Written for the very first Fanfiction Challenge on The Looking Glass Forum.
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Identity
By ZionAngel
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It took a minute or two to find the infirmary. She cursed the builders of this ship, the idiots back in 2111 who had decided that "big ship" and "maze" should be synonymous. It didn't help that every last soul on board was in the engine room or the control room or the cockpit, none of which were close enough for her to find someone to ask directions without getting lost again. And then as the burn began to sting again, she cursed Roland for not keeping the Mjolnir in working order in the first place. It wasn't the rest of the fleet's job to drop whatever they were doing and come fix it for him.
Finally, she spotted an open door down a side hallway, and heard a few faint metallic clangs emanating from withing. The pale blond woman she found in the room - the infirmary after all - looked up when she entered, and eyed her bare injured arm. "What happened to you?"
"Blowtorch,"she answered absently, pulling herself up onto the operating table.
The medic cringed as she fished around in a few drawers, pulling out bandages and several small jars. She smiled sympathetically as she came over. "Sorry about that," she said almost cheerfully. "You need any anesthesia?"
"No." She looked away, around the room in an attempt to keep this medic from any task but tending to her arm. She was in a bad enough mood already; the last thing she needed was a forced conversation with this sickeningly happy woman.
But she didn't seem to be paying attention to the disinterest, and just laughed, shaking her head. "I've never understood people like you. Nothing ever hurts. I'm Maggie, by the way."
"Switch." It was just an automatic reaction she hadn't been able to stop, but she was just asking for trouble by saying it. At least her tone was much more evidently bored and annoyed - perhaps she would get the hint now. She got enough prejudice from the freeborns in Zion. The ones on the ships were supposed to at least keep their mouths shut about it, if they were so willingly working alongside the "freaks."
"That's why Roland keeps me here," she quipped, cleaning off the wound. "Put anything but a scalpel in my hand and I'll end up either killing myself or blowing the ship to pieces -"
"Hey, Maggie?"
Switch praised the gangly newborn boy at the door for sparing her a few moments of peace.
"You got any aspirin or something?"
"Over there," she said, pointing to a cabinet behind her.
As he passed by them, Switch caught the boy staring between her and Maggie, studying them closely. "You two sisters or something?" he asked, arching an eyebrow as he shut the cabinet door. Maggie laughed - again.
"What gave you that idea?" Switch demanded.
The boy blushed, averting his eyes as he fidgeted with his sweater and the pill bottle. "Well... both of you look pretty similar, you know?" What, had this kid never seen two blond women in the same room before? "And you look pretty close in age. And you're both podborn..." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other nervously.
"What?" How could this boy live on the ship and not even know the most basic facts about his own crewmen? "No she isn't."
"Well -" Maggie cut Switch off, setting down the damp cloth in her hand. "Actually..." She pushed up the long sleeve of her sweater, just to her elbow, revealing a tiny black circle on her forearm.
"Sorry for bothering you," the boy mumbled suddenly, heading fast for the door. "I gotta go."
Maggie smirked, and called after him, "Watch the fingers." Her sleeve fell back into place, and she resumed her work..
Switch stared at the empty doorway for a moment, confused, before turning back to the other woman. "You're not freeborn?" Maggie shook her head, keeping her focus on the burn. "What kind of podborn has a name like Maggie?"
She shrugged, not taking any offense at the question. "Name I was born with. Name my parents gave me."
She had met easily hundreds of podborns since being unplugged herself; some spent their days in Zion, some on ships. Never mind the fact that every last one she knew working in the feet was a soldier, but she couldn't remember a single one, anywhere, who kept their given name. "Why didn't you change it?" Switch asked quietly, her mood fading away into curiosity.
Maggie kept the main focus of her attention on her burn, smiling as though she had explained this a hundred times before. "Well, lot's of reasons to keep it, and none to change it."
Switch eyed the other woman for several long seconds, waiting for a continuation, before she realized that it wasn't forthcoming. Was she serious? "I could give you a hundred reasons why people change their names."
"Well then," she amended, "no good reasons." Maggie glanced up at the other woman, and found that she wore an incredulous and disbelieving expression. "Hey, trust me, you don't get to be a medic without knowing a little something about psychology." She stayed quiet for a moment, taking care of Switch's arm, before becoming unnaturally calm, and explaining. "You're called Rebels for a reason. People change their names as a sign of rebellion against the machines, against their oppression, against their old lives, everything bad that happened while they were still in the Matrix." The way the words were spoken, it was obvious that the words were spoken out of personal experience. But then again, what child of the Matrix didn't feel that way at least once in their lives? "They think they can strip away all outside influence by stripping away their old identity. And besides, the machines didn't start this whole thing, we did. They don't have a right to keep people in the Matrix against their will, but there's no point in trying to fight them in this, too. Last thing anybody needs is one more reason to hate each other, there's enough of that flooding Zion and Zero-One as it is." She picked up a long, rolled-up bandage, and began wrapping it around Switch's arm. "I'll admit I didn't have the greatest of lives back in the Matrix, but I'm not about to throw it away and pretend it never happened, pretend it doesn't affect me anymore. It's the entire reason I'm here. It's always going to affect me, whether I like it or not. No point in trying to deny that."
Switch was quiet as the medic finished tying off the bandage, thinking about her words. When Maggie was done, she stood, murmuring, "I have to get back to work."
Maggie smiled brightly as Switch walked out the door. "Don't make me see you again."
Maggie's words stuck in her mind as she made her way back to her work in the engine room. It all seemed reasonable enough, and true. She could remember, when she was first unplugged, being told the tradition of the hacker name. She remembered also, when she was trying to choose one for herself, the vengeance and payback lurking in the back of her mind. She hadn't noticed it at the time. When she had finally chosen the name Switch, and declared it to everyone who knew her, it had been her chance to start over with a new life, to rid herself of the old. The more she thought about it, the more she realized Maggie was right.
But as she recalled her given name - and that took a moment - she decided she would much rather be Switch.