Dopamine

The surface is covered in pattern from edge to edge — the grid of flickering cells on the right reads at once as a screen, as the lit windows of a city at night, and as a neural pathway in cross-section: the route a signal travels. Every spot here counts — reward demands that everything be registered at once.

At the center is Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of desire, whose hunger predates the word "dopamine" itself. In place of hair, a sheaf of flame-tongued tendrils, each tipped with its own small eye: a thousand-eyed gaze, for which the world is an endless list of what remains to be wanted.

Behind her shoulder, a line of skulls emerges one from behind another, like the stages of her descent. In the Sumerian myth, Ishtar descends into the underworld through seven gates, leaving a piece of herself at each one — a crown, a necklace, a garment — until she reaches the throne stripped bare. The price here is the same: each skull is a peak already lived, a thrill already cooled, surrendered for the face burning ahead.

Her torso is laced tight, like a corset or a frame built around a force too large for its own boundaries. A red ribbon trails down from her chin — a trace, an exhale, a discharge — arriving exactly where the grid of lights begins: a signal sent once keeps lighting cell after cell long after it has gone dark at the source.