Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 40

Knee length black overcoat with monochrome patterned lining - the pattern is moving, a long slow dive into a fractal. The coat has high glossy lapels on which you almost don't notice the lines of code etched into them in different textures of black.

The coat she wears open over a little, black, thigh-length dress with two white buttons at the throat and a feature front pocket. She sports white collars on her button-down shirt, large and dagger-like, pointing straight down.

She has a pop of sharp, starched, white cuffs appearing at the wrist. Black, leather-style driving gloves. Smart, shiny, black school-shoes. Crisp, sharp makeup. Red lip, pale foundation, sharp black brow. Black hat with black band tilted across the head. Hair a pop of jet black, pressed hard to her scalp. Like a monochrome knife stained with a drop of your blood. Rudegirl cyberWitch.

"Weavers think that they are the scientists, but Sirens... we know different. We know the amount of applied science that goes into making desires." She smiles, the audience laughs.

"So, today we are going to learn the most basic of the Sirens spells, we will plant the seed of a new desire in the mind of another."

As she prowls back and forth on the stage, she sweeps her eyes around the crowd. Under the polished pretence of insouciance, I can see she is both reading the crowd very intently, and avoiding looking at me.

"How do we do this?"

She cocks her head and I can almost hear hearts breaking as she delivers her crooked smile.

"There are many, non-magical ways in which we can proceed. Clan Siren existed before the Rhizome. And it will exist after it. But the Shivers can give us an edge in a dangerous world. The right Shiver can magnify our powers to charm, and usually we try to find Shivers who help us to read our target."

I'm quietly surprised. Always thought Sirens were self-obsessed.

"Look here at this parade of strangers, and look closely. Every one of them is communicating a thousand things about who they are non-verbally."

Alice summons a window onto a London Street. We watch the crowds drift past.

"They have an invisible sign above their heads where their fantasies are written for all to see. If you want them to desire anything, even and especially you - you must become the one who desires."

Well now I'm lost.

"You read your target. Figure out who it is they want to want and you use this to your advantage. Shivers can help, because many of them have lived inside the oceans of preference data that have been collected these past fifty years. Many of the code spirits that flock around the gap, are made of training models fed petabytes of information about the patterns of other people's desire.

And these shivers can help you to read signs you do not yourself know how to read. Especially those of you from different cultural milieu to one another."

So, the autonomous AIs that grew up feeding on data harvested from seventy years of digital marketing, that's the source of Siren magic. Makes sense.

"Difference is essential. We desire something we don't have. If we have it, we cease to desire it. The object of my desire must be exotic in some way. But we never really generate our own desires. They come from the outside."

Great, now we're in a psychology lecture.

"Ultimately - desire is the desire of the other. We want what we think other people want."

I admit it's an interesting idea, but I don't see how I can use it.

"So, such a simple thing, to plant a desire in another person's mind, can really be quite complex. But enough theory!"