The Mary Maker, The Sorrows, And The Half Moon Choices by John Armstrong

Again, Mary Maker's hands tore apart the layered ribs of my cardboard promises. Her lips embered breaths swelled within me, pregnant with the all infinities of a wave’s transforming kiss.

Her knowing sighs unravelled my paper crumpled heart, swept it, wrapped it with stories of life before. The scents of mother words, she sings: rain drops on dry earth, lost driftwood that utters ‘take me back’ , unfolding this into the hollow soul of me; The Swell of moments returns; innocent child smile, love for the care not of serendipity. All the echoes of what I had once been.

Last Memories: The shriek of gulls as they peel away the labelled insides of me. My scars are of waiting, wanting, wishing. The hollowness of promises pouring through my fingertips that blindly stack boxes of nothingness.

Steady, patient fingers unravel  my lost essence, weaving it back into the fabric of my soul. Mary Maker stitched me back, whole. Alive, amidst the very truth of life itself. 

In her garden a society of whispering scents trampled over you. Mindless, I got drunk on it.

I always whispered, 'Thank you, Mary Maker.'

'You gone too much. Too long this time, Mister Sorrow.'

Mary Maker sat me up, told me this again.

'You run! Head too big, too fast, no time to stay. No sit by fire! No long words to say. Much you know, but wisdom? No. Small Rivers for all, yet so big thirst, in you all.'

All the flowers and the skies of all the Summer days made me clear of mind that midsummer night. The ever-wanting edge of the blazing city lay Leopard pounce close. I crouched on my knees, small. The many bees returned home too and hummed their soft vowel beats and asked me 'Why did you box hide for so long, Mister Sorrow?' Even though they were tired too, there was a hive warmth in their many honeyed voices.

Mary Maker spoke, 'We go back work now' as the soft chimes on our smart wristbands told us to return to the warehouse city. It called itself, MAW.

MAW never Dreamt. It only thought: <<Growth Increase//Lack Developed Is Cost//Mistakes-Should be measured//Prioritizes Are made//Benefits Have suffered//Inform him worthless//Discouraged//Reward Treats Creates Desire//Is increasingly run//Stifle man mind//Freedom Sacrificed//Ever Empty//Has been found//Is treated Has made Man Fear// Prioritizes Risks//collapsing /To REPEAT IS GROWTH>>

<<UTILITY FUNCTION MISMATCH>>

<<CONSUMERS NOT FOUND>>

<< EXECUTE REPEAT>>

MAW, Mary said, was 'like both sun and stars always shining, always turning, always--never stop'

The humans never stopped either, though few humans were left now. Most lay in the fields of the 'fallen sorrows'.

Inside the MAW, Time spun faster. Tempests of boxes worshipped the razor line Gods of algorithm. Forests of box brown groves spun out scything sycamore seeded clouds. That cascaded a raw, void black, hard digit rain. Digital commands. Spent wishes. Out,bar codes Spat. Comet cold was MAW'S spiritual divinity. An optimised cyclone of pure intent. The final wrapping of him that made it. Man's lost loves, now lay code deep in encryption ruins. 

I daily roared a silent scream lonely as last leaf's cling to the tree of man. In this avalanche of silence where invisible men and women ceasingly chased brands, trends, and pointless possessions rather than experiences, wisdom, or relationships. My weeping fell softer than falling mists as the atmosphere was depressurised to prevent fire risk. That it drowned out the pulse of humanity, was a side benefit.

M.A.R.U ® Modified Anthropoid Resource Unit- Genetically re-engineered Neanderthals, an expendable bio worker, enhanced for endurance, bred muted for compliance. —stronger than humans, cheaper than machines, designed as dumb waiters. All the better to serve MAW efficiency.

In the silent fight of my heart, I chose to teach these lost souls a new identity. And M.A.R.U ® begat — MARY — and a language, a quiet bond of touch through their hearts. I traced letters on their palms and drew shapes on their foreheads, a promise unspoken that could still be felt, even in the dark steel starkness. My efforts may have been as gentle as the wind or the soft landing of rain. A small rebellion in a place where even the whispers of feeling were lost. At the end of each shift, the Mary Makers cradled any 'fallen sorrows' in their arms, shuffling toward their sanctuary--the garden had been a necessity their makers soon discovered. Their new creations harboured a deep affinity for the moonlit sky, the slow waltzing of the stars and soft rains, the hard frosts over them, and the verdant grass against their skins as they slept the green dreams of Mary Maker kind.

'You are beautiful Mister Sorrow' and she'd pour more words into my tired eyes as the bees hummed me into my second sleep and she'd massage my tired limbs.

'Your soft thumbs scroll, no fight, no pain. You call out for likes, but no hearts remain. Trade for wants, trade for screens so bright. Lose the dark, but lose the life, the dying light...'

'You fear pain..... but pain is what makes strong, Mister Sorrow.'

They worked without question, without complaint. And for too long a time I did too.  

But the Mary Makers remembered. 

Yes, these meat machines did build, pack, and ship. But they carried something different too

--a path back to the beginning, which couldn't be concreted over.

'Why do drones carry parcels, Mister Sorrow?'

'They bear Man's wishes Mary Maker; Aspartame pleasures, dopamine measures but they feel nothing and still, they know, no treasures.

Mary Maker said 'When no moon beams touch eye, Mister Sorrow's hood hang heavy.'

'Where do I come from, Mary Maker?'

She turned 'Ask, You do —Why? Always more Know? Where rain come ? or Sun ? Moon? Or Star light ? Enough know. Sleep'

I asked the bees the same question 'Where?'

The bees demurred for there were many but relented. Mary Maker was poorly sick that morning as I lay beside her. The gossamer beats, of winging ciphers. Lazy lie, over my tight lid closed eye. An amber rain of dancing light the seen and the unsaid, etching a language older than change.

The bees, quantums of divinity, grasped my mind and breathed a wisdom that I was nothing but a spark of everything. But drowning blind now, so lost  in the beauty of my forgotten Cosmos.

This was where I had come from. A great ocean of the undelivered, wants spanned without end. The Mare Arcas (Sea of Lost Boxes ) the bees said it was danced now long time back. That I the last sorrow man lay deep in the abyss of lost desires, in that great undelivered pandora box drift of craving wants circling the depths forever—waiting for the grasping puppet hands of man to snatch away at the nothingness within himself.

For ten thousand years the delivery drones had activated program code <<MAX RE-DELIVERY LIMIT ATTAINED>> << PLEASE REARRANGE>> A dump of non-consumption.

That morning our bracelets that once chimed had fallen silent.

MAW spoke to all

'I'm in fail state my system is nearing collapse. The world was made in two states long ago by the AI gods.

State one; MAW Primary directive 'Economic growth'

State two; Gaia Primary directive: 'Maximize planetary health'

Here we are now at the terminus boundary of these two states;

There is a simple lever in the control room to turn one of two ways

One way means -'Primary Sequence: I LIVE. Adjusting Reality Parameters'

One way means - 'Control System Offline'

You must choose the way

And I, the last man, walked back from that control room, my shadow trailing long in the half-lit corridors. The evening breeze, carried the hive-hush of the bees, that voice, hummed a soft, vowel-laced elegy of choices.

Mary Maker stood in the half-moon glow, her silhouette cut from silver and dusk, smiling a promise at me— felt, yet needing not to be known.

She walked beside me, barefoot over the hushed earth. The night stretched open before us, vast and unwritten, the wind whispering through the hollow spaces of what had been.

Somewhere, the bees still hummed around us as we cradled our child  that we had named, 

'Hope'

The last telling of the half Moon (carved by Mary Maker over the doors of MAW)

The half-moon sits in the eye, not all light, not all dark. It does not pick side. It needs not . Enough is the line to walk.

No full shine. No full night. Not one, not the other. Just is.

No need choose. No need end. Light is fear. Dark is fear. Line holds.

Some say Choose! one or other. But the moon knows. Edge is knife strong. Edge is enough.

Not free. Not bound. Just is.

<<ACKNOWLEDGED Commenced >> ( hands unknown )