I don't own the Matrix, that's Warner studios. If I owned the matrix, I
wouldn't be writing this. Any and all similarities to persons living or
dead are an accident. Sorry.
This is my first fanfic, but not by any means my first short story. Hopefully you'll like it, and though I've already finished writing the entire thing, feel fee to make comments and suggestions and I will take them on board when I come to post the other chapters. Read on. A/N. Because this annoying site is not compatible with italics, flashbacks/hallucinations/dreams will have to be separated by rows of stars.
* * * *
Like this. Remember, stars mean flashbacks/hallucinations/dreams. Thank you.
* * * *
The Matrix:
The Loss of Innocence
Almost Paradise
Her knuckles were white from gripping the gun, and her other hand clutched the wound in her chest. She could hear a ringing in her head from the last shot-or was it the ringing of the phone booth? A train clattered overhead, throwing moving shadows over the scene. Tears were streaming down her face. The agent smiled.
"What will you do, Miss Ellen? You cannot fight. You cannot possibly win. If you shoot me you'll be dead before you can get off a second shot. Imagine, for a moment, that you actually managed to escape this place. The resistance will never prevail. Humans, to quote a colleague, are a virus. They must be destroyed. It is inevitable - why fight it?
Delphi stepped backwards. "Anything is better than this."
"Anything?" the agent raised an eyebrow. "What of your friends? Your family?"
She choked back the tears. "I have no family. You bastards killed my friends."
The agent smiled a grim smile. "No, Miss Ellen. You killed them."
It had started just two days earlier.
Cassandra Ellen, Delphi to her friends, sat staring at the computer screen, light playing over her face. Around her, the room was a tip, littered with discs and papers. Someday she would have to clear it up. She turned back to the computer.
A message appeared in dull green writing. She smiled..
[I need an escape, please? Come on...]
Her fingers darted over the keyboard. "Jay, you know I don't approve of your nocturnal activities", she typed.
[Really?]
"I keep telling you it will end in tears...."
[Yeah, but not mine.]
She chuckled, despite herself. It was hard not to. She just wished he'd find some other hobby. Cat burgling was not exactly a noble pursuit. At least he always put things back-he only did it for the challenge. She always worried that he would get caught, that he would be thrown into jail, or worse, that the authorities would work out what they were doing. Right now the only thing really protecting them was the fact that they were too young to be of any importance. In the middle of nowhere.
"All, right," she typed. "Try the north corner of the car park.
[You're an angel. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, by the way, unlock the door when I get there, okay? I've forgotten my key.]
Half a mile away, a black sedan pulled up outside a filthy little block of flats. A figure got out. It crept down a thin stairway and stood in front of one of the doors.
"I'm waiting," it said.
The door unlocked with a click.
Delphi leaned back in her seat. She wasn't tired; she was never tired when she messed around even at this time of night. Green symbols scrolled across the screen, almost too fast to read. There was an uneasy feeling in the air. Maybe she was just worried as always, but the feeling had an edge to it. They would all meet tomorrow; maybe then she would get some answers.
She was tall, thin and just 15, though she looked considerably older. Her dark hair hung over her eyes haphazardly, her deep black eyes. People said they were like bottomless pits, but when she wasn't daydreaming there was fire in those eyes. She always seemed to be somewhere else - to her, the dreams were more real than real life.
Unusually for the underneath of a teenager's bed, there were no discarded socks and no old magazines. Nevertheless she reached under and for a second her hand wasn't there and then she was pulling out a blue plastic storage box. She popped open the lid and leafed through folders and odds and ends, finally extracting an A4-sized photograph. She looked at it for a long time.
It was her pod.
She slept, and dreamt.
* * * *
The screech of a modem echoed in her ears, mingling with her own screaming. The world seemed to grow indistinct, a corona of green light covering every surface, and suddenly started to distort. Her view of the room shrank, becoming a window of light in infinite darkness. And then it accelerated away, dwindling to a tiny point of light before vanishing completely. Then she opened her eyes.
She was smothered in red, in a womb of glass and bubbles. She thrashed wildly, pushing upwards and bursting through the blood-coloured membrane. As her vision cleared, she saw where she was. And then she fell backwards, falling into light again.
* * * *
The bus jolted again as it rumbled over the corroded roads above the glen. From here, Delphi could see all over the island-the fields, the mountains, the little valleys and streams that crisscrossed the landscape. Straight ahead the azure sea was just visible as the school bus rounded the mountain. She sighed, and turned back to the crowded interior. It was packed with noisy schoolchildren, of all ages, but everyone was taking great care to stay away from her.
One boy got up and walked over to her, sitting down beside her. He was the only one on the bus that would dare to come within a metre of her.
"Sleep well?" said Jay. Even with his constantly smiling face, framed with shoulder length hair, he always looked as if he was about to pull a gun and start smoking a joint. Which, Delphi reflected, he probably was. It was a strange thing that despite his immorality he was instantly likeable. He was a dropout, a 'blue-pill', but after seeing a rebel attack he had started his quest for the Matrix again. That was when Delphi had found him.
"No. No thanks to you," she retorted in mock anger.
"I'm sorry," said Jay, with a look that would have been a sneer, but somehow seemed amiable, something that only he could do. "Will you ever forgive me?"
She prodded him on the forehead. "Probably."
The bus started to go downhill, a sure sign that the school was only minutes away. Below it the town of Lamellas glittered like...well, like a large fishing village. Technically it was not a town, but it was the closest thing the island had. Besides, it had the only high school, the island council, and most of the restaurants and shops. It hugged the terrain from the calm bay, ensconced in the harbour wall, right up to the foothills of the inland peaks. The bus drove slowly down towards the seashore.
"You know there's been an agent prowling around on the coast?" she said.
Suddenly Jay was not his normal carefree stoner self. "What? Fuck! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Don't worry. It hasn't been near the ferry, it looks like it's just on a patrol from the city." The city on the mainland swarmed with agents.
"I hope so. Still, keep an eye on it."
"You don't have to tell me that."
They walked through the bustle of pupils, the crowd parting around them like the sea before Moses. Another bubble of emptiness joined theirs. It was Alicia and Ajax.
"Hi there. You've had a busy night haven't you, Jay?" said Ajax, a well built yet ragged looking boy.
"Breaking into the Macintosh hotel?" continued Alicia. She was another blue- pill. Talkative and brash, good with guns but all right at hacking - a jack- of-all-trades, as it were.
Jay feigned innocence, his eyes bulging at the very thought of it.
Alicia brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "Then what's that?" she said, pointing to the gilded cigar case protruding from Jay's back pocket.
Jay muttered while the other three laughed.
* * * *
Ghost had led her on through the rain, until they reached a little bar, tucked in behind the Corrie Hotel. They had walked down the neon-lit steps in silence, and she ran to keep up with the trenchcoat-clad man as he weaved through the smoky interior, eventually bringing her to a room overlooking the seafront. The sea crashed on the harbour wall, the horizon just a green haze through the pouring rain and the storm. The room was filled with smart suited men and women, all with knowing smirks on their faces, surrounded by equipment. Ghost indicated her to sit down.
"You are a surprise," he had said, smiling behind his ridiculous goatee. "I was expecting someone a little older."
Delphi nodded. She had been only twelve at the time.
"However, age does not matter. You know why I have brought you here. For the whole of your life you have questioned the world around you. Maybe you did not know, it, but you have. Your dreams are more real than reality. When you wake up, you feel you are falling asleep. Sometimes, when you concentrate, you can almost see cracks in your prison...."
And he had gone on, with his henchmen silent in the background all the time. And he had given her a choice. Red or blue. Truth or ignorance. Of course, for her it was no choice at all. She chose the red pill.
And she had woken up.
But somehow, the machines had kept their grip on her; she had fallen back into light again, before she awoke again in her own bed. She had dismissed it as a dream but she could not dismiss the nagging feeling that she hadn't really woken up, but had drifted back to sleep. For days she would not believe it. Until, after three days of mental torture, she decided to contact Ghost again.
And he had told her.
* * * *
Her cell phone rang, snapping her out of her daydream.
The ringing was more high-pitched than normal, more insistent. Not noticeable unless you were listening for it. It meant that it was a rebel, and that it was urgent.
"Put that phone away right now. Miss Ellen, or there will be serious trouble," shouted the teacher. Ignoring his demands, she answered it in a rush.
"Delphi," she said.
It was Morpheus.
She raced through the corridors of her school, faster than the teachers pursuing her could have managed even in their youth. From the hurried message from Morpheus all she knew was that a member of his crew, Trinity, was trying to escape an agent, and that she was coming up to a locked door. Delphi had to unlock that door before Trinity got to it.
She turned left into the computer room, and booted up a computer. She could hear the running feet coming closer. Willing the old machine to go faster, she moved a table across the doorway and dropped it just as someone slammed against the other side. Finally, the computer finished, and she raced to open the window that would give her access. Another blow landed on the door, and the table fell over.
Her fingers were a blur over the keyboard. They moved unnaturally fast, and the door lock clicked just as another teacher barged against it. She was safe, until they worked out to go in through the neighbouring classroom.
Immediately she spotted Trinity in the lines of code. The woman was running through a rundown hotel, with one agent and ten policemen in pursuit. The locked door, in this situation a terminal barrier, lay only seconds away. Delphi tapped a key, and the door was open. She watched Trinity run on, and up to the roof. Hunter and prey vaulted across the rooftops, and finally she got to a phone.
Delphi watched in horror as a truck started to thunder towards the phone booth. A split-second before it was turned into a battered chunk of twisted metal, Trinity jacked out. Delphi slumped back. And the teachers flooded into the room before she could do another thing.
* * * *
Every hacker had heard of Trinity, Morpheus, Soren, Ballard...they were legends. Every hacker was drawn into the complex web of information piracy and digital terrorism. And every hacker at one time or another asked the same question. Nearly all woke up from the matrix, were unplugged, and lived in the real world. Nearly all. Because some, whether by fluke or because they simply were not strong enough, did not make it and the Matrix kept its grip on them like it did her. And others, of course, chose ignorance.
After that she had not found it so hard to believe. As she began to understand, she realised that in the depths of her subconscious she had known it all along.
The rebels dared not try another extraction for a long time, so they visited her in the Matrix every day. There was not much risk of detection- this was the middle of nowhere after all. She trained and trained, though she had to learn the hard way-they could not just upload it into her head. By the time it was safe to attempt another unplugging, Delphi had decided to stay in the Matrix to help those who didn't make it out, the rejects and those who took the blue pill. And so their little group had grown. She had learnt a lot since her revelation. In fact-
* * * *
"Miss Ellen!! Do you understand?" screamed the headmaster, thumping his fist on the desk.
Delphi jerked out of her reverie. "Yes," she said quickly.
"I hope so. I really hope so. Your parents will hear about this and you will be given a senior detention. You are dismissed."
Woo. Not very exciting, I know, but just you wait. Go forth and review, people.
This is my first fanfic, but not by any means my first short story. Hopefully you'll like it, and though I've already finished writing the entire thing, feel fee to make comments and suggestions and I will take them on board when I come to post the other chapters. Read on. A/N. Because this annoying site is not compatible with italics, flashbacks/hallucinations/dreams will have to be separated by rows of stars.
* * * *
Like this. Remember, stars mean flashbacks/hallucinations/dreams. Thank you.
* * * *
The Matrix:
The Loss of Innocence
Almost Paradise
Her knuckles were white from gripping the gun, and her other hand clutched the wound in her chest. She could hear a ringing in her head from the last shot-or was it the ringing of the phone booth? A train clattered overhead, throwing moving shadows over the scene. Tears were streaming down her face. The agent smiled.
"What will you do, Miss Ellen? You cannot fight. You cannot possibly win. If you shoot me you'll be dead before you can get off a second shot. Imagine, for a moment, that you actually managed to escape this place. The resistance will never prevail. Humans, to quote a colleague, are a virus. They must be destroyed. It is inevitable - why fight it?
Delphi stepped backwards. "Anything is better than this."
"Anything?" the agent raised an eyebrow. "What of your friends? Your family?"
She choked back the tears. "I have no family. You bastards killed my friends."
The agent smiled a grim smile. "No, Miss Ellen. You killed them."
It had started just two days earlier.
Cassandra Ellen, Delphi to her friends, sat staring at the computer screen, light playing over her face. Around her, the room was a tip, littered with discs and papers. Someday she would have to clear it up. She turned back to the computer.
A message appeared in dull green writing. She smiled..
[I need an escape, please? Come on...]
Her fingers darted over the keyboard. "Jay, you know I don't approve of your nocturnal activities", she typed.
[Really?]
"I keep telling you it will end in tears...."
[Yeah, but not mine.]
She chuckled, despite herself. It was hard not to. She just wished he'd find some other hobby. Cat burgling was not exactly a noble pursuit. At least he always put things back-he only did it for the challenge. She always worried that he would get caught, that he would be thrown into jail, or worse, that the authorities would work out what they were doing. Right now the only thing really protecting them was the fact that they were too young to be of any importance. In the middle of nowhere.
"All, right," she typed. "Try the north corner of the car park.
[You're an angel. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, by the way, unlock the door when I get there, okay? I've forgotten my key.]
Half a mile away, a black sedan pulled up outside a filthy little block of flats. A figure got out. It crept down a thin stairway and stood in front of one of the doors.
"I'm waiting," it said.
The door unlocked with a click.
Delphi leaned back in her seat. She wasn't tired; she was never tired when she messed around even at this time of night. Green symbols scrolled across the screen, almost too fast to read. There was an uneasy feeling in the air. Maybe she was just worried as always, but the feeling had an edge to it. They would all meet tomorrow; maybe then she would get some answers.
She was tall, thin and just 15, though she looked considerably older. Her dark hair hung over her eyes haphazardly, her deep black eyes. People said they were like bottomless pits, but when she wasn't daydreaming there was fire in those eyes. She always seemed to be somewhere else - to her, the dreams were more real than real life.
Unusually for the underneath of a teenager's bed, there were no discarded socks and no old magazines. Nevertheless she reached under and for a second her hand wasn't there and then she was pulling out a blue plastic storage box. She popped open the lid and leafed through folders and odds and ends, finally extracting an A4-sized photograph. She looked at it for a long time.
It was her pod.
She slept, and dreamt.
* * * *
The screech of a modem echoed in her ears, mingling with her own screaming. The world seemed to grow indistinct, a corona of green light covering every surface, and suddenly started to distort. Her view of the room shrank, becoming a window of light in infinite darkness. And then it accelerated away, dwindling to a tiny point of light before vanishing completely. Then she opened her eyes.
She was smothered in red, in a womb of glass and bubbles. She thrashed wildly, pushing upwards and bursting through the blood-coloured membrane. As her vision cleared, she saw where she was. And then she fell backwards, falling into light again.
* * * *
The bus jolted again as it rumbled over the corroded roads above the glen. From here, Delphi could see all over the island-the fields, the mountains, the little valleys and streams that crisscrossed the landscape. Straight ahead the azure sea was just visible as the school bus rounded the mountain. She sighed, and turned back to the crowded interior. It was packed with noisy schoolchildren, of all ages, but everyone was taking great care to stay away from her.
One boy got up and walked over to her, sitting down beside her. He was the only one on the bus that would dare to come within a metre of her.
"Sleep well?" said Jay. Even with his constantly smiling face, framed with shoulder length hair, he always looked as if he was about to pull a gun and start smoking a joint. Which, Delphi reflected, he probably was. It was a strange thing that despite his immorality he was instantly likeable. He was a dropout, a 'blue-pill', but after seeing a rebel attack he had started his quest for the Matrix again. That was when Delphi had found him.
"No. No thanks to you," she retorted in mock anger.
"I'm sorry," said Jay, with a look that would have been a sneer, but somehow seemed amiable, something that only he could do. "Will you ever forgive me?"
She prodded him on the forehead. "Probably."
The bus started to go downhill, a sure sign that the school was only minutes away. Below it the town of Lamellas glittered like...well, like a large fishing village. Technically it was not a town, but it was the closest thing the island had. Besides, it had the only high school, the island council, and most of the restaurants and shops. It hugged the terrain from the calm bay, ensconced in the harbour wall, right up to the foothills of the inland peaks. The bus drove slowly down towards the seashore.
"You know there's been an agent prowling around on the coast?" she said.
Suddenly Jay was not his normal carefree stoner self. "What? Fuck! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Don't worry. It hasn't been near the ferry, it looks like it's just on a patrol from the city." The city on the mainland swarmed with agents.
"I hope so. Still, keep an eye on it."
"You don't have to tell me that."
They walked through the bustle of pupils, the crowd parting around them like the sea before Moses. Another bubble of emptiness joined theirs. It was Alicia and Ajax.
"Hi there. You've had a busy night haven't you, Jay?" said Ajax, a well built yet ragged looking boy.
"Breaking into the Macintosh hotel?" continued Alicia. She was another blue- pill. Talkative and brash, good with guns but all right at hacking - a jack- of-all-trades, as it were.
Jay feigned innocence, his eyes bulging at the very thought of it.
Alicia brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes. "Then what's that?" she said, pointing to the gilded cigar case protruding from Jay's back pocket.
Jay muttered while the other three laughed.
* * * *
Ghost had led her on through the rain, until they reached a little bar, tucked in behind the Corrie Hotel. They had walked down the neon-lit steps in silence, and she ran to keep up with the trenchcoat-clad man as he weaved through the smoky interior, eventually bringing her to a room overlooking the seafront. The sea crashed on the harbour wall, the horizon just a green haze through the pouring rain and the storm. The room was filled with smart suited men and women, all with knowing smirks on their faces, surrounded by equipment. Ghost indicated her to sit down.
"You are a surprise," he had said, smiling behind his ridiculous goatee. "I was expecting someone a little older."
Delphi nodded. She had been only twelve at the time.
"However, age does not matter. You know why I have brought you here. For the whole of your life you have questioned the world around you. Maybe you did not know, it, but you have. Your dreams are more real than reality. When you wake up, you feel you are falling asleep. Sometimes, when you concentrate, you can almost see cracks in your prison...."
And he had gone on, with his henchmen silent in the background all the time. And he had given her a choice. Red or blue. Truth or ignorance. Of course, for her it was no choice at all. She chose the red pill.
And she had woken up.
But somehow, the machines had kept their grip on her; she had fallen back into light again, before she awoke again in her own bed. She had dismissed it as a dream but she could not dismiss the nagging feeling that she hadn't really woken up, but had drifted back to sleep. For days she would not believe it. Until, after three days of mental torture, she decided to contact Ghost again.
And he had told her.
* * * *
Her cell phone rang, snapping her out of her daydream.
The ringing was more high-pitched than normal, more insistent. Not noticeable unless you were listening for it. It meant that it was a rebel, and that it was urgent.
"Put that phone away right now. Miss Ellen, or there will be serious trouble," shouted the teacher. Ignoring his demands, she answered it in a rush.
"Delphi," she said.
It was Morpheus.
She raced through the corridors of her school, faster than the teachers pursuing her could have managed even in their youth. From the hurried message from Morpheus all she knew was that a member of his crew, Trinity, was trying to escape an agent, and that she was coming up to a locked door. Delphi had to unlock that door before Trinity got to it.
She turned left into the computer room, and booted up a computer. She could hear the running feet coming closer. Willing the old machine to go faster, she moved a table across the doorway and dropped it just as someone slammed against the other side. Finally, the computer finished, and she raced to open the window that would give her access. Another blow landed on the door, and the table fell over.
Her fingers were a blur over the keyboard. They moved unnaturally fast, and the door lock clicked just as another teacher barged against it. She was safe, until they worked out to go in through the neighbouring classroom.
Immediately she spotted Trinity in the lines of code. The woman was running through a rundown hotel, with one agent and ten policemen in pursuit. The locked door, in this situation a terminal barrier, lay only seconds away. Delphi tapped a key, and the door was open. She watched Trinity run on, and up to the roof. Hunter and prey vaulted across the rooftops, and finally she got to a phone.
Delphi watched in horror as a truck started to thunder towards the phone booth. A split-second before it was turned into a battered chunk of twisted metal, Trinity jacked out. Delphi slumped back. And the teachers flooded into the room before she could do another thing.
* * * *
Every hacker had heard of Trinity, Morpheus, Soren, Ballard...they were legends. Every hacker was drawn into the complex web of information piracy and digital terrorism. And every hacker at one time or another asked the same question. Nearly all woke up from the matrix, were unplugged, and lived in the real world. Nearly all. Because some, whether by fluke or because they simply were not strong enough, did not make it and the Matrix kept its grip on them like it did her. And others, of course, chose ignorance.
After that she had not found it so hard to believe. As she began to understand, she realised that in the depths of her subconscious she had known it all along.
The rebels dared not try another extraction for a long time, so they visited her in the Matrix every day. There was not much risk of detection- this was the middle of nowhere after all. She trained and trained, though she had to learn the hard way-they could not just upload it into her head. By the time it was safe to attempt another unplugging, Delphi had decided to stay in the Matrix to help those who didn't make it out, the rejects and those who took the blue pill. And so their little group had grown. She had learnt a lot since her revelation. In fact-
* * * *
"Miss Ellen!! Do you understand?" screamed the headmaster, thumping his fist on the desk.
Delphi jerked out of her reverie. "Yes," she said quickly.
"I hope so. I really hope so. Your parents will hear about this and you will be given a senior detention. You are dismissed."
Woo. Not very exciting, I know, but just you wait. Go forth and review, people.
