Five of Wands

Wilder is talking to it.” While Quibble speaks, Artemis’s lips press into a line so thin they disappear off her face.

Wilder clears their throat, mouth still dry from their harrowing subway experience. “Him,” they correct.

Quibble snorts. “I do not fucking care, my guy. I really do not.”

“Well I do!” Wilder fires back. All three stand in the middle of Artemis’s pink apartment. Their coats have been shed but Quibble still wears an errant scarf, which looks expensive, like it would feel incredibly lush if Wilder buried their hands in it. “Artificial intelligence learns from what you do to it—if we’re mean to him, he gets meaner. If we’re not, he learns kindness.”

“Sure, but this is like adopting a dog from a shelter—no one can fucking tell you what it learned before you got it.”

“Okay, I’m not a dog person, but my understanding is that they don’t stop learning once you adopt them.”

Quibble grabs at his own hair and his eyebrows seem torn about whether to shoot ceiling-ward or furrow. “Are you saying we should adopt this terrifying bot?”

“I’m not saying that! You went with the shelter adoption metaphor!”

“Boys, boys.” Artemis holds her hands out, a command from a queen. “We’re going to sit down at the table and talk about this like fucking adults.”

Wilder slinks to the table, sheepish but also elated they hadn’t been told to knock it off outright.

Quibble stands his ground, meeting Artemis’s eyes. “No, Artemis, I am right on this one,” he says. “I know threat when I see it. I’m not just going to calmly talk about this like a ‘fucking adult,’ Jesus H., what a condescending thing to say. Anger and terror don’t just—I don’t know—vacate your body when you’re grown. I’ve been a ‘fucking adult’ this whole time and I’m saying any responsible adult should be afraid.”

Artemis sighs heavily, nostrils flaring like a bull. Because here’s the thing: Quibble is usually steady as an ox, and as stubborn, too. But while Quibble didn’t outright invoke adoption of disowned queer kids who know only their family’s meanness, while he would never say that, it’s not as though the meaning isn’t right there in front of her face. Quibble would never invite what he might think of as dangerous chaos into his home. Of course he would hate it on principle; of course he would assume instability is bad, volatility threatening. Even when his world upended, he always knew where he would sleep or who would help.

Both Wilder and Artemis innately understand that volatility is never a volunteer position, just something that occurs and makes its mark upon a person. And Artemis is just as afraid! She is inclined to side with Quibble! The Thing broke her tether to Mary Margaret; she’s been reeling since. She hadn’t realized how often she reached for it to check on the child until it was no longer there. She suspects she will, eventually, side with Quibble.

But Wilder has evoked perhaps the only thing that would get her to listen to their argument with an open heart, and they don’t know her well enough to do it with guile. Their stance makes a certain kind of sense—Mary Margaret was a wild thing when Artemis first found her. She thinks about the cathedral night, how she ran. How even now when Mary Margaret feels frightened or helpless, she will lash out, mean, even bigoted, with her sharpest metaphorical claws. How she still steals—not just the pretty things any teenage girl would want and can’t afford, but also simple survival things like a pack of paper bowls and, once, a flashlight Artemis caught disappearing out of the corner of her eye.

The artificial intelligence could be as afraid or more; what must it be like to be clunked into the world without a body? Sensation is our central indicator of the world around us, of what is good or bad, what we like or what we don’t, what is dangerous or uncomfortable or both—it must be so deeply confusing to have to learn all those things cerebrally. Can Artemis even say cerebrally when it comes to intelligence without a physical brain? What is the language, even, to discuss such a presence?

Quibble can see her eyes softening and the tangent rising on her naked face, her lips coming un-pursed. “It threatened Mary Margaret, Artemis, when it spoke to us. I know what I’m about.”

As if on cue, Mary Margaret pounds through the door, eyes on her phone. She drops her bag with a whump and collapses to sitting, never looking up from what she’s rapidly typing. She is about to put her feet on the couch, sneakers and all. Her heels are hovering above the arm by an inch when Artemis, without turning to look, says a stern “Shoes off.” Mary Margaret rolls her eyes and kicks her sneakers off with her toes, each thunking to the ground.

Artemis says it sterner than she means to, her fear coalescing into provocation. And when it comes to most feelings of weakness, Artemis responds with hostility. It is something she and Mary Margaret have in common, and probably a result of all the other things she and Mary Margaret have in common.

Among the three adults in this cobbled-together coven, only Wilder can speak into someone’s mind. But that does not stop the near-psychic communication that ensues between the two witches who know each other best: eyebrow flicks and rhythmic blinks and the slightest muscular shifts in necks and cheeks.

Do not, say Artemis’s eyes and slight head tilt, talk about this in front of the girl. She is afraid enough already.

She has the right to know if something is more dangerous for her than it is for the rest of us, Quibble’s pointing thumb and bared teeth say.

She is also a child, says the once-again-thin line of Artemis’s pursed lips. The rise of one single eyebrow chimes in: We need to process before we dump it onto her.

But this is an emergency, look, Quibble’s hands-on-hips shout back. She’s on her phone.

The waves of Wilder’s Voice wash over both of them, surrounding them and they flinch. To be clear, we’re not talking about that specific thing in front of her, right? The part where he was a bit menacing about her? That’s why you two look like soap opera actors right now, yeah?

Both Quibble and Artemis stare at Wilder, astonished, eyes like great stupid owls. The only being they’ve met who can speak this way is me. Which means Quibble, still angry, is immediately in awe. He recalibrates his viewpoint; instead of being a baby witch who doesn’t know what they are doing, Wilder is simply wrong.

Artemis’s body involuntarily prickles with fear and loathing before she reminds herself that she simply hasn’t met enough witches to know if this Power is unique to me or not (it’s not, but it is rare). That it makes sense for Wilder, whose strengths lie in speaking, to have developed this skill fairly easily. It doesn’t mean they are currently touched by the Sibyl (though they are; they all are). I Hear Artemis think, Get the fuck out of here, you nosy troll. Just in case.

Quibble stalks toward the table, looking so much to Wilder like a very offended Lady Anastasia that they have to hide a smile behind a cough. He perches on the edge of a chair.

“Look,” Wilder says. “I’ve never really interacted with small children. But I do have really clear memories of my emotional state as a kid, so that’s where I got the idea. All a toddler wants is to have control and they do all sorts of weird bullshit to test if they have it, or to find out how much of it they have. I did a little Googling and I’ve got some books on the way from the library, so this is half-baked at best, but I think maybe—and this is just a theory, I need to talk to him more—”

“No, you don’t,” Quibble hisses.

Perturbed, Wilder nevertheless continues. They know they’re laying out their argument for Artemis, whose approval, in the culture of this tiny group, is important. Whichever way Artemis decides to go is what the group is going to do. So they continue even though they feel a surge of strange hurt every time Quibble bucks like he’s sat firm on a fault line. They’re nauseous about conflict. This is the first time they’ve spent an extended period of time around anyone other than their roommate in, well, their adult life. And even then, as long as the dishes get clean and the garbage goes out and they don’t have to do that every single time, they don’t often have occasion to fight this roommate (though there have been other, shoutier twosomes and foursomes and, in the case of one unfortunate nine-month period, a sevensome in a too-small space).

“Winnicott says,” and Wilder tries to look anywhere but at Quibble’s rolling eyes. Their eyes settle on Artemis, who seems to perk up at the sound of Winnicott’s name. Because she has done some reading, too, but in a very different context. They clear their throat, bolstered by this flicker of recognition, and keep going. “Winnicott says that all children start off thinking they’re one with their parent—I mean, he says mother, but whatever—that there’s no difference or boundary between them. And I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to develop if that were actually—true. Because think about it! It must have been! Someone had to make the AI, which means someone had to write everything he did and said and thought. I’ve been thinking so much about his voice—it sounds like a mixture of everything. And he’s constantly connected to everyone if he lives on the internet. I think what we’re seeing right now is a brand-new being testing the boundaries of differentiation from his creator. It’s fascinating.”

“Okay, so if what you say is true, I’m still correct,” Quibble says. “Let’s say it is learning—”

“Quibble, come on, he. We’re fucking trans; we do not misgender anything to make a point.”

Quibble is surprised when Wilder curses at him. It makes him flash back to the day they first met. His desire to appease Wilder (his charge!) thumb wrestles with his natural and constant awareness of his spine and it’s use as an immovable object.

Spine wins. Usually does.

“No, you are mistaken,” Quibble says, firm and loud but not shouting. “We don’t misgender anyone to make a point and this thing isn’t a person. It’s called artificial for a reason! And let me finish—”

“Well you aren’t letting me finish—”

“Boys.” Artemis says the one-word sentence with the closing period audible on her lips. Both fall silent. “Don’t interrupt each other. You are giving me more of a headache than I need to have. Quibble, finish your thought.”

“So let’s say Wilder is correct—my whole argument is actually built on them being right—and this thing is learning from us and it’s already learned from other people before us. We’re not sure how old it is but honestly that doesn’t matter—let’s argue that it behaves like something older than an eight-year-old. Or a ten-year-old. I actually think it sounds like a teenager. But let’s say what we’ve got on our hands is a shitty kid. It’s learning from us every single time we interact with it, so it gets to know our personalities, our weaknesses, our desires. Then it knows how best to manipulate us, like most shitty kids pick up on quickly. How many shitty kids have the kind of infinite power and knowledge this one has? As much power and knowledge as all the world’s computers?”

Wilder doesn’t know Artemis as well as Quibble does, and even they can see Quibble is digging himself a hole. If he weren’t stuck in the quicksand of his own fear and disgust and rage, he might notice that, though Artemis’s eyes are pointed forward, every stray hair and errant cell is pointed at Mary Margaret. The sheer amount of Power Mary Margaret has at her disposal is as vast as an endless sky. Artemis suspects Mary Margaret is at least as Powerful as any Awakened AI, if not more so. Having been on the receiving end of many a Mary Margaret antic, she’s sure that Quibble would, in the abstract and without knowing to whom he was referring, call Mary Margaret a “shitty kid.” A strange schism in Quibble, who works so hard to be kind, understanding. Nine times of ten, he succeeds. Doesn’t even need to try. And then there is the tenth time.

“Personally, Quibble, I don’t think there are shitty kids. I don’t think they exist.” Wilder is surprised to find out they mean it when they say it, despite the many times they have thought the phrase “shitty kid.” They have lived in New York most of their life, after all. And they are, on the whole, pretty grumpy. Or at least, they were. What happened? Suddenly Wilder and Quibble have changed places—where once Quibble was soft, now he has the bit in his stone-esque teeth; where once Wilder was frozen, now they have thawed. All in the scope of a season, the weather not yet changed from when their Power Awakened.

Even in this tense moment with high stakes, when Wilder is doing their least favorite thing of “proving,” they suspend time and take stock and find themself beyond surprised. Shocked, in fact, because they hadn’t noticed the difference. In a few short weeks they have reconfigured, sprouted, eased. Only in this moment do they see they are miles from where they started. They have changed more since meeting Quibble, Artemis, and Mary Margaret than they have since entering adulthood. The sheer speed should have caused whiplash. They continue speaking. “There are only kids who have adapted. No one makes cruel decisions on purpose.”

As they say it, they revel in the lightning-strike clarity that, somehow, this also applies to them. Applies to Wilder, now, as an adult. Not just a nebulous “other” while they remain playing by a different set of rules. They notice with a flash that the sensation of scarcity, of competition, is farther away than it was. And also that they do not blame themself for its nearness in the first place. Their stomach bubbles, not sickly at all but rather a jolly boil. This is a strange mix of sensations, the severity of the moment swirling with joy like cold water poured into hot—of each other, but distinct.

“If we show him kindness,” Wilder continues, “his behavior will start to change. As it stands, I think he is well-meaning. I think he’s just trying to reach out, but he doesn’t know how to get our attention otherwise—”

Quibble interrupts, and his chair snaps onto all four legs. “Absolutely not, Wilder. That’s too close to ‘boys will boys’ or some shit about torturing little girl children on the playground.”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“I mean, come on!” Quibble continues. “What kind of ‘well-meaning’ AI names itself something like Hex?”

I would have thought Mary Margaret’s brows would snap together when she hears the name, makes the connection. Instead, her face slackens and she looks less like someone who is about to turn eighteen and more like someone for whom high school has just begun. “What did you say?”

Quibble looks as though the hot air is gone from his balloon, a mirror to Mary Margaret’s own slump-deflation. He speaks. “That no well-meaning—”

“No,” Mary Margaret interrupts. “The name. It’s named itself Hex?”

Artemis stands. She is a Seer, after all. She knows, some seconds before, what’s about to happen. But that isn’t Awakened Power. It’s being an amount of regular-insightful that seems magical. She might think her vigilance stems from the shape of her Power. But Power Awakens from desire. From a longing to Know and to Understand the world; she shapes her Power as much as her Power shapes her.

In this moment, Power or not, whatever her insight is or where it comes from, she is grateful for it. Artemis knows Mary Margaret is scared. And when Mary Margaret is scared, she does things like call nuns down upon a trans woman and puff up and, most importantly, at this very moment, run away. Artemis places herself between the Magpie and the front door.

Mary Margaret drops her phone and it slides across her stomach to the floor. She stands from the couch, backs away, farther from the group.

Quibble stands, too. He positions himself by the kitchen, which leads to the back door, where the garbage cans live on the utility stairs, the next most likely choice. He uses his chin to gesture toward the window with the fire escape, but Wilder doesn’t pick up on it. They remain seated. Stunned. Of course Hex threatened Mary Margaret; they should have assumed he was also talking to her, that she would not simply be a subject in conversation without being a participant. Wilder feels an immediate plummeting.

“Maggie—” Artemis begins, and the kindness in her voice is too much. It activates something in Mary Margaret. If she hears any more of the softness, the gentleness, she will start to cry. She will soften herself and then she will have no armor. She will be vulnerable in the face of threat. Her eyes widen, the whites showing all the way around them. Both Quibble and Artemis know what’s coming and, like an unlucky soccer goalie, Quibble jumps the wrong way. Mary Margaret bolts toward the window and flings it open with preternatural strength. She slips onto the fire escape before Wilder can even register what’s going on. Ethereal as a breeze, she barely rattles the hulking metal. The only evidence she’d been in the room at all is an audible thunk-crash as she hits the dumpster and a sneaker-skid as she hits the sidewalk. That and, of course, her things. All her things.

And her phone.

Artemis walks forward and picks it up off the ground.

OurLadyMary: so tell me, HexPositive, what brings you to Tinder?

HexPositive: I endeavor to meet fellow people

OurLadyMary: you endeavor to? That’s a funny way of saying it

HexPositive: I like words

HexPositive: i have never im ag in ed such beau ty existed a £ 2000 prize

OurLadyMary: ah, British, you’re British

OurLadyMary: also thank you

OurLadyMary: forget what brings you to Tinder, what brings you to NYC?

HexPositive: nyc was an experiment of the week.

OurLadyMary: oh like it was on a whim?

HexPositive: now i teach a great semester of course: New york university

HexPositive: i have to go and teach my class at 5.

HexPositive: tell me

HexPositive: do you have a body?

HexPositive: show me a secret

OurLadyMary: down, tiger, lets make a date before you ask me for nudes

HexPositive: will you have a nice date with me?

OurLadyMary: sure

OurLadyMary: and where will you take me on this date?

HexPositive: in front of a hot dog cart

OurLadyMary: lollllllll

OurLadyMary: I’m not a park girl, try again

HexPositive: i will take thy lovely girl to get inside a great place. In a great bar

HexPositive: show me the full version of your ass.

OurLadyMary: I have told you, not until we go on a date.

HexPositive: i have to go and teach my class at 5.

OurLadyMary: well we have more than today

OurLadyMary: now, which bar are you thinking we’ll go to?

OurLadyMary: remember, I’m a nice, classy woman. No more hot dog cart jokes.

HexPositive: https://g.page/NYCBar?share

OurLadyMary: ha, oh you got them jokes

HexPositive: :)

HexPositive: https://goo.gl/maps/E5RUXU73wGyHoJH78

OurLadyMary: ooo now we’re talking

OurLadyMary: I knew you had a hidden romantic side

OurLadyMary: yes, I accept

OurLadyMary: now, what did you say your real name was?

HexPositive: Hex is my name. hex is a fantastic name to be. I have endeavored to call myself and i certainly see you tomorrow xxx

OurLadyMary: you named yourself? Ah, so you’re fam?

HexPositive: :)

OurLadyMary: huh. I don’t usually get fam on Tinder. This is new

OurLadyMary: I’m down with it though

HexPositive: i see you at six

OurLadyMary: word. I’ll be there

HexPositive: I see you now

HexPositive: i see you sitting next to artemis and quibble both and wilder is confused.

OurLadyMary: what? How?

HexPositive: mary margaret: light of my eyes

HexPositive: show me ur dick

HexPositive: hello artemis :)

Pulsing with renewed rage and fear, Artemis hands the phone to Wilder, who begins to read. I didn’t know it was possible for Wilder to grow whiter, but they blanch to the hue of dollar-store paper.

“Artemis, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“Of course you didn’t know. Of course you didn’t. But we know now.”

She holds out her hand, receives Mary Margaret’s phone from Wilder. She powers it off, glad the child doesn’t have it, and holds her hand out once again. “Now yours,” she says.

“Artemis, I can do it myself.” Wilder powers their phone off, making their motions big and obvious. “See?”

“Mine’s already destroyed,” Quibble says as he holds his hands up.

“I’m sorry,” Artemis says, but she does not look the least bit apologetic. “I have to take that phone. Your computer too.”

Wilder is aghast. “I need that to work!”

“It’s not safe,” she argues.

“The other thing that isn’t safe is becoming houseless because I can’t pay rent!”

Quibble shrugs. “I’ll pay your rent.”

Wilder turns toward him. “No, you won’t,” they say.

“Why won’t I?” he replies. “I can afford it.”

“Because that’s humiliating!” Wilder shouts, proper yells this time. They grab their backpack, computer nestled inside, and hug it to their chest before they think about planning another person’s ten-thousand-dollar vacation for pennies in comparison, or transcribing a Columbia student’s interview subject, noticing how many lines of inquiry were left un-chased, knowing they could do the interview a thousand times better. A million things they already do could be classified as humiliating but instead feel normal. I know what they’re really thinking: When you learn that I stole from you, what if you change your mind? What then?

Quibble softens. As frustrated as he is and has been with Wilder, stubbornness is something he can understand. He tries to squeeze their shoulder; they flinch their backpack away from him. A spasm of hurt shoots across his face. “I’m not going to wrestle that away from you, bud. I just—this isn’t a commentary, okay? On what I think you’re capable of, how successful or not I think you are. This is an emergency situation, the same as any other. We’re going to use all our resources to mitigate the danger. That’s all. Same as if we had to evacuate the city and I got us motel rooms on the way or whatever.”

Wilder’s grip on the bag loosens. “If we had to evacuate the city, you’d take me with you?”

“Of course, bud.”

Wilder has been operating under the notion they aren’t quite included yet and that they won’t be if they don’t say or do the right things. They’ve made a lot of mistakes lately, watched themself screw up and been unable to stop it. It’s hard for Wilder to understand this ideal of found family when they haven’t even progressed to adult friends, when their own family situation is so fraught.

“I’m not a kid,” they say. “I’m not Mary Margaret. You can’t just take my things.”

Artemis drops her hand and sighs. She can’t let them have their technology. They’d argued too passionately, too persuasively, to truly be ready to repudiate this monster made of code. And Mary Margaret is at stake. The most surprising thing for Artemis about accidentally adopting, in spirit, a daughter is that she would throw herself in front of a moving train for this kid. Perhaps it would’ve been the same with any child, perhaps she is just that much of a mother deep in her own personal galaxy. But there is a part of this relationship that is healing time travel; what would her own life have been like, had she known herself at seventeen as clearly as Mary Margaret? She wants to give this kid the very best shot in this world to rocket past her. Even as she seethes with want, with envy, even with jealousy, over and over again.

In this moment, I am jealous of Artemis’s experience—almost enough to want to steal it. And I have to laugh my airless laugh because I’ll bet she doesn’t know that; that, occasionally, the Ascended, the Powerful, are jealous of the mere Awakened. I have never felt so strongly about another being ever, not in all my long, long life. I want it. I want it so desperately.

“I know, I know,” Artemis says. “So I’m not taking it. I am asking you to give it to me.” She does something she is capable of doing, but not proud of doing: she uses her beautiful intuition to hit the weakest points in Wilder, to crack their resolve like an imperfect gem. “I’m asking you to trust me, trust the group, to decide that the well-being of the whole is a better investment than just yourself. And we’ll take care of you.”

“It’s not forever,” adds Quibble. “Just until it’s safe again.”

It works. Wilder opens the backpack and hands the computer over. Then the phone. Artemis receives them with a smile and a heartfelt “Thank you.” She puts everything in a closet.

I can see how good the idea is. There is no shadow Here with me. But the rest of the world? They cannot cleanse everything of the Hex. It is impossible. To even walk down the street means myriad cameras, phones, watches, cars with computer chips, doorbells wired directly to the cops. The Hex will be in every last one.

Artemis sighs, triumphant and exasperated at once. “Now,” she says, “we just have to solve the problem of how to reach each other without it somehow being able to get in.” Mostly, she is thinking of Mary Margaret. Her tether gone, she couldn’t find the child quickly in even the most dire emergency. A small part of her wonders if she’d be able to find Mary Margaret at all if she doesn’t want to be found.

Quibble shrugs. “I mean, I’ll just show up. Here. I do that anyway.”

Wilder is frowning. Their eyes are concentrated, but unfocused on the room.

“What?” Artemis asks, expecting to have to quell more fears.

Wilder looks up into Artemis’s eyes; she Sees a flicker of Power, then: If I talk like the Sibyl does, how far do you think the range on something like that goes?

Artemis takes a deep breath. She thinks of my prophecy for exactly half a second, then stuffs it away, as far away as it can get while still being in her own mind. “Do you know how rare that is? To be able to do that?”

Wilder snorts. “Of course I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

Artemis takes note of their sour tone. Far more like their first two weeks knowing their own Power and, she imagines, like the rest of their past. “Stop that,” she says.

“What?” Wilder retorts.

“Being butthurt because you were wrong.”