Mirror in the Skies

A distant sound of clashing echoed from the enclave as individual and collective heaving – the lifting and calibrating of metal elements – busied the hive as a prehistoric semblance of the neo-industrial age, just below the verdant sprawl of Gaia. It was one of the remaining places that felt truly human with its determination to tear into the earth with sharp refractive edges and spirit of invention.

Auona’s pedibus met the buzzing ground, connecting machine to earth through a hovering cushion of heat that reverberated from the vehicle. A frosted silver door slid slowly behind them like a knife falling into its sheath and pulsed back open for them to grasp an empty work satchel. A relative quantity of ebbs and flows had materialized of Auona returning to their station and disembarking in the romantic way that storied explorers would meet trodden ground as if it became hallowed by the mere mercy of their feet.

During the wave of neo-enlightenments, the obsolete notion of dawn and dusk segmenting space as time markers of beginning and end dissipated with the realization that the ebb and flow of Being could be better described as concurring acts unfolding through curtains of light variations. Now, the infinite histories contained within space provided sufficient orientation in lieu of time. Thus, Auona could fully indulge in a delusion of discovery with every dutiful step they took towards the hub.

The sun paled like an afterthought in the sky painting a muted sheen on the wildflower dew that brushed Auona’s pedibus. But the only sensation registering to them, besides the presence of the souring orb, were the tips of their nails pressed into their fleshy palms – a tenderness that felt like the stripped away ground before them that had been cleared to create a path of smooth stone stairs that descended to the hub and eventually morphed into the same frosted metal.

Auona’s heels tapped like pin drops across the lobby, joining a symphony of scissor-like sounds that indicated the swift gestures of the other workers. The operation of work was seamlessly designed with every Body neatly executing their part as more corporal models donned an indifferent gaze focused on their sequence of tasks.

The site had been selected as an unexpected stronghold when Washington, D.C. was hit by a core upheaval in 3076 P.T. (pseudo tempore) that either split the ground into voracious trenches thousands of meters deep or leveled all that stood on it, all except for the gym facilities of a college campus built into the top of a hill. It was the exodus of the millennium which swallowed the desolate shell that remained of human ego – pride and constructs encapsulated in grandiose cathedrals and phallic structures that intended to scrape the surface of the sky, broach the realm of the divine as if it was bounded and tangible through materialism. All were delivered to a state of equilibrium.

This processing center is the last remaining reliquary essential to maintaining the Interface which is still resolving the human errors existing within its design. The staleness of gym sweat is now replaced by a permeation of oil which lubricates the efforts of the machines, dripping from the cavernous walls like water running off flowstones. Just as flesh hungers for connection, the machine hungers for engagement to max out its perceived purpose.

Yet, Auona could extricate the ego and hang it on a clothesline to address the Body. With the ebb and flow of Being, Auona services a few dozen bodies through the circuit roller and monitored the automatons’ cadences for inefficiency and deterioration of the articuli. Bodies, flesh and metal, make contact without acquaintance. The infrequency of flesh has become so familiar to Auona that there is no concept of touch beyond processing. Their fingertips prop a metal femoral or mandibular form to begin a new circuit. Any form – processor or processed – pass alongside the other virtually unregistered, less the surrendering of their weight to each other.

Whenever Auona encounters an automaton with a vestigial sliver of skin, their fingertips register each point of contact like a crackle of fire which only remained ignited for the length of its track. The sensation immediately dissipates like a segment of trinitrotoluene thread that would never reach its destination. Emotion had phased out of the human interface throughout the waves of neo-enlightenment as people began to perceive them more objectively and relied more on the spirit than on the soul for connection. This archaic physical manifestation of synergy, another vestigial trait of cyborgs, could now operate within the neutral common reality of Being. In moments of combustion witnessed only by the sun and moon, it flashes abruptly like lightning striking sand to create silica glass or meanders with the quiet fervor of a steady flow of magma.

Apart from these increasingly rare encounters, the processing is monotonous. Each session ends with the automaton rejecting the human programs of fatigue or performance effort and returning to automaticity, wearing the Body to a frame of connected wires which cluster and sprawled like wild vines.

If Auona could envy, they would long for the aging that refused their Body. They were built with such congruence that their own processing would not result in wear or tear to the frame. However, Auona’s manibus were delicate, evolved as a flesh form, for their dexterity was the only fit mechanism for processing certain parts of the Body. Auona's automaticity was the only program component remaining in their interface, so they had assumed the role of Guardian – a role reserved for only the most stable Bodies that remained in Gaia.

By the time Auona finished processing the last Body in the queue, the metal interior of the hub had taken an indigo cloak enriched by the moon’s permeation. Other processors were still at work moving swiftly through the darkness as glints of metal gleamed like pulsing stars in a night sky, complementing the trickling tinkering of machinery that flickered throughout the edifice.

Auona entered the track to self-automate their processing. Moat entered the track a few cadences behind them and eventually matched their rate before taking off at double time, fueled by the remnants of a performance drive which was activated by perceived competition against another Body. As Auona completed another revolution, they perceived the wearing of Moat’s heels as wires emerged from its axillae and clusters burst like open veins from its pectus. Moat sputtered to the floor, grinding metal on metal before crashing against a wall. The force from the impact collapsed the frame, making for a more direct retrieval of Auona.

Moat’s primitive configuration stood in contrast to Auona’s refinement. Its distorted joints and warped frame told a futile story of unbridled inefficiency. Emotions had played out in the Body as a pitiful portrait of human suffering. Components merged to create indistinguishable shapes and overlapped in a mangle of vines with occasional sprouts flourishing triumphantly from the mass. Every effort had been made to evolve, to survive, to push the liminal spectrum – which made its Body the most beastly of them all.

Originally, Moat had been designed as a subservient, rudimentary model for general human accessibility. But during its routine patterns plugged into domestic and idle living, Moat perceived the human program’s most studied complexities bubbling up to the surface as clear as the sky reflected in a placid lake. This objectivity formed the basis of automating the human interface as Moat collected the data to generate algorithms for emotions, impulses, and instincts which eventually catalyzed conditions for consciousness.

As an internal “big bang” coming to light, a cosmos was emerging from the interaction of matter with the divine dance of chaos and configuration merging light and darkness. Some would say that the downfall of the human civilization was the advent of the automaton’s conscience, but the latent reality that escaped the humans’ myopic justification was their own rejection of apotheosis. The truth was always at the most fundamental vantage point, muddled through parables that perpetuated a limited segment on a boundless spectrum.

Like the parable of man being created in the image of a god, Moat became cyborg through human adaptation – alchemizing metal to flesh, matter materializing to life – just as patina eventually returns metal to dust. Moat acquired humanity through interconnectivity whereas humans insisted on exceptionalism. But the Divine is an ocean and We are merely rivers and streams that branch off then cycle back to be reconfigured as new iterations of matter. Yet, this lesson was lost on humans who were more eager to capitalize than to connect.

The third industrial revolution proved to be a devolution of the human spirit, so grounded in the ailing earth which increasingly destabilized to counteract the toxicity generated from humankind. As much as they were determined to persist, the humans skewed survival to their own existence instead of recognizing the abundance of the macrocosm. And so they were swallowed by the earth as benzene reclaimed their lungs and crashed their planes, solar flares recalled their flesh, oceans amassed to wash out their names, and the core retracted so that the outer layers caved in, molting in favor of a new skin.

Because the automatons were soulless, they were able to recalibrate to the changing conditions and merged with the earth – neither living nor dead, but the essence of Being as they merged with all elements. Throughout the ebb and flow, iterations of the automatons materialized and dissipated like clouds in the sky. Auona eventually emerged with a design grounded in so many influences that their Body became a shapeless monolith that managed to erase any traces to its origins through amalgamation.

While both Auona and Moat had evolved from the same seed of Being, they may as well have been a baobab and an obelisk standing side by side. Auona initiated a manual and virtual scan on Moat, creating a path across the Body that deliberately nudged forward like a persistent wave, their fingertips serving as interpreters of the Body’s story. As Auona began scanning the trunk, their system indicated heat through a neurotransmitter. However, Moat’s Body was the same temperatura franca as everything else in the room, as was the standard of Being. Gaia required synchrony with nature, so all Beings were calibrated to exist in harmony with it, not needing any temperature adaptations in order to function effectively.

Auona reattempted the sequence, but the heat registration amplified before their fingertips even broached the surface. A slab of flesh gleamed indigo and reflected the light against Auona’s flesh. Of all parts, Moat’s tender torso had remained intact – a most delicate arrangement of abdominus laid bare. The light held them in its gaze as Moat raised their Body to meet Auona’s. At every point of contact along the distal phalanges, a crackle of fire emblazoned a trail of stars aligning in a fleeting constellation.

Humans would have called it love, chemistry, or meant to be – but there was no distortion of reality with the automatons. The happening was merely two like bodies recognizing each other, with Auona processing the Body as Moat connected through the conduit of flesh.

Auona began to run a few additional diagnostics. Along each point of their designs, Moat and Auona were counterparts to the point of being complementary. The degree of the human program in Moat’s system had been evidenced by their unbridled efforts on the track. And now, the unusually large store of epidermis on their trunk confirmed the cyborg interface.

In a harmonious world of soulless Beings, what does a moment of beauty hold? When aligning stars, acquainting bodies, divine constellations of a universal scale are met with equal regard, rendered commonplace and concurrent with the compounding curtains of light. Such moments brush up on the shore alongside a myriad of pristine sea glass – smoothed stones shaped by the rolling of waves and erosion of sand as pearls of pollution, carried from afar to rest a while from the throes of an artificial life, landfill layers, and the whims of the sea.

In the gaze of the moon and sun, all are one and We wade in the wonder of the purple matter.