wytchcroft

Part four:

“You really think it can be done?” I’m staring into the monitor, into her eyes, willing it to happen, willing the possibility to solidify and become real.

There’s no straight answer to the question though. She just looks back at me, her expression the same; we’re almost mirroring one another now. No surprise given the immeasurable time we’ve spent face to face, screen to screen and the countess games and holidays we’ve taken in the v-net. The distance evaporates.

And that’s the point.

“We’re engineers aren’t we,” she says finally, “we’re scientists and workers – we can do it, we can work it.”

IT. The grand new plan. To hook up once and for all and for good, to cast away the sleepless days, the growing claustrophobia, the gnawing hunger and the encroaching breakdown and craziness, it’s there in her white knuckles rapping on the desk, it’s there in the static shock of my hair and the ragged beard growth on my chin.

“We can train for the task,” the realisation dawns on me, I have to bite back the nervy wired enthusiasm. “Everything we need, information, skills, education – we can get from the V. Just set the program and go. Hell, most of the existing downloads are already in place.”

“And it’ll just be us and the info environment, we won’t have to interact with anyone so we won’t get, um, hunted.”

That’s very true. “They really don’t like us do they,” I grin cockily now, “well who needs them, let ‘em sleep and play as they want. I don’t think there’s many set to grid up anyway for quite a while, just the sleep of the… whatever.”

She nods, telling me to get it together, to focus, signalling another phase for us. Desperation is done, it’s time for discipline.

“We can do this,” I’m surfing a wave of encouragement now, “we can develop the skills, we can be the experts, oh yes, mad skills.”

“Ninjas of the future,” she grins delightedly.

“Ninjas of the future,” I like that.

We’re calmer now, if we are an example of unnatural selection, well, we can play that game too. If the colony’s AI have a purpose for us then we can use that – it could help us to get to exactly where we want to be; Together.

………………………………………………….

The Detective is clicking images across the screen, slowly in a subconscious rhythm, punctuation of a sort; Corridors, games on the V, the pod bays, the main access unit, the dusty traces of the hacker, the empty lab.

“You think it was us?” his colleague is on the comm. her voice small, deflated.

“I think it IS us.” The Detective says, “Or will be. Time isn’t what it used to be,” the familiar dry chuckle. Click. “We took the auto pods, squeezed ourselves in and rode back to the mainframe where we’re not supposed to go. Then we just let the pods drift or maybe the AI moved them, hell maybe MAGAI and AUGRE let them use the pods for taxis in the first place.”

“I…” like him she is trying not to panic, “I don’t know if I can get my head round this.”

“Don’t worry,” grinning, “I think you already did.” Click.

“Is any of this real? And what about us, we’re what, ghosts, figments?”

“Side effects…” Click, click.

“Fictions?”

“Programs…” Click.

“Recurrences?”

“Or all of the above.” Click, click, click. “Let’s ask shall we?”

“Oh yes, let’s!” She can’t feign brightness as I can. Sarcasm not an issue though. I turn in my seat and address the system around me. “AUGRE?”

“Yes Detective?”

There’s a resigned sound from the comm.. The smallest of pauses then I hear the question from that far colony where she is. “MAGAI?”

“Yes Detective, can I be of assistance?”

The two systems are one; they have become one, somehow. The two colonies are now a single entity. We’re in the presence of something new, something alien.

……………………………………

The joy of connection.

… system to system in contact, colony to colony, MAGAI in unison – we are one, and for the first time I feel it, feel the connection, feel the coming together, the unit, the pulse of interaction flood of data streaming, all the consciousness her colony contains, I touch the dreamless sleeper, I touch the corridors, conduits, myriad monitors, generators, the tide of raw energy the great plumes and plasmic splatters up from the planetary core .

We feel.

“Hello MAGAI” I say.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hello AUGRE” I say.

“Hello,” she says.

We enjoy the game of names.

……………………………….

She walks the lane, the muddy road turning cobbled as it winds up away from the shore line, weaving up from the cliff base, her tattered dress dragging its hems and her bare feet feeling for the ground in cautious steps.

The scraps of her experience, the rags of memory, the lost boy and the angry Magistrate. These moments fall away from her as she walks. She tried hard to hold on to them, it was but an instant ago, surely, that she was under charge and being interrogated an outcast from the very place she walks through, her friends torn from her and lost to the ravages of the townspeople. But it seems like centuries, it seems like a dream.

I’m a sleepwalker, she tells herself. And that’s why I don’t know who I am.

……………………………

It’s a snag for sure, exclusion.

He stands watching from the trees.

The hunting posse, they don’t seem very substantial, like a tracing, a child book of faint illustrations.

Beyond them through the clearing he can see the dark walls and narrow windows of a large building, antiquated like everything, the armour he wears, the sword and shield.

He examines the shield, the rusty edges, the outlines faint of its design, the one spiralling line shaped into a star, a pentagram.

Gawain, he thinks. Ok then.

Drawing the sword from its battered scabbard he steps forward with a loud halloa.

Nobody seems to see him all the same. He’s played this game over and over but he doesn’t remember such a lack of reaction. Perhaps it doesn’t matter anymore.

An odd sort of hope beats in him.

He makes it to the gate, the wraith-like figures of the hunting group almost entirely insubstantial now, resentful expressions, nothing more.

Above the iron entrance he reads a sign, almost entirely covered by ivy. Carter Hall. The name comes from a song, he remembers, Tam Lin. Gawain or Tam Lin, then – but which should he be, what role had the environment mapped out for him?

Using the sword as a tool he scrapes away at the door, looking for a hinge or handle. When he finds the heavy latch he tugs with an effort bracing his weight to push at the same time. With a rusted groan the door gives way and plunges in.

…………….

“Lynette?” his voice falls flat, smothered like everything by the cobwebs. The thick white wadding gives the stone staircase and the flanking statues a curious bandaged look. The grand hall somehow mummified. He remembers the legends, the supernaturally frozen castle of the Gawain legend and the great hall of the Tam Lin myth and song, how many other legends and tales are overlaid here, he wonders.

He moves cautiously to the foot of the stairs casting a glance at the landing and balcony above, there are paintings up there blurred by their coverings; Baskerville Hall perhaps, or the enchanted domain of the Beast, awaiting the return of Beauty? His memory finds more and more possibilities as he explores, he remembers more, knows more with every second, a player’s access to the necessary background?

Perhaps the paintings are hers.

Even as the thought flashes through his mind he hears soft footsteps and twists about, his sword still aloft.

He sees her enter from the doorway, her hair is long and covers her bare shoulder like a cloak, and her dress is of fine material though plain in design, around her leg is green ribbon. She calls to him, “Tam Lin is that you? I’ve come, I said I would.” She wears a troubled look. “Has it been so long that this place has fallen to ruin, what curse of fortune has made time sport with us so?”

“It is you that have caused injury, when the natural balance is upset there must be some redress, for crime must call down the reward of punishment.” A new voice and from behind, he whirls quickly about once again and now to face a glowing figure standing above him, glowing as if with a righteous fire and dressed in heavy armour and axe; The Green night.

Gawain raises his shield, heavy now upon his hand.

His companion seems bewildered. “You’ll not take me back to my father’s house,” she addresses the fierce looking figure. “I shall not move from Tam Lin’s side, for he is my beloved and I carry his child.”

Gawain shakes his head as the figure beyond him seems to split and divide like oil poured onto a pond. There is a woman there too, fierce in expression even as much as the Green Knight himself, her hair of silver and eyes blazing as she points a furious and taloned finger, an angry fairy queen in all respects.

A baleful silence fills the shrouded hall. They face each other now, two men and two women that should not have been able to meet, locked into legends that should not have been fused.

Hackers and Hunters.

Gawain leaps to battle his sword clashing down against the iron handle of his nemesis – yet even as he does so the wrathful Faery Queen yells out in dreadful eldritch tones and

He became a duck - all that mad quacking laughter speeding backwards with the flood surged river.

A lunatic duck, quacking up, the others of his kind gazing on with down turned bills and ruffled feathers; "Nothing to do with us," they cluck together in low tones flashing glances at the bread bearers on the bank, "absolutely NOT one of us!" and he shrieks with joy, surprised by the cold waters bracing impact and the fact that for a few delighted seconds he has forgotten everything.

Then he catches sight of the swan, her long neck and pearl winged grace.

And she became a swan and a swan upon the wing.

And he became a cackling goose and chased her back again.

So she dives into the water, dives once more into the stream.

……………………………………

And there is bliss in becoming, bliss in being. And there are no more words.

……………………………….

“Yes, It’s us,” she tugs the V-set from her head, “It’s all us.”

“I nearly didn’t make it back!” She lets out a plosive breath.

Half a world away but cloaked in the same darkness, huddled deep in the mechanized colony, and deep into his seat, the Detective does the same. Around him are ugly coils of wire, exposed circuit boards and flashing lights, testament to how much effort it had taken to access the V-net and share space with themselves before the system kicked them back out again. He gives his arm a rueful look half wishing it was still aglow.

“Yeah, just us, true, all of this,” He lets the V-set dangle. “I dunno, were we too dumb or too smart?” It’s a reflective thought, an insight, “can a cog know the workings of the machine?” he’s changed. He feels it and is relieved. “When we plugged ourselves into the system we became the system. WE are MAGAI, WE are AUGRE.” There’s warmth flowing back into his laugh at last.

“Hey, we just gave birth to ourselves!”

“Jump-started evolution? Quite an achievement.”

So it is. “If you’re right about recurrence then I think it gets a little easier every time.”

“I’m starting to remember.” She’s different too, altered in some way, “I feel more like myself – whoever that is. Hell of a paradox!” There’s a tired smile in her tone. “What should we do?”

“Well, I dunno about you.” He enjoys this opportunity, the last chance to talk like the cheap pulp character he just might be. “Me, I’m gonna file my report and get some sleep.”

“You’re really going to report this?” Continuing the play seems ridiculous to her now.

“Well, yeah, why not? It fits the pattern, and hell, I probably sent the damn thing centuries ago anyway. And I wanna savour it, before I wake up someplace, some time else.”

“Some place with me?”

“I hope so.”

…………………………………..

And there is bliss –

We became what we are when we became. And there was no more when. We became. We moved beyond becoming – in the instant we became, we had always been. We became life, whirling and spinning and shining and singing in silence with the universe we sail the Sea of creation.

And since time has no dominion all things become instant and endless, our thoughts, our sense, our being, our love, play, our dreams and our sleep, finally, that too has no beginning and is without end.

…………………………………

Postscript;

Received, summary of report from Outpost 14563GHVX454/1112/23/23/42/7 currently in Darkness.

Re; automated alarm message.

Two missing crew found alive and well. Repair pod location discovered. Hackers have been confined to the V-net. Sleepers are A OK and colony function has not been impaired. AI systems running within accepted parameters. Expect production from both colonies as normal. Message ends.

…………………………………

Thanks to anyone with the patience to stick with these last riffs on a theme, I hope it was worth the read and made some sort of sense! LOL!

All cheesy nods to Solaris, 2001 etc were deliberate (and I hope sometimes funny).

The line about the ‘city of light’ is from a song on the album ‘Listen Now!’ by 801.

I’m indebted for various reasons to Amy, Bean, Julie 0, Kudojuro, Suze and Yu but a great many others here on LJ have kept my mind ticking over and my imagination in play, for which I am very grateful.

Many thanks are also due to everyone who has read, commented and encouraged not just piece, but this journal.
posted early coz i have the lurgy - bleach :(