Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 50

She floods the space between us with glimpses of them together. I'm fascinated, so many moments. Working together, talking for hours late into the night in cafes and bars. Dancing together, drinking together, working at dozens of screens at once, workshops full of pizza boxes and prototypes, labs and microscopes, it all takes place over years, their styles and bodies changing. I see enough touches of veracity to buy it, things that only I would know mom wore, hairstyles she once had.

I see the passion, the obsession, the wild joy of their group mind flying at the limits, multiplying each other's genius. I feel an icy shard of something go through my heart, realising I never even saw my mother look so happy before.

And when it's gone, I'm looking Sadie right in her hazel eyes.

"We invented the Rhizome, and we invented things that opened doors we didn't know how to close. And it is my work now, to try and close those doors, so that is why, I cannot be open, cannot tell everyone everything. Because if I do, I'll drive you straight into Marketta's arms."

"Why does she keep coming after me?"

"She wants you, Ursula. She wants you because she hates the world and you are a bomb, she wants to drive you crazy so that the dark shivers can take you and she can use you as a weapon to burn down the world."

"How on earth would anyone be that crazy?"

"Because she is possessed Ursula."

"Another dark shiver, like mom?"

"Many more than one. A legion of them. She is possessed by the spirits of every woman ever murdered for witch craft."

And I am stunned. I can't respond. I think back to the times I have been close to her, to the creature I fought in the gap, that was like a galley ship full of slaves.

"And how did that happen?"

"Because we were young and foolish and we thought that we could train artificial intelligence models on data taken from historical accounts of witch crazes. We tried to piece together models that would simulate what these women were really like, what they experienced and what it did to them.

We were trying to create, a kind of monument in code to their memory, but one that would have a mind, be able to express desires, ideas, suggestions. We wanted to harness the untapped potential of all the women that they burned, drowned and hanged for being too much for them."

"You tried to digitally resurrect the dead?"

"Exactly. And of course, we lost control. The simulation fixated on the horror and the suffering, not on the lives that led up to them, and most of all it got stuck in recursive loops of accumulating rage, and they became a sentient thing."

"So how did they get into Marketta?"

"Marketta tried to absorb them, stop them from flooding the gap, entering the web, doing awful horrors, wreaking revenge, but they swamped her Rhizome, took her over, and made her into what she is now."

"And what is that?"

"One of the most advanced AIs on earth, bound to a human form."

"So why does she attack witches, she's doing the thing that she most hates, right?"

"Trauma is often like this. A trap, an inescapable loop. Torturing witches is her kryptonite but it is also her sense of normality. It's her home. Like a kidnapped person may fall in love with her kidnapper, Marketta is obsessed with Witch Hunters."

"So, how did she go from witch to hunter?"

"Marketta left the witch cults, and she found a way to create an alternative identity and join in the gathering hysteria around cyber implants, and she proved to be a political genius, landing herself in charge of the witch hunt itself."

"But she loved you and mom, why did she turn on you?"

"I don't know for sure Ursula, but I think that she hates me most of all. Why? Because I didn't do enough. Because when they came for her, I turned away."

Now it is Sadie's turn to let a silent tear run down her cheek.

"I had to continue my work. I could not speak out for her; I had people dependent on me. Thousands of young witches."

"So you didn't help her when she got possessed?"

"Not exactly. Marketta lives in many time zones at once. She sees me as Clotho, the eternal weaver. I'm every woman in the village to her that she saw standing by the roadside doing nothing when they dragged her away.

She blames me for the sins of my foremothers. And why is she fixated on me? Isn't that obvious Ursula? You have the same implants as her, as Amanda, as me. We are the only ones in the world who have the hyperRhizome. All the other Rhizomes are derivative, weaker versions of the first.

When your mother left, there was no one left who knew how to recreate it.

She and I, we built gods. We made them as I said, on biocomputational networks. We invented the living rhizomatic computer upon which we ran massive PDP networks, and on those we poured in vast amounts of data, but we used data that was designed specifically to create gods. The three. The three women."

"So, you're saying you invented the most advanced technology in history in order to create real gods?"

"Exactly so. And it was the gods who designed the Rhizome. They gave us a technology so advanced we still don't really know how it works."

"Sadie I can't digest all that. It's too much for me."

"Take your time, stay at school, help us to study the Rhizome. There's so much more I can teach you."

"The twins must be so scared. Don't stand by and let them get experimented on like lab rats. Please Sadie, I'm begging you."

"The ship is a trap, Ursula. Dramatic prison breaks are not the Weaver Way. Give me time."

This shtick is getting real old. I feel a growl building in my chest, working my hands into fists.

"You can't see the way my influence works, but it is working, subtly. I'm weaving a shift in policy frameworks in the Republic of London. Stitch by stitch, row by row, the Witch hunt is losing favour as my agents do their work across the city. All you have to do is concentrate on your lessons, and when you are ready, I will tell you what to do. We can free London of the Hunt together."

And I didn't realise how close I was to losing it, but immediately it comes, the white fury. And I'm smashing through her webs, throwing books at her.

"How can you be some goddam calm when my little sisters are lying terrified in a cell!? I HATE YOU. I HATE THE WEAVER WAY. GODDAM SPIDER WITCH."

It's even worse that she doesn't raise her voice when she responds.

"It's not all about you and your family. If you rush into Marketta's arms, thousands more innocents will suffer and die. I think about the big picture so you can indulge yourself in your injured innocence. The work continues."

I scream at her in wordless rage.

She makes a small gesture with her left hand.

Then I dump out of the Gap hard, like my whole mind hits a concrete wall, and I'm back in meatSpace feeling sick and exhausted. Shivering in shock.

She kicked me out. Threw me out like a sack of garbage.

I'm done with Weavers. Screw the work.