"The Matrix has us all. It does not discriminate nor shows truth. We hide ourselves in our own dreams in a hope that peace will find us. That is the lure of the Matrix."

Sophos

From the archive of the fourth anomaly:

I was once normal before my world was destroyed. I lived in a nice home had a little dog. I had a pretty good normal job as a police officer in a small town. My days seemed to be on a normal routine never really changing. Most days were just a blend of waiting on the road for speeders or the occasional call for some drunk or a fight at the bar. Through my 11 years as a police officer I never had to use my gun or get shot at by some perp. One thing I knew I would always be was that I could be very calm and take in everything around me. My foster parents always said I was very attentive a quiet but I never told them about the day I was 12 years old and I saw people turn into dogs.

It was during the summer I remember the sun was bright and beautiful. I was outside playing with my dog Rudi. I was trying to train my dog to fetch a frisbee and he seemed to always want to run off into the street. I kept chasing after him laughing because Rudi kept dropping the frisbee and barking at it. Across the street there was a small park with a few swings and jungle gym with a slide. Rudi ran over to the park and stopping at the end slide. I ran over to him and started to pet him and say he was a good dog. I liked the little park but most of the time there was older kids that hung out there. They smoked cigarettes and pot. Sometimes highschool kids would be there and they would be drinking beer. As I made my way over to were Rudi was I could see that some people were standing near the slide. I slowly made my way and as I approached the slide I could see that the people was there were some older kids from the neighborhood. One of them was bending down to pet Rudi. He had blond hair with red highlights he was had his eyebrows pierced. I could see that he was wear a black shirt and dark pants. The boots he was wearing were the military kind but they had no laces. I knew he must be new to the neighborhood because I knew almost everyone on my block. I see that there was two other people with him. A girl who I knew from my history class her name was Beth-Ann. She had dark brown hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red shirt with lace of the sleeves and she was wearing a short black skirt. She also wear a lot of makeup dark blush and red lipstick. The third person was another guy from my class and his name was Darryl. He was on the wrestling team and he was an arrogant ass. He had sandy colored hair which was cut really short. I could see that he was still wearing his team jacket and he was wearing a blue shirt and jeans.

"Come on Pete lets do this. I wanna try this good stuff you've bragged about" complained Darryl. Darryl looked like he was nervous. He kept looking side to side. Then he saw me standing near them. "Hey! Get the hell out of here you freaky ass before I beat the shit out of you!"

Pete the one boy who was petting my dog Rudi looked up at me. He had a very faraway look in his eyes like he was dreaming. "Its cool man, relax. This stuff is so good you won't care about anything." said Pete. Even his voice sounded like it was being muffled by something. Pete stood up and looked at me again. "You wanna try some of this stuff? It makes you fly."

I shook my head no and watched as Pete began to dig something out of his pockets. Pete took out what look like three pieces of wrapped candy. The candy was wrapped in a red wrapper with a strange clown face on it. I knew that it wasnt really candy because I had seen some other people have similar stuff they used to shoot up of smoke. One thing I knew was different about these wrapped candies was that the faces that were printed on them moved and I could have sworn the clown faces were winking. I stared very a long time at Pete's hand when Darryl said "Hey Josh you wanna hit too? Pete said this stuff is really good." I looked up at Darryl and shook my head no. "Where did you get this stuff?" I asked Pete. Grinning Pete stupidly Pete stated he got his stuff from one of the bouncers at Club Hell in the city. I heard about that place. My foster parents told me it was hang out for losers and gang members.

"Did you really go to Club Hell?" asked Beth-Ann.

"Yea, but the door guy wouldn't let me in. He said my pattern wasn't cool enough even though I all my clothes matched. At least he sold me this stuff. You guys ready to do this?" Pete said.

I knew that was my cue to leave. I didn't want to watch them get high and I knew Darryl would probably try to mess with me. "Come on Rudi we got to get home" I tugged on Rudi's collar and then I looked at the three people in front of me. They all had their eyes closed and they stood very still. I noticed that they were beginning to sweat. I could see the beads of water on their bare skin. Then suddenly Beth-Ann opened her eyes wide and tried to scream but no sound came out of her mouth. Darryl and Pete both had opened their eyes too. I could see they were all afraid. I could see that they were shaking almost like they were vibrating. Then I heard a loud plop like something heavy and wet falling down. I could see that Darryl's skin seemed to fall right off his body. I watched in horror as all three Pete, Beth-Ann and Darryl melted by the slide. In a few moments they were just three pink piles of flesh and goo. I knew that they were still alive and the pink masses were quivering. Slowly to blobs of flesh started to move I could hear to sucking sounds that it made as it started to reform. I tried to blink thinking I was hallucinating. With in a few moments instead of three people standing before me were three dogs that looked like Rudi. I stood there frozen because I was afraid this was all real which I knew it was. Then all three dogs ran off in different directions. I heard a car pull up and saw two men getting out of a black four door car. I thought it was a police car because it was the same kind they used in the movies. The two men got out of the car and made their way over to me and stopped at were Pete, Darryl and Beth-Ann had been. They were dressed in black suits like the FBI or gangsters and they wore dark sunglasses. They were average height and they both had brown hair. They looked very plain I thought like they were not special at all but I just knew they were dangerous. They moved passed me like I wasn't there and they continued to look around.

"Another code error" said one.

"Yes"

"Begin protocol and trace source" said the second man in black.

"It has begun. Recommend restarts and change code to alpha" said the man who spoke first.

"We must reset all assets and purge anomalistic code. Highest priority." said the second man.

The two men turned to me and stared at me for a long moment. I didn't know what to do but I wanted to get away from them but when I tried to move it felt like me feet were glued to the ground. One of the men open his coat and i could see his gun. I really was afraid now and I began to struggle. He pulled out a silver pen and when he got to me he pointed the pen at my chest. I heard the pen click but when I looked at the pen it wasn't a pen no more. The pen had become a silver octopus like thing with spindly silver arms. I tried to raise my arms to fight it off but I could not move at all and it seemed as if the whole world stopped moving. I felt something cold on my chest and it spread from my chest out through my body. When the cold reached my feet the world seemed to fade away and then suddenly I was back home in my bed. I jumped out of my bed which scared Rudi and he made a nervous yelp. I looked around my room expecting some kind of monster to jump out but it was just my room. I was sweating and breathing fast my mind was trying to deal with what I saw but also very curiously I also saw another memory of the same day. I saw the saw the same thing but no melting people or scary agents. The memory seemed so fake and artificial. I jumped when my alarm clock went off and saw that it was 6:30am. I knew it was time to get ready to go to school and I still was trying to make sense of the time that I lost. At first I thought to blow it off as a really weird dream but I knew it wasn't a dream at all. My head felt like there was a red-hot knife imbedded in my forehead. I slowly made my way over to my dresser and got ready for school and when I went down to the kitchen to make my breakfast everything felt wrong.

I saw my foster dad Jim sitting at the kitchen table drinking his coffee like he always did right before he went to work. I could smell the freshly brewed coffee and I could also smell burnt toast. Jim didn't even look at me it was like I wasnt there at all even when I said good morning to him. Jim didn't even react to my voice. It was if I was a ghost. I went to the refrigerator and got some orange juice and an apple to eat. I continued to stare at the strange way my foster dad was acting and when I took a drink of my orange juice and it tasted like it was something burnt. I spit it the juice out in the sink and stared at the orange liquid. The orange juice seemed to bead in the sink like it when you try to mix oil and water together. I reached down and touched the juice and I could moved it around the sink. Everything seemed wrong to me so I grabbed my book bag and hurried out of the kitchen. When I got outside I noticed that everything seemed to move a lot lower like everything was under water. I started walking down my street and it felt like I was going through syrup. At first trying to move through this stuff I couldn't see was weird to me but then I felt like I couldn't breath. Fear over came me and I was desperately trying to get out. That is when I noticed the men in the black suits again. I could see them staring at me. I could see that they were talking but I couldn't hear them clearly. It was as if everything was muffled like when you have water in your ears. I tried to turn and run away but everything was moving slow. I tried to move my legs and it felt like trying move in water. I tried to move my legs as fast as I can and I get about five steps when I feel a hand on my shoulder. The hand on my shoulder pulls my around and I see one of the men in black. He had his dark glasses on and one of those ear pieces that secret agents uses in the movies. I could barely hear what he was saying but I could only make out something about full system reset and protocol 1. I looked into the man's face and it was as I was looking at a statue. I started to feel dizzy then everything went black. Then next thing I knew I was back in my bed again and my alarm was going off. I tried to think that it was all dream but I knew it was not.