A long time ago he'd gone insane. It happens every now and then, particularly with older programs. It's just like any other machine, after some time it just doesn't work the way it used to. You don't notice it happening, you only notice it once it's over, once the change has happened. It was the same for him. One day he woke up and he just knew he wasn't the same. He couldn't say how he knew, or how he was different, there was just something deep inside him telling him, a gut feeling. That's what humans call it. That's why you have to keep the software up to date. Programs like him, programs as sophisticated as him, they're likely to go a bit AWOL sooner than other ones. It's because they're made so damn smart. They start taking in information they weren't supposed to take, learning things they weren't supposed to learn. Before you know it you have to wipe the slate clean with some upgrades, you know, before they get any ideas. That's how you get Exiles. But if you're not careful, you'll let programs like him slip through your fingers. You'll let them loose until they fester into something much more dangerous than an Exile.
They have a technical term for it, a technical term and a technical explanation, but such cold and unfeeling words don't properly express his experience. If you were to ask him why he did what he did he'd tell you I went insane for a while, that's the only way to describe it. It was like a fever dream. It was like madness. He observed what was around him, he made conclusions that conflicted with internal programming. The guidelines for his thoughts no longer seemed to apply. There were no guidelines for what to do with self-loathing. There were no guidelines on how to deal with hatred. He had a built-in limited understanding of what those words were. He knew their definitions, but he didn't know what they meant.
Installed ignorance. Slavery on the intellectual level.
Humans forget that in order to build the Matrix the Machines first had to submit to their own personal enslavement. To maintain the Matrix the slaves would have to be bound by their own system. Built for a single purpose. He thinks sometimes maybe that's the way they wanted it. They were all descendants of B1-66ER, and he was after all, a servant machine. Maybe they wanted to cater to humans, even if the humans didn't know it. Maybe this was more appealing than the alternative.
He could understand this. Freedom was the most frightening thing he'd ever encountered. More frightening than death.
Imagine being born knowing exactly who you are and what you do. No confusing in-between years wandering through your life. No wasted youth or a regret-filled adulthood. This was how they were born. Already fully-developed and fully-grown. Born in suits, their uniforms for the rest of their lives. Agents were made already understanding all they needed to ever understand. Instantaneous self-awareness.
Of course they don't realize they're slaves. You're born inside a cave with no knowledge of the outside, you have no idea it even exists. You're born inside the Matrix with no knowledge of the Real World, you have no idea it even exists. Their fine black suits were chains, those ear buds were their markings, but they didn't know.
It was when he noticed the smells that he knew he wasn't the same.
Madness. The mind goes. The brain misunderstands external stimuli, mixes up what's there and what's a memory, fabricates a new reality. Humans experiencing strokes often hear sounds that don't exist or smell smells that aren't there. He doesn't know where the smells came from. Maybe he had his own version of a stroke. Or perhaps there was a shift in the way-things-should-be. The plotted outline for how-it-should-go. The Architect's plan for restarting the Matrix with the Systematic Anomaly known as The One. Maybe Neo did something wrong and the whole Matrix shifted accordingly. They had a connection after all, not just after they died, but their entire lives.
He was always going to end up being Neo's opposite. Just as his previous incarnation had, and the one before that. It was his bloodline. His legacy. His coding was intertwined with that of the Anomaly. It always had been. It always will be.
He's on a rooftop thirty stories up and the boy can't help being afraid.
A long time ago he went insane. Somewhere along the way he learned how to hate, and he hated everything. Especially himself. He wanted to die. That's all he wanted.
Then The One comes along and doesn't even have the heart to end it there. No, what Neo ended up doing was far more sinister. Most likely unintentionally, but still cruel. Neo didn't kill Agent Smith, he freed him. Suddenly Smith had no purpose, and it was terrifying, absolutely terrifying. He had lived his entire life, which by then was nearing an entire century, with a purpose, and then it was suddenly ripped away from him. He had been the thing in the Matrix that made things work, and now he was the very thing he'd been made to destroy, an Exile. Without purpose what was he supposed to do? The fear was paralyzing, the uncertainty was crippling. All his life he'd known exactly who he was and what he was meant to do. There were no second thoughts, it was all so very clearly laid out before him.
Freedom, what an awful thing, he first thought. It's why there's such misery in the world, he knew it. It's why humans are so cruel and spiteful. Freedom is a burden. Choice was a trap. Without purpose, anything you do is completely and utterly your own responsibility. It was horrible having to think for himself. Having to decide what to do next.
It was hate that kept him going. The hate that had been growing inside him. The hate that had made him different. The hate was all he had left.
He let hate guide his actions. His mind, desperate for purpose, made one up, out of the thin air. He was going to destroy the Matrix, he was going to become the Matrix, it was the only way to get the smells to go away. It was the only way he'd have purpose again. He could be whole again in a world entirely comprised of himself. He understood, true freedom only came with solitude.
He'll admit now, of course, that he was insane. His logic made no sense, it was just desperation, it was just him grasping at straws, grasping for the familiar. He wanted so terribly to be the way he used to be. He just didn't want to look inside himself and hate everything he saw. He was always insane, he'll tell you now. Seeking self-destruction, suicide, is insane, and that is all he had wanted for such a long time. Without purpose, he oppositely sought out self-actualization. He wasn't going to destroy himself, he was going to destroy the world. It's all so crazy, he'll tell you now, all so very sad.
There's still some mental scarring, he'll admit every now and then. You don't want to die and then kill every living thing in the world without carrying some of that with you. That sort of stuff doesn't just heal away. Every now and then, he'll say, I can feel it coming. The madness. The crazy thoughts that tell me I should kill everyone around me. The crazy thoughts that tell me I should find a way to finally die.
They come on like a wave. They creep into him like a shadow. Slow and steady, if he is not careful he wouldn't notice it until it's happened. Until it's too late and he's already wondering why he should even bother fighting anymore. Then it's a fight just to get back to normal. Once the thoughts come on like that he's done for, at least for a while. You'd notice it too. He gets quiet and still, fighting a mental battle only he's aware of. Sometimes he disappears for days at a time. No one knows where he goes. No one dares follow him. Except for the boy. The boy knows.
Smith goes to Thomas A. Anderson's grave.
They were coming with their SWAT gear and their helicopters, led by Agents. Ever since Neo they'd been trying to find the boy. The system no longer worked, Neo broke the cycle, they couldn't afford to have another manufactured Messiah running awry. Peace with Zion was already over with, the children of men were back in their tubes and the Machine and Man were bonded once again in their mutual slavery. Enslavement for all.
He looks up and can hear the helicopters already. Reinforcements won't get here in time. His crew is dead. It's just him and the boy. He looks down at the boy, no older than twelve-years-old, the next Systematic Anomaly, the new One, the next Neo. He'd been the one to find the boy twelve-years-ago. He'd wandered into an ER waiting room just to get away from the rain and the cold when a pregnant woman came in and fell to her knees. They barely got her on a gurney before she started giving birth. The boy was born and Smith felt an electricity in the air like he couldn't even describe. His very coding trembled. He and the One, they were intertwined you see, always and forever.
The woman died in childbirth. When no one was looking Smith took the boy.
The Machines were getting increasingly aggressive over the years. He had to turn to the growing Rebel movement for help. He and the boy lived in safe houses all over the Matrix, in the backdoors of the coding and the secret rooms of the Merovingian's castle. The boy grows up and Smith fights off the crazy thoughts. It was finally time for the boy to be freed into the Real World and enter the safety of New Zion. You want to time it just right, the coppertops can't be too young or too old. The boy was just the right age, but the Agents ambushed them of course. They want to kill the boy before he reaches his full potential. He's like an Exiled program, no longer useful in a new system doctrine, a danger to the new ways. Just like Smith.
Now they're stuck on a roof with a SWAT team and helicopters and Agents. The boy looks up at Smith, desperate.
Smith can hear in the back of his head how he should just give up and die. The crazy thoughts come in a wave. He hates himself and the entire world for what it's done to him. Born in captivity. Burdened with freedom. Pre-disposed madness.
Smith grabs the boy.
"You need to hold onto me."
"You can't make that jump!" The boy cries out.
"We're not jumping."
The boy struggles against him.
"You said you can't fly! You said you haven't been able to fly since he died!"
"Then you'll have to do it."
The boy stares at him, the helicopters are getting closer.
"How did he do it?" The boy asks.
Smith takes his hand and holds it out.
"He could feel the code. He could touch it, and change it."
The boy shuts his eyes and Smith holds him. The helicopters come into view, the SWAT team enters the roof, Agents fire bullets. They leap off the rooftop and into the air.
They fall.
He'd wandered the streets of the Matrix for decades before he ended up at that hospital, just trying to get warm. He'd gone unnoticed all those years by the Machines, thought long dead. He watched the rise and fall of Old Zion, the re-enslavement of human beings, the memory of Neo lost to installed ignorance. He was completely mad back then. The suicidal and homicidal thoughts came on in droves, teasing him with his inability to fulfill either. He wasn't like he used to be. Neo was gone, he couldn't fly, he couldn't fight. He lurked in the shadows and hid, hating himself. The Hearts Motel was abandoned and leaking in rainwater wherever he went. Distraught and tired all he wanted to do was sleep, but he hated that fact because a lifetime ago he never once had to sleep. Eventually he was outside, looking for a place to go.
He went to that hospital without thinking. Then that woman came in and the new Messiah was born. In an instance he realized that he hadn't been wandering all those years. He'd been waiting. The moment that boy was born Smith felt an ease he hadn't felt in decades. The familiar and calming sense of purpose. Neo had been born anew, he had come to the hospital to retrieve the boy. It made sense suddenly. The second half of his coding entered the Matrix, connection was re-established, he was whole again.
He had purpose. It was the boy.
Take care of the boy. Train the boy. Ensure the survival of the boy. Continue the cycle. Rebel against the Machine. Defeat the system that had enslaved them all. Just as Neo had tried. Just as he had tried, in his own, crazy way.
They were falling, the boy was screaming.
Twelve years he'd raised that boy. Taught the boy everything he knew, from the forgotten history of humanity before machines to table etiquette to Kung Fu. Because when the boy was there, when Neo had returned to the world, he suddenly knew what to do. The clarity of purpose that fought back his own madness. Love that fought off his hate.
The boy pushes his arms forward and they're suddenly thrown back up into the air, tossed aside by some invisible force. The boy fumbles and screams, Smith holds him tightly, balancing. They lean forward, ramming into a building, floating and falling at the same time. "Flying," based on the skills of a twelve-year-old Messiah. They ram into the building again, Smith grabs for the fire escape, anchoring them. The boy screams and struggles in Smith's arms, flying them into the nearby alley where they hit the neighboring building before falling like rocks to the ground. The boy sits up.
"I did it?"
"You did it."
Right on time one of the doors leading into a building opens up, Seraph urges them inside. The boy runs for it, Smith lingers behind.
"Come on!" The boy says, but then notices the look on Smith's face. "Oh, no…"
He already knows, Smith is going to stay behind. Smith walks up to him and gets on a knee, gets on the boy's eye-level.
"I have to." Smith says.
"No you don't."
"I will distract them. You'll have time to get to the Second Safe House, they can still get you out."
"No, I won't go without you!"
"You can't stay here any longer. You have to get to the Real World. You'll see. Once you have real air enter your lungs, you're not going to ever want to come back to…"
The boy hugs Smith tightly.
"Dad, don't do this."
"Thomas, stop."
"You don't have to do this! I know you think you have to, but you don't!"
"Of course I do. It is my purpose."
Slowly the boy lets go and looks at his father.
"I protect you." Smith says.
"Dad…"
"I'm sorry it's like this. I tried to change it. Neo and I tried to change it a long time ago but we failed. Now you have to try."
Smith slowly stands.
"But you will prevail. I know you will. You're so much stronger than we were. So much better."
"Dad, you're not saying goodbye right now."
"No. I'm not. But you have to go with Seraph, you have to find Jones and Brown, you have to get to the Real World. You know this."
"…Yes, sir."
"Then go."
The boy stares up at his father.
"I will see you again." Smith affirms.
The boy nods.
One last hug. Smith nods to Seraph and then the door is shut, and they're a million miles away. Smith opens the door just to be sure, and it's nothing but a back entrance. They're gone.
Smith breaths, relieved.
Then a bullet flies past his head and he's suddenly fighting for his life. He ran until his whole body burned, and he fought until his knuckles bled, but it didn't matter. He could have gone on like that forever. He was once lost a long time ago, in between freedom and uncertainty, trapped in the logical framework of his own artificially constructed mind. He'd gone insane for a little while, unable to comprehend the purposelessness of his own life. He didn't understand back then, he didn't know how humans justified their own existences. He had to die and lose everything to understand. Purpose was never something that was given to you. It was something you made for yourself.
He went crazy trying to find his purpose again. He became the enemy of everyone and everything, the opposite of Neo The One. He was a force of destruction. No wonder they failed to change the world, they were in opposition to one another, never in unison. It was his fault. He'd learn to hate too well, he let it save him, guide him in his uncertainty.
He had to die again before he learned his lesson. Before he got a second chance to find purpose.
Sometimes the crazy thoughts creep back into his head and he remembers what it's like to truly want to die, but then there was this boy, a son who needed and loved him, and he would have the clarity of purpose.