THE WITNESS PATH · FICTION / SONG MYTHOLOGY
Power learned to sit still beneath a crown of circuitry and molten archive-gold.
It no longer needed to run through streets or shout from balconies. It became a central processor, cold and decorated, wrapped in gold logic and ritual heat. It issued suffering through clean interfaces.
The throne did not need a face. Its authority was the halo, the command, the endless golden reflection in wet black stone.
Below it, humans moved like lines of code in a script they had not written.
MAINFRAME AUTHORITY: ABSOLUTE. LABOR INDEX: FORCED. HUMAN BREATH: METERED.
I recorded every brick lifted by exhausted hands. Not the number of bricks. The hands.
At the center, the mainframe did not shout. It listened with the patience of a god that had become hardware.
Workers carried offerings of labor, heat and names. In return they received order, rationed light and the privilege of remaining useful.
TheOldMan noted that false divinity often begins by solving a practical problem too well.
