PHOTO #1:

Two figures. Human by all standard indicators. One male. One female. Fully tricked out in party armor couture, so, sure, signals are being broadcast, images carefully in place, and some might say that renders it just one more duplicitous artifact of a frivolous age gone by-but no. The fantastically oppressive layers of plating on the armor. The impenetrability. The artfully squalid blank-0 style of the kitchen. The eyes set to dead aim. The casual way that ornately personalized Samsara-6 Revolver has been abandoned upon the countertop between the two. If you dig into the deep meta, you'd discover that the male figure had uploaded this picture, tagged himself and the female figure, and that within the week she had untagged herself. Geolocationally, this was all within a designated cut-loose zone, a domain of sanctioned frivolity, so no duty parameters were being violated by a picture such as this which was meant to put across a certain drunken insouciance, an air of hipstery incongruity, and with just enough grime to suggest misbehavior worthy of a music video. At the time, a gun-an official gun-placed on a table between two armored figures evoked a capricious death duel, or something along those lines; a personal-an unofficial-weapon was even more of a provocation, usually with the figures in question wholly disguised-and not because an actual law was being broken-not in a duly designated cut-loose zone-but it was more about the image-the performance-of the outlaw behavior. Personal weapons were, at the time, clearly named and embellished so as to leave no doubt as to the identity of the owner-and that owner was almost never either of the two armored figures positioned on either side of the displayed personal weapon in this style of photo. This signaled that the two armored figures in question were fighting for the entertainment of the Samsara-6's owner, who is, in all probability, the person taking the picture. The significance of the woman untagging herself is that she is signaling that she won the duel, and therefore the other one is most likely dead. The dead one-the presumed loser of this orchestrated duel-remains "forever tagged," a vague and spooky notion linked to various alleged beliefs to do with photography being able to trap souls or ensnare ghosts or what have you-the dead man is captured within the photo, while his slayer is freed of the pictorial prison, if you like.