Author's Note: Thank you guys all so much for all the great feed back (Digital Angel you need to get an account here so we can talk about how you can apparently read my mind ^_~). I'm glad everyone one enjoyed the last chapter, and am very happy so many of you thought I did everything on purpose. I basically had 'Smith picks up Christine from school' as the plot of last chapter, everything else was made up on the dot.

Warning: After my build up last time is it a spoiler to warn you that Smith takes off his earpiece?

Disclaimer: -insert here-

Hollow

It had started to rain when Agent Smith led Christine back to his car. Considering how hot it had been earlier that afternoon, it was odd that water now fell from the sky. A freak weather change is what a man on the radio called it. Smith knew better. He knew it was the work of programs that couldn't agree on the season, this had been happening with more frequency lately. Perhaps it was time to replace those programs.

Smith pulled up to the house which was Christine's current foster home. She pulled her hood up and handed him a third piece of her hard candy before she said good-bye and exited the vehicle, running up to the house to get out of the rain. Smith pocketed the candy for later, he still had the second one in his mouth.

He hadn't been too impressed with these "Jolly Ranchers" at first. His plan had been to accept the candy to be polite and dispose of it when Christine was not looking. But during his venture into the bakery to take care of the exile problem, the candy had melted in his mouth, voiding the need to get rid of it later.

After he took Christine to the facility that the Agents worked from to test her programming skills (programming wasn't exactly her forte, but Christine showed some promise), he had led her back to his car, and she'd offered him a second piece, a red one this time. He hadn't expected it to taste different so his senses had been caught off guard, but in a way that he found somewhat pleasant.

Christine waved to him from the porch before she went inside disappearing from view. Smith found he had raised his hand to return the gesture. Odd. He worked with other humans and programs, he's seen them exchange this sort of farewell, but he had never himself participated in it. He never felt enough familiarity with anyone to do so.

Smith cocked his head as he pulled away from the house. He considered the possible meanings of his decision to wave back to Christine as she left. He had work to do, he would have to think about this more thoroughly later. In the meantime there was a bank robbery taking place a few blocks away and down the hill. Thus far it appeared to just be mere human action, but he was ordered to keep an eye on the situation, in case there were more exiles, or human rebels.

"How did you even know about this call?"

Agent Smith recalled Christine's curiosity about how he knew about the Ethereals from earlier, he suspected she would have questions about the bank robbery too if she were still here. He remembered her question, too, about taking off his earpiece. The inquiry had never truly left his mind, and curiously he fingered the small device in his ear.

This little thing was what connected him to the Source, nothing that happened in the Matrix was beyond his ability to see as long as there was some sort of witness. At the moment, the bank robbers, both still plugged in humans, were jumping into a car, their get-away vehicle. Smith stroked his ear piece. What would happen if he…

He pulled the ear piece out.

And was struck suddenly by the silence.

Of course it wasn't completely silent. Rain continued to fall, splattering against the windshield of his car. The window wiper pumped back and forth, and each time it did it made the same repetitive whumf. The car engines themselves made a soft humming noise, and Smith could here the splatter of water as he drove through puddles. In the cup holder, the coffee Christine had noticed earlier, jiggled with the movement of the car, the untouched and now cold liquid made its own small noises.

No, it wasn't silent, but something was missing.

It occurred to Smith that he didn't know where he was. Well, he knew where he was, of course, he was on 54th street, a few blocks away from where he had dropped of Christine. But he didn't know where he was. He didn't know what was happening around him, what the current situation with the bank robbery was. Smith noticed that his hands had started shaking. The world was full of sound, but some how it was still too quiet.

Perhaps if he turned on the radio…

Smith tried to calm himself, aware now that he was showing signs of distress. The music helped. The Agent wasn't overly fond of human music, especially not of this period, which was why he kept his car radio on a station that played music from earlier centuries, "classical music" he'd heard it called. The song that was playing when Smith turned his radio on was over. A man named the piece, and its original composer, Smith was accustom to the sound of this man's voice, it calmed him somehow, yet he noticed that his voice seemed different, now that he was listening to him without the ear piece.

More music began to play; the Agent lifted his head, recognizing it. It was the 1812 Overture, a piece he did admit a certain liking for. He reached a stop light and turned the radio up. Smith tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in turn with the music. He had seen humans do it in their cars, but never understood why they did it. Brown had once proposed a theory that it was some sort of code humans used to communicate across distances, the theory had been rejected, it appeared to just be something humans did while listening to music.

While he still didn't fully understand it, Smith was beginning to see why they did it.

Movement outside caught his attention. There was a bird in a yard, braving the rain looking for worms, or sticks. It wasn't real, it was merely a program designed to look and behave like a bird. Smith had never seen a real bird, no one had, and he found himself wondering if that was how a bird really behaved.

Then, suddenly, there was a flash of yellow-brown movement. A cat. It caught the bird, also braving the rain to find a meal. One life ended so another could continue. It was beautiful in its way. Another balance, order that nature created long before machine, and long before man. Smith looked beyond the cat and the bird, to everything else.

As an Agent he had never looked beyond what was in front of him, he never needed to. What laid before him was his path, everything else was unimportant…but beautiful, he now noticed. The detail of the Matrix was incredible, marvelous. The rain fell in sparkling drops, and occasionally the sun would peek through the black clouds, lighting the sky. There were hundreds of trees, with hundreds or branches, covered with hundreds of leaves. In those trees where small creatures, insects, mammals, birds, even a few small lizards hid in them. On the ground, there was grass, concrete and cement, thousands of blades of grass, cracks in the cement, holes concrete. This road was in need of repair.

The Matrix was beautiful.

A horn honked behind him. The light had turned green, and cars had started to form a line behind his. Agent Smith turned his attention back in front of him, it didn't matter, all of a sudden, that he had no idea what was happening around him. There was a lot more than what the Source told him.

Including a get-away car speeding to get away from cops.

As Smith's car rolled out into the intersection, the bank robbers from before turned into the corresponding road, and ran the light, not paying attention to what was in front of them. The vehicles collided. Smith's car, being the smaller of the two, was crushed by the other, both vehicles spun wildly out of control in the water filled street. Horns honked in alarm, and creatures jumped from their hiding places, started by the noise.

But Smith knew none of this.

The impact of the cars caught him entirely by surprise, he didn't know how to react, the cars continued to spin, and crash into a ravine. Pain. He was in pain. Agents didn't feel pain the same way humans did, he barely noticed every day pains, and even being shot barely made him feel anything more than slight annoyance. But now he was in pain.

He vacated the body he was using. There was a young man on the sidewalk near by, a witness to the accident, he took that body. Through a newly attached earpiece, he heard the song of the Source, relaying the accident to any other Agents nearby, and that a Vamp had been spotted by an old church on the other side of town. Agent Smith stayed where he was, his hands were shaking again as he lifted one to his ear piece.

Never again. He thought with a forced calmness, I'm never taking this off again.

Strangely he thought of Christine, and felt grateful that he hadn't taken the earpiece off while she had still been in the car with him. He wasn't sure why.

One other thing he noticed was that the Jolly Rancher in his pocket was gone.

Author's end note: Pretty exciting right?