Old friends--Abuela has been writing a paper about how a group of people working in concert can be considered as a fantastically powerful parallel processor. After visiting the link she provided as a demonstration of her theory, this makes a world of sense to me.  Abuela actually dropped everything this weekend for some kind of emergency consultation.  I don't know what she was working on, but she didn't sleep at all Sunday night. 

I had a bad night too, for a strange reason.  A frightening reason.    

Mephista had a nightmare. 

That hasn't happened before.  Usually she's just there at my ear, my wise raven, my witch's cat.  She works out the score to music I hear and particularly like. She has the menus memorized at all the places I like to order from.  She doesn't make me less human:  she makes me more ME.  Of course the first few weeks after implanting feel strange, this voice whispering words you haven't learned to hear yet; showing pictures you have to learn how to see.  But it had been years and years since I had the sense of her as something other than me. 

But Sunday night I woke up and she was . . . tossing and turning in me, like a child in a hot bed.  Flicks and phosphors of her thought guttered around the edges of the HUD implants.  The noises were worse.  Part of me, the meat of me, could tell the room was quiet:  but in my head I heard these sounds, clicks and whistles.  Wind.  Clanking machinery.  A deep, wicked voice.   

Mephista crying. 

What's wrong? I started to ask.  But she, who never sleeps, was sleeping.  She didn't come when I called her, and when I touched my face, it was wet with her tears.        

L.