Verity (part 7)
The nightmare stretched into a dark eternity. It had started the usual way, with him trapped inside the transparent coffin, black cables growing out of his body. But Jim was tired of just lying there in nameless terror, tired of feeling helpless. He lifted up his hand to touch the surface above him, and it gave. He pushed, and punched his hand through the transparent membrane. Then he sat up, and pulled out the breathing apparatus that was stuck down his throat. He coughed violently, bringing up a clear liquid, probably the same that he had been floating in. He'd hardly taken more than a few breaths when a huge crab-like robot hovered in front of him, seized him by the throat, unscrewed the huge cable attached at the back of his neck, then dropped him back into the pod like a piece of detritus. That appeared to trigger a chain reaction, because the black cables popped off him one after another, with a loud snapping sound. At the back of the pod, a hole opened suddenly, draining out the liquid, and pulling him with it, hurtling down a dark drain, until he shot out another hole, out into the air for a moment, and then plunged into a foul-smelling body of water with a splash. Whether it was a river, a drain, a moat or a lake, he couldn't tell. He was too busy just trying to stay afloat.
What seemed like hours later, he was startled by a bright light. Something rattled above him, a grapple of some kind. It grabbed him around the torso. He dangled like a prize in a child's grab-it game. Up and up he went. Doors shut with a clang, and the bright light shut off. Voices then, and human hands, carrying him to a table. Pain then, and the dulling of pain. Blood he could smell, his own. Disinfectant, and sharp machine smells. Sharp pains, and a forest of needles sticking into him. Muscles, stimulated. And voices telling him it was going to be fine, and to calm down. Medical lies, he didn't believe them. Noises afflicted his ears: the screeching of metal on metal, the thump-thump-thump of motors, shouts thundering on his eardrums, and an infernal humming that wouldn't go away. And then it would become so silent he couldn't even hear himself breathing. But at that point he would be gagging at the smells: blood, sweat, disinfectant, the scent of his own waste. And if not that, he cringed at the rasping touch of the sack-cloth he was wrapped in. One torment after another. He drifted on a sea of pain, trying to find the dials, but he was too tired.
He came to himself, lying on a narrow bunk in a small room. A cell? He blinked several times, eyes watering, until his eyes adjusted to the light. He went to rub his eyes and noticed his left arm had a tube sticking out of it. Not a simple needle taped and sticking into a vein, this was large, plugged into a socket in his arm that looked as if it had been there a long time. No tenderness or redness was evident where it joined his flesh. No tenderness there, but in other places on his arms there was tenderness and subtle scarring. As if something else had been removed. What the hell was going on? How long had he been out of it? Because he was sure that this, here, now, was no dream.
Jim moved his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up -- too quickly. His head pounded and he felt faint. He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass. What had they done to him? Who were they? Where was he?
He opened his eyes again and looked around. The room was small, with barely enough room to stand beside the bed he sat on. The walls were metal, and he could feel the throbbing of engines vibrating through the wall at his back. The door had a high sill and round corners, and had a wheel instead of a handle. He was on a ship? But he couldn't smell the salt tang of the sea, just metal and oil and electricity and the flatness of recycled air. A submarine? Had he been taken by a foreign government? Taken and tortured and -- What else? What had they done to him? What mission had he been on? What had happened to his men? Had he told his captors anything? Though with Sodium Pentathol they surely wouldn't have needed torture. He pulled the tube out of his arm and threw it down with disgust. The other end was attached to an IV bag hung up on the wall, but this was no hospital. He had no reason to cooperate with his captors, whoever they were.
He looked himself over. He was wearing patched trousers faded to an indeterminate grey, and a stained t-shirt under a ragged sweater that had seen better days. No expense spared for the prisoner, eh? He felt his head. His hair was cropped short, shorter than he usually had it. When his hand moved down to the nape of his neck, he jerked back like he'd been burned. Metal. Gingerly he touched it again. Another socket, larger than the one in his arm, of different design. Again, no tenderness around it. His mind flashed on an image, a silver and black metal monstrosity holding him up while something whirred at the back of his neck. Nightmare. What the hell is going on? Head pounding, he lay back down again, and closed his eyes.
He heard footsteps approaching. He tensed, then relaxed. No point trying to escape until he knew more. If he was on a sub then trying to get outside would be suicidal. The wheel turned and the door opened with a clang that made him wince.
"Captain James Ellison, ODA 731," he said, turning his head to look at whoever they'd sent to check the prisoner.
It was a girl, barely a woman, with pale skin and short brown curly hair. Her clothes were as grey and patched as his own. Her brown eyes were wide with surprise or shock. She shook her head. "You aren't a prisoner!" she exclaimed. "We rescued you. Actually, you rescued yourself, but we rescued you afterwards."
His eyes narrowed. Rescued? What an interesting propaganda ploy. No point in wasting time with the girl, she obviously knew nothing.
"Do you want something to eat?" she asked.
His stomach revolted at the thought of food. He shook his head.
"Sorry, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Gecko," she said, holding out her hand.
"Captain James Ellison, ODA 731," he repeated.
She pulled back her hand as if she'd been slapped. "I'll tell them you're awake," she said, and turned to go.
What he saw then riveted him to the spot; at the back of her neck was a socket like the one at the back of his own. The door clanged behind her before he could shake himself out of his shock. What did it mean? Was she a fellow prisoner who'd been wired up too? She seemed free to come and go. But then she must have swallowed the party line, whatever it was.
He followed her progress with his ears, without thinking about it. She walked at first, then ran, opening and closing a few doors on the way.
"He's awake, he's awake," her high voice called out. "But he thinks he's still in the Army! He thinks we captured him! All he'll say is his name, rank and serial number!" She sounded upset.
"He's cracked," said another voice, a man's. He had a trace of an accent. British? London? "Maybe he'd've been better off if we'd left him to drown."
Drown? Wasn't that part of the nightmare?
"Don't say that!" Gecko protested. "Don't say he's crazy!"
"No," said another man, "he's too strong for that. He's just confused. As we all were, at first."
"You can't say it wasn't a mercy that the woman drowned before we could get to her," said the first man. "She was crazier than a loon, from all accounts, and it wasn't from the waking up."
"That's enough, Dart," a third man said, in a deep, mellifluous voice. "We can't say what would or wouldn't have happened if we'd gotten to her in time. Right now we have Jim Ellison to look after, and we must do the best we can."
"He's too old to cope," said another voice, a woman. "You know that, Morpheus."
Morpheus? Where have I heard that name before?
"Ordinarily, yes, but he woke up on his own," said the second man. "That's got to count for something. Even I didn't do that."
"People have woken up before," Morpheus said. "They usually die. Or get killed by Agents. Or go crazy."
What's all this stuff about waking up? They obviously aren't talking about the morning after a good night's sleep.
"Why did you bother, then?" the second man said, darkly.
"Maybe I'm an optimist," Morpheus said dryly.
"He'll never trust us," said Dart. "He's a copper, he's wired into their mentality."
The logjam of Jim's memories broke. He wasn't in the Army, he was a Detective. Morpheus was a terrorist, and the woman they were talking about having drowned might well be Alex Barnes. A sentinel. As he himself was a sentinel. What do they think they've rescued me from? he wondered. Smith? And where did someone like Morpheus get a submarine? They weren't like rockets or guns, sold off to the highest bidder with the right contacts. Maybe it wasn't a sub after all. Maybe the engine he heard/felt was just a generator. Or maybe they had the backing of some minor government, bent on mayhem.
"Then we just have to find someone he can listen to. If that doesn't work, if he is crazy, we'll take him to Zion," Morpheus said. "They can look after him there."
Zion? What? Are they Zionists, Israeli separatists?
"If he doesn't off us all first," said Dart, "trying to escape."
"But there's nowhere for him to go," the second man said. "Leaving the Nebuchadnezzar won't get him one inch closer to what he thinks of as home."
"Yes, but he don't know that," Dart pointed out. "There's one thing worse than coppers, and that's Army. And Army that thinks its behind enemy lines doesn't have any compunction about killing."
"If he can," the second man scoffed.
"You may be a god in the Matrix, Neo, but this is the real world," Dart returned.
"Dart does have a point," the woman said. "If he doesn't know there's nowhere to escape to, he might try."
"But I don't think Ellison is in any shape to kill anyone," Neo said. "From what Kay said, he's barely recovered. Weak as a kitten. And I know this isn't the Matrix, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten everything about combat. Have you?"
What is the Matrix?
At that moment, an alarm sounded, blasting in Jim's ears. He curled up, covering his ears, then nearly fell off the bed as the whole place jerked and moved, as from a sudden change in course. It must be a submarine after all. The alarm cut off as suddenly as it had started. Jim slowly uncurled, and sat up. Another thud jolted him back to the bed, and then the lights went out.
Blackness. Silence.
Jim's pupils dilated wide. It wasn't that sentinels could see in the dark, so much as that they were able to make the best use of what light there was, from stars or moon or city lights. But here there were no stars, no moon, no windows, no cracks. The emergency lights had not come on. Jim's eyes strained in the darkness.
"Sentinels approaching."
He must have unconsciously turned up his hearing also. Had he heard that right? Sentinels?
"Stand by on the EMP."
"Standing by."
Jim clutched the side of his bed, feeling suddenly dizzy. EMP? Electro-Magnetic Pulse? This wasn't a nuclear sub, was it? What the hell is going on?
"Now!"
That was all the warning he got, before everything around him was outlined in blue fire. It danced along the edges of everything, including his own body. He held up his hand and looked at it, fascinated by the glow. Almost immediately it started to fade. What was it? He had to see.
A minute later the lights came on, but Jim didn't notice.
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The smell of burning sage assaulted Jim's nostrils. He sneezed. "Sandburg! What did I say about your moth--" he broke off, remembering he wasn't in the loft, Sandburg wasn't there, and nobody should be burning sage on a submarine.
He opened his eyes. Naomi Sandburg stood over him, waving a bundle of burning sage. She wore a tunic and pants much like his own, but they were dyed a washed-out brown. "Naomi!" Jim exclaimed, sitting up. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Bringing you out of a zone-out," Naomi said. "Isn't that what Blair calls it?"
"What are you talking about, Naomi?" Jim dissembled, trying to wave the smoke away from him and sneezing again.
She blew out the sage and tossed it to the end of the room, near the door, where it still smoldered a little. "I do read Blair's papers, you know," she said, moving Jim's legs over and sitting next to him on the bed. "The ones I can get hold of. I don't understand everything, but I do know what he was doing his thesis about: sentinels. People with enhanced senses, tribal guardians. And if one of these gifted people concentrates too hard on any one sense, they fall into a sensory black hole. The world goes away. "
She knew about sentinels. She knew enough to recognise a zone-out when she saw one. He must have zoned out, he knew that. Was there any point denying it? Jim studied Naomi. She seemed older, somehow, her hair not quite so vibrant a red as he remembered, crows feet in the corners of her eyes. More like someone her age ought to look. Old habits die hard. "You think I'm one of these... sentinels," he said cautiously.
"Well, that's obvious -- now." She shook her head, smiling ruefully. "But Blair's always been interested in so many things, I believed him when he said he was studying the pi--police, especially because he wrote some papers about it too. " She touched his arm, squeezing it. "But I should have realized there was something special about you, something different."
He noticed there was an IV tube in his arm again. She noticed the direction of his gaze, and pulled out the tube. "You don't need that now," she said. "They were really worried about you, you know. Kay burnt the candle at both ends trying to figure out what was wrong with you. Are you okay now?" She placed a hand on his brow. "Headache?"
"Naomi," he said, removing her hand, "what are you doing here? Did they kidnap you too?"
She laughed. "Me? Kidnapped? Of course not!"
"But Morpheus is a terrorist --"
"A freedom-fighter," Naomi corrected. "I don't agree with his methods -- death is never justified -- but we share the same goal: the freedom of humanity."
"The freedom of humanity?" Jim echoed. He knew that Naomi was a somewhat ditsy idealist, but this was going a bit far, even for her. "I wasn't aware that humanity needed freeing," he said, not quite able to remove the irony from his voice.
"Of course not," Naomi said. "You were asleep."
"And you're going to wake me up, is that it?" When Naomi had visited them in Cascade, he'd been patient with her weirdnesses, but he couldn't afford to do that now. Not with his life at stake, and possibly hers, despite her assurances.
"No, you woke yourself up," she said.
"This is obviously some new meaning of the phrase 'wake up' of which I was not aware," he said dryly.
"But you know, Jim," she said. "How could you wake up and not know it?"
"I've woken up in dreams," he said. "That doesn't mean I woke up."
"In dreams?" she said. "Of course. You thought it was a dream." Her face fell. She put her hands on his arms and said earnestly, "You don't think this is a dream, do you?"
"No," he said. But he didn't add "of course not". It was all too strange.
"Good!" she said, smiling, almost bouncing, in a way that reminded him painfully of Blair.
"Naomi," he said. "Do you know -- Is Blair all right?"
A shadow passed over her face. "I don't know," she said. "The last I heard from him was when I told him to go to the Oracle, the day after you woke up."
Woke up in a manner that she still hasn't explained. "When was this?"
"A few weeks ago," she said.
Weeks? he thought, fighting down panic. I've been out of it for weeks? He turned his attention back to Naomi. "I told him to leave if I disappeared," he said. "He's probably just laying low."
"You think so?" she said hopefully. "I guess we would have heard if they'd gotten him." She touched her heart. "I know he's in danger, but he isn't dead."
"Naomi, who are they?" He considered his suspicions about Agents Smith and Harman. "Some sort of conspiracy inside the government?"
Naomi shook her head. "They are beyond all governments, beyond all laws."
"What, some kind of secret society, like the Illuminati?" he said skeptically.
Naomi shook her head and sighed. "Jim, you are so bound up in your old ways of thinking, you can't see what's in front of you. If you can't listen, I can't explain."
"How can I listen when what you say doesn't make any sense?" Jim burst out.
"I'm sorry," they both said at the same time.
Naomi settled herself into a lotus position on the bed. "Let's start again," she said. "Did Blair ever mention the Men Without Faces?"
"Yes, but it's just a fairy t--" Naomi silenced him with a finger on his lips.
"Shh. Shh. Listen," she said.
Jim shut his mouth and turned his attention to Naomi.
"Once upon a time, near the beginning of the 21st century --" She held up a finger as Jim opened his mouth. "Ah, ah, don't interrupt. Once upon a time, at the beginning of the 21st century, mankind was so proud that it thought it could create life. And they created a mind, inside a machine, a mind without a soul. And it made more of its kind, but that was not enough. And some men were afraid, and some were foolish, as men always have been. And the fearful ones tried to destroy the machines, before the machines destroyed them, and there was war between mankind and the soulless ones."
The Laleo were created by a magician, a white man, but they killed him and took his power, Jim remembered.
"Now, the machines drew their power from the sun. And men said, "We can live without the sun, but they cannot. Let us block off the sun so they cannot use it." So they built a terrible weapon that made the sky go black with clouds, and they thought they had won."
The land of the Laleo was a land of black clouds that hid the sun, an eternal storm that never blessed the ground with rain, Jim remembered.
"But the machine-minds were clever. "Men can live without the sun," they said, "so we will live off men. We will warm ourselves with their warmth, and power ourselves with their power. And we will build suns of our own, and use that power also." But they knew they couldn't just capture men and use them, for the men would spend all their energy trying to escape. So when they captured men, they put them into an enchanted sleep, and put their minds inside a machine, where they dreamt that they were awake, in a world of dreams the machines had built, while all the time they were really sleeping."
A chill went down Jim's spine as more parts of the story of the Laleo flashed into Jim's mind. Enchanted sleep, black cords draining the life out of.... No, it couldn't be!
"And to make sure that none of the captives would awaken, some of the machine minds went into the dreamworld, to patrol it, seeming like men, but having no souls. These are the Men Without Faces."
"But surely they would remember being captured?" Jim protested.
"Maybe, maybe not," Naomi said. "Maybe it was built into the dreamworld. But it soon became irrelevant, because soon there were no free humans left. The machine-minds had won. And after that, the only humans alive were the ones who had been born inside the machine, plugged into the dreamworld, into the Matrix, from the day they were born, fed through tubes, sleeping as the machines fed off them."
Jim shook his head. "Not possible," he whispered.
Naomi ignored his protest. "Then one day, there was a man born inside, who could manipulate the dream-world, change anything he wanted. He broke free of the machine, and freed others. When he died, the Oracle said that he would come again, one day, and that day would mark the beginning of the end of humanity's slavery. And after the One would come the Two, and they would do things even the One could not."
"Please, spare me the Messianic ode," Jim said.
Naomi smiled serenely. "But the One has already come," she said.
The words echoed in his memory, You may be a god inside the Matrix, Neo, but this is the real world. Jim shook his head. "It's a pretty fairy tale, but it's not possible. A dream-world that people think is real? Machines feeding off human beings? Artificial intelligence? Nobody has --"
"Nobody had," Naomi interrupted him. She turned her head away from Jim, and pointed to the back of her neck. With a shock, Jim saw that she had the same metal socket he'd seen at the back of Gecko's head, that he'd felt at the back of his own. "This," she said, "is the instrument of our former bondage." She turned to face him again. "Plug it in, and it feeds electrical impulses directly into the brain, bypassing the senses, feeding an illusion into the mind."
Jim shook his head. "I don't believe it," he said, though he knew that Naomi quite sincerely believed it herself. She'd shown none of the telltale signs of lying, such as an elevated heartbeat or a failure to meet his eyes.
"If I prove that it's possible, will you believe it then?" Naomi said.
"Prove it first," Jim said.
"Okay," she said, bouncing off the bed. "Would you like the proof now, or you would you like something to eat first?"
And let them slip a drug into my food? No way. Jim thought. "Now."
"Come on then," she said, stepping to the door. She picked up the remains of the sage from the floor and put it in a pocket. "One of the reasons I love sage," she said absently, "is that it's one of the few real things we have left. Someone actually managed to save some. I love tomatoes for the same reason."
"Tomatoes?" he said, standing behind her.
She turned the wheel of the door and pushed it open. "Yes, tomatoes. I wish I could have brought some with me, but the Nebuchadnezzar doesn't have the setup for a real hydroponics plant." She sighed. "The Apollo, on the other hand..."
"The Apollo?"
"My ship. They transferred me temporarily to the Nebuchadnezzar because you know me."
Jim wondered if he'd ever really known Naomi at all.
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