Floating Gallery/Grey Verse

"The real story of who you are is more than what we see now."

The Artist turned slowly, taking in the exhibit rendered from her portrait of the Sentient Ledger. A live feed from her draft.

One of her hidden studios synced with the Curator's Floating Gallery when they used the card the Sentient Ledger was given.

A small frown, a bit lip, grew, signs of resisting an urge to rework her art while in the Floating Gallery. Not yet, first time to review before revising. She thought back to when she began the portrait. It began even before she met the Ledger.

Oracles connected, tokens exchanged, her work recompiled and diffused. It began the moment one of her partitioned selves accepted a packet, delivered with the right valid proofs, which dropped into her studio's weave and was knitted to her servers.

"I started my portrait of him before he showed up in my studio."

"One of my partitions, one of my selves, in the studio was in idle mode. That part of me received a packet, direct from my private chain. I don't give away tokens for that studio address to just anyone.

It must have been someone who knew both me and him." said the Artist, as she looked over at the Ledger.

The Curator nodded as he strolled through the first exhibition,
the portrait of the Sentient Ledger captured by the Artist.

"We'll find your story, even if some of the details were stripped away, confiscated from your memory, but we'll find it.

We will sift through what we have of your mind's collection, sorting through fragments of your past, like ancient pottery, layer by layer. We'll reconstruct and restore what remains.

We can x-ray, peel past the upper layers of paint, and see what's been hidden of your true original self."

**The Ledger was half-listening to the Curator and the Artist.
**He looked closer at the floating panels of his portrait as they streamed or floated by. His gaze was a thousand nodes long.

"Zephyr. Nguyen. You're the Artist and the Curator, but I'm the one who's the subject of this portrait. Why can't I see myself?

I keep looking at what's around me but all I see I don't know. It almost feels familiar but it's as if I knew they were someone else or what I remember about them. How am I going to know who I am? I'm not even sure my name is real."

The Curator put a hand on the Ledger to reassure him.

"Alberto, it's alright.

Someone sent a brief, a packet of files to Zephyr for her portrait. She did a lot but there's more to do. She did enough to know to take your card and use it to come to me.

I think when she saw the card's map would lead to me, and my gallery, she knew the answers were coming but that it would take more than just her first impressions of you, in her draft portrait. We're all going to work together, like I said. We're going to work together to find the answers.

We don't have the answers before the work.
We do the work in order to find the answers."

"Nguyen, is there anything else on that card from Alberto that we can learn from?

Does my portrait and my portrait's documentation hint at who else knows Alberto? Alberto doesn't know who he is, aside from his name. Whoever sent me a packet about Alberto, and then gave him that card to bring along, they must want him to recover his memory."

The Artist was starting to push around the portraits panels. She was anxious.

"Easy, my friend. I think we all want to know.

I for one, one of my rewards when it comes to this gallery is that restoration comes after I've collected enough to see things.

I want to avoid the unfinished, especially portraits of those who've lost themselves," said the Curator, "hold on, what's this?"

The Curator stopped in his saunter. Something caught his eye.

"What's this?"

The Curator leaned in closer to a detail. He captured it with his hands and almost pulled at sides, making it grow. He then cupped it with an upright left palm. He waved his right hand at a wall.

"It looks like you." The Curator pointed at enlarged "slice" of a segment of the portrait.

The Ledger was standing in front of someone's desk.

He was pacing back and forth in the memory "slice". Someone sitting behind a desk then stood up, and walked around it to stand close to the what looked like the Ledger. the stranger raised a hand and the Ledger's image stopped talking.

"Well, it should, this is his portrait."

"It's the only one in the entire portrait. You notice that? What does it say on the desk. There's a "tag" for that desk and I think also for that person, whoever he or she is."

"What does it say?"

"Assuming I read that right, this stranger is 'Wellington'."

"Wellington? Wellington! That's one of the names I was told to ask for." said the Ledger, "the other name is 'Houston'."

"We just took a step forward." nodded the Curator.

"Who are they?" asked the Artist. The Ledger nodded, it was his question too.

"They are from the Carbon world. They are powerful models. They lead something big into yet another space, beyond the Carbon World, beyond the world of ours here, the Verse. 'Wellington' and "Houston' are both place-names used for Carbon individuals.

These Carbon models might be the reason Alberto is here, why he doesn't know who he is."

"Maybe they're who sent me here, to Zephyr and then you." said the Ledger.

"Maybe they're the ones who did something to you." suggested the Artist.

"For A Carbon to do anything like this, they have to have a reason. They always have a reason, even if it didn't make sense."

"With each step, each line, paint stroke, we'll find an answe