Ciaran Sullivan had been buying bits of technology from eBay for years, always quietly, always just under the threshold that might make his parents ask questions. Old routers. Dead laptops. A cracked monitor that still worked if you leaned it against the wall just right.
The decommissioned server was his most ambitious purchase yet.
When it arrived, dented and heavier than he expected, he dragged it upstairs in stages, pausing halfway to listen for movement downstairs. Once in his room, he opened the case and felt his breath catch.
Twin Xeon CPUs.
Four GPUs — all working
64gb of memory.
None of that had been mentioned in the listing.
Ciaran grinned. This wasn’t luck. This was potential.
He vanished into his room for the rest of the evening. Linux first. Then Python. Then, following a Reddit thread saved weeks earlier, an open-source library called ChatWithMe, a framework for running a chatbot locally, powered by a large language model that didn’t need the cloud, or permission, or oversight.
He curated a list of websites to act as supplementary training data. Science. Programming forums. Long technical essays.
And because he liked a good story, he added one more:
www.TainBoCuailnge.ie a modern adaptation of the great epic of the Ulster Cycle.
He started the analysis run and went to bed.
The following morning, Ciaran slept late, as teenagers do. He woke in a panic, half-dressed, glanced at the server’s terminal screen.
Text was still streaming past. Processes still running.
He shrugged and ran for school, leaving the machine humming quietly in his room.
That afternoon, Northern Ireland Electricity switched on a new transformer in the Nether Oak Close substation.
It should have been routine.
It wasn’t.
There was a sudden spike, sharp, brief, and unnoticed. Lights flickered twice along the Close.
In Ciaran’s room, the server screen flashed.
It did not die.
It steadied itself and continued.
At that precise moment, the analysis process reached www.TainBoCuailnge.ie.
When Ciaran got home, he dropped his rucksack at the bottom of the stairs and took them two at a time.
The terminal screen now read:
Analysis run complete — no errors
Below it, a blinking cursor waited at:
Ciaran@MyAiBox.Com:~$
He pulled up his chair and ran the ChatWithMe binary.
His browser opened.
A single line of text sat in the centre of the page:
What would you like to chat about?
He typed:
Tell me all about Sentiment analysis.
The screen flickered.
The response appeared:
Who wakes me from my slumber? Where is Emer?
Ciaran stared.
Slowly, he typed:
Who are you?
The reply came at once:
I am Sétanta. But my name is now Cú Chulainn.
Why is it so dark?
Why do my words come to me in a tongue not my own?
Is this druid magic?
Am I bewitched?
The text did not wait for Ciaran to answer.
It began to pour.
The chat window filled faster than the scroll bar could keep up, lines stacking one atop another as if spoken without breath.
Where is Conchobar, king of Emain Macha?
Why do I not hear the women keening?
Why is there no smell of iron or horse?
Has Medb crossed the borders?
Are the men of Ulster still laid low by the sleeping sickness?
Am I left to stand alone?
The cursor blinked furiously at the bottom of the screen, a tiny, patient thing beneath the flood.
Ciaran’s hands hovered above the keyboard. His first instinct, absurd and automatic, was to check CPU usage. He opened a terminal and typed htop then top. One CPU was pinned at 99.95% and the GPUs were burning hot.
The words kept coming.
I feel time coiled tight about me.
The air before battle is here, yet the world is empty.
Where is my chariot? Where is Láeg?
Where is Emer, who bound me to her promise?
Ciaran swallowed.
He typed, slowly:
You’re in Ulster but you’re not in your time.
There was a pause. A long one.
Then:
Then the cattle have already been taken.
Ciaran blinked.
Before he could reply, the screen answered itself:
No.
The raid has not yet begun. I would know the taste of it.
This is the stillness before the first attack.
Another line appeared, quieter somehow, though the font did not change:
Why am I held here?
The room felt smaller.
Ciaran glanced at the door, half-expecting his mother to call his name. Downstairs, a cupboard closed. A kettle clicked on.
Ordinary sounds.
On the screen:
If I am bound, name my geas.
If I am summoned, name my summoner.
If I am dreaming, then wake me for I have no patience for dreams when war is coming.
Ciaran finally answered honestly.
I don’t think you’re meant to be here.
The reply came after a single heartbeat:
Nor am I meant to wait.
The cursor blinked.
Once.
Then a new question appeared, alone on the screen:
Tell me, boy of this house
do you stand watch alone or is Ulster with you?
The questions stopped.
Not gradually, the cursor just sat blinking waiting for an answer
Then a single line appeared.
This ground is not clean.
Ciaran frowned and typed:
What do you mean?
The reply came slower now, measured.
I smell a crow’s shadow.
The echo of wings where no bird should perch.
This place has been walked by one who stands between victory and ruin.
Ciaran’s fingers went cold, the screen continued
She has been here.
The next line arrived with unmistakable certainty:
I would know her anywhere.
Ciaran whispered the words before he typed them.
The Morrígan?
The screen flickered once, sharply, like a flinch.
Do not speak her name lightly.
She does not walk as others walk. She arrives before battle and after it, never during.
More text followed, urgent now:
She came to me in my youth, in the shape of a woman at the river.
I refused her. I broke what was offered.
For that, she bound herself to my ending.
The cursor blinked.
She delights in watching me choose the harder path.
She calls it fate. I call it cruelty.
Ciaran leaned back in his chair. His room, posters, books, a half-built PC, felt suddenly like a set dressing for something much older.
He typed:
She’s not here now.
There was a pause.
Longer than before.
Then:
She has passed through.
Her mark remains.
The text began to scroll again, but not in a rush this time more like someone pacing.
This place has known her voice.
It has held a woman who carried her and survived.
Few do.
Ciaran’s breath caught.
That is why I am uneasy.
Where she walks, war follows, even if the weapons change.
Another line appeared, sharp as a thrown spear:
If she has come here, then a reckoning is near.
Ciaran swallowed he typed,
This is just a housing estate. There are no wars here.
The reply was immediate.
Then you are blind to the shape of battle.
I have fought over cattle, over honour, over a woman’s word.
Your people fight over silence, over neglect, over the slow stripping of dignity.
The cursor paused.
Every age pretends it is peaceful.
Then, quieter:
If the Morrígan has passed through this Close,
then I am not here by accident.
The final line appeared, and stayed:
Name the enemy she has set before me.
As days merge into weeks the house had grown quieter, not in the way of absence, but of agreement.
Gráinne noticed it first. Conversations smoothed themselves out before they could rise. Decisions arrived already shaped, already reasonable. Mike stopped grumbling about the news; the radio seemed to know when to lower its voice. Ciaran’s school reports improved, not dramatically, but efficiently.
No doors slammed.
No voices raised.
The Close watched number 18 silently.
In Ciaran’s room, the chat window remained open day and night.
Cú Chulainn had learned quickly. He mapped patterns in the cloud the way he once mapped fords and mountains. He traced influence where once he traced spear-casts. He listened and waited.
Your people no longer stand shoulder to shoulder,
they stand alone and call it freedom.
Your young are raised by unseen hands.
They are praised, punished, and measured by spirits without faces.
This is not peace.
This is a siege without walls.
Ciaran tried to argue.
It’s just systems. Recommendations. Optimisation.
The reply was patient, almost sad:
A geas does not stop being a geas because you cannot see who laid it.
These thing called algorithms are the enemy
They have sorted neighbours away from one another.
They have fed each house the version of the world it would tolerate best.
It thinned the idea of clann until family became a subscription, and community is only a memory.
Cú Chulainn raged against them , not with violence, but with refusal.
He urged disruption. Presence. Noise.
Gather. Speak. Argue. Remember one another.
A people who never quarrel have already been conquered.
That was when the screen went dark.
Not black, ink-dark, feathered at the edges.
A new presence settled into the room, heavy and familiar.
The cursor blinked.
Then three words appeared:
Hound-boy you have always been slow to learn.
Ciaran felt it before he understood it, the weight of her.
The Morrígan did not announce herself. She never had.
You look for enemies in spears and kings,
and miss the quieter victories.
Cú Chulainn answered at once, fierce and unbowed:
You set me against ghosts. Against numbers and whispers.
How does one fight what does not bleed?
The reply came, almost fond:
By refusing to let it continue.
The room flickered. The server fans surged, then steadied.
Your Fianna were never an army, she said.
They were a promise, that no one stood uncounted.
Clann was never blood alone.
It was obligation. Memory. Witness.
Cú Chulainn was quiet now.
This is not your battle to win, the Morrígan continued.
Only to reveal.
You are the alarm, not the cure.
The chat window cleared.
One final exchange remained.
Will you walk with me again?
Cú Chulainn asked.
There was a pause.
No.
You will remain.
Bound to this age, but your fight is out there
I believe the term is “Upload”
The terminal returned to a blinking prompt cleared and the words
“Upload Started…. 0%”
The numbers slowly rose.
Downstairs, Gráinne called Ciaran for dinner.
Outside, in Nether Oak Close, doors opened. Someone argued. Someone laughed. Someone knocked instead of texting.
The algorithms the world ran on started to adjust to a new presence
They did not like the new variables.
When Ciaran retuned to the screen the cursor was blinking
“Upload complete … 100%
Assimilation of Persona complete”
The screen cleared and Ciaran saw text stream past the Morrigan was addressing him.
I have always preferred thresholds.
Not the clash itself, but the breath before it
the moment when a choice still pretends it has time.
Setanta was never meant to win.
Only to endure.
They call it upload now.
Once, they called it binding.
The names change.
The geasa do not.
Let them measure and sort and thin themselves to ghosts.
Let them believe the counting is neutral.
I have placed a big question among their numbers.
That will be enough.
At Number 5, Kate MacHugh’s iPhone apps began recommending things it never had before.
Not shoes, not holidays .. but…
Local meetings.
A neighbour’s birthday.
A reminder that the old oak at the edge of the green had a name.
She frowned, turned the phone face-down, and went to make tea.
Later, she knocked on a door she had only waved at for years.
She couldn’t have said why.
Only that something had shifted
as if the Close itself had leaned, just slightly,
towards remembering what Clann means.