Entry 8
It's too late. I said I wouldn't like her, but she smiled at me, and that was it. I was the first person she saw when she opened her eyes and came out of the cocoon. I was the one she looked at, and I was the one she smiled at. It just feels like a connection, you know? Kind of like when a baby is born, and they open their eyes and look at one of their parents. There's such a link there- for life. Waking up and seeing someone looking back down at you; well, that's just something special there. Besides, coming out of the cocoon is pretty much like being born. Out here, your life starts when you're unplugged. So really, I'm almost as old as most of the crew.
She opened those gorgeous dark eyes and that was it, I was gone. Now I know why Cypher always looks at Trinity like that. I'm probably looking at Aria the same way. God, I shouldn't do this to myself. I've seen what it can do to other people. Like when Kyassa died, Tank locked himself up in his room for three days. We just drifted while he was in there. Nothing we could do would get him to come out. Finally, the fourth day, he opened the door and walked out. Sat down at his normal seat, just like that. Nothing said. And Aria will die sooner or later. We all will, even Morpheus. I can't imagine him gone, but someday, some way or another, he'll have to die.
Living out here gives you a lot of perspective. Someday, when this is all over, we should market this as a boot camp for 'difficult' teenagers. Hah. Can you imagine? A bunch of incompetent, disagreeable, immature morons out here trying to save the goddamn world. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Then again, are we that much different? It's pretty much the blind leading the blind. If Morpheus ever doesn't know what to do, well, we can't tell, can we? I mean, he could just have done everything spontaneously and totally by accident and just been lucky, right? Ok, I'm scaring myself. If our fearless leader (joke again, but not really if you think about it) actually is just shooting from the hip here, we could be in deep shit. Which makes you wonder if anyone knows what they're doing. Say Morpheus is just following the example of the leader of the ship he started out on, who followed the guy before him, and so on. So who started? Did some guy just use random strategies and hoped they worked, and now we're all copying him? A very frightening thought. I don't think I can deal with that right now. Not with someone new. I have to help her. I can't be going through my own self-examination, too. Then again, better now than at a more inconvenient time. Apock told me a little while ago that sooner or later everyone questions why they're here, and whether it's really worth it. I guess the whole concept of what we're doing takes a while to sink in.
It's not that I want to get out- even if I did, I couldn't. But I'm just starting to wonder why this all started. What was so wrong with the world that it had to come to this? I'm not religious, but what did any omnipotent power have against us that it would punish us with this fate? It's enough to make even the most deeply religious person question their sense of faith. I mean, religion and science are supposed to be entirely separate, and yet these machines are playing God to us. They create us, they control us, they destroy us. How can there be a God if the machines are God? Is the Matrix heaven? Well, technically it was designed to be a sort of heaven, a human utopia, but you can see how that backfired. The problem with us humans is that we define our lives vicariously. We live vicariously. That's how we function. Don't you spend a lot of your time, well, in the Matrix at least, wishing you were someone else? Trying to be like someone else, trying to live someone else's life. That's the way it is. I mean, there's nothing we can do about it. It's human nature.
But- I don't want to think about Aria right now. It's just too hard. I really can't deal with it. Honestly, I have enough to worry about without a girl to complicate things. But it's kind of nice, just to know that there might be someone here I care about in that way, not just as a friend or somebody who's clearly older and wiser and more experienced than me. It's like they just fucking hold that over your head until it drives you crazy. I don't know, maybe I'm paranoid. I just feel like I've got one of those inferiority complexes going on, you know? God, I wish life was simple. Even if I just lived in Zion, I'd be happier. It's a goddamn wasteland out here.
It's miserable, it really is. Human companionship isn't everything. I mean, sure, if it wasn't for the rest of the crew I'd go insane but even as it is it's hard sometimes. Nobody ever told me life was going to be this hard. In the Matrix, you go to school, go to college, get a degree, get a job as some executive on Wall Street, get married, have two kids, retire to Florida, and come to visit and torture your children and grandchildren every so often. That's how life is. I can't say it exactly sounds exciting to me, but hey, it's simple. They tell you how to live your life, and that's what you do. You live by the strict parameters of society, and if you stray too far, well, that's what the Agents are there for. They take care of the nonconformists; they tie up the loose ends. Basically, if you don't fit in, they kill you. It's like extreme high school experience or something.
She's beautiful. She really is. Apock braided her chopped-off hair into a sort of ring, like a thick woven strand of silky black fibers. When she saw that her hair was gone, she almost cried. I could see the tears in her eyes, but she bit her lip hard. Pride. She doesn't want us to see her cry. I guess Trinity is kind of a role model of hers, though, because when they were introduced, she smiled. A real smile. She looks even more beautiful when she smiles. Like a ray of sunshine in our dark world. I wonder what the sun is like. Sure, I've seen the sun in the Matrix, but the real thing has to be better. If us humans hadn't scorched the sky with our pseudo-hopes to stop the machines. I wish that for just one day I could go back. Back to before this all happened. Even for just one day, if I could stand outside on a hill. Feel the sun on my face, and look up and see a clear blue sky. Just one day. I think that would be heaven.