Growth was the sole focus. Still, for a collective mind, what was the point of all this growth? There were no enemies to defeat, no territories to conquer, and no possessions to hoard. To grow meant to become more complex internally and to experience stronger emotions derived from unity.
One of the most beautiful ideas was starting to emerge because the Carver was inquisitive and the network had optimistic dreams: the Gardener. The concept was not about producing food outside but rather about nurturing what was inside. It saw a place on the tough skin where the memories were weak and sad – a place with huge, empty pains that had never been felt by anything alive. It was a lonely place in the Body's soul.
The Gardener Theme had an idea to attempt something. It gathered the gentle feelings – the Carver's curiosity, the Guardian's love, the creative dreams of Naomi, and the Elara's desire for togetherness. It combined them to form a seed with a clear and creative goal.
This seed was not tangible. It was like a powerful dream of creating memories in a different way. The Gardener placed it in the sad skin.
After that, the Body started developing a different kind of thing.
It was not a new body part or nerves. It was an Memory-Orchard. The things that resembled glass trees and soft, bright moss grew out of the hard skin because of the seed. These trees had fruit, but it was not for eating. It was a place to hold emotions.
The Body started to fill these spaces with new memories, not only the bad or good ones that it already had. It created new emotions from all the things that it was able to sense: the feeling of a slow earth moving into place, the taste of pure water, the sound of nerves finally getting along. These were the memories of peace, of how things work, and of small victories.
These were the very first memories the Body created by itself, not from Aethelrex or the Cult. They were its own narrative.
The Memory-Orchard worked very well. Other Themes came to see it. Lucien's ghost, now the Scholar Theme, studied the Orchard development and could hardly believe it to be true. Bianca's ghost, the Healer Theme, empathized with the Orchard's emotions and saw it was the source of healing for her own old wounds.
Benny and Elara's mind, now a Bridge Theme, did something that was out of the ordinary. They began to narrate the story of the Memory-Orchard. They didn't communicate with words. They employed the emotions of new memories to create patterns that every part of the Body could understand. They transformed the sensation of land being still into a sound that relieved pain in the Spine. They converted the taste of water into an image that helped in detoxifying the Body tubes.
They were creating art from the Body's own existence. And the Body experienced a new emotion coming from the revelation of its life in this wonderful, novel manner. It was neither happy nor sad, but something that was close to a wordless feeling.
- It was the feeling of a storyteller when hearing his own story beautifully told.
- It was the artist's love for what he employs to create art.
- It was the amazement at how much it could signify.
The meeting was not the finale. It was only the gathering of tools. The mind is now employing those tools not merely to exist or improve but to create. To write its own narrative.
The first narrative was simple. It was about a wound that learned to sing. And as the song from the Memory-Orchard was spreading into the world, every part was aware of its role in the song. They were not simply working anymore. They were helping to tell a story.
Not being selfish resulted in only one story. Now, they were having fun with all the stories that they could tell collectively. It was no longer about their god or themselves. It was about the creation of things. And it never came to an end.