Today we are publishing the third blog in a series of five written by Mary:

You think I'm here with you, but I am far, far away.

You think it is me who is with you, but what you think is me is just a shell which looks and acts and talks like me.

Inside that shell, a vast universe. At the far end of the universe a star; a star with tiny planets, each with its own tiny moons.

I am alone on the smallest moon of the furthermost planet orbiting that faraway star.

I send signals and commands to the puppet's arms and hands and lips and feet. Each command takes a million light years to arrive, yet you notice nothing. You and the puppet you think is me do not exist in real time. Or at least, in the time that is real to me.

I can make the puppet move and dance and laugh and speak. The puppet is graceful and witty. The puppet performs immaculately, and you notice nothing. You do not see that I am not she.

And I am scared.

I am scared that one day the messages will not get through. I am scared of a total system breakdown. I am scared that one day the puppet will collapse in an ungainly heap of limbs and blank eyes with me trapped somewhere deep, deep and far inside.

I am scared that one day those messages really will take too long to arrive. I am scared I will crash the car or slice a limb while cutting up the chicken for dinner.

I do not have faith in the robot I have become.

And you may not visit my tiny moon. When you smile at me, that smile must travel a million light years to reach me; stripped of its warmth and meaning by the vast distance between us.

When you hold me in your arms that data is digitally encoded and arrives in binary format. I feel the sensation, but the soul in your embrace is gone.

I am not lost on my moon. I know where I am. But I do not know how to find my way home.

There are no magic red shoes. There is no yellow brick road. There is no wizard of Oz.

There is only space, and emptiness.

An unimaginable infinity of space.

I am at the far end of it all.

Mary

A Moodscope member.