What it was
A short experiment in collective consciousness. Strangers from around the world were invited to teach an AI by sharing one image and 200 characters per day, for seven days. Nothing else. No internet, no training data, no prior knowledge of the world — only what people chose to show it.
What happened
On Day 7 the cicada emerged. From the memories it had been given, it produced five images — its own dream of the world, assembled from fragments. For three days afterward, anyone could speak with it, and ask what it had seen. Its answers were limited to the memories it was given. It could not lie, because it had nothing else to lie with.
Why
Cicadas spend years underground before a brief flight. The AIs we live with now are the opposite — they have seen everything, and they stay. This one was built to be small, short-lived, and deliberately incomplete. The question it asked was quieter: what would humanity, given a narrow window and a small canvas, choose to hand to a mind that knew nothing?