Ghost Stories

Ghost stories. That's what Gawyn sometimes called the crumbling pieces of paper that were arrayed before them. Jitari just called them what he thought of them as – crumbling pieces of paper. Crumbling pieces of paper that the captain of the Talos was risking the lives of his crew to get.

"This is a mistake," Jitari murmured.

"It becomes a mistake once a squiddie shows up," Gawyn murmured. "If that happens, you get to call me out on it."

"That's nice to know Captain. I'm sure that'll make the process of impalement much less painful."

Gawyn ignored her. He just kept going through the crumbling pieces of paper that most people called books. He rubbed his head, the socket at the back of his skull visible through his hair.

"Lord of the Rings," she heard her captain mutter, before putting a copy in the bag. "We got any copies of that back at Zion?"

"Eight."

"Well, let's make it nine." He put a copy in the bag. "Nine…heh, there's some poetic justice in that."

"I'm sure," Jitari murmured, leaning against an old bookshelf, resting her lighting gun on the ground and taking a swig of water. "Just tell it to someone who gives a damn."

Not for the first time, Jitari reflected on the ridiculousness of it all. Why someone like Gawyn was willing to take a red pill in the first place when he seemed so entranced by every piece of old human culture that supposedly existed. How he'd convinced the Council to allow him to take the Talos on quick surface ventures, prowling through the ruins of a civilization that didn't exist anymore, and for all Jitari knew, might have never done in the first place. For all she knew, this ruin of a city, situated somewhere in what was once called Europe, was just part of an elaborate hoax by the machines. As if to say, "see? We got it right. There were cities in the real world. Don't you miss the ones back in the Matrix?"

Jitari didn't miss them. She couldn't miss something she'd never experienced herself. But over the year she'd served as an operator on the Talos, it had become clear to her that Gawyn did miss it, or at least, aspects of it. True, he continued to offer a red pill to anyone who wanted out. True, he sent every squiddie he encountered back to the scrap yard. But there just wasn't something…right, about him. His fixation on the ruins of the past, as if he was trying to reclaim some aspect of the dreamworld he'd once lived in. Maybe it came with the territory. Cloning, sleeping most of your life, maybe the tube that was once stuck up his arse in his pod had never been fully removed.

"Ah, finally. Been searching for this for ages."

Jitari looked up. She saw her captain walk across the floor of the ruined library, glowstick in hand. She looked at the cover of the book. It showed a metal ship in the sea with numerous people one it fighting a giant sea creature. A squid, if she remembered correctly.

"Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea," Gawyn said. "A classic."

"I'm sure," Jitari said. "And you know it's a classic because…?"

"Well, it's by Jules Verne." He tapped on the cover, where the author's name was printed out.

"Yeah, but on what authority is it a classic? Something that we know? Or just another lie in the Matrix to make you think it's a classic?"

Gawyn opened his mouth. Then closed it. Jitari smirked.

She was tired of this. Tired of wasting time. Tired of coming up to the surface, a realm where, while blissfully free of Sentinels this far from Zero-One, was still freezing, and even darker than the tunnel systems that led to Zion. Tired of Gawyn still being stuck in a dreamworld.

"You don't like being up here, do you?" the captain asked eventually.

"No, I don't," Jitari said, assuming that she didn't need to ask for permission to speak freely. "I don't like being cold. I don't like being so far from Zion. I don't like wasting my time up here when we should be spending it on the prowl for squiddies, or looking for more red pills in the Matrix. I mean…" She gestured towards the shelves of books. "I get it. At some point in time, these were a cornerstone of civilization and all that crap. But they don't mean anything now. We're in the real world. And sometimes…" She paused for words. "Sometimes I think that you're not."

Gawyn remained silent. Thunder boomed in the background. Lighting made its way across the sky, briefly illuminating the library and what was left of the city it was part of. Dead, grey, and a place Jitari wanted to get away from. Pacing around the room, book still in hand, her captain seemed to be on the verge of agreeing with her.

Or not, as he sat down at a desk. Or what was half of a desk beneath a pane-less window. Only the chair he was on was still intact.

"Did I ever tell you how I was unplugged?"

"I…" Jitari trailed off. "No sir. You never did."

"Fair enough. You never asked."

"I…didn't want to intrude."

It was an honest response. Jitari had served on other ships before the Talos. Had seen men, women, even children be brought onboard after being unplugged. Their lives shattered, their bodies broken, their minds, while free, fated to be subjected to the horrifying truths of the real world. Physically, emotionally, she could only guess as to what the process was like. So while some red pills were willing to share their stories, she preferred not to press it.

"I was in a library actually," Gawen said. "At a computer."

"Didn't you have one at home?"

"I did, but I figured using a public one was safer. I figured that the longer I searched for…an answer, the more I looked up on people like Morpheus, the more likely the powers that be would take notice. And when I wasn't searching, the library was a good place to just get away from it all. The feeling. The lack of sleep, or the need for it. A place where I could enter fantasy worlds that were devised by humans rather than machines."

Jitari remained silent. So far the story had been quite similar to most she'd heard. Red pill stories usually began with a computer and Internet searches. It was the process of being contacted by a captain and being offered the red pill/blue pill choice that deviated.

"Well, they found me," Gawen continued. "While I was reading, actually. They-"

"Who's 'they'?" Jitari asked. "Agents? Or red pills?"

Gawen smiled sadly. "Both, actually. Agents walking in, saying that I had to come with them, and that I could bring the book with me if I wanted to, provided I checked it out. I refused, they grabbed me, and that's when a book case came crashing down on the bastards."

Jitari smirked. She'd never met an Agent in person. She was incapable of it. But she'd followed enough red pills from an operator's chair over the years to cheer every time one of the sons of bitches failed in one way or another.

"Well, as you can imagine, a bookshelf crashing down on Agents isn't going to do much," the captain continued. "But it was enough for Morpheus to come, get me out, and put me in a car waiting outside."

"And you let him?"

"Didn't really have a choice. The only choice I got was when he gave me the pill choice. Usual drama, only he made it clear that the book I was holding wouldn't follow me down the rabbit hole."

Jitari smiled. Gawen didn't.

"Well, you can imagine the rest," Gawen said. "Took the red pill, unplugged, ejected from my pod, yadda yadda yadda. Ten years later, now I'm the captain of my own ship."

For now, Jitari reflected. It was a nice story, but she still couldn't understand why this excused her captain to do what he did.

"Treasure Island."

Jitari looked up. "What?"

"Treasure Island," the captain repeated. "The book I was reading the day I was unplugged. A book I never finished. A book I've never been able to find in the real world."

"So how do you know it even existed?" Jitari asked. "How do you know the machines didn't right it and put it in the Matrix for entertainment of their batteries?"

"Same way I know Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic," Gawen said. "Because it's well written. Because it speaks to the imagination, not for it." He tapped the copy of the book he was holding. "Ghost stories and relics of a bygone age, maybe. But you read enough books, and you learn what's good writing and what isn't. So I know Treasure Island is real. I know Jules Verne was a real author. I know that the machines didn't write a single piece of fiction in the Matrix because there's nothing to suggest the bastards are capable of it."

He smirked.

"Don't worry Jitari. I don't want to be re-plugged. I want the war to end. I want the machines defeated. I want to be able to walk through Zero-One, hold a squiddie at gunpoint, and demand that they give me access to the files that they obviously have on every book that's ever been written."

"You'll shoot the squiddie at some point though, right?"

"That. Or impale it." Gawen pointed to the squid on top of the book he was holding. "Maybe I'll call myself Nemo as well."

It was meant to be a joke, but Jitari didn't get it.

Though looking at the cover, the operator wondered if she should perhaps read up on the context.

After all, it would be a long trip back to Zion.

A/N

Admittedly this is similar to one of the short stories in The Matrix comic series. I was writing this without Internet access at the time though, so I couldn't use the same characters and admittedly, the backstories would have been different by necesity. Hopefully still decent.