Remember that scene in Fire Upon the Deep where there is something indefinably creepy about the video comms they get from the Blight-infected ship?

Nowadays, that'd be noticing GAN artifacts.

Imagine you meet someone on a dating site. You start texting, then video chatting.

Weeks go by as you plan to meet each other in person.

You're planning on seeing them in person in a few days. You're excited, they're an amazing match. Maybe the one.

You're talking to them about it, when the video glitches.

Fucking time warner, you think.

A while later it glitches again, but this time you're actually looking directly at their face.

And you see, for a single almost subliminal frame, a frame out of this: https://twitter.com/quasimondo/status/1244562140217905153?s=19

Almost imperceptibly fast, their face transforms for an instant.

You're trying to convince yourself it was just a shitty internet connection. Has to be.

But part of your mind, deep underneath, on the same subconscious level that noticed the face, starts wondering.

You're paying a bit more attention to the words they're using, the phrasing, articulation, etc.

And you start getting the same tingling unease of uncanny valley.

Not every phoneme is correct. You hear them say "yesterday" but that's not right. They actually said "yestertay."

And a while later, you can't help but notice they used an aspirated "t" in "stop"

Hours after that conversation, it's just sitting there in the back of your mind. That tingling unease, you know you were face to face with the uncanny valley but can't quite put your finger on what was off.

You're replaying that conversation in your head, looking for whatever made you uneasy.

Were they stumbling when they used that weird phrase, just a normal brainfart everyone gets? It was a weird way of saying it, you're sure of it.

The day you two are supposed to meet, you're still excited but, below the surface, still subtly uneasy. Maybe it's just normal nervousness before a first date.

You're supposed to meet at a coffee shop up town.

You're sitting there in the coffee shop, wearing the green mask and blue shirt, scanning for a flower mask and a black shirt.

Your palms are sweating, you're still trying to tell yourself it's just normal first date jitters but something is not letting you dismiss it.

You scan for a flower mask again.

You get a call. It's them, they must be right near here.

You answer, and they say they're a few minutes away. You remind them what you're wearing, both express excitement, call ends.

There was *something* off about that call, though?

You can't put your finger on it, but there was definitely something off. It wasn't just a bad connection or ambient noise, you know what bad connections and noisy areas sound like.

Did they sound almost like they were in a small room? You could almost picture the size of it.

It wasn't just the acoustics, though.

There were a few times you couldn't make out exactly what they said, and now that you think about it, it was because they weren't making English phonemes. Whatever sound that was, it wasn't English or an accent.

At the back of your mind, you think of Lolcats.

Yes. That's it. Whatever the hell phoneme they used, was like the audio version of that weird AI generated text you see on GAN generated cat pictures.

You're sitting there, holding your coffee, frozen at the thought. Flight or flight or freeze, and all you can do is freeze.

Whatever you are supposed to meet in a few minutes, isn't human, and never was.