He simply showed him a smiley face with a shrug in reply.
“I see,” Helmer sighed forlornly. “Education is not what it used to be these days... He was actually an Austrian knight, but more importantly,” the stranger raised his index finger, “A sculptor as well. You know, I am something of a sculptor myself. I love creating something new.”
He replied with the same smiley face, not because he disliked the stranger, but rather because their encounter had added an amusing splash of color to the otherwise drab canvas of his humdrum days spent preparing to install the neural network.
On any other day, he would have been delighted by the strange conversation and this equally strange person. But not today. Today, he longed to talk to the City itself.
Spring was coming, though its arrival wa
