Ghost Imaging
A sonnet about Tia Never from Bluebird. I imagined her initially as some kind of necromancer, but that's not quite right - it's more like probability manipulation at a quantum level. The army of nanomachines is totally unrelated, that's just one of those things that happens by accident when you're charming and sweet to lonely androids.
In point of fact, the dead cannot be raised
but fortunately Tia's also found
there's not a single dead thing underground,
only lost machines, their ghosts out of phase.
It's possible to relocate a ghost.
Tia can find a changeling in space-time,
a cuckoo's egg in flesh or power lines -
any clot of data can be a host.
That's the thing the Queen doesn't understand:
they're the same. Each is an electric soul,
and soul will clap hands and sing if it can,
no matter if it's a voice or a recording.
It'll shatter the lungs of the body it stole
and pour right out again into the sand.
