Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 46

Summoned by the Queen of Sighs.

Vash, Ty and myself are entering the Siren Tower, for the first time.

And inside there are seven floors of marketplace to ascend before we reach the Siren Palace at the top, of course, referencing the cliff top legends of Greek mythology. It is also a real market, stalls selling exotic products and services.

And inside it is overwhelming to say the least. It is an assault on the senses, but in every way, a delicate, subtle and powerful assault. Everything I see here, I want it, want to be it, want to become a part of it. It's fascinating. I could wander these rows of stalls for lifetimes.

And there are all kinds of witches here, browsing the endless supermarket of the collective unconscious. This is where, I'm told, people come to upgrade their avatars in the gap. When you earn enough credits from lessons you can spend them here. I check my credit. not bad, but something makes me want to resist spending the credits. Like remaining in my noob skin, means I haven't really fully signed away my soul to this place.

Ty and Vash are not so particular, and I nearly lose them more than once.

So many styles here, styles and anti-styles and sub-sub-sub cultures, remixes and flavours from cultural comments half familiar or not. And each stall I pass fills me with a sense of longing for something lost, a saudade for something I never really had in the first place.

And I have to focus real hard to keep moving on and up through the warren of stalls, seeing people bartering in the languorous and seductive way that Sirens barter, buying and selling minor Shivers, blueprints and code, digital pets and affectations, things to be taken back to meatSpace and printed at a fabricator, all of them expressions of identity, outfits, garments, smells, trinkets, attitudes and ways of moving.

I am stopped for a moment in my tracks when I see a glimpse of home, Manhattanite-bougie-literati style served up in a few racks of clothing and a few accessories, tech-literati trinkets, my own cultural space and time rendered a commodity, and I realise how the clothes I always thought were impervious to trends were in fact a trend. My no-style was a style after all.

People think Sirens are shallow, but this shit goes deep.

And then Vash giggles in my ear, "I think me and Ty should both get these avatars so we can be like a likkle NYC kind of coven".

"Yeah, repping the NYC vibes." Echoes Ty, trying on clothes he could have taken out of my wardrobe at home.

And finally, we make it to the top floor, to the heavily guarded entrance to what looks like I imagine a nightclub used to look like back when ordinary people used to go out dancing, before it became the preserve of the ultra-rich.

And we have to show our wristbands to the bouncers, and they look real mean, but also exquisitely fashioned, in a way that no doubt makes somebodies heart skip a beat, Sirens are always so desirable that even when they are not targeting you, you almost wonder if your own tastes are too limited.

And then we are in, Ty and Vash are made to wait outside, I hush their protests, I'm desperate to find out what her majesty has to say, because her invitation hinted heavily it was some dirt on Sadie.

And here I am, trying to shake off all this distraction, because I just need to get to mom, my sisters are rotting in an induced coma, wasting their little muscles away while I mess around in this dumb ass computer game, and I know Sadie Weaver isn't telling me everything, but God I don't want to trust Elisabeth Kyteller either.

Pick a button, one will get your old life back, the other will get you burned alive. No pressure.

But I cannot keep these ideas in my head when I see the whole Siren court assembled together, and I fall in love with all of them, the whole ensemble, so hard I almost forget my sisters' names.