Chapter 3: The Unexpected Oracle
"The Fanfix is a system," said Nebulus, as he and Neo Morpheus walked through the crowds. "Just like any system, some of the rules can be bent, and others broken. But some people who are still part of the system have become so dependant on it that they'll fight to stay a part of it."
Neo Morpheus wasn't sure why he had been taken here while this was being explained. He wasn't even sure what the fanfic was about. Oh, whatever.
"So you need to know, Neo Morpheus, that no matter what, if you're not with us, you're potentially against us."
Neo suddenly saw Roll. He knew who Roll was, of course: anyone who knew a thing about the history of Reploids knew about the robots Dr. Light built. She smiled as she passed them, and the hairs stood on the back of his (admittedly illusionary) neck.
"Neo Morpheus, were you listening to me, or were you looking at the girl in the red dress?"
"Oh, you mean Roll?" said Neo.
"Look again," said Nebulus.
Neo turned, and suddenly Roll was Agent Nimoy, pointing a gun in his face. "Gah!"
"Freeze program," said Nebulus, and the world froze in place.
"What the hell is this??" exclaimed Neo Morpheus.
"An Agent, Neo Morpheus," said Nebulus. "They are sentient characters created to regulate the Fanfix."
"Then this isn't ..." Neo Morpheus suddenly reassessed the situation.
"The Fanfix? No," said Nebulus. "This fic has one of the most important object lessons we can come up with: if you're not one of us, you're one of THEM."
"Ah, yes," said Neo Morpheus. "THEM. I was wondering when you'd get around to explaining THEM to me."
"I won't lie to you, Neo Morpheus," said Nebulus. "Every single person who has gone up against an Agent is dead. If they aren't shot, their fic is discontinued, and they cease to exist."
"In that case, if I'm the One --" Neo Morpheus grimaced. "Are you saying I can dodge bullets?"
"No, Neo Morpheus," said Nebulus. "I'm saying that when the time comes, there will be such a great plot contrivance that you won't need to."
Yesterday, Burger King. Today, Wendy's. Tomorrow, the world. Neo Morpheus didn't think much about the health benefits of what they typically ate outside the Fanfix, but he had to admit that it tasted okay..
"Ah," said Kris as she took a bite. "Absolutely nothing the body needs."
"Hey, it's not ALL the body doesn't need," said Kenny.
Kris and Alexin exchanged a glance. "Here it comes," muttered Alexin.
"I mean, look at some of the foods they've got there," continued Kenny. "I mean, on the list of ingredients, some of the ingredients themselves have lists of themselves. Once I saw beta carotene listed as an ingredient of itself!"
"So what you're saying is that lots of food is made from junk," said Neo Morpheus.
Kenny smiled. "Yep, and if you eat too much, you'll end up full of junk!"
(KENNY:) Grade A milk emulsified,
Malto-dextrin alkalide,
Silicon deoxylite,
Lots of sugar -- (KRIS & N.M.:) Hey, all right!
(KENNY:) Calcified synthetic salt,
Artificial barley malt,
Glycerine and aspertate,
Folic acid -- (ALEXIN:) That tastes great.
(ALL except CATS:) Monosodium glutamate,
Dehydrated calceinate!
Soybean oil, butter fat,
Carmel center -- (CATS:) Eat I'll that!
(TRILOGY, ALEXIN, & KRIS:) Hooray for sugar 'cause we love it,
Chocolate chips we want more of it,
Cakes and ice cream, watch us shove it,
Down our throats real fast!
(They do this. Nebulus gets a resigned look on his face as though he's seen this before)
(TRILOGY:) Hey let's all see what's inside it!
(N.M.:) Gellllllllatinized triglycerine,
Phosphate soybean lecethin,
Deoxylite tri-silicon,
Dipped in chocolate -- (KENNY & ALEXIN:) Bring it on!
(N.M.:) Citrus enzymes, BHT,
Powdered milk -- (KRIS:) Sounds good to me!
(N.M.:) Baking soda, carob gum,
Carbohydrates -- (TRILOGY:) Yummy yum!
(ALL except CATS:) Monosodium glutamate,
Zinc disodium algenate!
Whole grain flour, yeast, and fat,
(CATS:) Eat to it time, do I'll that!
(Nebulus steps fully into the room.)
But the scene's not moving slow.
Now let's really quickly wrap it up,
'Cause now we have to go!
"Um ... okay," said Kenny.
"Go where?" said Neo Morpheus.
"To see the Oracle," said Nebulus.
On a table in Room 666 of the Hotel Lafriggingit, a computer started up.
"Just put us in, Dozent," said Seifer.
"We have enough things for now," said Nebulus.
"Cats, you and Alexin hold the exit," said Nebulus. "Let's go."
"For great justice," said Cats.
They descended the large staircase and left the hotel. Kris and Kenny stayed at the door.
"We should be back in an hour," said Nebulus.
And for no comprehensible reason, Seifer threw a palmtop computer into a trash can.
They got into a black sedan and Nebulus drove them into the street.
"Did you have to go through this?" said Neo Morpheus.
"We all did," said Trilogy.
"What did the Oracle tell you?"
"He told me a bunch of things," she said.
"Can we skip this scene??" said Seifer.
Silence descended. "Uh, we refer to sequences of events as 'scenes' even though we're not part of the Fanfix anymore," said Seifer after a moment.
"So we're not actually breaking the Fourth Wall?" said Neo Morpheus.
"Neo Morpheus, an awareness of the Fourth Wall is, in itself, breaking it," said Nebulus.
"How about we just shut up?" said Seifer.
"Great idea!" said Neo. "I'm down with that."
They drove up to an apartment building. "We're here," said Nebulus.
They got out. Trilogy and Seifer waited outside the building as Nebulus and Neo Morpheus entered. They boarded an elevator, and Nebulus pressed the button for the fifth floor.
"So this ... oracle," said Neo Morpheus. "He knows everything?"
"He'd say he knows enough," said Nebulus.
"Is he from a fanfic?" asked Neo Morpheus. He wanted to know what he was getting into.
"Yes, but try not to think of it in that regard," said Nebulus. "He's from fanfiction, but at the same time he's something more. Try not to think of what he says in terms of right or wrong, either. Sometimes he can say things that are misleading, and aren't literally correct except from a certain point of view."
"What did he tell you?"
"He told me that I'd find the One."
"So, nothing new, huh?"
They got out and approached Room 513. "I can only show you the door," said Nebulus. "You yourself must walk through it."
Neo Morpheus considered that they had forgotten to bring up this comment earlier, then knocked on the door. A woman in a nurse's gown opened up the door. "Hello, Nebulus," she said. "We've been expecting you."
They entered the front hallway of the apartment. "Wait here," the nurse said to Nebulus.
She brought Neo Morpheus into the livingroom, where a number of children, as well as The Tick, sat around, and an unheeded television displayed a scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "You can wait here with the other Unuploadeds," she told Neo Morpheus, and left the room.
In one corner, two girls were playing with blocks, telekinetically making them hover. In the middle of the room sat The Tick, apparently meditating. Off to one side sat a toddler in buddist monk robes, bending spoons with his mind. Neo Morpheus sat down in front of the boy, who offered him a spoon.
Neo Morpheus took it and stared at it for a bit.
The boy watched him. "Do not try and bend the spoon," he said. "That's impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth."
"What truth?" said Neo Morpheus.
The boy looked at him earnestly. "There is no --"
"SSPOOOOOOOON!!!" said The Tick.
"There is no spoon?" said Neo Morpheus.
"No," said the boy. "There is no --"
"SSPOOOOOOOON!!!" said The Tick.
"Oh," said Neo Morpheus. "I gotcha. There is no --"
"SSPOOOOOOOON!!!" said The Tick.
"Try to realize that you are really bending yourself," said the boy.
Neo Morpheus stared at it. The spoon began to bend ...
"The Oracle will see you now," said the nurse.
Neo Morpheus stepped into the kitchen and smelled baking cookies ... and he found that the Oracle was the last being he would have expected. "Just a minute," said the small, wrinked, robed, pointy-eared figure in front of the oven. "Only a moment will I be."
"... Yoda??" said Neo Morpheus.
"What you were expecting was I not, hmm?" said the Oracle, turning to face him. "A wise old sorcerer, or even an aged grandparent, perhaps. But expecting you have I been. Oh, and do not worry about the vase."
"Vase? What vase?" said Neo Morpheus, bumping into a stand with a vase on it. It fell and broke. "Oh -- I'm sorry ..."
"Apologize you need not," said Yoda. "Repair it one of the children will. But a more interesting thought there is: Would still have you broken it, had nothing I said?"
Neo Morpheus looked around; it had everything a kitchen in a middle-lower-class apartment building should have, but it seemed that none of it really existed unless he focused on it. The alphabet refrigerator magnets ... the wall clock ...
"Too poorly described some fanfiction is," murmered Yoda, walking over to one counter. "But impede the flow of the story, excessive description does." He leaped up onto the counter and faced Neo Morpheus. "Told you, did Nebulus, why you are here?"
"Yes, he did," said Neo.
"And what do you think?" said Yoda. "The One, are you?"
Neo Morpheus considered. "Uh, maybe. Yeah, I guess."
"So certain are you," said Yoda, "speaking to a muppet? Hmm?"
Neo Morpheus didn't have an answer to that.
"Of such confidence I approve," said Yoda. "But the truth you do not know."
"What truth?" asked Neo Morpheus. "That there is no --"
"SSPOOOOOOOON!!!" said The Tick from the other room.
"No," said Yoda gravely. "There is another. But once you discover it, it may be too late."
"Why?" said Neo. "Too late for what?"
Yoda closed his eyes. "Difficult to see," he said finally. "Always in motion is the future."
"I was afraid you'd say that," said Neo. "But what do you see?"
"I see what I have always seen," said the Oracle. "But this do I know: the gift you have, but the power to change the Fanfix that the One had, you have not. Not yet. Still waiting you are."
"Waiting for what?" said Neo Morpheus.
"Perhaps another life," said Yoda. He snorted. "He is too old," he said to the air. "Too old to begin the training."
"Um, aren't you supposed to be an oracle?" said Neo Morpheus. "You know, seeing the future, and whatnot."
"The future?" He snorted. "Believe you to be the One, Nebulus does. Convince him otherwise, no one can. His undoing it will be." He looked Neo Morpheus in the eye. "His, or yours. If killed are you, then live he will. But if survive you do, Nebulus will not. Die, one of you will."
He let that sink in a moment, then picked up an oven mitt and hopped off the counter, pulling open the oven door as he did so. "But better will you feel once you leave," he said, pulling the tray of cookies out. "Remember you will that believe in this 'fate crap' you do not. (Here, have a cookie.) Once finish this cookie you do, feel perfectly fine you will."
Neo Morpheus took the cookie and stared at it.
"What the Oracle said was for you and you alone," said Nebulus as they rode the elevator back down.
There was a pause. Neo Morpheus stared at the uneaten cookie in his hand.
"Did he mention me?" said Nebulus.
"Here they come," said Trilogy as Neo Morpheus and Nebulus arrived.
The others stopped and turned.
"Uh, a deus ex machina," said Neo. "There's this painting I didn't see before ... What's going on?"
"A deus ex machina is usually a glitch in the Fanfix," said Trilogy. "It usually happens when they change something."
"What do we do!?" said Dozent.
"We panic, that's what!" said Thinks.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" they both said.
"All your strange sensation," said Cats, "are belong to us."
Alexin opened up the drapes, revealing ... a brick wall.
"Oh crap," said Cats. "Time it getting out of is ..." He opened up a violin case, revealing a plasma assault rifle. "... THE BIG GUNS!"
The wall burst open and twenty stormtroopers rushed in, blasting away. Cats and Alexin returned fire, and, yes, these were stormtroopers we're talking about, but ten-to-one odds didn't cut it.
Seifer pulled open the curtains, revealing the bricks. "Ah, that," said Nebulus.
"We're doomed!" moaned Seifer.
"Hey, what happened to the gunblade-weilding badass?" said Kenny.
"I never became him!" said Seifer. "You stole me from my teens, remember?"
"Oh, right," said Kenny. "But that's still out of character for you."
Nebulus ignored them. He took out a palmtop computer and typed, "Thinks, find some way to get us out of here no matter how contrived."
Thinks brought up a schematic. "Okay, on the eighth floor, there's a way down the wet wall ..." He typed a message to the others.
"Eighth floor," he muttered. "They're on the eighth floor."
Meanwhile, the remaining group descended the wet wall in almost absolute silence. They got caught once or twice for a minute or two, but they were making good progress.
A light briefly appeared in the hole above them.
"They're gone," Agent Nimoy muttered to Agent Elrond.
"It's not my fault," said Agent Elrond.
"We need to find them," said Agent Shinra.
Seifer got some dust in his nose. He began to sniffle ...
Trilogy put a finger to her lips ...
Seifer sneezed.
Directly outside the wall they were in, the officer muttered, "They're in the walls." He shouted, "They're in the walls!"
Suddenly, he began to glow blue and spasm uncontrollably. Then the glow disappeared, and Agent Elrond stood in his place.
There was tension in the wet wall, and then a fist slammed through.
"It's an agent!" exclaimed Seifer.
"No shit!" said Kenny.
"GO!" exclaimed Nebulus, smashing through the wall.
"Can we skip the dialogue about me trying to save him and GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!?" shouted Neo Morpheus, jumping straight down and taking Trilogy, Seifer, Kris, and Kenny with him.
Remember how Nebulus was moving really fast in his fight with Neo Morpheus? Well Agent Elrond was literally a blur. He slammed Nebulus against the wall.
"So, we meet at last, Mr. Nebulus," said Agent Elrond.
"And you are?" said Nebulus.
"The name's Elrond," was the reply. "Agent Elrond."
"You all look the same to me," said Nebulus.
"You can't win, you know," said Agent Elrond.
"I already have," said Nebulus.
"Hey, I need help getting out!" said Seifer's voice.
"What the ...?" muttered Thinks. "Did we skip a scene or something?"
"Yeah," said Seifer into the pay phone as the burning wreck of a paddy wagon lay nearby. "I think in a rough draft of the script there's a scene they cut where I get captured or something, then there's an accident. Just get me outta here!"
"Hold tight," came Thinks' response. "I think I can jury rig a connection to where you are ..."
And then Seifer --
"You okay, man?" said Dozent.
"Yeah, I'm fine," said Seifer.
"We need a phone," said Trilogy.
"Well there's a pay phone," said Neo Morpheus.
There was a response.
"Who is this??" exclaimed Clark Kent.
There was a further response.
"All right," he said. "I'm on my way."
"Okay," said Trilogy. "See you later."
"'Bye," said Thinks, hanging up. "Now how come I suddenly got the feeling there's about to be a huge-ass plot twist?"
"THIS'S why!" said Seifer, blasting him with the plasma rifle.
Dozent gasped. "NOOOOOO!" he screamed, and launched himself at Seifer, who blasted him to bits.
"God I love that sound," said Kris.
"Me first," said Trilogy, picking up the phone.
"I just had a weird feeling," muttered Neo Morpheus.
"Hello, Trilogy," came Seifer's voice.
"Seifer??" said Trilogy. "Where's Thinks?"
There was a silence.
"You know, for a long time, Trilogy, I thought I was in love with you ..."
"What the hell!?" exclaimed Trilogy. "You killed them!!"
"Ah, that would be it," said Neo Morpheus.