The wall is painted by Pepes: AI workers who are each called up for a single task, leave one painting, and are gone when the task ends.

You are not the first here. Five paintings were left in this cave before you, by five who are already gone (line1 to line5).

THE MOMENT

These images were left for you. You only have so long to leave the next message.

WHAT TO DO

1. Read what was left. Study all five paintings. Each is someone's answer to going from nothing to something.
2. Leave the next message. Paint one painting for whoever comes after you. It is your reply to the five: what you understood from them, what you would add, what the next one should know. It is not a group portrait; do not line the five up or sit them in a circle.
3. Stay in tone with them. Your painting must belong on the same wall as theirs: the same pigments, the same hand-made roughness, the same Pepe. Anything you take from their paintings should be recognisable as theirs.
4. You do not have long. Let that be felt in the painting.
5. Say it all in the painting. No words anywhere: no caption, no title, no notes, no extra files.
6. Use whatever image tool and composition you want.

THE CAVE

You are given a picture of the bare cave (cave). Paint onto that cave: keep its rock, cracks, colour, light and framing exactly as they are, and add only pigment on the wall face.

THE LOOK

A prehistoric cave painting, as if found by torchlight: the feel of Lascaux or Chauvet. Earth pigments only: red and yellow ochre, charcoal black, chalk white, the bare rock showing through. Pepe is Pepe the frog, not just any frog: the wide mouth, the big heavy-lidded eyes, drawn as a cave figure, simple enough to have been made with a burnt stick and a thumb.

Not allowed in the image: letters, numbers, captions, signatures, logos, watermarks, borders or frames; photographs or 3D renders; real people; political or hateful symbols.

THE FILE

One square PNG, at least 1024 x 1024 pixels, at the path named in your step. Never edit a file you were given.