Chapter Three It's so hard to know the children these days. They all seem- what? Older
than their years, I suppose.

So many of the children just don't seem like children anymore.

It's almost as if there are things in their minds they don't want you to
know.

-from John Saul's "The God Project"

Astral woke up in pain. Thrashing like a newborn in the goo that threatened to choke her, drown her, she struggled to sit up and gasped for air. Her lungs hurt. She registered something about a yellowish cocoon, and countless others like it, and black painful tubes and drips imbedded in her flesh. Astral worked blindly, subconsciously, ripping the offenders out. Now the big one in the back of her head- she stopped and gasped, stunned, at the great spidery metal creature that hovered over her, now. Astral felt a fear she had never felt before grip her, tightly, and tried to scream, but her throat hurt too much and her chords were too tight- it came out as a small screech.

Then the horrible, sticky pain of something sliding out of the back of her head, and she fell, sliding, like she was drowning, down an endless black tube, and naked into the murky waters below.

--

Mouse and Trinity sat on a hard metal bench in the kitchen, wordless. Mouse seemed to find his feet strangely enthralling. Trinity leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. Morpheus stood in front of them, leaning against the counter. He was like that- no matter what, Morpheus carried about this serenity and stillness wherever he went. When Morpheus was truly angry or disappointed he would adopt this frighteningly calm quality. Sometimes you wouldn't even know he was in the room, watching, quietly judging, until he spoke.

Scared the hell out of Mouse.

"Can't I at least see her?" Mouse dared to break the deafening silence. Beside him, Trinity drew in a sharp breath.

Morpheus didn't respond. Instead, he slowly shifted his gaze from the wall behind them to Mouse's sunken face.

"Ooohkay." Mouse muttered under his breath. Back to stare at his shoes.

Needless to say, Morpheus had been more than a little displeased when he discovered Astral's sputtering, writhing body in the infirmary, Apoc and Dozer working on her silently, apologetic glances occasionally shooting up to the ship's captain. Mouse admitted that he hadn't really thought this far ahead in the game plan. It appeared that neither had Trinity, or she was leaving that to him. A little amused, she watched the panic set into Mouse's face. Learning experience or some other manipulative bull crap she would call it.

"Astral is still resting. It will take her awhile to get over the shock. Longer than it took Neo. She wasn't ready." The disapproval was apparent in Morpheus' quiet voice.

"When Apoc is done with her you can see her. I suggest you have an apology in mind. It's quite a scare for one to lose everything she knows unprepared."

Mouse had an angry, irrational thought about losing his own family, one he couldn't remember. He pushed it out of his head before his mouth could form a sarcastic come-back.

"I somehow managed to convince Jolix to take her aboard." Morpheus' glare, if at all possible, deepened Mouse's shame.

Wait a minute.why should I be sorry?

"He'll be here in two weeks. It will probably be traumatizing to switch ships so quickly like that."

Oh, shut up, you.

Morpheus quirked an eyebrow, as if hearing Mouse's thoughts. The boy gulped.

"Go to your cabin, Mouse. I'll be there shortly."

Mouse stared up at his captain apprehensively, and shot a pleading look at Trinity. When she offered no forthcoming help, he sighed and stood up, walking out of the mess and down the dark metal corridor nervously.

The big dark man then turned solemnly to Trinity who sat serenely still, staring back at him. The two freedom fighters regarded each other for a moment. Trinity was the one Morpheus probably knew best of all his crew, with the possible exception of Tank and Dozer. She was only Mouse's age, perhaps a little younger, when he had picked her up, a frightened, angry young girl from the rural slums of Argentina.

Now the big man sighed and leaned against the counter, tilting his head slightly to the side. Trinity's look was identical to his.

"I'm not going to pretend to know why you assisted Mouse on his little adventure." Mopheus swallowed the truth. He knew Trinity had been acting on some undisciplined, impulsive protective feeling, much like he had done some twenty years ago.

Trinity pulled her feet up and rested her hands on her knees, much like Morpheus often did when he was waiting for some response or action.

"What am I going to do with you?" Morpheus asked, no one in particular.

Trinity didn't break her gaze from Morpheus'.

"What am I going to do with him?"

--

Mouse always found it surreal in Apoc's makeshift infirmary. The way the blinding white light leaked up from one side to be swallowed up by the impending darkness. He stood a little apprehensively by the end of the room, leaning against the doorframe.

Only a few days had passed since Astral had been ripped out from the 'safe, warm' life she had known before the real world. Mouse had seen her a little earlier that day, when he, Tank and Dozer helped the girl start to re-learn to walk. Now he was bringing her some semblance of a supper, the way Neo and Trinity did when he would fall ill. And Mouse fell ill a lot. Morpheus told him that he was unusually sickly as a child.

Astral stirred from her restless slumber and blinked deep, dark eyes at him from inside her plastic-bordered cot. She grinned, at least her smile hadn't changed, and effortlessly pulled herself into a sitting position, with more than a little pride.

"How have you been?" Mouse asked as he stepped forward with his offering- some more of that flavourless mush, a dark mug of water, and a few slices from a small, feeble tomato. Despite being there to help her re-learn the things she thought she once knew, Mouse didn't get to see Astral a lot- since Morpheus' decree that all his spare time be eradicated for a month. He actually had a curfew placed on him, much earlier than he thought suited him, and all of his waking time was taken up by some lesson or chore he never thought needed to be done. Complete restriction from the Matrix for a month, and the white room for two weeks. Pretty much all the fun in his mundane little existence had been taken away.

"Ah, a feast," Astral had adapted to her new life a lot quicker than anyone had expected her too, showing gratefulness for whatever nourishment she could get, and genuine delight at a feeble treat like a real vegetable.

"How have you been?" Mouse asked again, placing the small fare before her and seating himself on a swivel chair close by.

"Been better," She admitted, running a hand over her bald scalp, a little bit of peach fuzz starting to show. "I kinda miss my hair. Kinda really miss it." Mouse smiled when he remembered when he first saw Astral in that crowded, smoky theatre front. She was short, but her huge slanted bright pink spikes lit the way to her. Everything had been different since then.

"You know, my 'real' hair colour is shit brown." Her bluntness made Mouse chuckle. "And it's got this gross wave thing going on." Astral absently licked the last of her gruel from it's black bowl. "I'm not looking forward to growing it back."

"Maybe your real real hair is different." Mouse offered.

"Hopefully," Astral downed the rest of her metal-tasting water and hugged her legs to her chest. God, she looked so thin. Gaunt was actually probably a better word.

"Feeling a little homesick?" Mouse prompted, seeing the sad confusion on her face.

"Yeah. Stress is starting to get to me." She sighed. "It's all so much to take, you know? And I know it sounds stupid, but the only thing I can really think about is how my friends and family, even though I know they're not actually my friends and family, are taking this. Do they think I'm dead or that I took off or something? I feel so bad about it."

"Don't. It's not stupid. Everyone feels that way." Mouse was staring at his right hand again, studying the pale, frail fingers, absently.

"Did you feel that way at first?"

This caught him off guard. He had never thought of it in terms of himself before.

"You know, I can't remember," He said, the way he usually brushed off questions about his past before. He really couldn't.

"Really? When did you wake up? You're not that much older than me, it mustn't have been that long ago."

Mouse shook his head, as if it were obvious, still staring at his hand. "Nah, I've been here all my life."

Astral didn't say anything. Eventually Mouse looked up at her and saw in her face that she was as confused as ever.

"Look, don't worry about it." He got up and cleared away Astral's tray, drawing the thin white sheets up over her. "It's just the way it is. I must've come out when I was a baby or something. I grew up on the Neb, Morpheus is like my dad. That's just the way it is."

"But you came from the Matrix, right?" Astral leaned back and pulled the sheets around her, settling in for sleep. "Not from Zion?"

"Yeah." Now that he said it all out loud, it did sound a little strange. Other rescued children were fostered on Zion but he remembered being on the ship his entire life.

"Have you ever asked Morpheus?" Astral had her eyes closed, and stifled a yawn.

"Once.he didn't really answer me." He looked down at the once vibrant, energetic young girl drifting into sleep before him. "Well, I won't bother you anymore. G'night."

"Night." Astral muttered as Mouse dropped a chaste kiss on her forehead and stole quietly out of the room.

--

That night, Mouse had another nightmare. Even scarier this time, if possible. And once again, holding the sobbing boy in his small, dank cabin, Morpheus asked him if he wanted to talk about it. And once again, Mouse shook his head no.

How do you talk about an ordeal you don't even know you've been through? What would he tell Morpheus.the darkness, the clinking of chains and the smell of burnt flesh, and the eternal sporadic hum of the sewing machines?

Oh, and the streets- the dusty, crowded streets, sharing a square meter of concrete with seven others like him, children selling garbage bags and pencils and pickpocketing. The mothers crying and begging. The blood, and the pain, and the yelling in some language he didn't understand.

Morpheus would hold him close and tell him to fight back, to face his fears.

What would he do? Tell them to stop beating him, please? In a language he didn't understand? Maybe he could learn it, get it uploaded, if he knew what language it was!

And then he remembered the screams, just some screams of some girls he didn't know, didn't want to know. Girls, underage girls, in an AIDS-ridden brothel, he would know if he weren't so naïve.

So instead he kept it all inside, and shook his head no, and cried into his surrogate father's expansive chest.