Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 54

"Good, and then what is it that allows you to amplify those effects using your implants?"

"I can bind a type of shiver, a dancer, that hacks my nervous system to change the way I move, changes the way I use my vocal cords, generates certain patterns of impulses in my brain that lead to relevant ideas that will assist in suggesting to the other person that I am the very thing, or the gateway to the thing, that they long for with every cell in their body. The most expert witches can redirect raw desire into new channels. Because the true object of desire is really desire itself."

This last one is a quotation direct from the Siren book. I know it'll win me approval even though I don't really get it.

"Excellent."

There are many more questions I don't ask. I know that Sirens in meatSpace use other technology besides the Rhizome. In particular, I know they use drugs, sometimes having sprays built into their bodies. Hidden injectors, all kinds of illegal augmentations.

I'm only just now noticing that there is only me here. Me and Alice and her other coven sister. This is pretty much a private lesson.

Suddenly the teacher changes, and yet doesn't change. Almost immediately I feel the fear siding up in me. She's barely moved. Her body subtly rearranges itself using micro-muscular tensions. She has not come towards me yet and suddenly she seems way too close. When she speaks again, I feel my ass cheeks clench, and I stop breathing.

"You'll never see your family again; you are alone in a world that does not care that you exist. And what is worse, you are guilty and rotten, tarnished and filthy, you deserve your solitude. It was all your fault."

It's not just the words, I could distance myself from the meaning if it was. The way she speaks taps into something, some special kind of fear that lives in my genetic code. I try to run, I'm held down, I'm fitting, the Glitch is coming.

Then it fades. Alice is stroking my hair. It takes time. But my breathing slowly returns to a regular rhythm.

"Wow, that really works." I finally manage to whisper.

"Now it's your turn." The teacher says.

###

I am shrinking. This is The Gap. Scale is entirely relative. The model of the prison ship grows to full size in front of me. And now there are simulated guards standing either side of the gangway. And they are moving like real people.

I'm in a secret lesson inside a secret school.

I'm in a sim in a sim in a sim in a sim in a sim in a sim. Snap out of it.

It's a pretty typical cyberWitch situation. I'm almost getting used to it.

But I know something the teacher doesn't know. My Rhizome has outgrown me, it dances around me, invisible to the eye. And I wonder briefly if I could make direct contact with someone else's brain, if it would work or if it would kill me and them outright or drive us both insane. I dismiss the thought and get ready to practice the new skill.

I look at the guards for a long time, hidden behind some handy crates, hoping the real world is so generous with hiding places. The more data I can capture the better chance the Shivers have of finding a data trail.

I say the words that will attract the right spirits, and welcome in two of the finest looking visitors. The Data Miner zooms right into the faces, gets thousands of points of data to comb the face databases of London, that are not legally supposed to exist. It takes less than a minute to build up big files.

Most ordinary folks gave up on internet privacy a long time ago. Or they were half assed enough to think a few proxies and a firewall would be enough. I don't need to read the files thank God, Data Miner does it for me. And I'm seeing, literally seeing the clouds of desire and fear around the sim guards. I know I can choose to focus on either of the clouds, or even the places where they overlap, for maximum effect.

So, I invoke and bind the second spirit. And this one is harder to swallow, because it hacks right into my nervous system, and through my brain, it takes control of my larynx. Even my thoughts are now not entirely my own.

Most full-grown Londoners are really afraid of the same stuff. Not being able to feed your children in a world where everything is unstable. Losing your job in a world where there are no more jobs. What you might become if you were half starved, how quickly you might step over your own loved ones to feed yourself. Will the killer heatwaves come north? Will the floods come again this year? Will the food chain finally collapse?

But these are just the rational tip of an irrational iceberg. The genius of the Siren Magic is that it uses these visible fears to drill down into deep subconscious pre-rational terrors, the point at which fear is connected to the lizard brain, hard-wired, no filters.

So, when I move towards them, I'm not throwing out 'Hey imagine your children don't get to eat anymore' vibes. I'm subtly triggering a response that goes into the place where those feelings are born. I'm becoming a source of dark waves of terror, a thing to be fled from.

And they run from me, and their screaming is delightful, because the shivers that are now half controlling me, do not share my values, and they delight in the terror of other people.

And my glitch is going absolutely crazy. The whole sim is glitching. Feel like the boat is talking to me, inviting me to sail it away to an island in the ocean where we can go wild forever, me and all the witches and demons. A place where I can turn all the sailors into pigs just to make Alice laugh.

The teacher is trying to end the simulation but she can't and I no longer care.

I'm on the ship, opening door after door, releasing all the beautiful monsters.

But I can't find the twins and then it's just me in a room, and the boy is there, the golden-haired boy, the angel with the heart of Satan. Marketta's son.

I'm feeding him to the shivers, waiting for my black magic to come online, playing delaying tactics.

"Why did you come here?" He says. Without opening his mouth.

"My mother sent me." I respond with my mind, two can play that game angel face.

"This is not a safe place for you." He smiles ever so slighty.

Then he takes a step towards me and reaches out a hand to touch my face.

"I'm not a simulation. I'm here to kill you."

I hear myself laughing. The thing I have half-become is delighted by the prospect of mortal violence.

But wait, none of this is real? I ignore the touch of his fingers on my cheek. I set to work.

I concentrate, but no file comes, no data trail, no traction at all. So, I try to come at him with an educated guess. He's terrified of women.

I use this fear.

He wails in terror. Then he stops and smiles.

And he has his hands around my throat and I'm really choking. Shocked, confused. Not taking any action, and rapidly running out of time.

Didn't they say you could choke yourself to death in meatSpace if you believed too hard you were drowning in the gap? I have no air. I'm dying. He is drowning me.

But I cannot drown.

"I am Applethorn. And you are in my house."

I push my thumbnails into his eyes, he tries to pull away but keeps his thumbs pushing into my throat. His eyeballs burst under the pressure of my thumbs festooned with their vicious nails.

The Glitch rips through the sim, like I am a bomb, and then I am in three places at once and goldenBoy is not in any of them.

The Siren teacher sees her chance and pulls me out. I'm too spaced out to talk.

"Get her out of the gap Alice, she's not safe here. She is a door. She lets things in that should not be here."

"You saw him. He's Rhizomatic. No way he could be here if he wasn't." Alice shouts, unusually direct and emphatic.

"Leave that to us to figure out Alice. Just keep your coven alive and waiting for orders."

And then Alice begins the chanting that will take us back to the real world.