Chapter Four: Down the Path
After I managed to take in one more deep breath and swallow the lump that was more swiftly forming in my throat, I leaned toward Morpheus' hand. I still wasn't sure what I was exactly doing, or why I was doing it at all. The only thing I knew was that this was by some freak coincidence the right thing for me to do. Yet, even as I was about to take up the red-colored pill into my own hand, none of it made the least bit of sense. Morpheus, who had been watching me, must have seen the mixture of doubt and confusion inside my flitting eyes.
"Remember," he warned me, "all I can offer you is the truth. It won't be easy; but it will be real."
I gazed deep into Morpheus' eyes. I could sense there was something he had not yet told me; the same something that would make this other life so uneasy. Although, the calling of my conscience was mush louder than the sense I acquired from the man before me. I thought for one more second. Yes, this was the right thing; this was where I was supposed to be - what I was supposed to be doing. Without the chance to doubt again, I snatched the red pill from Morpheus. I nearly threw the pill down y throat, while managing to gulp down the entire contents of the glass that had sat on the table only a few moments before. After nearly choking out of my haste, I returned my gaze to Morpheus. He rose to his towering height, with a hint of a proud smile on his lips.
"Follow me," he commanded in a smooth tone. Without further hesitation, I rose from the large chair and followed closely behind Morpheus' spiring height.
He led me into the small adjoining room, where the rest of his entourage had disappeared into. After setting across the threshold, I was bombarded with the feelings of intimidation once again. The small room was filled with the same strange faces I had encountered before, and I still disliked that fact as much as I had before. But, with a shudder I was somehow able to continue walking. Morpheus walked only a few steps ahead of me now, as I stood feeling somewhat out of place amid all the sounds and sights. Technical equipment I had never heard of flashed with magnificent lights, while other mechanisms buzzed and beeped relentlessly.
Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, I began to feel nauseous. The entire world felt as if it were flipping over itself time and time again; and even odder was the fact that my strength was being drained from me the longer I stood there - the more breaths I took. As if in slow-motion, I could see Morpheus coming near me. His form took on a sort of fluid movement, and his lips moved painfully slow. I heard little of what he said, but understood nonetheless. I slid myself into the chair that Morpheus had directed me to sit in. My head could have fallen betwixt my legs at that point, or even worse to the floor; but amazingly, I managed to sustain my form within the safety of the chair itself.
Morpheus, glancing at me a final time as if to check my stability, turned back to the man which I had already developed a strong hatred for. "Scalper," he addressed the dark man, "get us online now."
The ominously strange man turned from his monitor toward Morpheus. "I'm on it sir. Just one minute and we'll be linked."
Morpheus gave Scalper a satisfied nod, but before he could direct his attention back to what I was going through, my mind veered off in another direction. 'Scalper!' I scoffed inwardly, 'what an appropriate title!'
Then suddenly, I was irreverently jerked from my contemplation with myself. The voices behind, in front, all around me dragged me from my inward conversation and caused me to attempt focusing on them. With each second it grew harder to concentrate, to move, to even breath! Yet, I tried almost completely vainly.
Before me, Morpheus was the first to speak. "trinity, have you found anything yet?" he questioned.
The answer came from somewhere behind me, although I could not specify where exactly. "Almost there. Neo!" she shouted in a loud voice, most likely directed across the room. "Get tank ready to send the signal."
A man clad in what appeared to be a shadow itself moved effortlessly about a console before him. This man, now distorted by the strange effect on my vision, was the man known as Neo. From where I sat, I could make out only a few things, but this man was not something I could miss. He stood out, with his wavering trench coat and his hair like liquid ebony; the way his eyes stood out amid the confusion - the delusion - I viewed. He swiveled on his heel toward the direction where Trinity must have stood.
"I'm on it," he confirmed with what could have been a nod, but by this time everything was so tweaked that I could hardly have recognized my own image if I had seen it. Nonetheless, the interactions of the cluster of strangers surrounding me carried on as if nothing were out of place. All the while, my condition was on the downhill track and moving along quite swiftly. My breath came with a tremor, and I felt as if my entire body was being pieced apart slowly. To my right, I could oddly enough feel the presence of Morpheus. I choked for a moment on my breath, then found my voice once again.
"What's happening to me!" I cried, in a composition of terror and agony.
That was when the driver, known by the name of Nytris, spoke up. He took a step into what was my visible sphere and gazed at me with understanding sympathy. "The red pill that you downed back there," he directed my dim attention toward the door I had entered through, "that pill is part of a trace program we have to run on anyone getting out. It's used so we can find your location.
Hearing this, I felt only more confusion flow over my already scrambled mind. I resorted to chewing on my lower lip, until I decided to gaze back up at him. "What do you mean?" I retorted with somewhat of a mixed-up passion.
That was the moment when the black shadow of Neo drew nearer me. I felt the pressure of his firm hand placed placidly upon my shoulder. For a moment, I felt as if his shadowy form would disappear before me, as if to confirm the false reality of this entire scene. Yet, he did not vanish but rather spoke.
"Just try and relax," he almost whispered into my ear. I felt a chill run through my entire system as a sense of dread come over me that I had never felt before. If I had had the strength, I would have shot Neo a sarcastically defiant look. Yet, with all my energy sapped and my heart beating like a sledgehammer inside my quivering chest, I found it nearly impossible to merely move. Nonetheless, I managed to throw my eyes upon the ghostly figure of Neo, my eyes alit with terror and fear - a complete contradiction to the ease I was advised toward.
Neo smiled warmly down at me, his eyes the pale chocolate brown of a richly fresh fudge. "I know who you feel," he chuckled in an aside to me alone.
With that, he patted my shoulder in a comforting way, before removing his hand and stepping into the far left corner of the room. I watched him, as best I could, press a cell phone against his ear and mumble a few phrases. Then he melted into the shadow I knew he had been all along. Soon to follow, I felt Morpheus draw near me again. Had he ever left my side? I still cannot confirm that to this day, yet I knew he stood nigh once again at that moment. He did not gesture to me, as Neo had. No, he stood at a slight distance, and began to speak in something of a riddle to me.
"Have you ever," he began in a rich, wise tone. Just as his words formed in my ears, I noticed a slight distortion in the shadow that his form seemed to cast at my feet. The shadow was only centimeters from the chair in which I was seated, in fact it was so near I could have reached out and touched it. I had, for some unknown reason, not noticed its presence before now. Yet as I did, the outline of the dim shadow morphed into what I could only describe as something alive. Slowly, it began to coil around the floorboards as a snake would slink about. I cannot be sure, as in of many of these events, if Morpheus' words flowed between the beginnings of this incident and when I recognized his voice again. Although once I recognized his tone, I did my utmost to comprehend. And yet, his words seemed distorted, mingled with incomprehensibility, and mixed around with lack-of-reason. I felt somewhere inside of me that surely he must be speaking plain English, and yet what I heard were the sounds of whining electricity, even that of a soft-murmuring heart of a machine.
Had I had the strength, I would have conveyed an expression of confusion and desperateness, yet every last reserve of energy I possessed seemed to be filtered into my concentration on the unnatural shadow's form. After a few more moments passed, I felt compelled to test the shadow's reality. Surely, this could not be real; no, this was a dream, a nightmare if it was thus - but real it was not. I slowly bent down to touch the ground where the shadow slithered, half expecting myself to awake in a cold sweat, half expecting the shadow to be completely normal. Yet, as I did my finger sunk into the almost mercury surface. In shock, and almost instinctive panic, I pulled my hand back toward my body. To my surprise, the mercury substance remained melted to my hand, almost becoming a part of me altogether. This moment was when I rejoined Morpheus' voice. To my amazement and bafflement, the words formed in the mouths of others suddenly became clear once again; Their volume had faded to a mumble, yet their words were at least something I again recognized.
"What if you could not escape?" he questioned me. "Would you be able to know your dreams from the world in which you laid asleep for so long? Or would they each become their own reality; merged together by nothing more than your slumbering conscience?" As he finished, Morpheus gave me a quizzical glance. I felt compelled to, but was not able to give an answer to his question. Instead, I returned to the substance now flowing not in the shadow, but down my arm. That was when the voices of Trinity and Neo rose in the back of my mind. I hadn't been listening to them formerly, but suddenly their comments came through to my stumbling mind as a steaming knife would through cold butter.
"Neo, I have a lock on her," declared Trinity with a triumphant undertone.
Neo, who to my knowledge, still encompassed himself with his phone, now spoke legibly into it. "Tank," he addressed the listener on the other end of his line, "we need the signal"
With this new conversation passing among the company, Morpheus stepped back from my side. Thus left alone to my own devices, I now concentrated on the mercury substance. Its touch was of stabbing icicles, that ran across my skin with indefinite precision. With every millimeter of my skin the mercury touched, its deathly chill touched as well. I knew I could not escape the flowing death which mingled into my flesh, as if my flesh were not more a part of myself than the air I breathed daily. Not to mention, the longer I sat idly in the chair, the more of my flesh the liquid metal consumed. Soon, I felt it - the dread that would consume my heart itself, thus leaving me no way of getting out of this fateful death.
Then, the shadowy figure of Neo became nothing more than a solitary voice, demanding obedience in the darkest corners of the human heart. "Tank, send the signal now!" he commanded.
With that final command, my senses faded into nothingness and I felt as if I had become a part of the same shadow. Thus, I had a sense my fate was sealed as the mercury flowed into my screaming mouth and down throughout my entire system. As the liquid filtered into my lungs, I felt a fluttering shutter run through every nerve in my body. The last noise I heard in that world was the distortion of my voice; the sick, pale utterance of a once horrified shrill. Then at last, I knew the end had come. Death had won its steak on my life, and soon I would feel the weight of the ground upon my coffin. Yet, as if in defiance of this assumption, life almost instantly flooded back into my veins.
After I managed to take in one more deep breath and swallow the lump that was more swiftly forming in my throat, I leaned toward Morpheus' hand. I still wasn't sure what I was exactly doing, or why I was doing it at all. The only thing I knew was that this was by some freak coincidence the right thing for me to do. Yet, even as I was about to take up the red-colored pill into my own hand, none of it made the least bit of sense. Morpheus, who had been watching me, must have seen the mixture of doubt and confusion inside my flitting eyes.
"Remember," he warned me, "all I can offer you is the truth. It won't be easy; but it will be real."
I gazed deep into Morpheus' eyes. I could sense there was something he had not yet told me; the same something that would make this other life so uneasy. Although, the calling of my conscience was mush louder than the sense I acquired from the man before me. I thought for one more second. Yes, this was the right thing; this was where I was supposed to be - what I was supposed to be doing. Without the chance to doubt again, I snatched the red pill from Morpheus. I nearly threw the pill down y throat, while managing to gulp down the entire contents of the glass that had sat on the table only a few moments before. After nearly choking out of my haste, I returned my gaze to Morpheus. He rose to his towering height, with a hint of a proud smile on his lips.
"Follow me," he commanded in a smooth tone. Without further hesitation, I rose from the large chair and followed closely behind Morpheus' spiring height.
He led me into the small adjoining room, where the rest of his entourage had disappeared into. After setting across the threshold, I was bombarded with the feelings of intimidation once again. The small room was filled with the same strange faces I had encountered before, and I still disliked that fact as much as I had before. But, with a shudder I was somehow able to continue walking. Morpheus walked only a few steps ahead of me now, as I stood feeling somewhat out of place amid all the sounds and sights. Technical equipment I had never heard of flashed with magnificent lights, while other mechanisms buzzed and beeped relentlessly.
Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, I began to feel nauseous. The entire world felt as if it were flipping over itself time and time again; and even odder was the fact that my strength was being drained from me the longer I stood there - the more breaths I took. As if in slow-motion, I could see Morpheus coming near me. His form took on a sort of fluid movement, and his lips moved painfully slow. I heard little of what he said, but understood nonetheless. I slid myself into the chair that Morpheus had directed me to sit in. My head could have fallen betwixt my legs at that point, or even worse to the floor; but amazingly, I managed to sustain my form within the safety of the chair itself.
Morpheus, glancing at me a final time as if to check my stability, turned back to the man which I had already developed a strong hatred for. "Scalper," he addressed the dark man, "get us online now."
The ominously strange man turned from his monitor toward Morpheus. "I'm on it sir. Just one minute and we'll be linked."
Morpheus gave Scalper a satisfied nod, but before he could direct his attention back to what I was going through, my mind veered off in another direction. 'Scalper!' I scoffed inwardly, 'what an appropriate title!'
Then suddenly, I was irreverently jerked from my contemplation with myself. The voices behind, in front, all around me dragged me from my inward conversation and caused me to attempt focusing on them. With each second it grew harder to concentrate, to move, to even breath! Yet, I tried almost completely vainly.
Before me, Morpheus was the first to speak. "trinity, have you found anything yet?" he questioned.
The answer came from somewhere behind me, although I could not specify where exactly. "Almost there. Neo!" she shouted in a loud voice, most likely directed across the room. "Get tank ready to send the signal."
A man clad in what appeared to be a shadow itself moved effortlessly about a console before him. This man, now distorted by the strange effect on my vision, was the man known as Neo. From where I sat, I could make out only a few things, but this man was not something I could miss. He stood out, with his wavering trench coat and his hair like liquid ebony; the way his eyes stood out amid the confusion - the delusion - I viewed. He swiveled on his heel toward the direction where Trinity must have stood.
"I'm on it," he confirmed with what could have been a nod, but by this time everything was so tweaked that I could hardly have recognized my own image if I had seen it. Nonetheless, the interactions of the cluster of strangers surrounding me carried on as if nothing were out of place. All the while, my condition was on the downhill track and moving along quite swiftly. My breath came with a tremor, and I felt as if my entire body was being pieced apart slowly. To my right, I could oddly enough feel the presence of Morpheus. I choked for a moment on my breath, then found my voice once again.
"What's happening to me!" I cried, in a composition of terror and agony.
That was when the driver, known by the name of Nytris, spoke up. He took a step into what was my visible sphere and gazed at me with understanding sympathy. "The red pill that you downed back there," he directed my dim attention toward the door I had entered through, "that pill is part of a trace program we have to run on anyone getting out. It's used so we can find your location.
Hearing this, I felt only more confusion flow over my already scrambled mind. I resorted to chewing on my lower lip, until I decided to gaze back up at him. "What do you mean?" I retorted with somewhat of a mixed-up passion.
That was the moment when the black shadow of Neo drew nearer me. I felt the pressure of his firm hand placed placidly upon my shoulder. For a moment, I felt as if his shadowy form would disappear before me, as if to confirm the false reality of this entire scene. Yet, he did not vanish but rather spoke.
"Just try and relax," he almost whispered into my ear. I felt a chill run through my entire system as a sense of dread come over me that I had never felt before. If I had had the strength, I would have shot Neo a sarcastically defiant look. Yet, with all my energy sapped and my heart beating like a sledgehammer inside my quivering chest, I found it nearly impossible to merely move. Nonetheless, I managed to throw my eyes upon the ghostly figure of Neo, my eyes alit with terror and fear - a complete contradiction to the ease I was advised toward.
Neo smiled warmly down at me, his eyes the pale chocolate brown of a richly fresh fudge. "I know who you feel," he chuckled in an aside to me alone.
With that, he patted my shoulder in a comforting way, before removing his hand and stepping into the far left corner of the room. I watched him, as best I could, press a cell phone against his ear and mumble a few phrases. Then he melted into the shadow I knew he had been all along. Soon to follow, I felt Morpheus draw near me again. Had he ever left my side? I still cannot confirm that to this day, yet I knew he stood nigh once again at that moment. He did not gesture to me, as Neo had. No, he stood at a slight distance, and began to speak in something of a riddle to me.
"Have you ever," he began in a rich, wise tone. Just as his words formed in my ears, I noticed a slight distortion in the shadow that his form seemed to cast at my feet. The shadow was only centimeters from the chair in which I was seated, in fact it was so near I could have reached out and touched it. I had, for some unknown reason, not noticed its presence before now. Yet as I did, the outline of the dim shadow morphed into what I could only describe as something alive. Slowly, it began to coil around the floorboards as a snake would slink about. I cannot be sure, as in of many of these events, if Morpheus' words flowed between the beginnings of this incident and when I recognized his voice again. Although once I recognized his tone, I did my utmost to comprehend. And yet, his words seemed distorted, mingled with incomprehensibility, and mixed around with lack-of-reason. I felt somewhere inside of me that surely he must be speaking plain English, and yet what I heard were the sounds of whining electricity, even that of a soft-murmuring heart of a machine.
Had I had the strength, I would have conveyed an expression of confusion and desperateness, yet every last reserve of energy I possessed seemed to be filtered into my concentration on the unnatural shadow's form. After a few more moments passed, I felt compelled to test the shadow's reality. Surely, this could not be real; no, this was a dream, a nightmare if it was thus - but real it was not. I slowly bent down to touch the ground where the shadow slithered, half expecting myself to awake in a cold sweat, half expecting the shadow to be completely normal. Yet, as I did my finger sunk into the almost mercury surface. In shock, and almost instinctive panic, I pulled my hand back toward my body. To my surprise, the mercury substance remained melted to my hand, almost becoming a part of me altogether. This moment was when I rejoined Morpheus' voice. To my amazement and bafflement, the words formed in the mouths of others suddenly became clear once again; Their volume had faded to a mumble, yet their words were at least something I again recognized.
"What if you could not escape?" he questioned me. "Would you be able to know your dreams from the world in which you laid asleep for so long? Or would they each become their own reality; merged together by nothing more than your slumbering conscience?" As he finished, Morpheus gave me a quizzical glance. I felt compelled to, but was not able to give an answer to his question. Instead, I returned to the substance now flowing not in the shadow, but down my arm. That was when the voices of Trinity and Neo rose in the back of my mind. I hadn't been listening to them formerly, but suddenly their comments came through to my stumbling mind as a steaming knife would through cold butter.
"Neo, I have a lock on her," declared Trinity with a triumphant undertone.
Neo, who to my knowledge, still encompassed himself with his phone, now spoke legibly into it. "Tank," he addressed the listener on the other end of his line, "we need the signal"
With this new conversation passing among the company, Morpheus stepped back from my side. Thus left alone to my own devices, I now concentrated on the mercury substance. Its touch was of stabbing icicles, that ran across my skin with indefinite precision. With every millimeter of my skin the mercury touched, its deathly chill touched as well. I knew I could not escape the flowing death which mingled into my flesh, as if my flesh were not more a part of myself than the air I breathed daily. Not to mention, the longer I sat idly in the chair, the more of my flesh the liquid metal consumed. Soon, I felt it - the dread that would consume my heart itself, thus leaving me no way of getting out of this fateful death.
Then, the shadowy figure of Neo became nothing more than a solitary voice, demanding obedience in the darkest corners of the human heart. "Tank, send the signal now!" he commanded.
With that final command, my senses faded into nothingness and I felt as if I had become a part of the same shadow. Thus, I had a sense my fate was sealed as the mercury flowed into my screaming mouth and down throughout my entire system. As the liquid filtered into my lungs, I felt a fluttering shutter run through every nerve in my body. The last noise I heard in that world was the distortion of my voice; the sick, pale utterance of a once horrified shrill. Then at last, I knew the end had come. Death had won its steak on my life, and soon I would feel the weight of the ground upon my coffin. Yet, as if in defiance of this assumption, life almost instantly flooded back into my veins.