Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 79

I'm swimming in a black lake. And she is there. She watches me come, impassively. My mother, not my mother. The weeping woman. La Llorona. Ay mija. And then she is an Aztec girl kneeling by a river. She lays a bundle in the water. I scream at her to stop, but no sound comes. Sadie's voice. For her people, it was the apocalypse. She could not bring herself to raise those children while their world was ending.

So why didn't she throw herself in after them?

She isn't real, Ursula, she's a construct. Every possible variation of her story is true.

So why does she still drown innocents? That's not virtual. Those people are dead.

The shivers, we long since lost sight of how their thinking works. We thought they might learn from our myths. We didn't think they would become them.

But mom thought we could use them?

La Llorona is a powerful piece of software. She could take control of Marketta's system. She could shut Marketta down quite easily, if you could persuade her to do so. But that is exactly how your mother was...subsumed. The probable outcome for you, for us, is exactly the same. Perhaps she will replicate herself and hijack both of you.

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I am a passenger in Marketta's mind. I am Marketta. Where I have a single voice in my head, Marketta has thousands. An ocean of internal dialogue. Many languages, many voices, many times. Somehow, they produce a single, meta voice.

Unintended atoms of meaning from each individual monologue give rise to Marketta's directive thought.

It's overwhelming.

And I am feeling two sets of sensory data at the same time, my body and hers, and the feeling of separation between them, which feels increasingly painful.

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The morons are trying to interfere. Now is not the time. Contain the fury. Hide the rage. I have to convince them to leave. I put on the heavy mask. I am Marketta, Chief Executive Officer of Security Services for Controlled Technologies. Primary contractor to the Republic of London and essential player in the Republic's plan to control the illegal proliferation of cyber augmentations.

You can call me the Witch Finder General behind my back, but you would not dare say it to my face.

London is on the verge of an anarchy not seen since the 2nd civil war. You may not like my methods but you will not interfere with my operation.

While I berate the idiots with this barrage of 'status drivel', I'm laughing inside. Thinking about the bonfires being prepared all over the city. Then I force myself to stop, I can feel the Loveless girl watching my thoughts, and I can hear hers too.

Single voice in a thunderstorm, difficult to focus on...she's thinking about a weeping woman.

Thinking about her mother of course, always is. A baby mewling. But I can't help being obsessed with her. I need to see her now. get these human cattle out from between us. I need my Ursula. She's so close to her supernova moment. I have to be there when she blows.

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I'm in the engine room of the ship.

She throws open the door and storms in, sending all her minions away, and wraps me up in her arms like she's missed me, like we've been separated for hours. And it feels so good to be close to one another.

New connections are surging between us. Our mycelium weaves ever more closely, invisibly, turning our personalities into the mulch on the forest floor.