He couldn't understand how of all things in the world, he would be
addicted to cigarettes when he had never actually had one pass his lips in
his entire life. It seemed unfair to the man who was leaning against the
bulkhead of the small, dimly lit hovercraft, that the one thing he craved
more than anything else was the sweet kiss of nicotine, and he had done
nothing to deserve it. In the bowels of the Resistor he sat, the tangled
mess of hoses and conduits around him like ship's intestines, chewing on a
stick he had found that for once, wasn't metal. He'd had enough of that,
metal. Too much metal, not enough nicotine. That was his problem. It
couldn't kill him if he smoked a thousand packs a day when he had the
chance, because for long time, he had been free. But still, he woke each
morning on the bunk in his tiny metal box which smelled heavily of grease -
as most of the Resistor did - and instantly he yearned for a cigarette.
He had been quite the rebel in his youth. The only difference now was that his hair was short, more like a Marine Corps buzzcut than the ponytail he used to affect on himself. It was a rather thrilling adventure, he remembered, being found out by the woman in black leather - which had been like some sort of dream, to have an attractive woman in tight leathers seeking him out in a bar - and taken to meet the man who had ultimately denied him cigarettes. Longing for the touch of a filter on his lips for an instant, the Red Pill had cost him that for eternity. Why, he wondered, didn't he take the Blue Pill? Because he liked to think he was an adventurer, something he had very well become, but certainly didn't feel like any more. With long, slender fingers he reached for his chest, picking a spot on the broad expanse of hard muscle to scratch at out of total boredom.
His first cigarette... He could still remember it. Just sixteen, hiding from the Principal behind the gym with Lawerence Ramsay and John O'Brien. Coughing his lungs up, his friends clapped him on the back in the way that showed they were still very impressed with the boy they never thought would take a puff, and that he had finally taken a step towards the kind of idiocy they thought would be manhood. Principal Woods had grabbed him roughly by the collar, and John had taken off behind the groundskeeper's rough little shed... Then Woods grabbed him again, in the same place with the same hand. John kicked him smartly in the shins, and he dropped like a lead balloon. He could remember it as clear as a bright summer's day that he would never see again. Though it wasn't real, the memory remained.
Ah, music. They could never take that away from him. That had always been real, one of the marvels of human ingenuity. His fingers reached up to the thin line he had pressed his lips into around his makeshift cigarette - ciggy, smoke, cancer stick, he'd heard it all - and they began pushing out a tune to keep him company. In the bleak light around him, his whistled reproduction of 'The Memory Remains' pinged off metallic walls, resounding around the engine room as though he were Whistler for the London Symphony Orchestra. Appropriate, he thought - a metallic sound to a song by Metallica. How he longed to hear the real sound, so loud it could blast the decades of grime and grease that had built up over the bulkheads which imprisoned him. But that, too, was impossible. Red Pill.
Finishing his song, he stood up, having quite a distance to stand because another thing that was very real about him was that he was a little taller than six feet. The gritty black trousers which hung from his impressive frame were still able to drape around buckled combat boots, which he thought would look all that much better if they weren't permeated with the same amount of miscellaneous debris as his grey t-shirt, which had been white once upon a time but had slowly gotten so much grime on it that nobody could be bothered to tell the difference. It was also pocked with so many holes that Joule had commented he looked more like the moon than a man. He wondered idly if the moon still existed in this world he was torn back into, because not one of them had actually ever seen beyond the shifting maelstrom of cloud that covered their new lives. That was of course, assuming you ever got to see beyond the steel walls of the ship you were 'reborn' into. Jack had called it being reborn, but he, Surge, insisted it was like being spat out of something that decided you were no good for it anymore, like a bug, or some cancerous cell.
The sound of his own whistling was sharply punctuated with light, pinging steps as somebody descended the metal stairwell to Surge's right - to say that it was metal may not be totally necessary, seeing as how most things in Surge's life were so. He knew that those steps certainly weren't Volt's, or Jack's, they were both burly men like himself that seemed to stomp wherever they went, and liked to seem rather a lot bigger than they were. Sure enough, Joule descended, setting foot on the grating which covered the innermost sanctum of the Resistor's workings. She looked every bit as gorgeous as Surge remembered her when they first met, and he had gone by a different name entirely, when Andrew Dalton had stood, unable to help but stare at the woman in black while he stood by in his stuffy suit. Even outside, her figure was trim, her body didn't have a single jot of hanging or excess skin, everything curved just enough for his tastes, with all the inny outy bits he liked going inny and outy in just the way that he thought they should. "I didn't know you liked Metallica," she laughed, her voice light, airy, and as Surge had told her once whilst plastered from far too many of Bulldog's drinks, she sounded like she was always singing.
"Good music," he replied gruffly in his tenored voice. "You'd think I'd had enough of heavy metal, huh?" One broad sweep of his large hand took in all that surrounded the pair, a smile that was not entirely forced put onto his lips. Something always tried to make him smile when Joule was around.
A sheepish giggle escaped her rosy lips, and Surge dropped his pale blue eyes to the deck where they stood. If he ever looked at her face long enough, things started happening that really shouldn't between the ship's First Mate, and him, who they *called* the Chief Engineer, but who really spent most of his time tinkering with the reactor and hoping it didn't give out, screaming his inadequacy. "Silly boy, you'll have had enough of it once we reach Zion."
"Yeah, yeah, I know the stories. Big, wonderful city under the ground, the last bastion of human hope." He stuck out his tongue distastefully. "We talk about it like it were the be-all and end-all of ship life, and what does it get for us? Life as worms, Joule. We crawl into the dirt and we hide. I'm sick of not fighting, Jack doesn't see it?"
Joule shook her head ruefully, one thin blonde brow flicking towards the ceiling. "Now don't make me take you down for insubordination," she chided playfully. Surge was not in the mood for it, shaking his head so quickly it looked as if it might drop off. "We fight as often as we can, Surge, you must see that. There is only so much that six people can do against the world." She took a step foward, placing one delicate hand on his chest. "Only so much one man can do."
As much as he would have liked to have stayed angry with her, with Jack, with the whole damned galaxy, Surge's knees felt as if they were going to collapse under him at her touch. He nodded as slowly as he could without it looking as if he was standing still, and a jet of breath shot from his mouth in one of his heavy sighs. "You're right, as always. I know Bulldog and Panzer agree with me, though. They've always known Zion, and from what they've heard about the Matrix, they'd rather have lived their lives in it and been freed like us."
"They didn't, did they?"
Surge's beefy shoulders gave a shrug, and he managed to look up from his boots, tracing his eyes up Joule's body slower than absolutely necessary... "Bulldog thought so. Don't know that Panzer was really that keen on the idea of having been a Duracell Baby, but hell, anything beats Zion food, eh? Single-celled protein my torn arsehole. That isn't food."
She nodded glumly, and draped herself over Surge's chest, who wrapped his arms around her waist as carefully as he could without his hands getting anywhere they shouldn't go. "We're going back in, soon. Jack thinks he's found him."
"Who?" Surge already knew the answer.
"The One."
***
Sentient. Did it mean to be alive? He was not alive, he was sure of it. He had never been born, he had no parents, and he did not have a body plugged into the powerplants outside of the realm he had been given free reign over. On the television over the bar, he could see an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' being re-run, which managed to confuse even his intellect no end, because it was fictional, much like the lies of the world which he was wearing, sitting on, and even then, drinking. A steaming black coffee sat in front of him as he regarded Data, the android one. His crew, his 'friends' all thought he was alive. The man with the coffee was not alive. He had no friends, no crew, only associates. One of them sat across the table from him, also with a pungent coffee before him. Neither of them drank. The aroma of the coffee was merely a distraction from the pervading stench of the world around the sombre pair, the simulated stink almost visible to the man watching Star Trek.
"We have the name of the next target." His associate, in a severely cut black suit, was business as always, seemingly ignorant of his train of thought. "It is a boy. He calls himself Spike."
"Spike?" The man stared through black plastic shields at his coffee, steam rising like rising trails of cloud. "Which ship is nearest?"
"Judging by last known proximity taken from the Sentinels, the Resistor is most likely the closest of their ships." His associate stared straight at him, eyes boring into him even through the square, rimless glasses they both wore. "His ship."
"Why does it concern you?"
"He clouds your judgement."
"My judgement is never clouded."
"You are fallible, like him."
"I am nothing like him."
His associate's tone was as dry and deadpan as it usually was, nevertheless he managed to portray one of his rare displeased faces, lips pulled into a thin line across his jaw. "Since the one they now call the Oracle left us, they do not fear us as they used to. Do not fail us as she did, O'Brien, or They will have you removed from the system on mere suspicion."
Despite the ominous portent, the dark-suited man who had been given the name O'Brien couldn't help himself but to smile in the grim, menacing way only a sentient program, a hunter-killer, an Agent, possibly could. "Doe... For one who concerns himself with my studies in human psychology, you display an increasing number of their traits. Concern for your comrades, hmm?"
Doe laced his fingers in the handle of his cup, lifting the coffee and feigning a drink so the populace would not suspect. Acting on a silent order from him, the barman was forced to hand out a beer to a customer not once, but twice, as the amount of coffee in Doe's cup was reduced by a mere sip.
"Whoah... Deja vu."
He had been quite the rebel in his youth. The only difference now was that his hair was short, more like a Marine Corps buzzcut than the ponytail he used to affect on himself. It was a rather thrilling adventure, he remembered, being found out by the woman in black leather - which had been like some sort of dream, to have an attractive woman in tight leathers seeking him out in a bar - and taken to meet the man who had ultimately denied him cigarettes. Longing for the touch of a filter on his lips for an instant, the Red Pill had cost him that for eternity. Why, he wondered, didn't he take the Blue Pill? Because he liked to think he was an adventurer, something he had very well become, but certainly didn't feel like any more. With long, slender fingers he reached for his chest, picking a spot on the broad expanse of hard muscle to scratch at out of total boredom.
His first cigarette... He could still remember it. Just sixteen, hiding from the Principal behind the gym with Lawerence Ramsay and John O'Brien. Coughing his lungs up, his friends clapped him on the back in the way that showed they were still very impressed with the boy they never thought would take a puff, and that he had finally taken a step towards the kind of idiocy they thought would be manhood. Principal Woods had grabbed him roughly by the collar, and John had taken off behind the groundskeeper's rough little shed... Then Woods grabbed him again, in the same place with the same hand. John kicked him smartly in the shins, and he dropped like a lead balloon. He could remember it as clear as a bright summer's day that he would never see again. Though it wasn't real, the memory remained.
Ah, music. They could never take that away from him. That had always been real, one of the marvels of human ingenuity. His fingers reached up to the thin line he had pressed his lips into around his makeshift cigarette - ciggy, smoke, cancer stick, he'd heard it all - and they began pushing out a tune to keep him company. In the bleak light around him, his whistled reproduction of 'The Memory Remains' pinged off metallic walls, resounding around the engine room as though he were Whistler for the London Symphony Orchestra. Appropriate, he thought - a metallic sound to a song by Metallica. How he longed to hear the real sound, so loud it could blast the decades of grime and grease that had built up over the bulkheads which imprisoned him. But that, too, was impossible. Red Pill.
Finishing his song, he stood up, having quite a distance to stand because another thing that was very real about him was that he was a little taller than six feet. The gritty black trousers which hung from his impressive frame were still able to drape around buckled combat boots, which he thought would look all that much better if they weren't permeated with the same amount of miscellaneous debris as his grey t-shirt, which had been white once upon a time but had slowly gotten so much grime on it that nobody could be bothered to tell the difference. It was also pocked with so many holes that Joule had commented he looked more like the moon than a man. He wondered idly if the moon still existed in this world he was torn back into, because not one of them had actually ever seen beyond the shifting maelstrom of cloud that covered their new lives. That was of course, assuming you ever got to see beyond the steel walls of the ship you were 'reborn' into. Jack had called it being reborn, but he, Surge, insisted it was like being spat out of something that decided you were no good for it anymore, like a bug, or some cancerous cell.
The sound of his own whistling was sharply punctuated with light, pinging steps as somebody descended the metal stairwell to Surge's right - to say that it was metal may not be totally necessary, seeing as how most things in Surge's life were so. He knew that those steps certainly weren't Volt's, or Jack's, they were both burly men like himself that seemed to stomp wherever they went, and liked to seem rather a lot bigger than they were. Sure enough, Joule descended, setting foot on the grating which covered the innermost sanctum of the Resistor's workings. She looked every bit as gorgeous as Surge remembered her when they first met, and he had gone by a different name entirely, when Andrew Dalton had stood, unable to help but stare at the woman in black while he stood by in his stuffy suit. Even outside, her figure was trim, her body didn't have a single jot of hanging or excess skin, everything curved just enough for his tastes, with all the inny outy bits he liked going inny and outy in just the way that he thought they should. "I didn't know you liked Metallica," she laughed, her voice light, airy, and as Surge had told her once whilst plastered from far too many of Bulldog's drinks, she sounded like she was always singing.
"Good music," he replied gruffly in his tenored voice. "You'd think I'd had enough of heavy metal, huh?" One broad sweep of his large hand took in all that surrounded the pair, a smile that was not entirely forced put onto his lips. Something always tried to make him smile when Joule was around.
A sheepish giggle escaped her rosy lips, and Surge dropped his pale blue eyes to the deck where they stood. If he ever looked at her face long enough, things started happening that really shouldn't between the ship's First Mate, and him, who they *called* the Chief Engineer, but who really spent most of his time tinkering with the reactor and hoping it didn't give out, screaming his inadequacy. "Silly boy, you'll have had enough of it once we reach Zion."
"Yeah, yeah, I know the stories. Big, wonderful city under the ground, the last bastion of human hope." He stuck out his tongue distastefully. "We talk about it like it were the be-all and end-all of ship life, and what does it get for us? Life as worms, Joule. We crawl into the dirt and we hide. I'm sick of not fighting, Jack doesn't see it?"
Joule shook her head ruefully, one thin blonde brow flicking towards the ceiling. "Now don't make me take you down for insubordination," she chided playfully. Surge was not in the mood for it, shaking his head so quickly it looked as if it might drop off. "We fight as often as we can, Surge, you must see that. There is only so much that six people can do against the world." She took a step foward, placing one delicate hand on his chest. "Only so much one man can do."
As much as he would have liked to have stayed angry with her, with Jack, with the whole damned galaxy, Surge's knees felt as if they were going to collapse under him at her touch. He nodded as slowly as he could without it looking as if he was standing still, and a jet of breath shot from his mouth in one of his heavy sighs. "You're right, as always. I know Bulldog and Panzer agree with me, though. They've always known Zion, and from what they've heard about the Matrix, they'd rather have lived their lives in it and been freed like us."
"They didn't, did they?"
Surge's beefy shoulders gave a shrug, and he managed to look up from his boots, tracing his eyes up Joule's body slower than absolutely necessary... "Bulldog thought so. Don't know that Panzer was really that keen on the idea of having been a Duracell Baby, but hell, anything beats Zion food, eh? Single-celled protein my torn arsehole. That isn't food."
She nodded glumly, and draped herself over Surge's chest, who wrapped his arms around her waist as carefully as he could without his hands getting anywhere they shouldn't go. "We're going back in, soon. Jack thinks he's found him."
"Who?" Surge already knew the answer.
"The One."
***
Sentient. Did it mean to be alive? He was not alive, he was sure of it. He had never been born, he had no parents, and he did not have a body plugged into the powerplants outside of the realm he had been given free reign over. On the television over the bar, he could see an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' being re-run, which managed to confuse even his intellect no end, because it was fictional, much like the lies of the world which he was wearing, sitting on, and even then, drinking. A steaming black coffee sat in front of him as he regarded Data, the android one. His crew, his 'friends' all thought he was alive. The man with the coffee was not alive. He had no friends, no crew, only associates. One of them sat across the table from him, also with a pungent coffee before him. Neither of them drank. The aroma of the coffee was merely a distraction from the pervading stench of the world around the sombre pair, the simulated stink almost visible to the man watching Star Trek.
"We have the name of the next target." His associate, in a severely cut black suit, was business as always, seemingly ignorant of his train of thought. "It is a boy. He calls himself Spike."
"Spike?" The man stared through black plastic shields at his coffee, steam rising like rising trails of cloud. "Which ship is nearest?"
"Judging by last known proximity taken from the Sentinels, the Resistor is most likely the closest of their ships." His associate stared straight at him, eyes boring into him even through the square, rimless glasses they both wore. "His ship."
"Why does it concern you?"
"He clouds your judgement."
"My judgement is never clouded."
"You are fallible, like him."
"I am nothing like him."
His associate's tone was as dry and deadpan as it usually was, nevertheless he managed to portray one of his rare displeased faces, lips pulled into a thin line across his jaw. "Since the one they now call the Oracle left us, they do not fear us as they used to. Do not fail us as she did, O'Brien, or They will have you removed from the system on mere suspicion."
Despite the ominous portent, the dark-suited man who had been given the name O'Brien couldn't help himself but to smile in the grim, menacing way only a sentient program, a hunter-killer, an Agent, possibly could. "Doe... For one who concerns himself with my studies in human psychology, you display an increasing number of their traits. Concern for your comrades, hmm?"
Doe laced his fingers in the handle of his cup, lifting the coffee and feigning a drink so the populace would not suspect. Acting on a silent order from him, the barman was forced to hand out a beer to a customer not once, but twice, as the amount of coffee in Doe's cup was reduced by a mere sip.
"Whoah... Deja vu."
