My fiancé, Milo, is something of an artist. He has always been fascinated with Sandro Botticelli's famous "Birth of Venus", a painting in the middle of which Venus, a full-grown woman with long, blonde hair stands on a seashell looking dreamy after emerging from the sea. I rather like the painting myself, so when he asked me to be his model for a four-dimensional remake of Venus, I gladly accepted.

Milo is rather critical of his own work, which I think is a result of his so-called friends always badgering him with less than constructive criticism of anything he shows them, calling them ugly or asymmetrical. I think he's just really good at what he does; his pictures are so realistic that they also include the less aesthetic attributes of his models, be they fruit, our pet cat or people. And life, after all, has never completely succumbed to what the art lovers of any era happen to consider perfection.

Whatever doubts Milo may have about his work, it has never stopped him from daring to show it to me, finished or in progress. I could watch him start working on Venus while standing in the posing room. The posing room we have at home is actually a smallish, closed and temperature-conditioned box that has just about enough space for a handful of people to stand in. It has several cameras Milo can move around from where he paints. The walls are usually just blue, which reminds me of the sea, but they can show any digital imagery as well. When I am in the posing room, Milo usually entertains me by using one wall for showing his work as it progresses and occasionally commenting on it through the speakers.

I tend to get somewhat lost in thought while posing, since it mostly a challenge of patience. Milo usually lets me know when he's working on the face parts and needs me to keep sharp, but I guess since Venus does look kind of absent-minded in the original painting, he never called me back to focus before mentioning that he was probably done. I glanced at the result, and was awestruck. To my eye, the girl in the 4D image was me, the only difference that it was locked in its eternal moment of pose, while I was free to twitch a cramping arm or leg to relieve myself. I was kind of surprised that she did not blink in sync with myself - although I noticed I unconsciously started to breathe in the same rhythm as the image. I remember telling Milo that, but his response was an absent-minded "mm-hmmm". I could almost hear him tearing himself apart over the imperfection he always got criticized for; probably my legs were not quite symmetric in shape, or my nose not quite the right shape or size. While it might not bother either of us in life, his criticizers had succeeded in making it bother him in his images.

I could tell he had given in to the urge to make his picture more perfect. I was just about to tell him to at least save this version for me before he touched it, when a mind-wrenching sensation passed through me. I looked around the small room nervously and called to Milo, but got no answer, not even a mumble. I moved to leave the room, but noticed that I could not get to the door; all the walls were suddenly alike, as if I could only look at one even if I definitely had turned my head.

And all the walls showed the changed image that only somewhat looked like me at this point, but yet seemed very lifelike in its own way. It even turned to comment to Milo that its foot was getting tired, and Milo answered to it that he was done for the day. The new and improved image of me turned off the lights in the posing room as it went out, and I was left alone in the darkness.

Or maybe not quite alone. I heard a voice at the back of my head, which I was certain belonged to my image, saying "I am truly sorry. You are now stuck here; the artist captured our essence too well." An eerie calm settled on my mind. I would not be here alone: my perfect image would be with me, as we both were locked in our pose for all eternity.