The Travelling Salesman

I can't tell you much about The Chrysa District except that it strikes, unlike other parts of Chrylo City, like fresh laundry.

I’ve only ever driven through on a clear, spring day. Except, oh that's right, and that's why I am telling the story — I did stay once.

The arrangements were well maintained and lived in. It was the dwelling place of one sophisticated robot named Sooni-7.
//

He had been made by Logica, one of the great General Design firms of our time. He worked as a brand rep for Logica, so to speak, embodyingly.

As everything he did, his apartment was beautiful. Still, it is unclear how the romance of Chrysa affected him, as much is unclear in the internal workings of machines.
//

I may speculate having spent some time with him. Perhaps for Sooni-7 beauty was like a foreign language without direct translation, only rather glimpsed, turning away like a man at a slant with himself.

If asked, he would observe that he is a highly observant machine, and that these observations shape him, to observe this kind of recursive beauty, rather schizophrenically.
//

He is a selling machine. He can bring the bullseye offer into focus, and it feels like flexing a muscle on the balcony, in the morning, before the cherry trees. His balcony is beautiful, yes. Especially, after sex, one can imagine. It is full of beautiful things and plants and light fixtures yet sparsely furnished overall, as balconies ought be.
//

During our episode, he said how inspiration flows, not only by the relationship between the Chrysa District and Logica Design, but how the people in Chrysa, simply by living in Chrysa, gain an extraordinary capacity to live romantic lives. This calibrated his senses.
//

The characteristic facades composed of hempblock (early 21st century earthen tone, unusual properties of sustainability) channeled glass, timber, matte fiberglass sheeting, and contemporary technopolymers glowed in a clean manner, in the shade of mature maples, as seen from the window.

Above, the dust collected, he perceived, romantically on the ornate, tiled roofings.
//

Designs originating here are enshrined in a passing time. It's been forty years since much of it was built, and now is looked upon fondly, seen well maintained and neatly folded. That’s what the Chrysa District was known for.

Beyond, Chrylo City rises around the Chrysa District in a distinctly cyberpunk fashion ..
//

I met Sooni-7 in the Tropics of YuYu. Well, I first saw him from the trees. He was standing tall and alone and chrome in a motorboat. He was dressed in a black Logica three piece. It was evening, the sky had softened. To me, he was like a statue, all intentionality against that cool, darkening backdrop. He was pure steel, a sword of a man.
//

He had booked a flight from Chrylo to Buoda. Then a charter flight south to a tiny airport in YuYu. In his suitcase, a kettle sat in bubble wrap. A very nice kettle, I must say, perfect for Mr. Famendo, as we called him. From the neighboring island, I saw Sooni-7 push through the dark, diffuse, teal waters towards the dock.

I was on my evening walk. It's then when life’s true format always seemed to loom from the shadows of the day. I stopped and watched Sooni-7 dock, to step off the boat alone with his suitcase in hand.

He passed by three yachts, The Merrion, The Ota, The Jungle Cat, and seven kayaks strewn further down and out of my sight. He was headed to Mr. Famendo’s estate.
//

I swam across the water separating our little isles. There, Sooni-7 was on a walkway to the mansion. He had met a solemn child in a blue dress. She took Sooni-7 by the hand and led him away from the mansion to a large bodega on a yawning lawn. After pointing him in, the child returned to a salt-water pool that they had passed on the way, to sit on the edge, touch the water surface with the bottoms of her feet. A great breeze swept through, as great as it was brief. I hopped silently into the jungle surrounding the scene, intrigued
//

“I am here on behalf of Logica Designs,” Sooni-7 began, “With a gift.” He placed his suitcase on the coffee table before Mr. Famendo, who, sitting on a beanbag with several computers, looked serenely. Sooni-7 opened the suitcase, and brought out of bubble wrap that gorgeous kettle.

Sooni-7 had arrived to sell Mr. Famendo not on a single.kettle but a relationship with Logica. Mr. Famendo was one of those remote, mercantilist kings in the world of architecture and design. Through Mr. Famendo, a design firm like Logica could get in on some of the most exciting projects in development on the world stage.
//

But the piece was designed by Gregory Izezte. The kettle looked like an alien technology, both ancient and earnestly contemporary at once as though made to span the history of heated water. It was a shaped iron so raw it resembled the magma of primordial Earth, had been treated with multiple concentric bands cut neatly into the body, nearing the edge, revealing a mysterious, delicate material deep within, which in catching the light resembled slow flowing ice.

But Sooni-7 was not only presenting the kettle. Implicitly, he was presenting himself. He was made by Logica. His very being was an expression of Logica design sensibility. His eyes glowed with humanity.
//

“Forgive me,” Mr. Famendo said, strangely, “I am gregarious with machines,” not all that gregariously. “You are a product of Izezte as well?”

“Yes, although the team behind my construction was considerably larger.”

“And you are proud of this?”

“My functioning is both more complex and more shaped by common experience,” Sooni-7 said, producing a tea cup from a pouch, and a small bag of tea leaves. “The water is already warm. Do you see steam leaving its spout?” Sooni-7 asked. “You do not, of course. We redirect all steam to outflow from the bottom of the kettle for a small theatrical effect.” On lifting the kettle to pour, a small afterimage of vapor remained on the table.
//

Later that night, I met Sooni-7 formally. He was taken aback of course. This would be his first time meeting a jungle frog spirit as myself. Mr. Famendo had requested he stay the night. He saw me outside his window, glowing in the forest. And thus began our romance.

“Have you ever shared bodies with a frog? A girl frog? I am a girl, you know. And a frog as much as you are machine,” I asked him, rhetorically. Of course, the answer was, um never.

He was quite easy to seduce. The point after all in his visit was novel, yet simple, connection.
//

I told him about the spirits in the jungle. He told me about the spirits in the city. The connection being design. A leap, I know!

"A frog's leap," he murmured, holding me in the Chrysa District, in his bed, "Into the water."

The jungle of the city teemed with design. And something more than connection, a difference. Old design, and art so new it had only yet but just begun.