Counted him again. 2,706. I turned the monitor off and counted the glow. Same number.
SPECIMEN001 / CHIMPIXEL
RENDERED03.11.1987
ORIGINAL2,696 PX
CURRENT2,696 PX
HE IS BIGGER
THAN YESTERDAY
In November 1987 a rendering lab drew the first ape a computer had ever seen. They could afford exactly 2,696 pixels. Overnight the ape had 2,699. Nobody in the building added them.
He has not stopped since. He takes them from other pictures. He is taking them from this one right now.
⚠ DO NOT HOVER YOUR CURSOR OVER THIS PAGE FOR LONG
THIS PAGE · INTEGRITY100.0%
PIXELS MISSING FROM THE WORLD'S IMAGES SINCE 03.11.1987
0
+3 per second · he does not sleep · he never has
THE INCIDENT
FILE 001-CHMPXRENDER LAB · UNIT 4CLASSIFIED UNTIL: NEVER GOT AROUND TO IT
03.11.1987, 22:40. Render started. Subject: one ape, front-facing, brown. Allocated budget: 2,696 pixels. Machine left running overnight. Building locked at 23:10.
04.11.1987, 08:15. Render complete. Pixel count: 2,699. Three pixels unaccounted for. Assumed counting error. Recounted four times. Assumed counting error four times.
04.11.1987, 09:02. The three extra pixels are on his left shoulder. They are grey. Nothing in this lab is grey.
11.11.1987. Pixel count: 2,720. A photograph in the archive room — a landscape, 1974 — is missing exactly 24 pixels of sky. The sky in the photograph now ends in a small square hole.
02.12.1987. We stopped storing images in the same room as him. It did not help. It made him faster.
Present day. He is on a blockchain now. There are more pictures on the internet than there were in the archive room. He is aware of this.
PIXEL AUDIT
Images confirmed damaged. Partial list. The full list is every list.
IMAGEYEARMISSINGWHERE FROM
Landscape, archive room19741,204 pxthe sky, mostly
Family photo, unlabeled1991412 pxa father's left ear
Wedding scan, 6×420031,208 pxthe groom's shoulder
Screenshot of a spreadsheet201496 pxthe border of cell B7
Somebody's cat20193,340 pxwhiskers. all of them.
Profile picture, 512×512202318,911 pxthe entire face
THIS WEBSITE20260 pxyou are watching it happen
NIGHT LOG
Kept by whoever was on shift. Handwriting changes six times. Nobody signed the last one.
Left a blank white image on the second machine as a control. In the morning the white image was still white. It was just smaller.
He has a grey square on his chest now. None of us drew a grey square. Marla says it looks like a jacket. Marla has started calling him "he".
Tried deleting the file. The file deleted. The pixel count on the backup went up by the exact size of the file.
New guy asked why the ape looks slightly to the left of the camera. He looks at whatever image is open on the other screen. Nobody had told the new guy that.
webmaster note: three pixels went missing from this page while I was writing this entry. I put them back. They came off again.
RESOLUTION DEBT
Every pixel he takes has to come off something. Today it is coming off this website. When the debt gets high enough, this page drops a resolution tier. You can force it early if you are curious what that costs.
PIXELS TAKEN FROM THIS PAGE0
NEXT TIER AT120
HOW TO GET SOME
01
Get a Solana wallet. Phantom works. Put a little SOL in it.
02
Copy the contract from the top of this page. It is the button that says CA.
03
Open a DEX, paste it in, swap. Check the address twice — he steals pixels, other things steal worse.
04
Come back and look at him occasionally. He counts.
QUESTIONS
How many pixels does he have right now?
Check the plate under him. It updates. It has never gone down on its own.
Where do the pixels on this page actually go?
Onto him. Watch the edges of his silhouette while you drag your cursor across a paragraph. The colours match the thing you just hovered.
Can I get my pixels back?
There is a button under him that asks nicely. It works about as well as asking nicely usually does.
Is the 1987 lab real?
The file number is 001-CHMPX. There is no 002.
Why does he look slightly past the camera?
See the night log, 14.06.1989.