+J.M.J.+
Priorities
by "Matrix
Refugee"
Disclaimer:
I do not "own" the world of The Matrix; the
characters are essentially my "creation". All resemblance to any
(philosophically) existing or ontologically challenged person(s) is purely
coincidental. But the events were intended only to be the author's opinion of
current affairs as they stand.
Author's note:
I wrote this following a major confrontation with my boss, so if it sounds a little "Nuts-to-you-too,-Mr.-Finkelsteen", it is purely intentional. I have no idea where exactly this story came from; the words just flowed out of my pencil.
Sunlight gleamed off the steel and glass tower, warming the
concrete to white heat. But cool air flowed abundant on the safe side of the
tinted glass.
Kevin MacLaine, CEO of DiGianTech, sat at his desk, sorting
his paper mail. As usual, some of Penman's mail had strayed into his bundle. He
looked out through the open door of his office. A secretary passed by.
"Ms. Obeler? Do you know anything about this?" He
held up the errant envelopes.
Ms. Obeler stepped through the doorway and goggled at the
envelopes. She shook her head.
"I don't know: you'll have to ask Berlin."
"Ask Berlin," he murmured. He stood up and pushed
past her. Going out into the hallway. He headed for the rows and rows of
cubicles. He scanned the human forms in each square space, each human working,
bent over their keyboards. He watched for movement down the passage.
Sure enough, he spotted Berlin, the mailroom clerk. She made
it impossible for him to overlook her, with her tastefully cut black leather
blouse over a black skirt and black shoes too high to be shoes and too low to
be boots--testing the limits of the office dress code. She pushed her mail
trolley along, pausing to hand a sheaf of mail to each occupant of each
cubicle. She lingered here and there, chatting with a few workers, exchanging
news before passing on to the next cubicle.\par
He caught up with her. "Miss Berlin?"
"Yeah, Mr. MacLaine?" She looked him in the eye,
dead on a level, holding herself straighter than necessary, so that she looked
more than human.
"When you're finished with your work, could you come to
my office?"
"Sure." As she said this, she turned away and
cocked on hip at him as if to say, "Kiss my rear while you're at it."
He returned to his office. 9:15 showed on the clock on
monitor and wall.
He opened his mail--HIS mail--while he waited for Berlin to
come crawling in, not that she would ever actually crawl. Only in his dreams.
Why he always ended up with the surly mailroom clerks fell beyond the pale of
his understanding. He'd never understand it, not if he lived to be a hundred
years, and with the economy slowing like this, he just might not live to be a
hundred.
The mailroom trolley clattered to a halt outside his door.
Berlin swung into the room, taking the floor in two long strides. She folded
her arms loosely behind her back and settled onto one hip. Her eyelids relaxed
and a faint smile dared to show itself at the corners of her mouth.
"Berlin, can you tell me why I am still getting
Penman's mail?"
"Excuse me?"
"Penman's mail. This is the third day in three months
that you've given me the wrong mail."
She started to open her mouth for an excuse, but he beat her
to it. "I try to run an efficient business. I ask only that everything run
like clockwork, like the binary current flowing through the circuits and memory
chips of a computer. You understand?"\par
"Yes, Mr. MacLaine."
"And in order for the current to keep flowing smoothly,
I need my paper mail delivered to me in an orderly, efficient manner. That
means Penman gets his mail and only his mail, and I get my mail and only my
mail."
"Yes, Mr. MacLaine, I understand."
"And this will never happen again?"
"I'll avoid it as much as I can."
"No, I want your word. It will never happen again, will
it?"
She breathed audibly through her nostrils. "As far as a
human can--"
"No, no, you don't understand me. I want--no, this
company needs perfection--"
Something screamed out of the clear blue sky. A black shadow
eclipsed the sun-flooded window. The building shook like a tree in a hurricane
blast. Lights went out. The computer monitor zapped off. A great rending,
wrenching screech knifed through their ears.
The floor listed under their feet. His desk slid slightly
toward the door. Berlin stepped out of its way, breathing deep, her eyes
wide-open. Office workers ran screaming past the open doorway. A heavy acrid
stench, like diesel scorched his nostrils along with the smoke that seeped into
the room.
MacLaine dropped the letters to the floor. He bolted for the
door, knocking Berlin down as he rushed out.
"Ouch, dammit! Watch where you're going!" Berlin
shouted, jumping to her feet.
He ran for the front entrance, but the crumpled fuselage of
a jet laterally blocked what remained of the front hallway.\par
He rushed back down the hallway, pushing workers out of his
way. The back entrance. He had to get to the back entrance before anyone else.
Before that plane blew.
He passed Berlin among the cubicles. She dialled a phone.
"Are you crazy? what are you doing? Calling 911? They
can't help us!" He rasped.
Berlin ignored him. She paced back and forth in the cubicle
like a caged black panther. He dimly heard the line ringing.
"Loosh, get me out of here, fast! They changed
something big time! If anyone else is in here, get them out! Broadband
it!"
She looked up. Her tawny face paled, but her eyes stayed
firm.
Three tall figures approched from the smoky hallway. Three
men in dark suits. Sunglasses even indoors. Wired with earpieces. They advanced
down the passage between the cubicles. Berlin crouched over the phone.
And suddenly her black-clad body dissolved in a cloud
of...code. Green code that faded into a thousand green sparks. The phone hung
poised in midair for a second, then clattered to the floor.
The three men walked past MacLaine. The tallest stooped and
picked up the receiver. He looked at the other two and banged the receiver onto
the base.
"She escaped this time, but they won't be using this
hardline any more," he said.
The floor rumbled under MacLaine's feet. Poisonous black
smoke engulfed him and the three Feds.
Explosions blasted out his eardrums. The floor burst like an
overblown tire. He hurtled through space, empty except for heat and smoke.
He landed, hard, on concrete. He looked up for a moment at
the blue sky. Not a cloud drifted overhead, but the black clouds pouring from
the silver tower comnpensated.
He lifted one hand before his eyes. Black soot and black
charred flesh marred his hand. He let it drop beside him.
A shrill buzzing filled his ears, ringing and wailing like
sirens. He hoped someone had called the paramedics. He looked around, but the
light faded from his eyes. He felt blood running sticky over his face and body,
filling his eyes with red.
It grew colder and darker. He opened his eyes and looked
down.
A red pod, like a fruit or a womb, hung suspended below him,
its upper end socketed into a half-metallic, half-chitinous column. The outer
suface of the pod shone clear, as if the red came from the the gelatinopus
substance that filled it.\par
Something stirred inside the gel.
A human form.
Himself.
He barely recognized himself. Snake-like coaxials coiled
about his body, socketed into plugs on his arms and legs, into his mouth,
around his genitals and rectum, around his legs.
His body shuddered. The buzzing grew louder. MacLaine's
spirit looked around.
A forest of gunmetal grey columns dominated the blasted
land, stretching up into the boiled black sky. Story after story, tier after
tier of red pods fanned out from the columns, millions upon millions, each with
its human occupant.
A spider-shaped thing dropped past him, as if out of
nowhere. It cut open the pod and siezed his body around the neck with metal
jaws. For a moment it poised over its prey. Then another set of pincers cut the
cable at the back of his neck. It released him as a metal iris at the back of
the pod opened and flushed out his corpse, aborting it from the system.
The creature dropped down onto another pod. More of them
lurched into action on other pods all over the tower.
And with his first though in the real world, Kevin MacLaine
saw and understood the truth. His body passed on to one hell, a material hell
on earth where it would be consumed, while his soul would pass on to another
hell, worse than the first.
Aboard the hovercraft Gilgamesh, Refugee shivered, a
ragged blanket wrapped about her. Her crewmates surrounded her.
"You did your best; you couldn't have seen it coming," Arthax, the commander said, trying to reassure her. "Everyone has a rough shift sooner or later. But you did well, you kept your head."
"Coulda been a lot worse," Roach, the runt of the
crew put in. "Hey, you came out unhurt, all in one piece. More'n some
people can say right now, hey?"
"They were right after me. I know they got him."
"No, they wouldn't have gone after him. You were lucky
they didn't get ther chance to use him against you," said Luk, the
mech-repairman.
"You'd better rest; you've had a bad scare and it's
disrupted your mind," Arthax said, helping her to her feet and leading her
to her cabin. "I'll send someone to check on you later."
As soon as he went away, Refugee collapsed on her bunk. Her
head rang from the explosion and the jacks in her legs and arms tingled
painfully, the way they always did after a shift. She rubbed the back of her
neck, fingering the big jack there, wishing she could claw it out, but her
fingers stung.
She closed her eyes. And for the first time in the real
world, she prayed for and forgave the soul of a man who might have been her
enemy.