Chapter One: Things are not always as they seem.
I was twenty, and nearly done with my second year at university. My classes were fine, primarily biology and ecology, with one or two really random classes thrown in for good measure. The third Matrix film was almost out and I had Lord of the Rings to look forward to next month. Time seemed to pass in a blur, and now it is easiest to remember it blurred, each day passing without distinction into the next. My first encounter with the agents is the one thing that stands out from the fog, as an ending punctuation.
They came for me after my last class on Wednesday the week before Revolutions came out. I remember it was that day because I had just purchased tickets online to the premier showing the night before, and as a result was having trouble concentrating on anything else. Thoughts of the Matrix were even intruding into my dreams. Every night for the past few days I had dreamed of agents and pvc-clad rebels and white rabbits. I didn't remember anything distinctly enough to write down, though, and had to be content with the faint memories.
I wasn't the type to really truly think The Matrix was real. I did admit it was possible, but most definitely not probable. I just went along with my life, which admittedly wasn't a bad life, but was boring, mundane. Steady classes at the university, steady work, steady and above all else boring. I watched movies and read books, mainly science fiction and fantasy. Maybe it was escapist. But even then I had no illusions about the lives of the characters I followed. They had troubles equivalent to mine, but in a different direction. And for every hero there were ten thousand extras.
Anyway, here I was, walking out of class late after picking up a test (which I scored quite highly on, for once). There were three of them, waiting off to one side of the hallway. I looked up from the test and stopped dead. Luckily I was one of the last to come out of the class and thus no one ran into me. They were dressed from their squared-off shoes to their earpieces perfectly, immaculacy, and identically. They weren't physically identical, though very similar, and certainly none of them were the ones from the movies. They all wore sunglasses of course, despite being inside.
Oh man, they're agents, but they can't be, but they can't not be, but—yarghn. My mind slipped a gear or something as I stood there, blinking stupidly and creasing the paper in my hand as I gripped it too tightly. The agents step towards me as one.
"Miss Ackerman?" the leading agent says. I managed to shut my mouth and nod once, sharply. "Could you come with us, please? We have a proposition for you."
"Wha- who are you?" My voice came out rushed as I tried to focus, faced with something that by all sense shouldn't exist.
A ghost of a smile touched the lead agent's face. "I believe you know the answer to that question, Miss Ackerman. We are agents." I open my mouth to ask another question, but he anticipates it correctly and answers before I can ask it. "Yes, that kind of agents. Will you come with us now?" He pauses, waiting for me to speak.
A million thoughts rush through my head, leaving it curiously empty. Sure, I had fantasized about something like this happening, for any and all of the books and movies and television shows I liked. But here it was happening, in really real life, and I could think of nothing original or smart to say. "Okay."
My hands drop to my side, still clutching the test paper, as the lead agent motions me forward and turns slightly. I step towards him, suddenly and acutely conscious of my flip-flops and scruffy t-shirt. The two supporting agents moved aside and drop behind me. The three shepherd me down the hallway and out the back door, which opened onto one of the few roads on campus with car access.
I can't help but let a twisted grin show when I see their car, parked right outside the door by the curb. A shiny old black Lincoln that looked as if they had stolen it right off the set of the movie. The lead agent opens a rear door and turns to me, raising his eyebrows slightly above his sunglasses. The other two agents stand to either side, blocking me from any way but forward into the car. I swallow, trying to overcome years of conditioning to not get into any stranger's car. I finally duck down and slide onto the plush leather car seat, dropping my backpack on the seat beside me and buckling the seatbelt automatically. The door shuts with barely any noise, but in my memory it is the slamming close of one life and the opening of another.
I sit quietly as the three agents got into the car. I noted that the one who had been talking to me sat in the back, where Smith sat in the film, and that the slightly taller of the two other agents was driving. The car starts and pulled away from the curb. I was so busy trying to figure out what had just happened that I barely notice as the car turns right and heads towards downtown.
In a few minutes the car pulls into a reserved spot in the parking structure of some nondescript government building. I stay put as the agents get out, the one who had sat shotgun opening my door. I climb out, awkwardly carrying my backpack, and am again surrounded by the agents. I follow the lead one into the building, the other two staying just behind us.
We head in past a receptionist, who barely glances up from her magazine as we walk past her and into an elevator, which opens just as we approach. The agents file in around me and one presses the button for floor nine, the highest floor. There weren't that many tall buildings in Tucson.
The elevator rises directly to our floor and dings, opening. The hallway is beige carpet, the walls white paneling in a subtle grid pattern. We step out and the agent that talked leads us into room 909. This room has the same carpet and paneling as the hall, and is lit tastefully with a number of small light fixtures. A sturdy brushed aluminum table sits in the room, with two chairs, one on either side. On the table sits a slim green folder and beside it on a tray a rather large and scary looking syringe, filled with clear liquid. The exterior wall is all windows from floor to ceiling, looking out over the city and back towards the university. I can clearly see the football stadium, a giant concrete eyesore. I check and see the sky is in fact still blue, and not white or greenish as in the movies. It doesn't reassure me.
The lead agent gestures towards the single chair. "Please sit," he says, as the other agents file around me and take up stations behind me in the corners of the room. He moves to the other side of the table and sits down. I pull back my chair, which makes no sound on the carpet, and slide into it.
He slides the folder towards him, opens it and leafs through a few papers. After a moment he closes it and begins to speak, smoothly and deliberately. "My name is Agent Miller. What I am about to tell you may be slightly difficult to believe. However, with your record online and off," he glances down at the folder, "I believe you will adjust quickly." Miller then takes off his sunglasses and folds them up, placing them carefully on the table. I notice he has very pale blue eyes, like the sky at dawn.
"To put it very bluntly, Miss Ackerman, the fictional setting you know as the Matrix is in all actuality real. Some names and events were made up, but the background, premise (with one or two small exceptions), and much of the design is based completely on reality." His hands move from their place on the table and gesture at the walls with a slight motion. "This reality." Agent Miller pauses, waiting for a response.
I am still as he speaks, barely daring to breathe. When he pauses, I give into temptation and say in my best Keanu imitation, "Whoa."
The agent eyeballs me disapprovingly. "Indeed. The movies, by focusing on the activities of the rebels, destroy their credibility and attempts at recruitment of all but the most gullible through the internet. People who are drawn to question their reality watch the movies, and bring their questions to internet message boards where they are told that it is just a movie and generally made to feel foolish. In addition, these congregations of reality-questioning Matrix fans are much easier to track than the vague whisperings about the matrix before the movies came out. Now, I am telling you this because it relates somewhat to the reason you are here with us today."
"Since the very beginning of the violence between our races, some humans have supported machines. In movie canon, this is alluded to in certain places and mentioned once in The Second Renaissance animated short, which is indeed the true history of the world. What is not mentioned is that some humans, scientists and sympathizers, went with the machines to Zero One. And then the war truly started."
I swallow and sit up straighter in my chair, remembering the scenes from the anime. "Zero One was bombed. Nuked."
"Yes. But the war was foreseen by strategic planning AIs and measures were taken so that our human friends would survive the bombardment. There was a project, started long before true hostilities erupted, the aim of which was to move human minds into machine shells. It was started as a commercial venture to benefit humans with crippling diseases. But the bombs came earlier than expected, and extreme measures had to be taken. They were mostly successful. Of the experiment's first generation, two thirds survived completely intact, and the remainder to varying degrees.
"It was later found most of that third were in some way mentally unfit or unprepared going in, which led to the greatest majority of failures. The procedure has been greatly refined since those days, and now a less than perfect result has an extremely low chance of happening.
"Now we come to the reason I am telling you all of this. It is not just the rebels which recruit. From your internet activities, we know you prefer the side of the machines, and from testing your psyche while asleep that you fit the mental requirements for the process to become an agent. If you so desire it."
As he speaks those last words the world seems to slow. What he had told me in the past few minutes was enough to spend hours considering, and that along with the rapidly shifting worldview was enough that I probably should have gone off to think for a week before saying anything. I didn't have that time. I consider his offer, holding in one hand my life up to now and its future prospects, and in the other the hidden possibilities of what may be. For a long moment the world seems crystallized, holding its breath. Then I breathe out.
"Yes," I say, "I want to be an agent."
"Very well. If you like, we can begin—"
"Wait. First I want to see some proof. You could just be some hoaxers with a hidden camera show, or something," I say in a rush. "And I want to know exactly what I'm getting into and what is going to happen to me."
Agent Miller leans back in his chair and smiles fully for the first time. "Of course. Very reasonable. I see we were correct in making the offer." He picks up his glasses from the table and puts them back on as he turns towards the agent standing behind me in the corner to his right. The agent who drove steps forward to the table. I crane my head up to look at him.
"This is Agent Clark," Miller says, then indicates the other, still standing in his corner. "That is Agent Davis." Turning back to me he says, "Clark, if you would."
Agent Clark raises a hand to his earpiece and then flickers with familiar green light and in an eye-hurting move changes, dwindling into a much smaller and very confused looking man wearing a stained t-shirt and jeans. After a beat this confused guy grimaces and contorts and Agent Clark is standing there again. Just as in the movies, except for being real.
Agent Miller raises an eyebrow at me. "Is that sufficient?"
"Uh, yeah. That's fine." Something clicks inside me, and for the first time I truly and fully allow myself to believe what is happening is really real. Or that I had finally cracked, but it is much more interesting to believe what I had seen was true.
"Then we may now begin. The process of turning a human into an agent has three main components. Here in the matrix, we will insert a string of code designed to transfer you to disk once the proper signal is given. This works in conjunction with a small surgical process performed on your body in the powerplant."
I feel slightly sick at this, realizing my physical body is floating in a vat of pink goo somewhere, being fed dead people. Still, I'm not about to turn back from this. No blue pill for me.
"Once these events occur there is a set period of time in which you must die in the matrix. This triggers the capture program which turns your mind and self into a program, incidentally killing your human body in the process. The body may not be able to live without the mind, but a mind can live very successfully without an organic body."
Take that, Morpheus, I think.
"After that, there is a period of code modification and program testing before bringing your consciousness back online as an agent." Miller pauses and waits as I let what he has said sink in.
"Um... will it really be me that comes back as an agent, and not some copy or anything?" I say nervously.
"The twenty-six human-based agents currently active all experience consciousness as continued from their human life and believe they are truly themselves. Including me."
"You—were human once?" I say, eyes wide.
"Yes. Long ago."
"Huh. I would've never guessed."
"Thank you." He pauses for a moment, and when I don't say anything else picks up the scary-looking syringe. I guess there will be no pills for me, red or blue. "If you would please hold out your arm."
This is it. I take a deep breath and stick my arm out across the table. Goodbye, humanity.
The agent takes my arm and gently turns it over to give the injection. Despite my brave front I am unable to avoid flinching as the needle jabs in and Miller pushes down the syringe plunger. I feel the cold liquid moving into my arm. It seems to take forever for the syringe to empty. He then draws out the syringe, one drop of blood welling up behind the needle. I pull my arm back and wipe the drop off. No more comes. My arm doesn't exactly hurt, but feels strange in some indefinable way. I flex my hand. The sensation fades as the liquid disperses through my blood, but doesn't completely disappear.
"Okay, now what? How long do I have before—you know," I say, swallowing.
"Here you have a choice," says Miller, "The preparations in the powerplant are complete, so we can terminate you right here and now if you like. Or you can first participate in a short mission against the rebels, and be shot incidentally during that mission. Or afterwards, should you survive."
"What would be the mission?" I say. Even if it's guaranteed I will wake up afterwards, I'm not in a hurry to die.
"We have information on a rebel recruitment extraction attempt that will be occurring tonight in Phoenix. Their target is already in our custody and has divulged their meeting place. You would go there at the appropriate time posing as their target and gather information on their current recruitment tactics. We would track you by the code we inserted," he indicates the empty syringe, "and break up their meeting after sufficient data has been gathered."
"Hmm. Didn't you say there was a time restraint or something on when you could do this?"
"Twenty-four hours. Plenty of time."
"Uh, I guess I'll do the mission thing, then. Sounds more interesting than just getting shot right this second." I smile weakly.
Agent Miller nods. "Then it is time to go." He stands, and the other two agents fall in behind him. I stand too, and my eyes find my backpack. I pause, confronted with this remnant of my life before walking into room 909.
I pull it onto the table. "What do I do with this?" Agent Davis reaches across and picks it up, then the three agents move to stand in formation on my side of the table. I notice for the first time I am just a little shorter than Agent Miller, who is six feet at least. I am very tall for a girl, but before this moment the agents had all seemed much taller than me.
"It will be found with your body tomorrow morning. For now, do not worry about it."
How comforting. "Let's just go," I said. "This rebel thing's in Phoenix right? We gonna drive or take a plane or what?"
"No." Miller reached into suit jacket and pulled out a ring of keys.
"Oh." I start to catch on. "Backdoors, huh?"
Miller nods and moves alone towards the door, flipping through the silver keys. He picks out one and sticks it into the lock. The door opens onto the hallway of backdoors, bright glaring white.
I follow Miller into the hallway, Davis and Clark walking behind me. "Wow," I whisper. Goodbye, lingering doubts. To either side the hallway extends out farther than I can see. The never-ending hallway looks even longer in person than it did on film.
We turn right and walk. I count the pale green doors as we go, and get to twenty-three before Miller and the other agents stop. Clark opens a door on our left and I step through in front of him and Davis. It opens onto the ground floor of another office building decorated in neutral colors and grid patterns.
"Welcome to the Arizona sector agency headquarters, Miss Ackerman," says Miller.