John Hunter is very tired. He slumps down onto the bar, staring listlessly into the amber of his beer. Jesus,he thinks, you know I'm far gone when I can't even get up the energy to drink.
"Well, Mr. Hunter?" says the calm voice behind him. He hears the man in sunglasses take a seat on the stool next to him, and glances over to see Agent Davis - as the man had called himself - looking around the bar with a faint air of superior disgust.
"It's a lot to take in," John says. "'Specially 'cause this ain't my first beer."
He can't quite bring himself to feel disbelief, though. All of the things the Agent has told him, images of a ruined earth and a dreaming humanity- all of it should seem impossible, isimpossible.
But life hasfelt like a dream lately, since Chris died. Spending his nights here, at this shithole excuse for a bar, drinking his life away. Surely he could do something better than this? What if what the Agent is telling him is true?
"So who are you, then? Some sorta government organization trying to overthrow the machines?" he asks, not even looking at Davis.
There is a thin smile in Davis' voice. "You misunderstand me, Mr. Hunter. I am not with the government, not as you understand it. I amone of the machines. I am a sentient program designed to keep order in the Matrix."
That is almost enough of a shock to stir John into motion. Almost. He looks Davis up and down. The Agent in his neat green suit seems out of place in the bar, but John can see where the edge of his sleeve is dark with dust from the bar and where his crisp slacks wrinkle against the filthy bar stool. He looks human. "Then why're you telling me this? Thought you said the point was to keep us all ignorant."
"It is. But the trouble is, Mr. Hunter, that we programs can hardly enter the real world and pass as human. Not without elaborate fabrications. We need a human agent, a traitor to his species. And we believe you will have reason to help us."
John laughs apathetically. "Really? Why? Find someone else. I'm not like other people, y'see. Other people, you could threaten maybe, coerce. But me, I got nothing left to lose. My parents died a long time ago, I sure as hell don't care if Ilive, and Chris …" He trails off and reaches out to take another swig from his beer, hoping to drown the thought of Chris in it.
"In fact, it's specifically because of your Christopher Addams that we believe you will be willing to help us. You see, you were told that Mr. Addams was killed in a terrorist attack on the building that he worked as a security guard for."
"That's right," John says, wishing Davis would stop talking about it. But, he supposes, being a machine wouldn't give you much reason to care about sensitivity to the grieving. "Random act of bloody violence. That's - " His voice breaks. "That's what gets to me, sometimes. That it could have been damn well anyone and it had to be Chris. Any other building in the city, any other damn building!"
He knows Davis doesn't care in the slightest, but somehow that's freeing. He can say whatever he wants to the man without worrying that he's being pitied.
Davis nods. "Mr. Addams waskilled by terrorists. But that is not the end of the story. The terrorists, you see, were the rebels. The ones trying to upset our system. The ones trying to destroy our world."
"That doesn't make me feel any better," John says immediately. "It still could've been anyone, and their damn cause isn't worth his life. Not to me. You wouldn't understand something like that, of course."
"Love? I do understand love, Mr. Hunter, on an intellectual level. And that is why I have come to you, rather than any human I could have threatened. You see, this is your chance for revenge. We need you to make contact with a man named Morpheus, one of the terrorists. He will offer you a choice, and you must take the red pill. Once outside, you will be able to assist us in our infiltration of their city. You will be able to assist us in the destruction of the one thing that mattered most to the people who killed your partner."
John blinks. "Revenge," he says, as if testing out the word. It sounds empty to his ears – but not quite as empty, somehow, as everything else in this false world has since Chris died. "Revenge. I hadn't thought of that."
"It is not a concept we are programmed to embrace, but I understand humans differ." The Agent leans forward, his suited arm on the bar next to John. "Think, Mr. Hunter. You will be doing your species good, all things considered. This place isn't so bad, is it? Or at least it wasn't, before the rebels interfered. I understand you were going to get married."
John nods. If it had been even a day earlier, he might have had to bite back a sob at the reminder, but he's cried all he could, in the past few days. Now he's given up on that and resorted to drowning his sorrows. "That would have been real, wouldn't it? Him and me. We would've been real, even if this - " he waves drunkenly at the filthy bar around them - "isn't."
The Agent shrugs, as if it were no concern of his. "I suppose so. Will you assist us, Mr. Hunter?"
John thinks about it. He pushes himself up on the bar and drinks his beer down, staring at the stained, cracked wood of the bar. It's easy to believe this place isn't real, at least. And from there, well - if Davis is telling the truth, then Davis has a damn good point. John doeswant revenge, and he thinks, after what had been taken from him, he deserves it too. He wonders if the rebels thought of that, that the guards they'd gunned down might have had families and friends.
It didn't really matter one way or another if they had. They'd still done it. "Agent Davis?" John sets down his beer and extends a hand towards the Agent. "You have yourself a deal."