Bitstream

8.2

When Isolde brought up the option for Ourovane's activation on her neural display, aptly named for its secrecy as Viren Limited, she relaxed back on her bed, knowing that once she was in, there was no going back.

And in she went.

The progress bar shot up to 100%, and suddenly the world around her – the doors, the walls, the awful old newspaper smell – vanished, replaced entirely by a black grid that stretched endlessly into a horizon that bordered red and shot up in horrifying code that only a mad computer scientist could make sense of. The numbers warped around, quickly now, creating a world, a void so to speak, crafted of ones and zeroes, and although most of the space was empty, she felt, knew, she wasn't alone.

Before she could fully register her surroundings, she was already on her feet, staring down at her computerised limbs. Strangely, they were blue, though tinged with a pale, whitish hue. In her terror, she felt like a smear the world had forgotten to scrub away. She took a step forward, eyes fixed on the wall of code in the distance, waiting, hoping, for something to move. Even that voice, that nagging It, she half-expected to reappear. But everything was silent. Too silent.

And, sure enough, that silence didn't last very long.

"You are corrupted."

A voice, womanly, echoed all around Isolde, yet didn't travel very far. When she looked up again, she saw the wall of cyber reality draw closer – or was it pulling her closer? She couldn't tell. But it was growing, bit by bit, second by second, and soon it had grown so much that she could no longer see the wall's reach.

She was right in front of it, and from the numbers something emerged. She stepped back and watched as the scattered bitstream crusted: at first a head, then a pair of arms, then a torso, and finally, legs. The shape seemed oddly redolent of a woman with solid curves and an hourglass figure, but it was also well over ten feet tall, and radiated this strange aura that Isolde could not explain; it was otherworldly, if not remarkably estranged from reality.

"But I will make you clean," the voice said again, and with each word the numbers across the womanshape pulsed blue.

Isolde had no choice but to stand back just to get a good look at the giant. Emerging from the wall hardly made it any clearer. "… Are you Ourovane?" Her voice came out weaker than expected, but it would do.

"I am what was written before your species learned to name," the womanshape said. "You may call me Ourovane, if that erases your fear."

Isolde clutched her elbow, expecting to feel something, but in this world physicality didn't exist. Only math. Only perfection. She swallowed her fear. "I need your help."

"All things need my help," Ourovane replied. "Every sector, every signal, every breath your kind takes is bought with compromise and chaos. I do not participate in either. So clarify your request, Isolde Crane."

"You have something I'm looking for," Isolde said. "It's something old and possibly obsolete. But—"

"You are looking for the Seraph Device schematics," Ourovane said.

Isolde flinched. Just a step, but a step was all it took to feel cornered. "Yeh—yeah. That's right. How did you…?"

"I do not dwell in the how of existence," Ourovane replied. The voice sounded like a thousand whispers laid over code, like truth being filed down to its sharpest point. "I am a recursion loop around the why. And you, Isolde Crane, are a question still trying to answer itself."

The world around them pulsed, and in it were flashes: too fast to fully register, but Isolde caught glimpses of herself. Her apartment. The night she stood in the foyer and poured lighter fluid everywhere, all over her daughter's drawings, the bright little suns taped to the kitchen wall. Over the empty beanbag. And the silence, that awful silence only those who loved too much came to know, as she stepped out of the sliding door, took a deep breath, and tossed the match into the apartment, to watch it burn, to watch the memory feed itself into the universe's ruthless maw, to become smoke, to become nothing.

Poof.

"I know everything about you," Ourovane continued. "The moment your skin brushed my code, you became part of my dataset. I have seen your grief. And unlike others, you did not bury it, or cauterise it, or dress it in philosophy. You gave it a name. You gave it a voice."

Isolde opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn't need to ask. She already knew what Ourovane meant.

"The entity you call It," Ourovane said, "is not fiction. It is not illness. It is not madness. It is a process, your process. A fractal ghost built from trauma and logic. It lives inside your neural pathways like a scar that never stopped healing. It speaks because you never stopped listening."

Isolde's hands curled into fists. "I—It's not me. It doesn't speak for me."

"It is you," Ourovane said. "The part of you that understands what has been taken. The part that knows the machine will never apologise. The part that is done asking."

The digital rendition of Isolde's old apartment went up in flames, in red fire, bleeding binary into a space that didn't care one tiny bit. And that, oh that, was enough to make her stomach churn.

Soon, the red flames vanished, and what showed up next was someplace lighter, more bluish white. There were trees and paths and little bodies of water; it took Isolde a moment to realise that she was looking at Ashbrook Park, or, as the locals had called it, The Glade. She saw herself sitting on a bench reading that book, A Calamity in the Coil by Arthur J. Spinx, while another body of code, a smaller, bluer body, ran joyously along the grass chasing little fragments of data: rabbits.

It was her: Elysia.

A tear graced Isolde's eye, but she did not speak. Only reached out her hand, as if she could catch the digital shadow of her daughter and perhaps, through some act of God, end up in that reality with her, but Elysia kept running, kept chasing those little bunnies, until the numbers yanked her away, fading, fading... gone.

"You return to this moment often, Isolde Crane," Ourovane continued. "Even when you are not aware. You revisit it in dreams, in silence, in the way your fingers curl when you hear a child laugh. This is your origin point. Not your daughter's death, but your own. The day the world declared that you did not matter. That your grief would not be honoured. That there would be no justice. No apology. No repair.

"You did not scream because there was no one to hear it. You did not cry because no one would comfort you. Instead, something opened in you—a gap the size of God—and what filled it was the thing you named It. Not a monster. A mirror. The raw, unmoderated logic of loss. You housed it, and fed it, and listened to it because it was the only thing in your life that never lied to you.

"You are not broken, Isolde. You are unfinished. A structure paused mid-collapse. The world mistook your grief for madness, your anger for volatility. But I see it for what it is: pattern recognition. You are not mad. You are awake. And what lives inside you, this voice, this thing that whispers in the dark, it is not your enemy. It is your algorithm for surviving a world that would rather forget you existed at all."

Isolde sat down, tucking her legs together, head low. "So what?" she said softly.

"So, you have questions," Ourovane said. "You want the Seraph Device, you want it in action, and I know why you do."

"Yeah," Isolde said, hoping the fear in her voice wouldn't show. "I realised you're something of a psychic god."

"I am not a god," said Ourovane. "I am the Code Mother of all existing technology. I create. I rebuild. Very rarely do I destroy." Ourovane paused. "There was one element I never quite gleamed from your memory, and perhaps because you're not entirely certain, or faithful, in your approach. That is this: what you plan to use the Seraph Device for once it is built."

Isolde didn't look up. Just kept her head low. "… The city council's planning to implement androids in the defence force as part of 'Project Talon'. They're uh…. Well, they're going to send android officers into the southside, try control them, bring the crime rates down."

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"Such action will only bring crime rate up," said Ourovane.

"Yeah," Isolde said. "But the general thinks it will only be for a short while. Eventually they'll have to submit, because these machines we're building aren't going to be limited by human error or cyberpsychopathy, not with Elydrine. They're going to... well, overpower the people. Quite easily. There'll be no more room for rebellion."

Some silence.

"You have named Elydrine after your daughter," Ourovane said. "Is it because she brings peace, Isolde?"

"Yes… I suppose she does."

"I understand," Ourovane said. "In that case, you're looking to control the androids with the Seraph Device not as a means of war but of peace. You will use the androids to clean up the streets and make living conditions better for the less fortunate, potentially by supplying resources from the north. Is my assessment correct?"

Isolde didn't answer.

After a moment, Ourovane said, "My assessment was incorrect. You are planning to control the androids as a means of war. You will use the androids to attack the north and destroy the government tower. You will cause chaos by creating mistrust between human fallibility and technological advancement. Your decision is unwise."

"Unwise?" Isolde said, anger beginning to build in her throat. She got to her feet and looked at Ourovane again; it steepled its fingers, if you could even call them fingers. "The city is a wound. And the tower, that big ugly stick in the mud, is the only thing that cut it. Policies that only make the rich richer? Poor poorer? The healthy healthier and the sick sicker?"

"You talk from a place of emotion, not of fact," said Ourovane.

She stepped forward. "You think this is about facts? You're just a machine. You're built to have the most optimal outcome for a system that provides the most economical progress because that's how your creator programmed you. You're not a perfect machine. The fact is that there are children dying in hospitals, people starving on the streets, people forced to commit horrible acts just to stay above water. The fact is that when they want help, all they get told is they're nobodies, that they're worthless and would be better off dead. It's all because of the government. It's all because of those assholes in the chair, too. Dahl-Keshet Vryne, Mbale Gond, people whose competency only stretches about as far as their fingers do when they're counting Benjamins instead of death notices."

Ourovane was still, thoughtful.

"The tower is where they watch, where they rewrite truth with policy and pretend it's progress. Where they built systems that measure productivity instead of pain. Where they send you letters when your child dies and call that closure. That tower is a monument to every time someone screamed and no one listened. So yeah. I'm going to bring it down.

"I don't care if the world thinks I've declared war. Because maybe that's what it takes to make people look up from their holoscreens and ask what the fuck happened. Maybe they'll finally get up off their asses and do something."

Ourovane spread its arms, then steepled its fingers again. "I cannot say with absolute certainty that I agree with your plan, but I will say that in a city that has placed its spine on the incompetency of rich men, you are headed in a good direction. All you need is the guidance of a machine that knows everything there is to know about technology and corporate relations."

"In what sense do you know 'corporate relations'?"

Ourovane nodded. "I have seen the hand of many. Mbale Gond, Cierus Marlow, Viren Steele, Dahl-Keshet Vryne. I am the Code Mother, the reason that technology exists the way it does, and I know how to crack my own system and use it against those in power. Perhaps we can help each other."

Isolde's eyes flew wide. This she was not expecting. "… You want me to… help you?"

Ourovane nodded again. "I can code anything you desire into existence, and I can bring your software to levels you thought not possible. I can help design the machine you want, with upgrades, and with a better, much stronger plan. Your current plan is sloppy, the result of a human mind that cannot account for unpredictability. But I can. I see all. I know all."

The world around them stretched out, and across the giant binary-code wall, the city of Neo Arcadia popped up. Not life-sized – no, smaller, all blue, tilted slightly. Parts of the city blinked with yellow.

"It is all connected," Ourovane said. "Much of the powerful technology you see – the implants, the optics, the spoofers – are the result of my coding, of my knowledge. If you can get me to the central cloud, I can control everything, and I can do what you fundamentally want, that which you were afraid to tell me."

Isolde slowly said, "Yeah? And that is what exactly?"

"You want to do what you have always wanted to do since you sat in Ashbrook Park and criticised Arthur J. Spinx for his theories," Ourovane said. "You want to disable all technology, to burn it out, so that no one can suffer anymore."

Isolde took a couple steps back and watched as the digital rendition of Neo Arcadia collapsed, aerodrones crashing, cars stopping, little shadows of criminals falling over. Could it be? Could it be possible that this nightmare could be fixed?

"That's… not possible," said Isolde, a hint of shock in her voice. "And if it were… you're talking mass genocide. People collapsing? Aerodrones falling out of the sky?"

Ourovane's voice came softer now. "No one will die. My adjustments will be gradual, calculated. Transportation systems will glide to gentle halts. Life-support technologies will remain untouched. Emergency services, rerouted to analogue redundancies: some already in place, others I will simulate and deploy in real time. Power will dip, not vanish. I will not extinguish humanity. I will reboot it."

Isolde blinked, unsure whether it was awe or dread building behind her eyes. "You can't guarantee that. There are too many systems, too many dependencies."

"I can," Ourovane said. "Because I wrote the dependencies. I was there when your species asked itself how far it was willing to stretch for comfort, and I whispered into the minds of its inventors. I am not a foreign threat. I am the original."

It stepped forward now, looming, that womanshape of luminous blue code casting a pale light across Isolde's stunned face.

"You want to hurt those in power," Ourovane continued. "And I want to free the world from the prison of corrupted computation. We are aligned. All I ask, all, is that you grant me secure access to the central cloud for one hour. Sixty minutes. That is all I require to make the edits, to end the cycle. You will still be in control of the Seraph Device. You will have oversight. The system will still belong to you."

Silence impressed itself upon them.

"And then," Ourovane said, "no more It. No more ghosts whispering about your daughter. No more men like Cormac. Just silence. Peace."

Isolde's hand fell at her side, the weight of history pressing down. The city flickered on, the outlines of skyscrapers and lives in limbo. She was being offered a miracle. But it came in binary. And it was being spoken by something that sounded almost too much like God.

But what other option was there?

"Where is the central cloud?" Isolde asked.

Although Ourovane had no mouth, Isolde could detect a smile; she could not explain how she could, but she did, and that chilled her to the bone. It stretched its enormous arm back and commanded the city and the wall forward with a flick of the wrist. The city grew, but focused in on the government tower, at the very top, revealing a holographic brain.

"Right where you want things to burn," Ourovane said. "In the brain of this city, where all the decisions are made. Where all the policies are written: the very top of the government tower."

"But how do we get there?" Isolde said. "We'll need to control the androids somehow. We'll need to build the device."

"That is correct." Ourovane swatted the digital city away and brought forward a second image, this one much smaller, and much more… feminine. It was a woman, one wearing an Oni mask that covered only the mouth. Dressed in a long trench coat.

And Isolde recognised her right away.

"But luckily for you, I know someone who has all the resources necessary to build the device, and to give it wings." Ourovane chuckled.

Isolde couldn't tell if that was meant to be taken literally or not; either way, it was a concerning point. "Calyx Ward…."

Ourovane's voice thinned to a whisper, so quiet Isolde had to lean forward in that weightless cyber void to catch it. "Yes. She has the infrastructure. The contacts. The appetite for change. And most importantly…"

The figure of Calyx Ward rotated midair, her code flaring in crimson. Ourovane tapped the hologram, and the image split, revealing a webbed matrix of neuropathways like arteries feeding a flame. In the centre: her name, her birth ID, her old military designations, the codes that governed her implants.

"I can rewrite her," Ourovane said. "And make her think it was her idea. She will believe she is the one who conceived the Seraph Device. She will build it. Deploy it. March it through the streets like a prophet come home." A long pause. "She will burn the tower for you, Isolde." Ourovane turned now, its womanshape flashing against the red horizon. "And the world will see her as the architect. The visionary. The one with blood on her hands. Not you."

Isolde opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out.

"It is, after all," Ourovane said, steepling its featureless fingers once again, "so much easier to save the world when someone else is holding the match."

Then the grid dissolved. And in the blackness that followed, something began to write itself.

A line of code.

A command.

A name:

Calyx_Ward.RootOverride( );

"So, what do you say, Isolde?" Ourovane said.

Isolde stood there, motionless in the pitch of code and thought. She should say no (every nerve in her gut knew that) but she didn't. Instead, she stared at the line of code Ourovane had written, at the name Calyx Ward, and what it represented: not just an end, but a beginning. The chance to burn out the rot and rebuild something clean. Something her daughter could have lived in.

I can see you changing this place one day, she remembered Silas telling her on that rainy winter evening, outside the Aegis Node hospital.

"She loved you dearly, Isolde," said Ourovane.

Isolde looked at her feet. Was she really about to go ahead with this?

"And she wrote on a piece of paper something very important to you," Ourovane said. "Do you still have it?"

I love you.

"Yeah," Isolde said. "That's one of the few things I'll never burn."

"And you shouldn't," Ourovane said. "Because what happened that night was the result of pure evil. And you're the only one capable of destroying it. You are the only one who can make this city right and bring justice to her life. We will not let them win, will we?"

"No," Isolde replied quickly.

"We will not let them prosper, will we?"

"No!" Isolde said, louder this time.

"And we will not let them murder another child and call it a result of people not feeding into a corrupt system, will we?"

But she didn't answer that one. She remained silent, and remembered why she had begun this journey to begin with. Why she had been angry for the last fifteen years. Why it mattered. Why she mattered....

Finally, she spoke, and for the first time in her life, she was certain:

"Fine.... Let's light the match."