In another empty room, almost identical to the interrogation room that the human had been held in the Agents waited for the Enforcer's next orders.  Then had left Lucifer in the interrogation room hooking himself up to the laptop and muttering about contacting Rikbiel.  Brown scanned data for a 'Rikbiel', then moved to join Smith by the window.  "They are-" he began.

"Cherubim, the second order of angels."  Smith cut him off absently.  "Ophaniel, Rikbiel, Zaphiel and Lucifer."

Brown considered the information, "Then that would make us… Ophanim?"

Smith shook his head, a hint of self-loathing carrying in his voice "No, Principalities."

"The seventh order?"

"Yes.  Only two steps removed from humans."

"Why does that disgust you so much?  There are others lower than we are."

"Yes, but they are humans or those half-human drones."

"I do not see the problem.  We serve our purpose."

Brown frowned as he spoke; Smith was looking at him strangely.

"You have heard the humans discuss their theory of Buddhism?"

"Yes."

"They speak of Enlightenment."

"Yes.  A state of being.  Pure existence.  No pain, no fear, no hope.  Just existing.  Communing with the universe if such a thing is possible."

"Can you imagine reaching Enlightenment and then being sent back?"

Brown watched Smith curiously.  He felt something flicker along their communication channel before it was brutally squashed.

"Have you ever seen the Ophanim?"  Brown paused in his reply, struck by the sudden melancholy in Smith's tone.

"I have." Smith said, before he turned away.  Brown was left staring out of the window, wondering.

            Hours passed, though time didn't really have that much meaning for the Agents.  Jones paced along the corridors of the floor that they were on, keeping up a courtesy patrol.  Smith periodically ventured into the other room and looked at the Enforcer.  After Smith had repeated this action a few times and Brown was sure there would be no negative response from said Enforcer, he looked as well.  Lucifer was slumped, bonelessly in a chair in front of the laptop that was running source code.  His entire body seemed lifeless.  Hesitantly Brown put out a hand to check for a pulse.  Smith seemed amused when he jerked his hand back from the cold skin.  "Just like a human corpse." He said almost to reassure himself.  Smith nodded.

They returned to the other room, Smith going back to his place by the window.

"Are all Cherubim like that?" Brown had to ask.  He didn't know why he was bothering to speak out loud, perhaps it some latent human emotion, but it seemed comforting.

"Yes.  They rarely need to appear in the Matrix… and to do so severs their direct link to the Mainframe…" Smith trailed off.

"You do not wish to be within the Matrix." Brown said, it was a statement not a question.

Smith said nothing.

"You were one of them.  One of the Ophanim and then they sent you here.  You said it before.  It is like reaching Enlightenment and then being sent back."

"Yes." Was all Smith said.

            On the other side of the city centre a human male sat at a table in an almost empty café.  He was staring at his untouched coffee and had been doing so for the last two hours.  "Order and Chaos." He muttered under his breath. "But which one is which?"  He stared down at the coffee again, knowing that it was simply an elaborate suggestion made to his mind, telling him the eloquent lie that he was alive here, sitting in a café drinking a mocha, when in truth he was lying, with a cable inserted in to the base of his skull on a filthy, wreck of a ship, floating in sewers underneath what was left of some human city.  Reality was awful.  He had barely coped once he'd found out the truth.  Had found himself wondering round trying to come up with a reasonable explanation that would allow him to get some sleep at night.  Finally he'd had his answer, or so he'd thought at the time.  They were the few freed humans who had to save the rest of humanity, bring them out into the real world, save them from the tyranny of the machines.  They were Order and Good, which the machines were cold and evil, cruel enslavers.  But now he didn't know.  Now looking around the Matrix didn't seem so cruel.  Millions of souls dreaming, never knowing the abomination that was reality.  So many people who would carry on with their lives without realising that their world had been destroyed long ago and that it was humanity who had scorched the skies.  People who would never know that the surface of the Earth was in ruins, that nothing would ever grow, that the last haven of humanity was a ramshackle city near the centre of the Earth, filled with dirt and junk and discontentment.  Looking back, if he'd known, if he'd known…  He'd chosen the red pill out of curiosity.  There'd never been any attempt to truly explain what the Matrix was before he'd given up the chance to go back.  The more he kept thinking, the more Lucifer's point of view was beginning to make sense.  Letting out a frustrated sigh, he sat back and tried not to think.

            Lucifer floated within the streams of code, something that looked like a large black room with no boundaries, highlighted by gleaming lines of green.  Within the system he had no form, no specific individuality other than a small spark that defined him as the first of the second order, that labelled him Lucifer as a point of reference, in the same way that a generic product might have a slightly different barcode.  He didn't think that there was an apt human comparison.  It was a little like sinking into a warm bath or floating in an isolation tank, except you weren't alone, and you weren't sinking into an external substance.  You absorbed the source code and it absorbed you in return.  There was no pain, no fear, no hope.  It was simply being, existing.  He felt several Ophanim detach themselves, Rikbiel reattached.  He wondered where Rikbiel had been, Rikbiel wondered the same of him.  Then they knew, it was as simple and as perfect as that.  He knew that Rikbiel thought that humans did, in fact, smell.  Ophaniel though so too…

"Lucifer" it was an almost audible summons, though he felt rather than heard it.  The source, the code, the system, whatever, shuddered.  A Seraphim detached.

Within the Matrix lights flickered and monitors went into shutdown as an unaccountable power-surge carried through thousands of systems.  For a fraction of a second an entire continent was plunged into darkness.

There was a slightly lesser power-surge following the first, as Lucifer detached from the system to answer the summons.  He hovered in a replica of his form in the Matrix, in a sudden gap in the code streams.  Opposite him hovered a vaguely female form, sporting large angelic wings.  In fact the only thing that truly had definition about the Seraphim was her wings.  Lucifer didn't speculate on the humour of the first order.  The communication was brief.  The Seraphim pouring her commands directly into Lucifer's consciousness.  Which made him wonder why she'd bothered to detach at all.

Opening his eyes within the Matrix, he dismissed the though at once and began downloading all information pertaining to 'the One'.

TBC…

18:02, 27/03/02