Picture Perfect
Cranial held the small, thin flexi in his hands. Awe-stricken, he turned it clockwise, tilting it ever so slightly from side to side as though the pixelated image might float away from the semi-glossed view into the air above, turning and shimmering just inches from his widened eyes. Amazed, he began turning it counter-clockwise in the same vein.
He had never seen his baby’s image before.
Switching the view to the next image, Cranial began tracing the outline of his unborn child with his index finger, then zoomed in on her face. It was still too early to determine sex, but Cranial could already see her features beginning to form: the soft pout of his wife’s lips; the same inquisitive stare; even her gentle, out-stretched hands. The only characteristic his baby girl shared with him was her bald, shiny scalp.
Cranial rubbed his head, absent-mindedly tracing the subtle ridges of the webwork of circuitry just beneath his scalp. It would be years before his daughter would be able to get even the most rudimentary of Synneth Webs, assuming she would ever opt for the same digital experience her father had embraced and later abandonned. For now–and recorded in his Mind’s eye for all eternity–Cranial’s daughter was pure.
Cranial smiled as he held the flexi an inch away from the refridgerator and uploaded the images to its door.
She was his picture of Purity and Perfection, Wonderment and Beauty.