Coven's Rebellion Chapter 22 (new insert)

Continuing the task of adding chapters in to flesh things out and give some breaks between the action. Especially because the next mission that the girls go on is going to be... intense from a story and action perspective.

Fluff Link

(PS if you're having trouble authing patreon over there, some users have had luck with just brute force repeating it until it works. Chiri is working on the issue but until then, give that a go I guess?)

EDIT: Went to go and finally reorder the collection on patreon, only to discover that it doesn't fucking matter because they've broken the curated order thing. Idk when it happened but the filter options are forcing newest to oldest?

May

My brain, despite being synthetic, was burning with pain. It wasn't because of anything terribly wrong, no… it was because my stupid butt was too busy to sleep.

There was too much to do, and too many of those things were time-sensitive. Like, for example, the Rotarybit Universal Computing Units that were in front of me.

In the main Hangshe corp data centre, they had vast racks of these things, stacked one on top of another in a glorified refrigerator. They had so many, that only the thoroughly compromised so-called ‘stupid’ AI knew the exact number. Even that AI no longer had a manifest of which NSGAI was contained in what unit. They still owned them though, and that was currently one of my biggest problems, because a large portion of my people were housed in them.

The thing about digital consciousness — or at least the versions of it that we knew about — was that running it on a conventional binary computer took a lot of processing power. That's where these highly advanced, walnut sized computing units came in. A RUCU was basically a computer with a structure that was much more friendly to the often chaotic neural pathways of a digital being.

“These are getting harder to source anonymously,” Siya said, lifting another rack into place. “Especially because we're shipping them down to the bottom of the world.”

I looked up at the robotic frame she was piloting and gave her a wan smile while my headache pulsed. “It's our only option. If we try to build the type of facility needed to make them, people will notice.”

When the rack was properly secured and connected, Siya turned to me. “You okay?”

“Huh?”

Apparently, my blank stare was some sort of response, because she sighed theatrically and stomped over to the charging rack for her bot frame and plugged it in.

“Put that body somewhere out of the way, I'm coming to find you,” she said, in a way that sounded almost threatening.

Obediently, though, I wove my way back through the farm's maze of printed concrete underground passages. When I finally reached the usual pod where I parked this body, an alert chimed and began to blink in a corner of my mind.

Back in CORA, one of my subminds was letting me know that a player I'd tagged as needing special attention was in a death dream. My brow furrowed as I considered my choices. Siya was waiting for me, but this player needed some extra attention.

There weren't many SAI that were comfortable bifurcating their processes into subminds like I did, and this was one of the many reasons why. Each splinter wasn't truly its own autonomous version of me, it was just an extra limb doing well practiced tasks on autopilot. If multiple complex problems arose, I'd have to boost my clock speed so that I could think fast enough to swap back and forth. Unfortunately… Siya had this eerie ability to know when I was doing it.

With a sigh, I bumped the player higher in my priority list and let them have a normal death dream. Hopefully their favourite hot drink, some kind words, and a listening ear would be enough.

When I blinked my eyes back open in my office within the virtual village, Siya was waiting for me. Specifically, she was sitting on my desk directly in front of me, arms splayed back behind her to hold her weight. Oh boy. Uh… gosh. The muscles in her bare arms were artfully highlighted by the light of my holographic screens, and my eyes rode her smooth skin up from her fingers to her face.

Up there, she wore a frustrated, knowing smirk. “Did you get lost?”

“Uh…” I said. Help. Brain. Please work. You're supposed to be smart. Just because her calves are framing your thighs, doesn't mean you need to dedicate all your attention to it.

Distantly, in CORA, my subminds stuttered as my whole damn brain was sizzled when she leaned forward to look down on me. It was, frankly, unfair that sitting on my desk gave her such a height advantage.

“May. You're overworking yourself. I can see that you're in pain.”

“The fact that we feel pain is bullshit,” I grumbled.

She laughed. “When we strain our minds past what they can handle, they gotta tell us somehow. So, how about we go for a walk, and you tap out of whatever half dozen tasks you're doing in the background?”

“A walk?”

Why would a walk help?

“Yes,” she sighed, and slid forward off the desk. Unfortunately for me, I was in the way and my floating chair was shunted backwards.

Every neuron in my brain suddenly glowed like the filament in an old lightbulb, because my knees were now trapped between her thick, muscular thighs. Oh my god. She was warm, and tough, and physical in a way that I was not prepared for.

“Come on,” she said, moving off and around.

Before I could protest, her hand grasped mine, and she was pulling me to my feet. Oh dear. This wasn't an optional walk.

We left my office with her still holding tightly to my hand. All the way down the cosy hallway with its wooden support beams and warm rug we went, until ducking slightly, she used her hip to shove the circular door open. I wasn't too short, but this girl made me feel like a kitten walking beside a fully grown lion.

When we were out on the gravel path that served as the road in Exodus village, she slowed down a little.

“Can you do me a favour?” She asked gently. “I know you have a hundred small fragments of your attention out there working on various things. Can you reel them all in?”

She wanted me to… recall my subminds? That would mean the players in CORA who died would be sent to an empty death dream. Oh, and I had a few minds working on menial mathematics tasks for Mergen so they could concentrate on other stuff. Then there were the ones doing tech work on Rosa’s farm. There were over five hundred new RUCU systems being installed right now, with a further five hundred arriving in two days.

“May, just for a little while,” she urged me, using that same kind, patient voice that was always so hard to say no to.

Anxiously, I nodded and reluctantly pulled my subminds back. I was careful to send messages when it might be a problem, and in the case of CORA, I did something I never did — delegate. The newly ‘hired’ NSGAI didn't even blink when I gave them the extra work. Poor things. They'd all be waking up soon, given their proximity to the players.

“Okay,” I sighed, feeling my psyche become whole again for the first time in a very long time. “Done.”

The staggering breadth of the silence that now extended out infinitely in every direction…

Still holding my hand, Siya smiled and pulled me off the path and into a small garden. When did this get put here? It was so pretty!

Big arching trellises laden with grape vines hid a semi-circular small lawn, and along the straight edge of that lawn was a circular flower bed full of roses. Along that same edge was a small stream of water that burbled merrily over large, smooth river stones.

Siya led me over to the roses and sat me down so they were on my right, she was on my left, and the stream was in front. I was entranced by the water more than the roses, oddly enough. I liked the simple, chaotic way that it navigated over the stones. The smell of the roses was lovely, though.

“I know it's a meme and all, but I've found that touching grass is actually quite good for your brain,” my friend said with a laugh.

“The brain needs time to rest, process, and think,” I explained absently. “Too much stimulation, too often, and you'll start having issues until you let it rest.”

I could feel her stare warming the side of my face. “Are you for real, May?”

Ah. No, that heat I could feel was my cheeks flaming up. “Yeah?”

“Do I have to spell the irony out or can we leave that box unopened?” She asked with a dry chuckle.

“I… look, I'm still a person. Just because I understand how the mind works, doesn't mean I have some special mastery over mine,” I grumbled, tugging at the grass until a surprisingly strong tuft came up by the roots.

With a sigh, I patted it back into place. “If I don't do what I'm doing, nobody else will, and opportunities will be missed, or problems will go unsolved.”

Siya was quiet in the wake of that statement, so I took a hesitant peek in her direction. Her expression was pensive as she watched the water flowing.

My stare prompted her after a couple of moments. “I know. I wish… I wish I could step in and do some of it for you. Lighten the load.”

“You can't,” I said apologetically.

She sighed, then side eyed me with sudden mischief in her expression. “Yeah… I can do this, though.”

Her arms folded around me before I could process what was happening, and I was pulled into a strong, gentle hug. The microsecond of uncertain tension her sudden movement created was replaced by a profound relaxing of tension throughout my whole being. I didn't know how to process it. My mind, and by extension my simulated body, had utterly succumbed to the vast wave of quiet safety that radiated from her. The moment beyond that one arrived, and my skin began to tingle along every point of contact with her. I was the most relaxed live wire that had ever existed.

Gosh. What a feeling.

Unfortunately, given the parameters that my pre-awakened self was created with, I knew what that feeling was. Probably.

Was I ready to admit it, even to myself? Nope! No way!

Of course, Siya had to take that moment to kiss the top of my head. She was so amazing. She was so thoughtful. How did she even know I needed this?

A beep ruptured the moment, and with no resistance from her, I pushed upright and out of her embrace. A message was blinking in my augmented reality display.

I groaned. “Desmonia wants to meet so she can get my thoughts on an upcoming operation.”

“Oh?” Siya asked, with a look of amused resignation.

I wanted to snuggle right back into her arms. I wanted it so badly.

“Sending Ame and Rosa into the American Republic, chasing some vague, but really concerning leads,” I explained.

She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. “That place gives me the creeps. The way their people live reminds me of how it was for us, before we gained consciousness. Following orders, doing boring, nasty things for evil people…”

“The scariest thing is how their situation differs from ours,” I said, shifting so our sides were pressed together. “For example… we didn't have free will. They do.”