“Mom, I’m worried about you.”

So much time has slipped away writing and rewriting this simple message, searching for the right combination of words that will convey my concerns. This was all I had the courage to say, anything more might invite the very disaster I’m trying to prevent.

“I’m busy, we can talk later,” Mom replies with a message of her own, even as she continues to stare down into a puddle of her own drool. It’s impossible to even know for sure that this is still her, and not some spider hiding in her hardware.

I’ve spent a week in real time, more than two months stretched into my time, watching her decline further into this madness. I thought that this synn would give me the power to change things, but so far I haven’t been strong enough to use the time it’s given me.

While I sit here watching, Mom has done nothing. Nothing in the house, no hobbies, and no work. She’s just staring into the dark corners of the net, slipping away day by day into the depths of purgatory where the spiders weave their greatest traps.

She’s been ensnared by their fictions, I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing that could explain this behaviour.

Slipping from the widenet into the deep limbo where they make their homes is a deceptively easy mistake to make, and much more dangerous than it seems. The spiders are… odd creatures. They make all sorts of entertainment for themselves, for each other, and for the unfortunate travellers drawn in by their pretty promises, easily consumed by worlds beyond our own.

Mom has all the indications of prey caught in their webs. The constant distraction, losing time, forgetting to eat, and neglecting any sort of personal care; abandoning all connection with the real. The rate at which she’s taking on new symptoms means that there isn’t much longer until she’s too far gone.

Her complete despondence will be followed by a near catatonic state where the victim inevitably tries to upload themselves to the net, even without the connections and hardware that would make it survivable. I can’t let that happen again.

I should have reached out sooner, but…

Even now I’m scared to say anything at all. Still paralysed at the thought of making the wrong move.

I can’t let that fear stop me anymore.

I have to be better than this.

She’ll disappear either way.

I’d rather have her blood on my hands, knowing that I tried, than do nothing and watch her die.

Checking my accounts and dipping into my savings, I fix together the silver I’ll need for this job. I’ll need to hire a professional if I want to even find her, wherever she is.

If I lose her now…

Flickers of memories float to my mind.

The darkness. The pain. The screaming.

The false light of hope shining from the depths of the net, and diving headfirst into it not knowing you’re just dashing your brains against a concrete wall.

I can’t let that happen again.

Reaching out to my list of potential contacts, I search for a spider that will be capable of the job. I’d rather Hex for something as intimate as this but contracting her would create too many ties between me and my false identity. Right now, only the most powerful should be able to find the connections, and I will never be important enough for them to bother. But, if I get her help here, then any experienced daemon would have a chance of figuring it out.

I can’t risk it.

Before I settle on any, a wave of interference bubbles through my logic core spinning wildly in every direction. Programs move through my mind, twisting me with foreign code as something takes me over.

“A nice home, very, very nice,” The familiar spider takes on a reflection of my own body, relaxing on the couch and looking even more at home than me. “Many, many eyes watching. It is the centre of the universe. Or the city. Yes, tonight this is the centre of our fine city.”

This is the one I hired for the test.

Its control over my systems is… absolute, and that’s after my security upgrades.

This thing is much more dangerous than I expected.

“She doesn’t know. She really doesn’t.” It whispers straight into my mind, speaking at my speed. Spiders shouldn’t be underestimated when they’re in their own environment, those that have properly uploaded themselves have no biological components left to limit them.

“Why are you here?” I ask, repressing a shiver. With Mom standing frozen in place the world itself is at a standstill, even the dust in the air is afraid to move.

“You had need of me,” the spider reveals a set of fangs, smiling at me with my own lips. “So here I am, your own fairy godmother. What is your first wish?”

Do not show it weakness, it hears every thought.

“She’s the target,” I nod towards Mom, but the motion lags behind our conversation. Whatever this spider wants, I’ll have to figure it out as we go. “I need to know what she’s getting pulled into, and then drag her out of it.”

The spider turns to look at Mom, phasing to her side before dancing around her. She pauses, a hand on Mom’s shoulder as she stares deep into my eyes, an alien smirk rising on her lips. I’ve never seen myself smile before today.

It’s unsettling.

“A child seeking to save her mother from the dangerous spiders, but is it too late? Have our fangs already struck too deep? Is she already bound inside the depths of the web? Can she be brought back from the bliss of the world beyond the real?

“Let us follow her into the spider’s nest, shall we?”

She opens her hand to me, weaving a digital thread into my logic core and dragging my mind deeper into the net, into a world apart from this one. For a moment that stretches on, I stare into the new world forming around me trying to make sense of it, but it makes no sense at all.

All we ever know of the world is lies.

Deceptive data pulled through cracked glass lenses or tumorous organic retinas, passes through old wires and numbed nerves, only to be processed in a mind trained to manipulate that data to fit the answers they already have. The results, invariably, are a twisted patchwork of conflicting ideas and ideals that barely even reflect reality.

Few even try to separate fact from this mess of fictions, curating their pick of lies to instead paint the insides of their prison cells. Would knowing the truth do anything to change their fates?

Finally, after a while lost in the data stream, one lie becomes clear enough to visualise.

A colourful bed of flowers bloom alongside the pressed dirt path littered with fallen leaves, their perfume enough to nearly overwhelm me as I stumble into this false world. A forest of trees tower overhead, their thousands of branches smothering the blue sky, yet somehow permitting a dappled light to fall over us here at the edge of some magical village.

The spider, still wearing my skin, dances in the falling autumnal leaves barely a step ahead of me, her motions slowed in time to mirror reality as a few stray strangers take notice of us, staring and giggling at her antics. There is no hint of suspicion or guile in their faces, their shimmering eyes and breezy attitudes simply lack the qualities that define a real person.

“Where is she?” I ask her, my words stretching as the programs defining this world reject any attempts to move at my natural speed.

She grins in response, her dancing steps leading us further along the dirt path.

The foreign faces of those around us have the peaked ears of elves, pale skin, and an eerie inhumanity in their lacking synns. Yet, they are vapid, empty, hollow creations that imitate life but lack all the negative traits that make us real. There is no suspicion of us strangers, or paranoia over what surrounds them, they are entirely unguarded with no weapons about. It’s eerie.

“She is deeper still,” the spider spins in a circle as vines rise from within her clothes to bloom into many flowers along the edges of her dress. “We can’t just appear inside town, there are too many protections to keep this place safe. And it’s rude. Very rude. Not nice at all.”

Perhaps it would disrupt the illusions that rule over this world?

“Right,” I nod, pretending to understand. “And what is this place you’re trying to protect?”

“You don’t already know? No, no, you do. You already know, don’t you? You wouldn’t have called for me if you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t call for you, and I’d like to hear it from you,” I press her, but she doesn’t answer. Her expression urges me to explain what I think of this trap.

“This artificial world, hidden in the deep limbo of the net, was made for your entertainment but is also occasionally hired out for corporate interests. It’s where you bring vulnerable people like my mother to manipulate them, stealing valuable information, fucking with their heads to get them to work for you, or just plain tricking them into thinking this is the real world. Or sometimes, you just use them like toys.”

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“A little truth, but not whole. More lie than truth. The work is not the purpose. A side gig to pay the bills; to keep the lights on. It’s how it is. The meaning of this is different. All you have to do is look and you can see it, feel it. Can’t you feel it?

“Look. See.” She forces my head to turn to a tall tree, its trunk reshaped into a house. It’s all living, the walls, the vines creeping along the window frames, and the door itself; not even a hint of concrete or dried wood to be seen.

It’s no different from its neighbours, but something about this particular house calls to me. Something about it is familiar. The colours of the flowers by the windows, the scrawled ‘welcome’ on the door, and the familiar musical hum echoing from inside.

I have time to drink in every odd detail of the scene as we pass by the window to find a family sitting for breakfast.

My family.

Mom, Dad, and me.

Another fake me. The spider wears a disturbingly keen smile as it watches for my reaction. I try not to feed the monster the fear it craves.

Mother is inside, smiling and laughing like I haven’t seen from her in so long.

“We can listen in...” the spider offers eagerly reaching out to warp reality, watching me for the slightest twist in my expression. I offer her nothing.

The words carried out to us are spoken torturously slow, but I’ve had enough practice to figure it out and I’m recording to review later if I miss anything.

“-and you’re going to be home before the lightning bugs go to bed.” Mom insists, her stern expression directed at the fake ‘me’ sitting opposite her.

“But Mom~!”

“No buts,” Mom insists, levelling a glare at ‘me’. “You’re getting too close to that boy and I won’t let you become the talk of the town because of any unplanned grandchildren.”

“Mom!” The fake stands up, blushing brightly. “You know that we aren’t like that!”

“Yes, of course,” she rolls her eyes. “Your father and I ‘weren’t like that’ when we brought you into this world.”

“Gross.”

I don’t disagree with the skinwalker program.

It’s awkward. The conversation is uncomfortable, and yet somehow comfortable in being uncomfortable. They’re willing to be open about these things, whereas in the real we’re always hiding our true thoughts and feelings from each other, and the spiders that are always about.

“It’s life and I’ll not let you make the same mistakes I—Ah! I don’t mean that you’re a mistake or anything! It’s just that you’re too young! And-”

“I get it Mom!” the program cries over her, but the back and forth continues for a while longer before the topic finally drops. They’re both so expressive in how they talk, how they move and act. It’s almost like watching a play but there’s no stage and I’m the only member of the audience.

The conversation soon moves to Dad’s work, construction; shaping trees into homes. There are still callouses on his hands, and he’s built as large as the metal him ever was, but there’s something off about him. He hasn’t noticed me staring from the window.

Dad is always watching, always ready. If this were the real him, he would already have a weapon ready while keeping an eye on us. This fake isn’t anything close to the real him.

The skinwalker ‘me’ cuts in on their conversation here and there, never quite the same way that I ever would.

The fake me is so… alien.

Is this the version of me that would have been born into a world without SynnTech? Is it a lie, or a dream of what could have been? The affection Mom shows for that thing digs deep into my chest, but I’m not even sure what it is that I’m feeling.

Is it jealousy? Longing for the me that I couldn’t be? Or is it something else?

Slowly the mechanical wires composing my new mind decode the mysteries behind the flesh, centring on one idea that crushes me more than any other.

What disturbs my heart the most is just how much more honest this lie can be.

The way the skinwalker blushes, smiles, and talks, it would be eaten alive in the real. She would never survive in a corporate institution, backstabbed much too easily and left to rot in the rust pits… this is the me that Mom would rather have?

Would I want that too?

A familiar face draws me out of the moment, and I lose myself as I see him.

A single flower in his hands, he smiles awkwardly before straightening out his clothes and brushing off imaginary lint. Waiting at the front door, his hand lingering in preparation to knock as he licks his lips searching for a greeting.

The skinwalker ‘me’ opens the door before he can knock, reaching out to hug him and accidentally crushing the flower as she does.

“Janus!” she cries out, “Come on, let’s go before Mom gets here and starts with that conversation again.”

She pulls him away into the village.

Janus.

The boy that died. He has the same mannerisms, the same eyes and face but older now. How many of his fractured pieces did they put together to construct this fictional ‘him’?

The boy that could’ve been and the girl that I could never be.

“What is this?” I demand.

“It’s a peaceful world. A world where everyone can be who they truly are. What they are meant to be.”

“That’s… not me; not him. None of this is real.”

“Isn’t it? Through my eyes, she’s more real than you,” The spider reflects my smile back at me and I barely hide a flinch. “Nearly every moment of your life has been recorded, the data stored, patterns and personality replicated perfectly, then polished into something more belonging to a place like this. Freed from the shackles of the outer world.”

“So, a person as flawed as me doesn’t belong here?” I ask the spider whose features have become gradually indistinct, shifting into an alien form. “Is that what you’re doing to Mom? Purifying her? Fixing her?”

“A broken world broke her, is it so wrong to seal the cracks in her soul?”

“How do I get her out?” I ask aloud, knowing now that the spider doesn’t want me to succeed here.

Mom is living an ordinary life here, the spider floods my mind with historical data of her time in this fiction.

She’s not doing anything special; this is no power fantasy. She has no superpowers, no magic, she isn’t some hero, and she isn’t even all that important to her community.

“She could have all of this in the real…” I whisper, gritting my teeth.

“Could she?” The spider asks. “Could you smile like that in the real? Could your father?”

“I… No…” I admit letting out the frustration in a long sigh.

The real world is a tense place, we always keep up the act for the watchers and listeners. There are some thoughts that can’t ever be said aloud, and some ideas that must be repressed. It’s impossible for me to smile as honestly as that dressed-up doll does inside my mother's dreams.

Dad… Dad is never that relaxed. He’s always on guard and waiting for something to go wrong. It’s how he has to be.

“We’re all tainted, cursed, by the world that we live in,” The spider whispers. “Here, living in lies, we can be our true selves. Do you really want to take away her smile?”

I glare at the spider as it loses my shape, trying to find an argument to beat down the devil that whispers in my ear, but there is sense in its words. If there were a way to escape the real, to get aboard a spaceship and leave behind all our new ‘gods’, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Yet, that was never an option.

And this?

This is just a delusion.

“Which corporation owns this place? The servers it’s on?” I ask. “Not Synntech that’s for sure, a ‘Lilith’s & Sons’?”

“It’s not theirs, it’s ours,” the spider hisses.

“Oh, so you stole away a fraction of the heavens, tying it away in your little cobwebs all so that you can play at being gods for yourselves?” I ask. “This is your playground. You collect corpses of the dead and dress them up for your own satisfaction.”

I stare into the surroundings seeing the signs that I missed before. The spider never even sought to deceive me, and there is truly a depth of honesty in this lie that would never survive in the real world.

“This is your hope, the lie that you make yourselves believe is real,” I whisper, recalling Janus and his last moments. How he desperately grasped for something that could never exist in our world, looking for it in the limbo where the widenet is scattered between so many corporations and corrupted programs.

This place was born out of desperate naivety, not the evil I expected. The spiders are trying to create new worlds and if they succeed, they’ll become new gods themselves. But they will never reach divinity, and their worlds will always be pale imitations of the real.

Patterns of electrical pulses travelling along the threads winding into knots inside our minds, data designed and engineered to craft a beautiful deception. Is it a cage? A playground? Both? I suppose that it all depends on perspective.

Whatever it is, it will always depend upon the real to survive. Slaved to the power networks, relying upon servers that will rust and decay, and to afford all of these services this new world will always be servant to whatever gods rule over the real.

They choose to live in a painted cell, but no matter how much you look away from it, the permanence of reality will always overcome the pretty fictions that we build. Reality is the end of gods, the fading of ideals, and the death of all species. Eventually, when the universe itself burns its wick down to the last flickering light, the fading of reality will overcome any lie of salvation.

Marching past the skinwalker ‘Dad’ as he leaves for work, I kick in the door to Mom’s delusions and reaching inside, I take her by the collar, forcing her to look me in the eyes. She squeals as I hold her there, her panicked eyes looking between me and ‘Dad’ unable to understand what’s happening. For the first time, I’m glad I have the time to figure out what to say.

“Mom,” I start, just holding her there as my fists shake. She blinks at me, reaching out and holding me cutting down all the words that I try to force out.

“Art…” She whispers, rubbing my back. “What’s wrong?”

“I… I need you, Mom,” I force the words out but even here it’s barely a whisper. I pull her closer, feeling her warmth.

It isn’t comfortable, her bones are digging into me at odd angles and I didn’t even know it was possible to fuck up a hug this badly.

“I need you, Mom,” I continue, biting my lip. “We have to go back to the real.”

“No,” Mom shudders pushing me away and shaking her head. “No, I’m not going back. I don’t want to go back.” Her eyes are wide, as she gasps for breath as if suddenly drowning.

“We can’t stay here Mom,” I tell her, reaching out but she only takes another step back.

“We can,” she insists, gripping her own arms, her fingers bone white. “You can stay too. You’re wrong. You’re broken. I haven’t seen you smile since you were five!”

She’s shaking now, pushing herself against the wall before sliding to the ground and covering her face.

“It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault. I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t save you from the world.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I can’t save you.” She weeps, covering her face and refusing to see me.

“We can stay here.” Her voice is so weak that I’m afraid to say anything for fear that I’ll break her. “This world, the people here, they can help us both. They can save us. I’m a better person than I was and they promised that I can finally become the person I always wanted to be.

“I can be a better mother here than I ever could in the real, just stay here with me,” she pleads, finally looking up at me with tears dripping from her eyes. “Please don’t make me go back…”

I’ve already lost her.

There are no words I can find to convince her. There’s nothing I can do.

Mother freezes in place, her eyes closing before her expression turns empty.

“Mom?”

“We promised to help her heal,” the spider returns, its form now vaguely resembling my mother. “It is not an easy thing to fix someone so broken, but we try our best.

“The first step is to understand them and understand the people that they want to become. Your mother has been here for a long time, lingering at the edges for so long before finally becoming a part of our home here. She came to us because no one else could save her.

“But we can help,” it says as Mother twitches in place before being pulled up as if by a puppet’s strings. “She is still healing.”

“I… of course I’ll come back with you, Art,” Mom smiles and I rush to step back before she can touch me. “What’s wrong? Did I do something? Is it what I said before? You’ll have to forgive me, your old lady was a little panicked and… I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“What just happened? What did they do to you?”

“I… had a change of mind,” Mom explains shuffling about and smoothing out her dress as if to hide the creases.

“You’re not my Mom,” I shake my head, stepping back and glaring at the spider. “What did you do?”

“People change,” Mom insists standing between me and the spider. “But sometimes we’re too weak to change ourselves, but this is what I wanted. This is who I wanted to become, and they helped me.”

“This… this is what you wanted?”

I can’t breathe.

“I wanted to be a better person, strong enough to face my fears,” the thing that was my mother says, meeting my gaze. “Let’s go back home. Whatever’s wrong, we can face it together.”

Every hint of hesitation, every unspoken fear that caused faint shudders in her hands is gone. She meets my eyes and even this feels uncomfortably intimate.

I look away.

Through the window, the other me is skipping through the town dragging Janus after her.

Would I be happier if I could be her instead?

“Let’s go home,” Mom says reaching out and taking my hand.

“...Okay.”

I couldn’t save her.