TechnoNerd, TechnoWitch

Marylyn Randall was a self-admitted techno-nerd. It was that simple. She had three desktop computers, two laptops, a tablet and two cellphones...and lived by herself in herself in what used to be her Great Aunt Margie's house near Port Jervis, NY. She bought the house from one of her cousins because she was desperate to get out of the New York Metropolitan area: there were just too many people. That house, and her Aunt Margie were her only fond memories from childhood.

During the summers while growing up, she would spend a couple of weeks with Aunt Margie to get away from the city. That had been her mom's idea, and it was brilliant. Aunt Margie understood Marylyn's need for time alone and didn't rag on her if she spent a whole day with her nose in a book, whether it was in the guest room, or sitting on the back porch in the shade. Every day, Marylyn would find freshly-baked cookies on the kitchen table. Aunt Margie always asked her intelligent questions about what she was reading, and at dinner, if they talked, great; if they didn't, she wasn't chided about it. She loved her Aunt Margie more than most people.

It was also at Aunt Margie's that she discovered she loved cats. At home, she had no pets. Aunt Margie had a big old black Maine Coon cat named "Bootsie." He had big old Bugs Bunny feet, and despite being all black with a tiny little soul-patch of white under his chin, his huge paws were unevenly white, to the point where he looked like he had walked through white paint; hence the name "Bootsie." Bootsie came by it honestly. He was aloof with most people, but adored Marylyn. Whenever Marylyn stayed with her aunt, Bootsie slept with her, and followed her everywhere. Sad as it is to say, she was more distraught by the eventual death of Bootsie than she was over the either the expected or untimely deaths of actual family members. That cat cared for her more than most of her relatives. The same week she bought the house and moved in, she adopted her cat "Joey," her first ever pet. He was a gangly calico Maine Coon kitten who grew into his oversized paws and ears. Now, he was huge.

She loved her house; the first thing she had done was electrical work, so that she would be able to accommodate all of her computers and electronics. That was what truly made Marylyn a techno-nerd: she was hopelessly outnumbered by her computer equipment and tech devices. The second thing she did was get internet that was meant not for casual home usage, but instead, meant for a business. She wanted speed, and as few interruptions as possible. When she had to pay to get the more robust line extended to her home, she didn't bat an eye. She wrote a check and smiled.

Her therapist from her teen years once told her she had 'anti-social personality disorder.' She could believe that. Marylyn spent most of her life not understanding people, much less liking them. It clinched it when he asked her how she was at making friends. Apparently, "I don't like most people enough to want to be friends or spend time with them" wasn't the right answer. When her therapist asked her how her dating life was, she laughed at him. "I don't date, and I'm still a virgin. Let's just say I haven't found the right guy yet and leave it there." Her therapist did a lot of note writing that day.

On any given day, she'd rather spend time with her cat Joey over any average person and would stick pins in her own eyes before working in a crowded office full of people...ugh...or spend 'quality' time at some place like Department of Motor Vehicles. Family gatherings weren't exempt, either. Her closest family understood she needed lots of alone time, and recognized the signs of annoyance and frustration when she was nearing her limit on social interaction. Her more distant family didn't, and thought she was weird. She knew from talking to her sister Angela that some of those distant family members thought she was retarded. Her sister was the one that truly understood her best; last year she bought her a T-shirt for Christmas. It was a black cat, and it said "Ewww...people" on it. It summed up her life rather succinctly. Marylyn concluded in high school during a computer class that she did much better with computers than people. She took a basic computer programming class...and found out she was excellent at it. Working at home as a programmer suited her just fine. The only co-worker she ever wanted to deal with going forward was her cat. She preferred cleaning his litter box to co-worker drama.

She'd been here in what was her aunt's old home for three years, and it was the best she'd ever felt. Marylyn was by herself except for Joey and had no forced interactions. She purchased one of those "meal" plans from website where they send you all the ingredients and basically do all your shopping for you. She liked cooking; she liked eating...and she despised grocery shopping with an equal passion. Some days, she felt like she had "talk to me" tattooed across her forehead, which isn't optimal when you'd rather not have to talk to random strangers. Before she signed up for the grocery delivery service, Marylyn would let her cupboards go bare and order takeout before she would go to the store. Ugh! Amazon was her friend. There was nothing Marylyn needed that couldn't be purchased on-line and delivered straight to her door. The more interactions she could cut out...the better.

The power outage that happened eight months ago was simultaneously a blessing and a curse. At first, it was only a curse, and miserable at that. A techno-nerd without internet, phones, power...or even air conditioning was a horror show beyond measure. Marylyn loved reading, but all her books were on Kindle. She'd had to limit her time on her phone and tablet even without a signal, because she needed to save her batteries. Because she lived in a semi-rural area, one of her first purchases was a battery backup for her main work computer. After realizing that this wasn't going to be a brief power outage, she ceased using her computer at all. Marylyn hadn't thought she would need a full-house generator. Apparently, she was mistaken.

Her house had a large front porch that wrapped around two sides, and an upstairs old-timey 'sleeping' porch, meant for especially hot nights in the years before air conditioning. The house had been built in 1884; back then, sleeping porches would've been a necessity. That's where she found herself during the storm. Her house was miserably hot, and likewise, so was Marylyn. She sat on her porch wearing a thin T-shirt and shorts, reading one of the few actual books she had in the house that wasn't a textbook. Joey sat balanced delicately on the railing, taking in the view of the backyard, the field beyond, and the tree line beyond that, surveying it as if he were king.

After a while, the sun began to set, and Marylyn could see the storm as it approached. She hoped that it would cool things down, as the heat lightning made a beautiful light show streaking across the sky in large, branching arcs. The skies finally opened up, and Joey jumped down and settled into the other chair beside her when the rain changed direction and he began to get wet sitting on the railing. Marylyn was fine with getting a little wet. The water was cooler than the air and was helping to cool her off. The storm grew worse. She lit an emergency candle in a tall glass candle holder.

It was curious. Marylyn chalked it up to the fact that she had misty droplets of water on her that were being blown in, keeping her marginally cooler, which was welcome. As the lightning struck closer and closer to where she was, she began to feel it across her whole body every time the lightning struck, and assumed it had to do with the fact she was damp from the rain. On one hand, she was frightened by it, and rightly so. On the other, the movie "Powder" came to mind, and she wondered if what she was feeling at the moment with the electricity might have been a portion of what the character in the movie felt as he ran across the field and connected to electricity. Marylyn wanted for a brief moment to try running through her own field during the storm but thought better of it. Eventually, the storm subsided.

Marylyn took her candle and went inside long enough to retrieve two things quickly from her refrigerator: a bottle of soda, and two slices of leftover pepperoni pizza. She put down food for Joey, who set about to scarfing it down as soon as his bowl hit the floor. He was purring loudly as she dropped a small handful of treats by his bowl. Marylyn then made her way back to her sleeping porch.

Unfortunately, the first storm didn't cool anything down. Marylyn began hearing the rumbling of more thunder. Not long after, the next storm started. This one seemed more powerful, and hit closer and closer to her house, and Marylyn began having second thoughts about being on the sleeping porch. Even as she was thinking now might be the time to go in, lightning struck an end of the old metal clothesline right below her that her Aunt Margie had relied on even after getting an electric dryer, preferring the scent of line-dried to the synthetic scents of dryer sheets. When or how she felt electricity go through her, she didn't know. She seemed to remember -- entirely too late and after the fact -- that Aunt Margie had the upper porch reinforced with metal to strengthen it years before, back when she was in high school. One moment, Marylyn was watching lightning strike one of the metal clothesline supports, and the next, Joey was meowing over her as she lay sprawled out, and she realized she must've been struck by one of the branches of lightning that came off of the main branch that hit the clothesline. Her sight was a bit blurry, and she felt numbness in all her extremities. She lay there for a few moments as her sight returned to normal, and then she tentatively sat up. As she returned back to normal, she realized how lucky she was. Marylyn realized she might've died. What she found simultaneously cool and scary is that after waking up on the porch floor, she could clearly feel every lightning strike that followed after. She felt it's build-up, which was a tension of sorts, and she felt it as it released that tension and dissipated. Marylyn could feel it pass through her like a wave.

Even as Marylyn enjoyed feeling the build-up and later release of the lightning, she decided that she should return inside. She didn't want to get struck again, though she had a weird feeling that she'd know somehow if that were likely and be able to move first. She didn't know how she knew that, but since she could feel the energy around her ebb and flow, it made sense. At least Marylyn got the feeling back in her extremities. She toyed with the idea of making a doctor's appointment once power returned, but as long as her eyesight and her extremities were back to normal, and nothing new was happening, why go? Too people-y.

When Marylyn woke up the next morning, she was sticking to her sheets, which told her everything she needed to know about the power situation. By mid-morning, the power came on for a while, and then went back off several times. By mid-afternoon, the power came back on and stayed on. Once she turned on the TV, she realized how lucky she was once she saw the scope of the power outage. There were some places where power was coming back on, but just as many that might be out considerably longer. Marylyn counted herself lucky.

That same afternoon, she finished up the tasks that she'd been working on for her job. The office she worked with was in Manhattan, and they were still being effected by the power outage, which amounted to a free day. Marylyn basked in the luxury of making a pot of coffee, and pouring herself a large cup, adding copious amounts of cream and sweetener, and grabbed her laptop and settled in to her comfy chair, happy for the air conditioning. She turned on the laptop, and Joey leaped onto the arm of the chair, and made his way to the back of the chair behind her head. She launched her Second Life app, and logged in.

Marylyn went straight to her 'house' in Second Life, and then changed her avatar's clothes, and then teleported herself to her group's communal property; in this case, their 'living room.' Marylyn hung out with a 'coven' in Second Life, where they played at being witches. Some of them claimed to be witches in real life; some of them, like her, aren't and merely play one in world. She never differentiated between them ever. She thought the ones that fancied themselves to be 'real' witches were deluded. Nice, but deluded. Everyone knows magic doesn't exist, right? Imagine Marylyn's surprise when a spell she cast in-world...worked?

The first incident, she discounted. It happened that first day after getting struck by lightning. Most of the people in her 'coven' were fun people that she liked, though most of them she hardly knew because of their locations and the times they're in world. Unfortunately, there were three people that all but made it a habit to tap-dance on Marylyn's last nerve on a regular basis. One of them is this guy that has an ego that won't stop. He's a programmer, who thinks his shit doesn't stink, and likes to bad-mouth women programmers...Marylyn in particular. Another is this girl that she found out was spreading rumors about her to others. The third was the one that hurt most, and unfortunately, was the source for ALL of it. She became friends with this person when she initially joined Second Life, and they found out they had lots of common. Marylyn felt like she actually made a friend! Her shrink would be so happy. Her name was Avea, and they got to be friends in real life (IRL), and they joined the 'coven' together. All that was great, and she was happy thinking she might have a real friend, you know? And then, she found out through one of the other people in the 'coven' that anything she told Avea (for instance, comments to her about the programmer with the ego issues, or the woman who was spreading rumors) she was sharing with other people in the 'coven.' Worse still, Avea told them all about the fact that Marylyn had been diagnosed as having anti-social personality disorder -- which Avea had been told in confidence -- and everyone had snide things to say about it. She never figured out why Avea decided to backstab her and gossip to the others. Did Marylyn do something wrong she didn't know about? Say something Avea didn't like? How do you defend against someone who talks about you behind your back? She was fairly sure that not only did Avea tell them things that were in confidence, she made up stuff, too. Unfortunately, Marylyn didn't have much experience with either friends or betrayals of confidence.

The day she got power back, something really odd happened. Maybe Marylyn did it somehow, or maybe she didn't. She wasn't sure. Once she knew she was free for the day, she logged in to Second Life, and hung with her witchy group in their communal living room area -- and her ex-friend Avea came in and made some comments to her that the others who were present wouldn't have necessarily known were shitty. Marylyn ignored it then, but when she went back to her home in Second Life that all of her avatars shared, she had a thought. Her witchy avatar had a spell candle in her living room on the mantel piece. Marylyn, in the guise of her witchy avatar, stood before the spell candle and wished that Avea would be unable to attend the next group gathering in two nights, so she could enjoy it. After her comments that day, she figured Avea had it coming.

Strangely enough, when she showed up two days later at their group gathering in-world, Avea's avatar wasn't there. Marylyn found out that her account and all of her avatars more or less imploded. Her computer had problems, froze up and crashed while she was in-world, and not only did Avea's favorite witchy avatar cease to exist...all of her avatars went belly up and simultaneously disappeared. Avea had to go through the techs at Second Life to get any of them back, and never did get back all of her inventory, which is the exception, not the rule. The situation made Marylyn think: she'd done a spell with her spell candle hoping that something bad would happen to Avea's avatar...and it did. She wanted to count it and say she had something to do with it, but she didn't, because shit happens all the time without any spells. Regardless of why it happened, it made her feel good when she heard someone talking about all of Avea's avatar and account problems, and it made her think, too. Could she get back at Avea for real? Could she? Should she, if she could?

For then, Marylyn put it out of her mind; at least until their next group event in world the next month. Avea made her mad; it was a random comment as Marylyn arrived. "Oh look, here comes crazy..." and none of the others even bothered to defend her. They all laughed. Marylyn left the group event, and quit the witchy group, too. When her avatar teleported back to her in-world home, she went back to her in-world spell candle -- with real intent, real anger and roiling emotions, and cast a revenge spell, a curse - on Avea.

Two weeks later, Marylyn found out through some of the members of the witchy group she used to belong to that Avea had been in a car accident IRLand died. Even though she'd quit the group, a couple of the people in it still thought to reach out to tell her, knowing that at one point she and Avea had been good friends. All Marylyn could think as she heard the news wasn't "Aww, poor Avea." Instead, it was "Did I do that?" Later, she was trying to figure out if she did it, how did she do it? Could it have anything to do with getting struck by lightning? And if that spell worked, would others? Her brain was spinning with possibilities.

Over the course of a month, Marylyn did several spells in-world, trying to figure out if she really had power or not. The first spell was a money spell. It was a rousing success. She got a raise at work; a generous, unexpected bonus. The next spell wasn't especially planned, but her customer was annoying the hell out of her. She was programming an app for his business, and he was an ass. Nobody on her team liked working with him, and she was stuck with him for the duration. Unfortunately for her customer, he said something rude to Marylyn, and she went into Second Life to 'fix his little red wagon.' Not long after, the rude customer disappeared into the breeze, and she learned that his business partner had stolen insane amounts of money from him, went off to parts unknown lickety-split, and left her asshole of a customer forced to shut down his business. Marylyn laughed it off, glad that she didn't have to continue working with him.

Her next foray into spells in-world was against the coven that laughed at her. Shortly thereafter, there was a group split; a difference of opinion and beliefs that ended the group. Could it have happened without her? Sure. That kind of thing happens in-world -- and in real life -- all the time. Could her spell have fanned the embers that were already existing? Probably.

Three months into her spell-casting, two things happened. The first was that she was certain at this point that she was using power she could only attribute to the storm. Marylyn still didn't consider herself a witch. She thought the power was storm-borne only. Witch? Witches don't really exist. Power? Oh, yeah, that exists. Marylyn liked power. It gave her resources for dealing with shitty people that she never had before. 'Eww, people' was still her mantra -- only now she had more and better options for dealing with them.

The second thing that happened rattled her to her core. She was in Second Life and got a message. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't figure out who sent it. All it said is "I know what you've been up to."