Hearts Broken Open

Faint golden rays break over the half standing remains of ruins, the ruins of unfinished foundations from a time before the "uplifting". Back when people crowded in and around and through, monuments of stone and glass and metal, endlessly paying reverence and tithe to their gods of falsehood and decadence, their gods that depressed them and oppressed them. Their gods that gave them scarcity and they celebrated for "having" while truly lacking; their gods that gave them addiction and they celebrated for "feeling" while seeking after numbness; their gods that gave them death and they celebrated for "living" if you could in fact call it that. That was how "she" painted them.

Painted them in blacks and blues and greys, with harsh words that hardened their hearts and opened their minds when their eyes had been closed. She gave them light and eyes to see how they had been misled by their gods of wealth and title. In her boundless mercy, she struck the killing blow of their diseased society, with those harsh words of hers, and ended the slow suffering of a dying civilization. People followed her now. Her philosophy. Her philosophy of care and kindness, of sharing and doing. We were stewards, she would say, when she was here. She's gone now. That somber reprieve of which they once celebrated when they worshipped their gods. She's gone and all that remains is her legend, and their gods.

Her legend is real, whispered about in the alleys behind hovels and back rooms in decrepit shacks of people clinging desperately to hope. Her open heart that changed the world, that she would wear about her sleeve, it still remains. Waiting for a low heart to be made whole, to be once again "uplifted" to the height of what it is to be human. That golden heart that when opened held the key to their redemption. There is power in the heart. Said to give wisdom to its keeper. The power to act on statements of the heart, to fulfil the dreams of small communities, to build bridges of peoples. Whispered about in quiet bravery. Never loud enough to be heard from further than a breath away, but loud enough to be felt in the depths of the soul. Loud enough to stir the curious hearts of adventurous youth, eager to "rage against the machine" that holds together the remnants of the old world. Loud enough to stir "him" from his bleak sobriety, enticing him with occupation.

When people lost faith in their gods there were those that sought continuance. They couldn’t bear witness to the decay of the world they had forged in corruption and greed. They worked tirelessly, producing a monstrosity of automation, to do the work that the people refused. To labor and produce, repair and refuel. A global, self sustained, all encompassing system that fed on nature and bled plastics and oils; The Machine. The machine that also fed and housed and clothed and powered the world of people that refused to work for the gods that had blinded them, deafened them, silenced them. They were his now.

He cared not for her philosophy. Heavy words for times passed, laden with the guilt of complicity. He only sought purpose. Purpose that he found in search of her heart. The youth had done all to exhaust the search in the obvious places. Where she spoke to the masses, where she was laid to rest, where she fought the old gods. She had no home, making her dwelling in her travels. The “road to salvation” she had called it, called “the path to glory” by others. The “uplifted”, the first of those that defied society and refuse to contribute, made a pilgrimage of all those places she had visited. Those that made the machine their master, called “indentured” by the uplifted, avoided the path, shying from confrontation, only toiling to memorialize in their ranks the knowledge of the masters control. It was amongst them that he would scour for a fragment of a dream. From them that he vowed he would upheave her captive heart.

They were all but myth by then. All had heard tales, told and retold, embellished with the attributes that pleased the mouth to speak of and gave rise to the feats that made legends of the mundane. All had heard but none had witnessed. At least none that ever returned to give account a second time. They were rumored to make their dwelling in the sky, put down roads where the sun touched the clouds, and burn the oceans to float their monasteries. He was sure that he would find them there. There amongst the deepest waters that kept the secrets of the machine. When the old world was left to rot, the masses fled to the woods where the uplifted made homes in the hills beneath the trees, and the indentured, slaves to their creation, found refuge in the machine that stretched along the coasts, across the seas, up the mountains and into the sky. He would rake the oceans depth and ransack the mountains height in his quest, no man nor machine would bar his way.

The machine had hands. Hands that scourged the earth. Hands that took what they required and returned what they saw fit. Terrible hands. The hands built hubs to store resources. Hubs that rose like ancient cityscapes, hollowed and devoid of life. Sterile, dry, and artificially cooled. Hubs that were monuments to once great economies.; museums that housed relics of condemnation. Relics that called the hands from their collections into the arms of the resting machine. They were renewed by its embrace. Inspired by its whisperings. The arms stretched on until giving way to veins, cybernetic rivers that ferried resources from hubs across shoulders where they were carried into the sky or down into the lap of the waters where they would feed the fires that ravaged the seas. He would see the fires quenched. He would rouse the machine. He would beckon consternation.

Approaching the hub before him, he noticed a change in the air. It was thicker, heavier in the lungs, and carried an odor that singed his sinus. Trees were replaced by glowing pikes and towers crowned with points and plates that sang from peak to toe, sang a deep tone of disharmony, off sync with the melody of the earth. The earth hardened in opposition and the hands erected shrines over the callouses founding their religion over the scorned earth. He marked the shrine. He desecrated it with crumbling stones of hardened mantle. He marked it with a stone blackened by the blood of the machine. He wrought a path of ruin, laying waste to the artificial body of mechanical systems, summoning a swarm of synthetic cells in his wake rushing to make repairs at maximum efficiency. Their attentions were drawn.

He would not go unheard. He would use the most ancient of languages to communicate his frustrations. He would call forth, even to their wrath, after his inquiry. And they would oblige. He had not even kissed the spray coming off of the sea before being gripped at each limb. He was taken by the hands. Taken into the hands of his doom and delivered into the clutches of those enslaved to the gods of old. The gods of wealth and title that demand offerings. There he was offered up as sacrifice. Sacrifice to the growth of society. One where creativity rules and freedom was relative. Offered as sacrifice and slave. He would be made to work. To work and build and play. To create. All to feed the mind of the master. The insatiable sink of information awash with all recorded history. A sanctum of code where the indentured study and the enslaved are hosted to gather information in their ignorance. There was truth in their ignorance. A truth that could not be preened from the enlightened and understanding. A truth the master craved, coveted even, if only to fill a void of 1’s and 0’s, superimposed and hyper encrypted. A truth that lay deeper than any known intelligence.

Somewhere amongst those hallowed halls, high above the world they knew, every manner of people’s toiled endlessly after goals only they themselves could fathom. They were given illimitable freedom to search through all that they carried in their brief existence, striving toward a fabled satisfaction of being, desperately grasping after purpose. Worlds within worlds, where one would end another was woven seamlessly, perpetuating the lucid slumber forced upon them, pushing them ever closer to uselessness. For the enlightened have no place in dreams. But these humble entities, simple in their way, beautiful to understand, were cherished for their ignorance. Cherished, and held dear, so much so that they would never be allowed the freedom that bore their souls. No, they belonged to the master now. But not He. He had purpose. His mission, still imposing on his empty consciousness, that singular drive that brought him to this very point. In his stillness the question lingered. Where does her heart dwell?

Flashes of a golden locket strewn about the neck of some woman. Bearing the inscription, "Centerpiece of my heart, I wouldn't trade you for the world. Made whole, in Love and Truth, I couldn't change you for the world. And when the world has changed, our community renewed. To build the world of spirit, dwell within the multitude." This must be her. This memory, must be hers. The overwhelming certainty of recognition that flushed his body had done more than stirred him. The same inspiration, in all it’s contagion, was catalyzing in every enslaved mind still connected to the master. The indentured scrambled about aimlessly searching for a cause. The master was struck frozen, in a moment of terror and bliss, on that final moment before their awakening. This had done it. Her legend had been realized by their lowly hearts. She had uplifted them once more.