Red or Blue?
By Vortex
I've always felt different. Strange. As if, life wasn't what it was supposed to be. Like the dream world was real and the real world was all a dream. I guess that's why I don't have any close friends. I can't let anyone in. I can't let them know what I know.
What I've seen.
What the world is really like.
I have this thing. These powers. To see what others can't. What reality is really made up of. And what reality is really made up of is these letters, symbols or something. Lines of flowing green symbols covering everything. Stretching backward as far as the eye can see and running forward to cover over your skin, your eyes, your hair and nails. The code is made up of these signs, characters they look Chinese but there not.
I know there not.
I've run them through every translator possible.
Mapped them onto a spreadsheet to look for any correlation. Filled note books with pages and pages of them. Scanned them into my computer and messed around with them. I have got no where.
Midnight is a funny time. Not today but not quite tomorrow. I've seen midnight too many times. Been there in the moment when nothing is real. You know anyone else would think it was beautiful. It's pure calm. But not me. Silence is the one thing I can't take. Being alone with my thoughts. In a way I guess I don't like the calm. Because in the calm, the world seems so real. So alive. It almost makes me stop what I'm doing.
Almost.
I am a computer hacker. But not in the way people see it. I don't waste my time in bank accounts or FBI files. I look for the others, the ones like me. Who feel there's something wrong with the world. That it can't be real. That the world is somehow hiding something. I work trying to find the lost ones. Who used to be well known, but suddenly disappeared with no trace.
Like this Neo guy.
Program writer for a software company, the official story was that he was arrested and was now in prison in New York. But nothing was right there. If Neo was in prison he would have access to a computer, and he would be back. Even if they had told him not to he would be back. Hackers like them always came back. Hacking was like a drug. A highly addictive drug. A hacker always came back for more. Longed for the anticipation and adrenaline rush that came with breaking a firewall, entering an account, seeing what you weren't supposed to.
I had broken into the New York prison records.
There was no mention of Neo.
So I found out where he lived by hacking into the police records. A totally unnecessary hack, you say, why did she do it? But I also am addicted to hacking. I also am lost in the thrill of breaking the rules.
I know I should stop.
I've been told to stop.
But I can't stop.
When I got to Neo's house. There was no one there. The door was locked. So I used the fire escape. I figured, if Neo was in trouble he would need a friend. Looking in the window I saw a normal room. A normal hackers room. Discs and CD's everywhere.
Then the computer monitor caught my eye. It was placed facing the window, and one green phrase shined upon its surface.
'The matrix has you'
My stomach flipped a hundred times. Was the matrix what I had been seeing at night? Was the matrix this combination of green symbols that haunted me?
"Miss?"
A man put his hand on my shoulder and it scared the life out of me. I jumped back and slipped on my coat, sending myself plummeting to the ground. Oh crap. I was gonna die. I would never find out what the matrix was or what happened to all those hackers. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see my death. But death did not come.
Something had caught me.
"Shit."
I opened my eyes.
A man with big brown eyes held me tight. My heart pumped so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to explode. I had just faced death, and won. The adrenaline rush was intense. Suddenly the world began to swim around me. To merge into a sea of blurred adverts and bricks. I looked up again. The man who held me looked concerned. In that second I knew who he was.
"Neo?" I gasped, and passed out.
It's funny what shock can do to a person. I knew a man once whose hair went completely white from shock. In my case, it only caused me to pass out.
The inside of the car was dark, black. It had an eerie feeling to it that reminded me of something from the X-files. I put a hand to my head.
"Ok. Ouch."
Two sets of eyes met mine. Two sets of eyes, a thousand stories. I've always thought the eyes were the deepest part of a person. Eyes can tell us when someone is feeling sad, tired or ill. They have a certain spark that can't be replicated. That's the problem with conventional CG people. Computer generated people don't have that spark, and therefore look like something is missing.
Now I'm sitting in a green leather chair facing Morpheous. In his hands are two pills. A red and a blue. And I have a choice.
If I take the blue pill I wake up back in my bed. Back in the room with the computer, where the silence lives. Where I spend every night researching the code and looking for the lost hackers.
If I take the red pill I wake up from this dream. I find the missing piece of my life. I work out what happened to all the lost hackers and what the code is.
I wonder…..
Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue?
Red or Blue?
I've made up my mind.
Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue? Red or Blue?
Red.
THE END
Based on concepts by Andy & Larry Wachowski.