I'm back! I know it was a while since I updated, but now it's hard cause I have school and stuff. Now I must explain a few things: the following chapter was supposed to be only a part of an original chapter, but for some reason, don't ask me why, it turned out so long I had to split it in half. So that's why this chapter is called A Hole In The Matrix Part I. Now I understand it strays very far from the reality created by the movie, but I am just trying to do something different, that hasn't been done before, explore and bring up new aspects. This is an experiment! Now I will bore you no more so you can enjoy the chapter and I hope you will find that you can relate to my characters! :) PLEEZ R&R!!!!!

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"How many more miles to the nearest gas station?" Mike asked irritably. "My ass has gone to sleep all over again, We've been drivin' for about 60 fuckin' hours now, my ass has gone to sleep all over again, all down the left cheek, and all we've seen so far are goddamn cactuses!"

"If your IQ was a bit higher that10, you'd realize that if we've been driving for 60 hours we'd be dead by now. Dead from your endless blabber!" Alisa exclaimed. She was trying to cheer everyone up, but she wasn't feeling too cheery herself. They'd been driving through the abandoned stretch of desert somewhere in the depths of Utah since daybreak, and ever since they left the town where they spent the night, they haven't seen any sign of human habitation.

Dan, Alisa's boyfriend, wore a grim expression behind the wheel of his convertible, which used to be red, but was now more like a dirty reddish brown, all covered in dirt and dust.

Alisa, sitting in the front seat, knew why Dan was so grim. As she looked at the fuel indicator, and the arrow showed that they had less that a quarter tank left. Mike and Jodi, in the back seat, didn't know that, and Alisa thought it was best not to tell them.

As the harsh, hot, dusty air rushed past, messing up her hair, she stared out on the desert on either side of the deserted highway. Sand, rocks, shrubs, dirt, sand, dirt, rocks, a cactus here and there, more sand… All that stretched out as far as the eye could see. The sun was high, shining mercilessly, making the shadows short and rigid. Not a cloud, just the vast, spotless blue, as harsh as the landscape under it. As the empty highway wound up and down there were little puddles of water on it, either dark or reflecting the sun or the surroundings. They disappeared as the car neared them. Mirages. Caused by hot air rising from the road. Another optical illusion, also caused by heat, was the way the landscape wobbled and shimmered far away at the horizon, like it does in those footages of African savannas, or above a large bonfire.

Alisa realized Mike was talking about something with lots of expression. "I told you buttheads, it wasn't a good idea to cut through this fuckin' desert. But no, you wouldn't listen to me. Utah is a very weird place, I'm tellin ya, didn't you hear about all those religious polygamic cults and freaks that say they believe in Jesus and then sacrifice people?"

"Then this is definitely the place for you," Jodi said, "You would love to live in a polygamy, wouldn't you?"

"That's not the point!" Mike frowned, "I'm plain scared of this friggen place, I'm tellin ya. Gives me the creeps. Did you know that somewhere around here is the Dead Zone?"

"Dead Zone?" Jodi asked skeptically, raising her eyebrows,

"Yeah. It's sort of like the Bermuda Triangle. Planes avoid it. Desert car races never go there ever since what happened in 1957."

"What exactly happened?" asked Alisa, slightly intrigued. Mike's babble wasn't to be taken seriously, but this time, it seemed, he had some information. She turned around, kneeling on her seat. Alisa never used seatbelts.

"There was a desert car race somewhere around here," Mike started enthusiastically, "And when all the cars arrived at the finish point, two were missing."

"Jeez, got lost, that's all!" Jodi scoffed.

Mike ignored her. "Well they went looking for them, sent a helicopter."

"And the helicopter didn't come back, either," Jodi cut in. she was being sarcastic, but Mike said, "Oddly enough, Jodi, yes." She grinned.

"They thought it was maybe some weather condition, so they sent like a whole army with desert tanks and shit. And when they came… They found nothing. They lost all communications and got lost themselves or somethin', which was lucky, cause if they'd have gone into the dead zone they'd have been toast as well. But they found one guy wandering in the desert though. He was dehydrated and stuff, so when he told them that there was a place in the desert where the earth ended, time stopped, people just vanished into thin air and freaky shit like that, they thought he was being delirious and shit. But, they never did find any trace of the others."

"Well, what's your explanation for all that?" Alisa asked. This sounded like another legend.

"Wait a minute," Dan spoke for the first time, "When did you say that was?"

"1957. Why?"

"Isn't that about the time the alien flying saucer crashed in Roswell?"

"Exactly!" Mike exclaimed.

Jodi rolled her eyes. "Please don't tell me you think the alien from that saucer crawled all the way to here, set up camp in the middle of the friggen desert and is eating every stupid ass who has the brains to wander in there."

"Well, not exactly," Mike said, "But some believe that the alien technology from that vessel r whatever was used by the military, and when they were finished with it, they dumped it in the middle of the desert where they thought no one would stumble across it. Dug it underground or something. But they didn't do a very clean job. The spaceship or whatever is radiating some shit that causes weird stuff. Like a time warp probably."

"A whatta?" Jodi, of course.

"Time warp. It's where time slows down, speeds up, or even bends and shit. Whatever other weird stuff it caused there, that guy claimed to have seen whole sections of the desert just… disappear."

"Well, what you're telling me right now is that you believe some ass who lost half his brain wanderin' through the desert and was on the verge of hearing voices and seeing devils prancing about." Jodi declared.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Alisa said, "This sounds suspiciously like an X-files case. I don't mean to sound skeptic, that's Jodi's job, but doesn't seeing people vanish in a puff of smoke classify as being nuts?"

Mike gave her a sly grin. "Well, still they never found those other asses, the car or the helicopter."

Jodi was grinning as well. "Yeah, and I bet you'll use that as the argument to saying we'll all get eaten down here. Alisa was right, you definitely watch too much X-files, Mike."

Alisa wondered how the two got along. They seemed to be exact opposites of each other, yet they'd been dating for about 2 months now already. Mike was definitely a weird character, his interest in aliens was well - known, but he was nothing close to a geek. He was into heavy metal music, and dressed accordingly - all black, leather jacket, heavy silver chain around his neck, dog collar, and semi - Mohawk hair dyed green and blue. And tattoos, lots of them. He even had a tattoo of an alien. He didn't have any parents, and kept on changing foster parents all the time, because he annoyed them so much. He finally was allowed his own little apartment by the government at 18.

Jodi, her best friend, has changed a lot over the years. She remembered Jodi when they were kids, a sweet, dark-haired, always smiling girl who believed in angels. Now she wouldn't believe you could borrow her money and actually give it back.

Everyone except for ancient friends like Alisa remembered Jodi as a dangerous individual who carried a knife (although that was never proven) started up a fight whenever she got the chance and flirted with the hot Biology teacher. She now had fiery red hair and brilliant green eyes, which were also fake due to color contacts. Only Alisa remembered her friend the way she used to be. Such a radical change was due to divorce of Jodi's parents, having loved them both very much, pretty much her whole world fell apart when that happened. She had to live with her mother, who would yell at her one minute and ignore her the next…

Alisa, herself, didn't have a very happy life. Her parents never loved her and only cared about her little sister. When Alisa was younger she was always jealous cause Leanne was the only one who ever got pretty new clothes. At Leanne's every whine their parents they bought her loads of ice cream and when Alisa asked for some they'd say "Grow up, Alisa! You're older, and we don't have any money, you have to make amends for your little sister."

And of course, Leanne got the best presents at Christmastime.

It was different when Alisa grew up. She had her own job, her own money. All she wanted was a little bit of love. But she couldn't have that, either. Leanne got all of it.

Her parents never cared, when she told them they wouldn't give a shit if she died they just yelled at her.

Dan was a different story. He didn't have a screwed-up family like the rest of them. His parents were rich, and very busy, they didn't spend much time with him, but they seemed somehow concerned. When Alisa proposed her scheme to run away, leaving their dull city behind, and go to L.A. to Jodi, she had agreed immediately. ("What have I got to lose?" she said.) Jodi wanted to bring Mike along, and when she told him, he said simply, "I'm in."

Alisa thought it be more difficult to convince her boyfriend, but eventually did he not only agree, he decided they take his car. After all, it was a Porsche with an F1 engine. Yes, Dan was stinking rich as his friends liked to say. "I'm in it for the adventure," he had said, "Besides, you daredevils need someone sensible along."

That last part was said rather in a macho way, and, as Jodi had mentioned later, one could not be sure whether he meant 'sensible' or 'rich'.

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Another hour had passed, Mike got more and more grumpy, he dragged out a bit of weed, Jodi attacked it, and Alisa, who couldn't stand drugs, rolled over to the back seat, almost falling out of the car, and threw Mike's whole supply of pot out of the car. Mike got pissed, he cursed, commanded Dan to pull over, but he just said, "Sorry, man, this ride don't stop for such lowly purposes created by a creature as lowly as you." Mike threatened to ram his head down the first toilet he found, and everyone laughed at that cause there wasn't a single toilet in sight for miles.

As time passed, Dan got more and more tight-lipped, glancing very often at the fuel indicator. They had so little fuel left it was amazing they still kept going. The miracles Dan's Porsche could do. And still, after every curve of the road, there was nothing.

"Man, I don't know if we're gonna make it." Dan said finally. "The fuel is awfully low."

"Don't you like, have a spare canister?" Mike asked.

"Used that a long time ago." Alisa said grimly, "Don't you remember, butthead?"

"Oh yeeeeaaaah…" Mike nodded.

"Okay, don't tell me we're gonna be stuck in the middle of the desert without food or water!" Jodi said in disbelief.

There was a silence. Mike broke it. "Dude!" he said, "That is so cool!"

Jodi growled and started hitting him on the head.

"No, I'm serious!" Dan exclaimed. "If a gas station doesn't pop out of nowhere right now, this is gonna be really old and corny."

"But well, there still is hope," Alisa said, "We might make it."

And then, somehow, at that moment, she knew they wouldn't. She couldn't explain how she knew, it wasn't a resolution one could have made by logic, she just knew it. It was the same cold sureness she had grown to trust, and this time it filled her stomach with knots.

As it turned out, she was right. Soon afterwards, the engine started sputtering, and then stalled altogether. "Shit!" Dan cursed, turning it off, "What now?"

"Well, don't ask me!" Jodi exclaimed. "This is your car, you're the one who should have taken care of it! Said it would be a fun ride!"

"How could I have known-"

"Guys!" Alisa yelled, "Drop it. Do you realize we are in deep shit now, and fighting would only make it worse?"

* * *

They took some supplies from the trunk of the car, and set out on foot. They kept on musing over the fact that running out of gas in the middle of a desert was the stupidest thing you could do besides shoot yourself on the face while inspecting a gun barrel. But as they trudged on in the buzzing heat, Alisa started to get a very weird feeling, and it got stronger and stronger as they went farther. They thought they were going towards civilization, but she had a feeling they were coming down into an endless pit, falling into complete desolation, coming inevitably to a place where reality got dimmer and dimmer before it disintegrated, a place where the earth ended.

After a long while they became quiet. Mike and Jodi went ahead, Alisa was plodding behind, tired, with her head on Dan's shoulder. It seemed she was living a dream. It wasn't so much the situation as it was the feeling.

It seemed that as though when she closed her eyes the desert around them disappeared. She closed her eyes for a moment and the feeling came again. She tried to imagine herself not walking down a highway, but lying on the couch back in her air - conditioned home, sipping some cool ginger ale. Somehow the vision came quickly. A little too quickly. It seemed all of a sudden that she wasn't walking at all, she was lying down… Or was she floating? The longer she walked with her eyes closed the sharper the feeling became, until it started to feel more real than her reality. The feeling of being crouched into a fetal position as though sleeping, and floating… Floating in some… Liquid? Molasses?

As it became all too real Alisa felt like she was on the verge of waking up and realizing she was actually floating in the strange stuff… That's when she opened her eyes. The feeling went away, fast, like a wave, but its remains lingered in her mind. She must have looked really disturbed, for Dan asked her, "You weren't actually sleeping, were you? I've known people to sleepwalk, but never like this!"

Alisa smiled. "I think the heat is getting to me," she said, "My brains are starting to melt."

Suddenly, they heard Mike's hoarse voice coming from ahead. "People, I think I'm startin' to hallucinate or some shit. Jodi, do you see what I see?"

There was a pause. Then suddenly, Jodi sheirked in a very unlike for her high pitch, "HOUSE!!!! THERE IS A HOUSE!!!!"

"What? Huh?"

Jodi took off down the highway at top speed, Mike hot on her heels. As Dan and Alisa stared down the road, they saw it, too. It was a square, squat, seemingly white building next what seemed to be a gas station. Wobbling with heat, in the bronzing rays of the setting sun, it looked ghostly, but no doubt it was real.

"Could that be an optical illusion?" Dan wondered, "I mean, it was known that people traveling through the desert-"

Alisa jerked his sleeve suddenly. "It's not a fucking optical illusion, smartass, we've finally reached civilization! We're not gonna die!!! Come on!"

And so she set off in a run after the other two. Finally, it seemed, their perilous, screwed - up journey has come to an end. All their exhaustion blown away, they were running down the sunset - lit highway, feeling once again, like in the beginning of the trip, the excitement and exhilaration of being free. Mike was especially happy, feeling like he was gonna fly, because for a while already he wanted to take a dump, but the thought of doing it in the middle of a desert in front of his friends didn't make him feel too hot.

Their happiness, though, was short - lived. The gas station seemed as deserted as everything else. The old concrete had dry shrubs growing out if its cracks, and they realized the fuel pump didn't work. The square building actually turned out to be a restaurant. It seemed to have two floors, with small, dirty windows with drawn scraggly - looking curtains. There was a door with an old mosquito net on it, and above it, in big, red letters was the word 'RESTAURANT'.

"What kind of a bugged-out place is this?" Mike mused. Alisa reached out for the old, tattered handle that looked like it's going to fall off, but Dan stopped her.

"Let me go first." He said.

"Oh yeah, so you can protect us in case some man-eating zombie is waiting for us there, you big, strong, maaan?!" Alisa exploded. She liked to make fun of dan when he tried acting protectively.

"Ouch!" Mike exclaimed, and laughed. "Don't you know you should never do that to a woman, Dan? It's the third millenium, and every woman is a feminist!"

"Shut up!" Jodi snapped. Dan rolled his eyes. He reached for the knob.

"It's probably locked-" Jodi said. But Dan already turned the knob and pushed the door. There was terrible creak as the door slowly opened inwards. At first, the four didn't see anything, their eyes adopting to the dark. Their biggest disappointment was the fact that the building didn't have air conditioning. They were struck by the stifling, dusty atmosphere, and the working fan they noticed standing on the bar counter didn't help much.

Except for the bar, on the room there were tables covered with clean checkered table spreads, and chairs. In the middle of each table, there was a small vase with what looked like a fake, dusty carnation. The last rays of the sun leaked through the cracks in the heavy curtains, lying in lines of molten gold on the floor and the table spreads. There was music playing in the room, some kind of soft jazz that was so barely - audible they didn't hear it at first. Everything seemed normal about this place, but Alisa felt as though something, maybe the whole atmosphere of it, was somehow spooky and strange.

"Man! There's a bathroom here! Hallelujah!" that was Mike, who had already made his way to the back.

"I must admit that is rather a fortunate situation." Said Dan in a serious - mocking voice. They both sprinted down the hall at the back that said, 'WASHROOMS'. Jodi snickered.

"I wonder if there's anybody here," she said, "This place seems to be as deserted as the desert its self. Hello?" she called. "Anybody here?" Alisa joined in, "You've got customers! And some really pissed off customers, too, cause we've been stranded in the desert!"

"We want some service!" Jodi yelled.

"Or we'll file a lawsuit!" Alisa added, grinning.

Jodi cracked up. "Jeez, I sure hope they've got some sense of humor after this!" she exclaimed.

But no one came. It seemed strange, the music was playing, the fan was working, and the restaurant seemed to be in operation, but there was no sign that there was anyone running it.

"What the fuck are they thinking, leaving their customers to die?!" Jodi growled.

"I don't think they get a lot of customers here." Alisa sighed.

"Oh well, might as well help ourselves." Jodi said, getting behind the bar counter. She picked up the hose that said 'coke' on it. "Oh my god, I can't believe it, we can actually spray each other with coke! That would be wicked, don't you think?"

"With this kind of heat, hell yeah!" Alisa answered. She made her way to the back of the room. There was the hallway leading to the washrooms, and a staircase leading upstairs.

"I'll go check out the upstairs," Alisa called, "Maybe there's someone there." For some reason the stairs were strangely forlorn, and she held her breath and proceeded with great caution as she started to ascend. As she stepped on the first old and ruddy wooden step, it gave an ominous creak, much similar to that of the door. The stairs were narrow, like a passage leading through the walls of the building, and seemed to be covered with thick layers of dust.

There was another thing about them, though. The higher she climbed, stepping carefully, being ready for the stairs to break, the more she started to get the feeling she got on the road before. The reality seemed to be dimming. She suddenly wasn't sure that the space behind her, the room she just left, the steps she just stepped on, really existed. Maybe, she thought, what if, each step disappeared right after her foot left it.

That was kind of creepy. She deliberately turned around. The stairs were still there, of course. But somehow seemed to her that maybe they sprang into being right as she turned around to look back. Alisa remembered, dimly, that some kind of philosopher put out a question, that stated, "Does an object really exist when no one's looking at it?" It might seem stupid, but right at this very moment, Alisa thought, maybe that guy was right.

She continued slowly towards the single door that was visible at the top of the stairs, listening to any sounds that might indicate any human presence. But there were none.

Alisa finally reached the door and stopped in front of it. It was wooden, dark with age, with what seemed like a brass knob. She paused, and then rapped on the door, expecting a hollow sound. But the sound it made was rather weird, like it was missing something, like a bad sound effect in a low - budget movie. "Anybody there?" she called. Then knocked again. No response. Not even a sound. She reached for the knob, and turned it. The knob turned easily, the door wasn't locked. Alisa didn't feel too good just bursting into somebody's house like that, the inhabitants may be taking a shower or just hanging around in their underwear, it was their home, for God's sake!

But still, she pushed the door inwards, stepping forward…

She expected a room or a hallway, but nothing, absolutely nothing prepared her for what she saw next.

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Well, how da ya like that? Oh and by the way, if someone hated that chapter and thought it was terribly boring, feel free to be completely honest (but nice) and give suggestions in your review or email me, cause how else would I get better? But this is NOT an opportunity to have fun by putting, "thins sucks, get a life!" or something in the review. Next chapter coming soon (I hope) please don't give up reading my fic, I have GREAT things in my mind, this will get big!!! That's a promise!!!