AN: Hiya everyone! Well, it's that time of the year again…for me anyway. I'm supposed to start classes on Tuesday morning. Well, technically, class anyway. I'm only taking one class this semester and only because I have to. If I don't take one class, the grade I got on my Master's Exam (a/k/a the MCD) that I took in June won't count and I would have studied and taken the test for absolutely nothing. Since it took me about four months to study for the exam, I would rather the grade count! Either way, I promise that, barring some sort of horrible turn of events, I should be able to keep updating this little misadventure. Hopefully, you're all having a good time either in school or getting ready for it or doing whatever it is you're up to at the moment! Anyway, I hope you're all enjoying my little misadventure here. I'm trying my best to stay true to the characters and the whole idea The Matrix trilogy embodies with my own characters. I'm not entirely sure if I'm all that successful all the time, though. To anyone who's still out there reading this, you're awesome and thanks a bunch. To anyone who's left me a review, you rock like a box of socks! Thanks for all your insight and comments!
Disclaimer: I own nothing except the characters I made up and their Real World alter egos. I don't own The Matrix, The Animatrix, or any of that cool stuff. I'm broke and in graduate school studying biology. All I own are my Pointe shoes.
"Welcome to the planet
Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next?..." (from "Dare You To Move" by Switchfoot)
"Sir, not to question you or anything but do you think he's going to wake up any time soon?" Pixie asked, feeling a bit sheepish for asking such a question of her captain.
At the moment, the young woman was kneeling over the still out cold Neo- He was alive and his brain was working sure, but he still hadn't regained total consciousness yet- replacing the IV that was supplying his body with the necessary nutrients that would keep him alive until he woke up. Once he woke up Pixie figured he'd probably be put on what could creatively be called a "solid food" diet. Pixie wasn't exactly sure what to quantify the single celled…goop…they ate as. It was sort of solid but partly liquid as well. Maybe, semi-solid was the best way to quantify it…not exactly a liquid but not exactly a solid either.
Either way, there was a long running debate between her and her friends in Zion about whether you ate or slurped- like soup. That was another food that had spawned a long debate between her and her friends, actually. -the single celled substance. Since it was, basically, a semi-solid, Pixie wasn't exactly sure if she could call the diet Neo would have upon his gaining total consciousness, a "solid food" diet. It was the best description she could come up with, though, since what he would be "eating" wasn't totally liquid either.
Pixie tapped the IV tubing a few times before opening the stopper, just to make sure there were no bubbles in the line. Bubbles, she knew, could lead to all sorts of issues, even when the IV was inserted through a plug in someone's arm. She watched for a moment, making sure the line had no kinks in it. Secure in the knowledge that it was running smoothly, Pixie took in the sight before her.
Neo's rebuilding had been declared "completed" a few days earlier and, by all accounts, it had gone well. There were moments, more than one which Pixie learned was uncommon even with older teens, when Neo almost seemed lucid. He was able to ask questions and, even, complain that his eyes were bothering him, much to her amusement. It wasn't funny that his eyes were bothering him, of course, because being hurt wasn't exactly the most fun feeling in the world. Instead, she found it just a bit amusing that Neo had complained about his eyes hurting him.
With that in mind, Pixie couldn't really understand why he hadn't completely woken up yet. She was worried that, despite the fact he'd made it this far already, Neo was too old, the process too strenuous for his Real World form. After all the work they'd put in- "they" being Morpheus and Dozer with her helping out where and when she could- it just seemed a shame to lose him now. The fact Neo just might be the One, if such an individual existed, had never crossed her mind. Her worries were more founded on the fact he was just another bald headed human being.
"I have all the confidence in the world, Pixie, that he will wake up sometime soon. All we have to do is wait for that day to come," Morpheus told the medic-in-training.
He was standing in the doorway of the small cabin, watching Pixie work. It wasn't that he was overseeing her work- watching her to make sure she was following protocol and not making any mistakes that might endanger Neo's life- or anything of the sort. No, Morpheus trusted that Pixie knew what she was doing. Putting in an IV was simple work and Morpheus was confident that Pixie had mastered "simple" within her first few weeks of medical training in Zion. Plus, she'd had plenty of time and opportunities to practice those simple things.
It was more like Morpheus had asked her to change the IV and he felt it necessary to stay and watch. Leaving would have been somewhat rude, since he had interrupted her repair work in the first, and Pixie, despite the fact she still carried the "in training," deserved some measure of respect. After all, she was a good soldier and an apt trainee to have on board his craft.
Something about the way Morpheus was watching her as she worked was making Pixie very nervous. He was watching her with his patented- or, if it wasn't patented and there was such a thing as patenting in Zion, then he really should paten it- Chershire Cat smile firmly in place. It almost felt like any one of the days she'd taken any one of the practical medical exams that were given in Zion. Just the idea of someone watching over her shoulder was a bit unnerving to her.
Pixie was just trying to get by without making any obvious mistakes, especially when it came to something as simple as putting in an IV line. She didn't want Morpheus to think all the, very much appreciated time, he and Dozer had put into training her thus far had gone to waste. The young woman felt that there wasn't much he could do with certain skill but putting in an IV ranked among the things she could do.
Then again, Pixie was well aware of the fact that all of her worrying might have been for nothing. It might have been just something she cooked up in her head. There were plenty of times that she'd done that too. Back during her days in the Zion Academy, Pixie was infamous, among her friends anyway, for being stressed and nervous over things that were made up in her head. There was always some ring of truth but her imagination blew it out of proportion. To the point where she'd wind up making herself sick.
It wasn't exactly the most fun thing in the world but Pixie really couldn't help it. She was just one of those very nervous sort of people who were prone to worrying about everything in the Real World, real or imagined.
Allowing a small smile to cross her face since her back was to her captain, Pixie announced, "It's working well. This should last him for a while I think. I could be wrong about that, though. I'll make sure to check later though…only if you want."
Pixie turned to face her captain as he pointed out, "I trust your medical opinion, Pixie, and I will make sure to check back on Neo later. I believe you were in the middle of working when I interrupted you."
"Not really, sir," Pixie answered, staring down at her feet, "I wasn't really doing anything important. I was, actually, trying to fix one of the ducts outside my room."
Her face a bright red since she was feeling a bit foolish at the moment, Pixie added, "There's a duct just outside my room and it has a leak. I'm almost sure that the leak is driving me crazy."
Pixie knew that was mostly her imagination. The door to her room was pretty thick, just like all of the other doors on the ship, and the ship was rather loud because of the power generators. Though, to tell the truth, Pixie didn't really hear the hum of the generators that kept the ship running. She'd gotten so use to the noise that it had faded into the background, so to speak. The sound was there, true, but it wasn't really since Pixie no longer heard it.
Morpheus chuckled, a deep throated sort of sound, and looked as if he wanted to ruffle Pixie's hair for some reason. There were times when the captain had to forcibly remind himself that Pixie was over eighteen years old. At the moment, with her face bright red and eyes looking at her boots, Morpheus might have been hard pressed to believe Pixie was nineteen years old. He might have been inclined to say she was younger than that.
"I'll let you get back to your work, then," the captain told her, "thank you for helping me here."
The answer struck Pixie as rather strange, since Morpheus was just as able a medic as she was training to become, but the young woman didn't say anything. She mumbled a "thank you" and went back to climbing around in the ship's duct work. That elusive leak was going to be found and repaired, even if it was the last thing Pixie did that day.
Morpheus watched his medic-in-training wander back down the hall, heading a short ways down to her own door. He knew she didn't really believe in the whole idea of "the One" but, then, she didn't not believe in it either. Pixie was one of those "wait and see" types. Still, Morpheus was glad that she'd put whatever her beliefs were aside to do her part. That much he really did appreciate.
A few weeks and several IV bags later, Pixie found herself wandering around the Core of the ship she called home. She'd been assigned to help with repairs- It always seemed like something on the ship had to be fixed making Pixie wonder just how old the craft really was.- but, so far, no one had told her what to do. She'd been given no specific task to undertake leading to the rather useless standing around she was now doing.
"Pix, see if you can't wedge yourself in between those two consoles and find the source of the clanking noises. If you do find it, see what you can do about it," Trinity ordered, noting said standing around and doing something about it before she got on with her own welding related repairs.
Pixie laughed for a moment and started to unbuckle her boots. She could fit herself between the two large pieces of machinery quiet easily- as a result of her narrow build- but found that her clunky boots caused more problems than they were worth. She had gotten into the habit of taking them off every time she had to work in tight places.
It might have made work easier but, as her sock covered feet touched the grated metal that made up the floor, Pixie recalled the one downside to her little discovery. The floor of the ship always felt brutally cold under her feet. What's more, the grating didn't exactly feel comfortable either. Still, it beat having to try and maneuver the boots into tight spaces so Pixie was willing to sacrifice comfort for practicality.
"Mouse," she requested, "can you watch my boots and I don't mean watch Hawk or someone walk off with them?"
He mumbled an affirmative reply, keeping his mind on whatever he was suppose to be doing. Though he acted like some sort of crazy, perverse child, Mouse, when he wanted do, could focus on one task with an almost tunnel vision, narrow minded dedication. Apparently, whatever he was up to at the moment was such a task.
Pixie shouldered her equipment belt and shimmied her way between the two hulking pieces of machinery. The fit wasn't exactly tight, nor was it uncomfortable, but it was an awkward sort of fit. There was quite a bit of bending involved in order to get to what Pixie thought was the source of the clanking noise.
Body bent at an odd angle with her head, shoulders, and forearms stuck in the belly of a massive console, Pixie didn't hear Morpheus coming up to the Core. Actually, she didn't hear much of anything besides all of the noise she seemed to be generating in an effort to quell the banging created by a loose flap of bent-out-of-shape metal that didn't seem to want to do as she wanted and straighten out. No matter how much banging, bending, and talking she subjected it to.
"Pix, come out here. I think Morpheus is coming up," Mouse called from someplace over her head, "and he's bringing Neo up with him."
"No way," Pixie mumbled, pulling her head out of the belly of the machine she'd been working in so quickly that she hit her head as she tried to get free.
Rubbing the bump that was developing on the top of her head, Pixie extracted herself from the space between the two machines just in time to hear Morpheus introduce Neo to the rest of his crew. She knew she looked more than a little askew but that couldn't be helped considering what she'd been doing.
The young woman felt more than a little silly, though, since she was standing without shoes on. Pixie felt that might have been borderline disrespectful but there wasn't enough time to get her boots on anyway. She'd just have to stand there as she was…that included her lack of footwear."The little ones behind you are Mouse and Pixie," Morpheus informed the goggle eyed Neo.Pixie gave Neo a small smile, trying to appear friendly. She assumed from the way he was looking at everything around him that this was making absolutely no sense to him. He wasn't going to remember any of this later on. It was all a wash of names and faces and new information.
She remembered feeling that way when she'd been freed though she figured it probably was worse for Neo. He was older, after all, and his mind had been more dependent on the Matrix. At least, that's what everyone assumed anyway. Pixie figured that, whether or not that was true, it still must have been hard for Neo. He was use to the world being one way and now that way was being turned on its ears. That had to be disconcerting to say the least.The look of wide eyed confusion rapidly changed as Neo found himself being strapped down into one of the hanging chairs in the Core. From confusion, his face showed abject fear. Fear of the unknown, maybe, or of the strange thing being plugged into the back of his head or a combination of both. Pixie wasn't entirely sure.
"This isn't going to end well," Pixie mentally mused, not talking about her fears out loud.
She figured that she might not have been the only one thinking that though as she watched Dozer jack Morpheus into the Construct. Everyone might have been thinking it but no one was saying a word. An uncomfortable silence had filled the Core as all eyes were on Morpheus and Neo in the Construct….watching, waiting, expecting, something to happen. Some sign in the false space of the Construct to show them all the truth about whether or not Neo was actually the One.
