"Cost" and "efficiency." The two words on the page were like ghosts tearing at each other, locked in combat on the hollow battlefield within me. W's proposal was a dangerous shot of adrenaline. It promised to slow my disintegration, yet might hasten my transformation into something alien.
I did not reply to W's last message. Silence was my only defense for now, and my final declaration of autonomy.
But "it" inside me-the New Shackle born from the notebook, living in symbiosis with my soul, or perhaps parasitizing it-disagreed. After experiencing the negligible yet utterly real reduction in strain brought by W's plan, "it" seemed to have awakened to some deeper craving. A primal hunger for "efficiency," for smoother, greater "harvests."
That hunger was no illusion. It manifested as a kind of mental "agitation." Whenever I tried to sift through the mire of the deep web for my next target alone, as I had before, an unprecedented restlessness seized me. The information became cluttered and inefficient, the screening process slow and unbearable, like cutting tough leather with a dull knife. The dizziness from losing memories also seemed to grow more frequent and intense, as though "it" were protesting this "inefficient" mode of operation and using it to pressure me.
It was hungry. And W could provide food that was easier to digest.
That realization chilled me to the core. I was not cooperating with an outside organization. I might be feeding a monster that lived inside me. And W most likely knew that. Their "optimization plan" did more than reduce my burden. It might be a precisely calibrated way of feeding that monster, making it dependent on me and thereby controlling me indirectly.
After several days of torment amid restlessness and emptiness, I could almost hear the shackle's soundless shrieks deep