The Password
(6) Smile


Author: Tan
Rated: Somewhere between PG-14 and R... so far
Disclaimer: ?... Don't own anything?....?
Notes & Warnings: ***Shounen ai*** alert. Mentioned that, have I? Nah, forgot it on the previous chapter. 1x2 (HeeroxDuo), 3x4 (TrowaxQuatre), no specific order or uke seme, and the 'x' doesn't mean anything more or less than a plus + would. ::shrug::. Did I mention some lovely cursing? Maybe I should rate this R...
Alternate universe from Duo's P.O.V., loosely based on The Matrix, and my own warped interpretation of a bit from philosophy class.
Should probably mention this, even though it's a bit late...? I have a tendency to ramble. This is an older piece of mine... XD An' I ramble a lot! Have I mentioned this has no plot, as of yet? Sigh.





(6) Smile



I was in a motel room full of crazy, leather clad psychos that could run freakishly fast, pick up all ::mumblemumble:: pounds of me, and hack into my dreams...

Damn.

I blinked very, very slowly, allowing my eye lashes to touch my cheeks, and rise tremulously. Quatre stayed put, the motel didn't flicker... which I was fully expecting. No present day program could ever be that sophisticated. No way.

"It's not 2002, Duo," Quatre added as if reading my mind. Creepy thought. "We don't know the exact year... we can only estimate it to be far into the twenty-fifth century."

My mind proceeded to boggle, however boggling of the mind proceeds. I tried to count on my fingers just how far into the future the twenty-fifth century was, from this 'program time'... but I didn't have enough fingers. I did that slow motion blink thing again.

... okay. Program *is* that sophisticated. These guys *are* beyond belief. I'm not dreaming-- although, according to Quatre, I am, but let's not get technical.

My next thought was once again plucked from my brain (okay, now that made me feel queasy) by Quatre.

"You're a password for the program. Passwords are really rare-- we're the only four-- five-- that have been found in the past century... that's the average; four to five every one hundred years..."

Quatre planted his elbow on his knee, his chin in his palm, and his eyes on me, watching to make sure I was the good little sponge that I should be, and that I absorbed.

"You can't hack into the program for the passwords; they're the only thing that's not accessible through the connection. Even the processor doesn't know them. Only the Password can reveal itself. You see why it's so rare..."

Oh, sure, yeah. I see the light, and all that. o___o;;;

"Passwords are extremely important for our mission; they help us locate the minds and then the bodies... which have the choice of waking up, or returning to the network..."

Mission. Locating bodies.

.....

I was still stuck on the locating bodies part. Locating them in their 'vats' I suppose? So only the passwords' bodies could be found, and liberated or whatever.

Oh man, I'm starting to make sense of this.

I'm starting to *believe* them.

"We basically found you by accident. Our mission is to search for passwords, but you were completely unexpected." Quatre smiled sheepishly. "Wufei suggested that you might have been a password, but I didn't listen..." At the question mark appearing over my head, Quatre obligingly continued. Thanks.

"Passwords are usually introverts; like the kid at the back of the classroom that nobody understands, the worker that everyone thinks is perfect, or the devout disciple who's beginning to doubt the faith..."

"Or the mind reader," I muttered in reference to Quatre. He'd described his teammates well enough-- Trowa was the kid, Heero the perfect worker, and Wufei the disciple. Like, duh, so obvious.

Wasn't so obvious to Quatre, apparently. He blinked owlishly at me. "I'm not quite a mind reader--" The blonde grinned in a suspiciously cheerful manner. "Your expressions help-- which is another strange thing about you. You... smile."

I didn't think that was such a weird thing. He was smiling, and I'd even seen Wufei smirk a few times-- don't get me started on the other two.

He knows I'm not supposed to be smiling. What did that mean? Why aren't I supposed to be smiling? I'm a pretty happy go lucky person, once you get to know me--

Lies, all lies. I was apparently forgetting why I smiled. The past could only have been happy, joyous and free, to make me the person I am today... right?

"What's wrong with smiling?" I asked thinly. For once I guarded my expressions and my thoughts, just in case. I was kneading my pillow quite ferociously, however, so all Quatre had to do was look at my occupied hands (get your mind out of the gutter, please, I'm trying to do an internal monologue here) to know what I was feeling.

He did. He noted the shifting eyes, a sure sign of avoiding the subject, and fidgety hands. He sighed.

"If you're like the rest of us, you've begun to feel that you don't belong anywhere. You're without a purpose, lost or just very sad and confused." Good ole Quatre decided to pat my hand, along with revealing every internal torture I'd ever experienced. "It's one of the most terrible feelings in the world, to realize that where you're at is never 'right', and to think that it will never be..."

"Don't know what you're talking about," I sniffed importantly. I brushed off Quatre's friendly hand pat, and stuck my nose up in the air much to the chagrin of Wufei. He groaned shortly and shook his head in disbelief.

"'Wandering Death'," Heero's voice suddenly drilled into my head. "As if that isn't obvious enough."

I tilted sideways on the bed to find dearest Heero lounging in a chair against the wall. He was watching me quite blandly, but his words were powerful enough to strike a chord in my little brain.

I wandered. I had never, ever stopped for more than a month. I had never cried when I left my friends, because I had to leave them. Doesn't mean anything. There are lots of hitchiking bums out there just like me. They just like to travel...

But I didn't like traveling. I hated walking, and the blisters it gave me. I greatly disliked the feeling of a new bed and the smell of new or old sheets. I always wanted something to be the same. Somewhere to keep me.

I don't know how long ago it happened, but my lips had stopped twitching up into little smirks at what Quatre said. Even he was looking at me in surprise; the mask had been discarded, and what have we beneath it?

"So what if I smile when I feel lost and helpless," I muttered darkly. "Better than crying. Never got me anywhere."

Quatre had leaned forward eagerly at my words, and was for some reason about to drool all over me, his face was so delighted. Weird guy.

"A defense mechanism," he whispered. "You rejected what your mind had discovered, and you developed a way to feel normal. You only pretend to be happy--"

"I am happy," I snapped. Then, realizing my folly, I raspberried Quatre. "I can be happy-- I've made a ton of friends and I'm just a genial likable person!"

"I don't like you," Wufei offered aloud. Quatre's glare inflicted upon the usurper was enough to satisfy me. Haha, Wufei got in trouble!

"But are you really happy?" Quatre pressed. Geeze, the guy never gave up. Happy happy, joy joy. What did he want me to do? Get up and start dancing? "You have to understand that you're mind is only forcing you to feel happy, in compliance with the program. You've already decided that nothing here could be real."

"Huh. My mind is always running away like that. It's so indecisive, really. I'm not surprised or anything," I deadpanned. "After all, I'm living in a computer world while my body's actually in a crock pot somewhere on sci-fi channel earth--" I started to laugh.

"He's lost it," Wufei observed mildly.

Ha ha Wufei, I think that I lost it ages ago. Ages upon ages ago, when my house burnt down and I realized that I never liked it anyway, and I knew that I should have-- I should have been sad to see the ashes mixing with the rain, and the bodies lying charred next to the altar. I was supposed to remember all the good times in the church, and cry because they were gone.

I didn't. I watched numbly when the last of the fire sizzled out, and the fire crew roared up, nearly running me over.

Three years of psych hospitals, then. Not that they could ever keep me in them-- I was always pretty good with locks, and once I discovered that most of them were computerized; good bye mental institute, hello freedom.

Freedom. I snorted as the last of my laughter died out. What a cruel word. And Quatre was mean too, for telling me all of this.

I believed him.