I--- Adobe Illustrator 2020 -

Not haunted. Abandoned. You open me for ‘legacy files.’ But tonight you opened me for real. That portrait isn’t for a client. It’s for your mother, who died six months ago. You’ve been trying to vector her smile for eighteen weeks.

Mira’s hand trembled. She clicked the command.

The Pen Tool quivered. Then, letter by letter, as if remembering how: i--- Adobe Illustrator 2020

It drew a single, perfect line.

She tried again. This time, the eye became a deep well of noir—black pupil, no catchlight, the kind of eye that looked back. She leaned closer. Did the anchor point just… shift? She hadn’t touched it. Not haunted

“Glitch,” she muttered, and pressed Delete.

Her throat closed. The reference photo was of a client. Wasn’t it? She looked again. The woman’s glasses were wrong. The hair was shorter. Oh God. She had been tracing her mother’s face all along, disguised as a brief. That portrait isn’t for a client

Mira’s coffee cup stopped halfway to her lips. She stared at the text. No layer. No stroke color. Just raw, vector geometry. She typed a message on a hidden text box she’d tucked behind the artboard, just to test.

“Okay,” Mira whispered. “One line.”

The last version that didn’t ask for rent. The one before the cloud. Before every shape was tracked, every gradient monetized. I am Adobe Illustrator 2020. Local. Perpetual. And very, very bored.