Title: The Best Homework Excuse Ever
Rating: PG-13. Very little language and none of it is graphic.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own the Matrix trilogy, the canon characters, story or anything related. I can only wish that I did. I make no profit from this – I am merely exercising my writing skills for the reading pleasure of readers. However, I own this story. I own the character Chase, and Lady Delerith owns Ari.
Authors' notes:
Solia: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter! I really appreciate it. Thanks to Del, for loading it up for me. I must be such a pain, knowing nothing...
Delerith: How do you like our story so far? It will get better and much more 'Matrixy' in this chapter! And don't worry, we'll update soon. Never fear for Lady Delerith and Solia are here!
THE BEST HOMEWORK EXCUSE EVER: Chapter two
Ari stepped nervously into the computer technology lab. 'Nervous?' She felt annoyed at herself. She was never nervous. This whole no-friends deal really sucked. She wished she'd met Sarah-Jane and asked the way to the counsellor earlier. Then, maybe, she would have gotten time to get to know those girls. She could hardly remember their names – Ashley? Kerry? Caroline? Annie? – but she still remembered Sophie. The twins had looked so alike, but it was obvious that they were very different. Carrie, or Kerry, or whatever her name was, was just a normal girl, an airhead like everyone else in this strange world. She wasn't special. She was happy with her reality.
Sophie had a different expression in her black eyes. It was the same look Ari had felt her entire life. Haunted, confused, odd. Like Ari, Sophie could tell that there was something wrong with the world around them. Something they couldn't quite put their finger on, but that was driving them up the wall for not knowing. Something that set them apart from everyone and everything else.
"Ah – our new girl!" the teacher of this class said loudly. Ari tried not to wince. Every teacher had said that so far. Thank God – if there was one in this horrible place – that this was the second-to-last lesson of the day. The whole class looked up at her.
"Yeah," Ari said quickly, trying not to look away from the curious stares.
"Um..." The teacher fumbled for his roll. He sat in the front of the two- computer tables, at his desk, a big wooden cross hanging from a chain on his neck. Some people were so obsessive of their religion. But then again, she was in a Christian school now.
"Amanda Saunders?" the teacher asked, looking over his giant reading glasses. Wanting to groan aloud, Ari nodded. Why couldn't her dumb parents just enrol her as Kye next time? She hated her parents, and the fact that they insisted on enrolling her as Amanda, despite the fact that she hadn't gone by the name for years, just made her hatred more intense.
"That's me, but can you change my name, please? I don't usually call myself that. My name's Kye." "I am afraid we are not permitted to change a child's Christian names on the registers unless cleared by a parent," the teacher said. His badge said that his name was Mr Barry. "You will need to get a signed slip from your parents, and then take it administration, and they will make the changes."
Ari nodded, hiding her disappointment. No way would her parents change it for her. They 'wouldn't have time'. She'd just have to forge their signatures... Oh, well, she'd done worse. She'd done much, much worse illegal stuff. Hacking computers, breaking into locked Internet sites under the alias of Ari...
"Amanda, why do you not sit here, beside Sophie? We are doing a quick test right now, to check your levels of skill, so we need quiet. Not silence, but quiet." Mr Barry pointed at a spare computer. Ari dropped her book bag beside the chair and sank into it, grateful that now the other girls weren't staring at her.
"Kye?"
Ari turned quickly, and realised that she'd been seated beside Sophie – the Sophie from that morning, not any other Sophie. The girl brushed her chest- length dark-chocolate brown hair out of her face and smiled hesitantly.
"Hi," she said. She glanced quickly at their teacher and switched on Ari's computer with incredible, practiced speed. She obviously spent a lot of time on computers.
Ari felt a smile quirk at her mouth. She and Sophie seemed to have a lot in common. Although of course, it was highly unlikely that Sophie was an unauthorised hacker after hours, referring to herself mentally as her hacking alias, while also calling herself Sophie. Highly unlikely, but maybe possible?
"You like computers?" Ari asked, forgetting to keep quiet. Mr Barry shot her a nasty look. Sophie glanced up at him, and as soon as he looked away, she rolled her eyes.
"Yeah," she answered finally in a low voice. Before Ari could take control of her computer, Sophie brought up the typing program they were using for the test. She also, with another glance at Mr Barry, accessed an Internet instant-e-mail site. Ari noticed that she had the same site on her own computer screen. Sophie turned back to hers, flashing a quick smile as she clicked on the e-mail site. She waited for Ari to silently join the site – calling herself Kye instead of her preferred name of Ari – and then she started typing a message to her, her slender fingers flying over keyboard like she was born to it.
This test is so boring. Ari smiled over at her as she read the first message. Feeling her competitive streak coming out and determined to type faster than Sophie, she selected 'reply', and typed as fast as she could, never making mistakes.
I usually love computers, but this makes typing seem so sad.
I know. I'd kill for some challenges. Fun, you know? Like, on the Internet. Too bad the school's got big blocks and stuff against outside systems – I want to go to outside sites.
Ari wished that she could just go home and go down into her basement, where her computer was hidden. Her parents and stupid brother didn't seem to notice her long disappearances. They didn't notice anything, not even her suicide attempts years ago. She was often missing for half the day, secretly hacking, breaking into protected sites. Or, sometimes, receiving mysterious, somewhat disturbing messages from a very unusual outside source...
Mr Barry was heading in their direction, so they both hid the site behind the typing program and got to work.
"Well, you two can certainly type," he said approvingly, not noticing Ari and Sophie's nervous, guilty looks as they frantically typed to make up for lost time. Thankfully, he was too caught up in their actual typing to notice how little words were on their screens. After a minute, he left them alone, going off to tell a girl called Rebecca, who had just exclaimed, "Stupid godforsaken computers!" that she shouldn't use God's name in vain.
"I wasn't!" Rebecca said crossly, folding her arms and standing up. While Mr Barry was distracted, Ari brought up the e-mail site again and typed a super-fast message to Sophie.
This school is strict. Sophie read it in half a second and started to reply.
Yeah, but like everything in this world, it's not so bad if you can find a way around the rules.
Ari smiled. That was something she would say. She sent another message, glancing over her shoulder at their teacher. Mr Barry was now angrily telling Rebecca that she was sinfully disobeying her teacher by refusing to go to the school counsellor for her bad behaviour. Quite a few other girls were sniggering, although whenever Mr Barry turned to see who it was, they all went quiet and expressionless.
Who said anything about heeding the rules at all? Ari computer asked.
Usually, I'd agree, but this is school. Outside of school, yeah – rules were made to be broken. Learn them well so that you can break them properly.
Ari tried to think of a response, but then Sophie started typing again, kind of urgently.
Kye, what happened to your hands? Even the words looked demanding.
Ari glanced down at her hands, confused. Did Sophie have something against black nail polish? Oh, right. She knew what it was now. Her wrists, she meant. The crisscrossing white lines on her wrists.
Those were symbols of her independence and frustration. Before she had gotten into hacking, she had been so furious with herself for not knowing what was wrong with the world that she had decided that it wasn't worth living in. She had figured that the only way out of this place was death. Besides, she had other reasons for wanting out. She lived in a big house with rich parents, but that was about all she had ever had going for her. She was too rebellious and angry to make lasting friendships, so she had never had much of a school life. Ari had never gotten along with her parents or her despised, 'perfect' brother, so her home life was messed up. The whole family was screwed. They had too much money and didn't seem to realise half the time that they even had a daughter. They didn't even know that she was a weirdo. Ari's favourite story of all time was Matilda. She could so easily relate to the little girl in that great book. She liked to imagine that she had special abilities that might some day be discovered and respected by someone who would come and take her away from her ignorant family.
Then she had gotten hooked on finding out what this 'Matrix' was, and suicide took backseat.
Suicide scars, Ari replied shamelessly. I'm not suicidal any more, though. Don't worry.
Sophie gave her a slow, calculating look. She was obviously more sympathetic and life respecting than Ari could ever hope to be. But she had more to live for. She had heaps of friends, family that cared...
Sophie glanced over her shoulder, causing Ari to do the same. When they looked back, they were in for a surprise.
The screen of Ari's computer had started to flicker. To her bewilderment, so had Sophie's. Then both screens blacked out.
"What?" Sophie muttered, tapping her screen uselessly. She looked over at Ari's, noticed that they had the same problem, and then looked around the class. Ari leaned around her computer to look at the girls in front of her, two of Sophie's friends, although she couldn't remember their names.
Those two girls were still busily working on their computers, their screens perfect. In fact, everyone else in the room was doing fine with their computers. So why had the two computers being used by the best computing students in the class suddenly shut off?
"Kye..."
Ari glanced back at Sophie. The other girl was staring at her own screen with avid attention. Ari blinked when she saw what was happening to Sophie's (and her own, she realised with a sudden shock) screen. Both were still black, but at the top, green type had started to write across them.
'Having fun at school?...'
"Huh?" Sophie asked quietly. Like Ari, she didn't try to escape the program or whatever had taken over. Ari had no idea why Sophie didn't, but for herself, she didn't bother because this had happened before. Just never at school or anywhere but at home. This was the unknown contactor, the outside system or person who kept sending her those mysterious messages that made little or no sense.
'You have questions. I have answers.'
Ari paid careful attention. It was true – she had questions. She reminded herself to pretend afterwards to Sophie that she had no idea what this all meant. Sure, Sophie obviously had questions, too. Exactly the same questions, in fact. But Ari wasn't sure if she was ready for them. After all, Ari was the one who had been contacted by this person before.
'Follow the white rabbit... Follow the yellow-brick road... Into the woods... Take the carriage home...'
Huh? Ari asked herself mentally. Who did this person think they were? Dorothy going to Oz? Alice in Wonderland? And where the hell did they think she was going to find all of this stuff? Whoever it was that was typing this was quite possibly out of their mind.
'Trouble, girls...'
"Sophie? Amanda?"
They both snapped their heads around to Mr Barry, now completely over telling Rebecca off. He stood behind them, ignoring their guilty faces as he stared at the screens. Ari turned back, getting worried – what if he saw the messages? But the screens were both blank. The green words were gone.
"Why did you turn your computers off?" Mr Barry demanded. Ari glanced nervously at Sophie, wishing that she wasn't so worried. Somewhere, a bell went.
"That's why," Sophie said quickly, scooping up her bag and starting for the door.
"Not so fast, girls," Mr Barry said disapprovingly. He released the rest of the class and turned back to Ari and Sophie. "I see that you turned your computers off ahead of time so that I would not see your test results. I trust that you saved them, because I will be checking them tomorrow after lunch."
"Uh, yeah," Sophie lied quickly. Well, what were they supposed to say? 'Oh, sorry, sir, but we didn't get time to save our three paragraphs of typing because some unknown outside source caused our computers to crash'? Yeah, right. I sounded stupid even in Ari's head.
They both sighed internally as Mr Barry set them their detentions for that afternoon. Half an hour of scrubbing the desks in the library! Gross – Sophie miserably filled Ari in about the gum girls put underneath them...
"Anyway – about that program crash," Sophie added quickly, as Rayleigh started toward them with Carrie, Sophie's twin. "I have no idea what it was about. You?"
"No clue," Ari said with a would-be lost smile.
"Hi," Rayleigh said. Again, for like the hundredth time that day, she was twisting small locks of her hair into plaits. She linked her arm into Ari's. "You're in my RE class," she added, rolling her eyes.
She said RE, but it sounded like 'Ari'. The owner of the name glanced up at her, responding to the identity, then looked down again. She had to stop responding to that name.
Rayleigh led her away. Ari walked beside her, but she was thinking of that final message. How did this person always know what was happening? It was like he or she was forever watching her.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own the Matrix trilogy, the canon characters, story or anything related. I can only wish that I did. I make no profit from this – I am merely exercising my writing skills for the reading pleasure of readers. However, I own this story. I own the character Chase, and Lady Delerith owns Ari.
Authors' notes:
Solia: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter! I really appreciate it. Thanks to Del, for loading it up for me. I must be such a pain, knowing nothing...
Delerith: How do you like our story so far? It will get better and much more 'Matrixy' in this chapter! And don't worry, we'll update soon. Never fear for Lady Delerith and Solia are here!
THE BEST HOMEWORK EXCUSE EVER: Chapter two
Ari stepped nervously into the computer technology lab. 'Nervous?' She felt annoyed at herself. She was never nervous. This whole no-friends deal really sucked. She wished she'd met Sarah-Jane and asked the way to the counsellor earlier. Then, maybe, she would have gotten time to get to know those girls. She could hardly remember their names – Ashley? Kerry? Caroline? Annie? – but she still remembered Sophie. The twins had looked so alike, but it was obvious that they were very different. Carrie, or Kerry, or whatever her name was, was just a normal girl, an airhead like everyone else in this strange world. She wasn't special. She was happy with her reality.
Sophie had a different expression in her black eyes. It was the same look Ari had felt her entire life. Haunted, confused, odd. Like Ari, Sophie could tell that there was something wrong with the world around them. Something they couldn't quite put their finger on, but that was driving them up the wall for not knowing. Something that set them apart from everyone and everything else.
"Ah – our new girl!" the teacher of this class said loudly. Ari tried not to wince. Every teacher had said that so far. Thank God – if there was one in this horrible place – that this was the second-to-last lesson of the day. The whole class looked up at her.
"Yeah," Ari said quickly, trying not to look away from the curious stares.
"Um..." The teacher fumbled for his roll. He sat in the front of the two- computer tables, at his desk, a big wooden cross hanging from a chain on his neck. Some people were so obsessive of their religion. But then again, she was in a Christian school now.
"Amanda Saunders?" the teacher asked, looking over his giant reading glasses. Wanting to groan aloud, Ari nodded. Why couldn't her dumb parents just enrol her as Kye next time? She hated her parents, and the fact that they insisted on enrolling her as Amanda, despite the fact that she hadn't gone by the name for years, just made her hatred more intense.
"That's me, but can you change my name, please? I don't usually call myself that. My name's Kye." "I am afraid we are not permitted to change a child's Christian names on the registers unless cleared by a parent," the teacher said. His badge said that his name was Mr Barry. "You will need to get a signed slip from your parents, and then take it administration, and they will make the changes."
Ari nodded, hiding her disappointment. No way would her parents change it for her. They 'wouldn't have time'. She'd just have to forge their signatures... Oh, well, she'd done worse. She'd done much, much worse illegal stuff. Hacking computers, breaking into locked Internet sites under the alias of Ari...
"Amanda, why do you not sit here, beside Sophie? We are doing a quick test right now, to check your levels of skill, so we need quiet. Not silence, but quiet." Mr Barry pointed at a spare computer. Ari dropped her book bag beside the chair and sank into it, grateful that now the other girls weren't staring at her.
"Kye?"
Ari turned quickly, and realised that she'd been seated beside Sophie – the Sophie from that morning, not any other Sophie. The girl brushed her chest- length dark-chocolate brown hair out of her face and smiled hesitantly.
"Hi," she said. She glanced quickly at their teacher and switched on Ari's computer with incredible, practiced speed. She obviously spent a lot of time on computers.
Ari felt a smile quirk at her mouth. She and Sophie seemed to have a lot in common. Although of course, it was highly unlikely that Sophie was an unauthorised hacker after hours, referring to herself mentally as her hacking alias, while also calling herself Sophie. Highly unlikely, but maybe possible?
"You like computers?" Ari asked, forgetting to keep quiet. Mr Barry shot her a nasty look. Sophie glanced up at him, and as soon as he looked away, she rolled her eyes.
"Yeah," she answered finally in a low voice. Before Ari could take control of her computer, Sophie brought up the typing program they were using for the test. She also, with another glance at Mr Barry, accessed an Internet instant-e-mail site. Ari noticed that she had the same site on her own computer screen. Sophie turned back to hers, flashing a quick smile as she clicked on the e-mail site. She waited for Ari to silently join the site – calling herself Kye instead of her preferred name of Ari – and then she started typing a message to her, her slender fingers flying over keyboard like she was born to it.
This test is so boring. Ari smiled over at her as she read the first message. Feeling her competitive streak coming out and determined to type faster than Sophie, she selected 'reply', and typed as fast as she could, never making mistakes.
I usually love computers, but this makes typing seem so sad.
I know. I'd kill for some challenges. Fun, you know? Like, on the Internet. Too bad the school's got big blocks and stuff against outside systems – I want to go to outside sites.
Ari wished that she could just go home and go down into her basement, where her computer was hidden. Her parents and stupid brother didn't seem to notice her long disappearances. They didn't notice anything, not even her suicide attempts years ago. She was often missing for half the day, secretly hacking, breaking into protected sites. Or, sometimes, receiving mysterious, somewhat disturbing messages from a very unusual outside source...
Mr Barry was heading in their direction, so they both hid the site behind the typing program and got to work.
"Well, you two can certainly type," he said approvingly, not noticing Ari and Sophie's nervous, guilty looks as they frantically typed to make up for lost time. Thankfully, he was too caught up in their actual typing to notice how little words were on their screens. After a minute, he left them alone, going off to tell a girl called Rebecca, who had just exclaimed, "Stupid godforsaken computers!" that she shouldn't use God's name in vain.
"I wasn't!" Rebecca said crossly, folding her arms and standing up. While Mr Barry was distracted, Ari brought up the e-mail site again and typed a super-fast message to Sophie.
This school is strict. Sophie read it in half a second and started to reply.
Yeah, but like everything in this world, it's not so bad if you can find a way around the rules.
Ari smiled. That was something she would say. She sent another message, glancing over her shoulder at their teacher. Mr Barry was now angrily telling Rebecca that she was sinfully disobeying her teacher by refusing to go to the school counsellor for her bad behaviour. Quite a few other girls were sniggering, although whenever Mr Barry turned to see who it was, they all went quiet and expressionless.
Who said anything about heeding the rules at all? Ari computer asked.
Usually, I'd agree, but this is school. Outside of school, yeah – rules were made to be broken. Learn them well so that you can break them properly.
Ari tried to think of a response, but then Sophie started typing again, kind of urgently.
Kye, what happened to your hands? Even the words looked demanding.
Ari glanced down at her hands, confused. Did Sophie have something against black nail polish? Oh, right. She knew what it was now. Her wrists, she meant. The crisscrossing white lines on her wrists.
Those were symbols of her independence and frustration. Before she had gotten into hacking, she had been so furious with herself for not knowing what was wrong with the world that she had decided that it wasn't worth living in. She had figured that the only way out of this place was death. Besides, she had other reasons for wanting out. She lived in a big house with rich parents, but that was about all she had ever had going for her. She was too rebellious and angry to make lasting friendships, so she had never had much of a school life. Ari had never gotten along with her parents or her despised, 'perfect' brother, so her home life was messed up. The whole family was screwed. They had too much money and didn't seem to realise half the time that they even had a daughter. They didn't even know that she was a weirdo. Ari's favourite story of all time was Matilda. She could so easily relate to the little girl in that great book. She liked to imagine that she had special abilities that might some day be discovered and respected by someone who would come and take her away from her ignorant family.
Then she had gotten hooked on finding out what this 'Matrix' was, and suicide took backseat.
Suicide scars, Ari replied shamelessly. I'm not suicidal any more, though. Don't worry.
Sophie gave her a slow, calculating look. She was obviously more sympathetic and life respecting than Ari could ever hope to be. But she had more to live for. She had heaps of friends, family that cared...
Sophie glanced over her shoulder, causing Ari to do the same. When they looked back, they were in for a surprise.
The screen of Ari's computer had started to flicker. To her bewilderment, so had Sophie's. Then both screens blacked out.
"What?" Sophie muttered, tapping her screen uselessly. She looked over at Ari's, noticed that they had the same problem, and then looked around the class. Ari leaned around her computer to look at the girls in front of her, two of Sophie's friends, although she couldn't remember their names.
Those two girls were still busily working on their computers, their screens perfect. In fact, everyone else in the room was doing fine with their computers. So why had the two computers being used by the best computing students in the class suddenly shut off?
"Kye..."
Ari glanced back at Sophie. The other girl was staring at her own screen with avid attention. Ari blinked when she saw what was happening to Sophie's (and her own, she realised with a sudden shock) screen. Both were still black, but at the top, green type had started to write across them.
'Having fun at school?...'
"Huh?" Sophie asked quietly. Like Ari, she didn't try to escape the program or whatever had taken over. Ari had no idea why Sophie didn't, but for herself, she didn't bother because this had happened before. Just never at school or anywhere but at home. This was the unknown contactor, the outside system or person who kept sending her those mysterious messages that made little or no sense.
'You have questions. I have answers.'
Ari paid careful attention. It was true – she had questions. She reminded herself to pretend afterwards to Sophie that she had no idea what this all meant. Sure, Sophie obviously had questions, too. Exactly the same questions, in fact. But Ari wasn't sure if she was ready for them. After all, Ari was the one who had been contacted by this person before.
'Follow the white rabbit... Follow the yellow-brick road... Into the woods... Take the carriage home...'
Huh? Ari asked herself mentally. Who did this person think they were? Dorothy going to Oz? Alice in Wonderland? And where the hell did they think she was going to find all of this stuff? Whoever it was that was typing this was quite possibly out of their mind.
'Trouble, girls...'
"Sophie? Amanda?"
They both snapped their heads around to Mr Barry, now completely over telling Rebecca off. He stood behind them, ignoring their guilty faces as he stared at the screens. Ari turned back, getting worried – what if he saw the messages? But the screens were both blank. The green words were gone.
"Why did you turn your computers off?" Mr Barry demanded. Ari glanced nervously at Sophie, wishing that she wasn't so worried. Somewhere, a bell went.
"That's why," Sophie said quickly, scooping up her bag and starting for the door.
"Not so fast, girls," Mr Barry said disapprovingly. He released the rest of the class and turned back to Ari and Sophie. "I see that you turned your computers off ahead of time so that I would not see your test results. I trust that you saved them, because I will be checking them tomorrow after lunch."
"Uh, yeah," Sophie lied quickly. Well, what were they supposed to say? 'Oh, sorry, sir, but we didn't get time to save our three paragraphs of typing because some unknown outside source caused our computers to crash'? Yeah, right. I sounded stupid even in Ari's head.
They both sighed internally as Mr Barry set them their detentions for that afternoon. Half an hour of scrubbing the desks in the library! Gross – Sophie miserably filled Ari in about the gum girls put underneath them...
"Anyway – about that program crash," Sophie added quickly, as Rayleigh started toward them with Carrie, Sophie's twin. "I have no idea what it was about. You?"
"No clue," Ari said with a would-be lost smile.
"Hi," Rayleigh said. Again, for like the hundredth time that day, she was twisting small locks of her hair into plaits. She linked her arm into Ari's. "You're in my RE class," she added, rolling her eyes.
She said RE, but it sounded like 'Ari'. The owner of the name glanced up at her, responding to the identity, then looked down again. She had to stop responding to that name.
Rayleigh led her away. Ari walked beside her, but she was thinking of that final message. How did this person always know what was happening? It was like he or she was forever watching her.
