Chapter 4

"So, this probably isn't going to feel very good."

"No. The first time's the worst, though, and you don't notice it much later on."

"Great."

Amethyst felt a warm hand pressed to her forehead and heard Morpheus say, "Since your plug is still rather tender, we need for you to stay as still as possible."

"I'll try," she replied. However, when she felt the touch of the needle coming in contact with the plug, her whole body tensed and cringed. At that, the needle backed away and she heard a sigh come from above her. "Sorry."

"It's alright." He called Neo and Trinity over and asked them to hold onto her shoulders.

Amethyst felt Trinity's hands on her right shoulder and Neo's on her left. Finally, Morpheus's other hand fell on her chin. "Try to relax," she heard him say and she did her best to.

This time, the needle slid into the plug and had not the three pairs of hands held her down, she surely would have gone berserk. As it was, her hands clasped the armrests in a death grip and her feet pushed up against the footholds. The feeling was the most strange and unnatural thing she had experienced and her mouth would have fallen open had it not been held shut. Her insides seemed to squirm as she sat there and a sickening feeling filled her stomach.

With the push of a button, it all stopped and she felt herself standing up in what felt like a silent room. Everything was still black, though, and her hopes began to fade. She sat down on what she considered to be the floor, put her chin on her hands, and began to pout.

"Nope, it's working," Binary's voice spoke.

"But I still can't see."

"Just give it a minute, Amé. This is what we call the color black. It's what color you see when there is no light. For this session, we'll just have you looking in black and white to show you light variances."

"Fine by me."

Amé and Binary both waited there as light slowly began to filter into the room. With eager anticipation Amethyst started to see dark gray, Binary informing her of what the color was. When the light increased, however, Binary was able to see Amé's residual self-image and this time his jaw dropped.

Amethyst turned as she heard a clicking sound, but she – as usual – didn't see anyone in that direction. Then she heard Binary say, "Something's wrong."

"What is it?" Morpheus said, bu t Amethyst was unable to hear him.

"She has no image."

"What?"

"She looks like blurred figure. It's really weird."

A sigh came from the other end of the phone. "Don't worry about it right now. Just finish the session and we'll figure it out later."

"Alright." The phone clicked shut.

"What is it?" Amé asked.

"Nothing. You're doing fine."

"Okay."

The program continued until the Construct became completely white. Thought it was relatively unexciting for Binary, Amé continued to enjoy every moment. Once it was white, Amé started to see random shapes appear before her: squares, rectangles, circles. These simple two-dimensional objects started to give way to simple three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, spheres, cones, and so forth.

"So that's what they mean by depth."

"Yah."

"Cool."

----------------------

"Hey Code," Jake called out quietly. When the programmer came over, Jake whispered. "What would happen if I went in there with them?"

"Besides Morpheus biting off your head?"

"Well, duh. But who said that was an important factor?"

Code shrugged. "I don't know. I only designed the program to keep Amé from seeing Binary so I'm not sure if you'd be seen by her or not."

"Put me in," Jake said as she started to walk over to a console that was out of Morpheus's line of sight.

"Why?"

"Just because."

"Fine, but if Morpheus starts to gnaw on my head, it's your butt I'll come looking for."

"Whatever." Jake sat down at the console, and Code hooked her into the program before anyone could stop them. Needless to say, Code left the room running after that.

Once inside Jake saw Amethyst, and as Binary had said, she looked like one big blur. She went around in what she thought was the front of Amethyst. "Freak!" she yelled out loudly, satisfied when Amethyst almost jumped out of her skin.

Amé almost had a heart attack when she first saw Jake, but even though she had never seen her before, she had already planned what she wanted to tell her. "Holy crap! I could have sworn that this was the introduce-blind-person-to-colors program."

"It is."

"Hmm. When you came in I could have sworn this was the training against encounters with hideously ugly people." She smirked as she towered over the short girl.

Amethyst stopped smiling when she saw Jake point a gun at her image. She didn't recognize it because she'd never seen one, but she assumed that it was some dangerous thing. "What is that?"

"It's a gun, moron."

"Oh." Amé started sucking on her bottom lip, not quite sure how to react to it. "Where'd it come from?"

"Uh, me."

"How?" Amethyst heard a ringing sound from close by.

"I don't care. I have a gun and you don't."

"Hey Jake," Binary called out. "Morpheus wants to talk to you."

"So much for fun." The gun in her hand was lowered and started to spin. Then it shrunk and disappeared. Jake took the phone which appeared to be hanging in midair since Binary was cloaked against them. Putting it up to her head she said, "Hello? Ms. Smith speaking."

"What the **** do you think you're doing?"

"Um…analyzing Amé's progress." She said "Ame" as if she were saying "aim."

"Amé," Amethyst corrected.

"Whatever."

"Do you realize what you could have done to her?" Morpheus continued "She could have gone into a seizure or shock!"

"She looks healthy, though."

"Shutup. I just hope you realize what could have happened."

"Sorry, sir." The line went dead and Jake returned her attention to Amethyst. "Thanks."

"No problem." Amethyst saw Jake's body suddenly go translucent and then disappear. "Jake?"

Soon after, Morpheus appeared in the Construct and once again Amethyst was startled when she saw him appear. Instead of his Zionist gray raiment, he was displaying a suit of the darkest black she had ever seen. Upon the bridge of his nose sat a pair of spectacles with lenses of dark film rather than clear glass as she was accustomed to. She did her best to keep her heart rate under control at the sight of him. She didn't even recognize him until he started to speak. "You can go, Binary," he said, seemingly to open air. Then he spoke to Amethyst. "I apologize for Jake's behavior. She has a little disregard for authority sometimes."

She was going to comment on his appearance, but every question she could think about at the time seemed to be irrelevant. Instead, she decided to try and satisfy her curiosity about Jake. "How come you took her on with your crew?"

"She's the Analyst, and she's very good at her job. If it weren't for that fact, she'd probably be in Zion with all the other people we unplugged." Then he told her, "I've been informed that you have no residual self-image and I see that that is correct."

"What's that?"

"Every person in the Matrix has their own way of looking at themselves. When they go back into it or the Construct, their mind projects the way they view themselves and we call that projection their residual self image. The odd thing is that you don't have one."

"Oh, really."

"You're basically one big blur."

"So, that's what Binary was talking about."

"Yes."

"What can I do about it?"

"I don't know." He pulled a phone out of a pocket and dialed the operator. Link answered and Morpheus requested that he upload a blank Construct platform for them to work on. It was done quickly, but Amethyst was unable to tell that anything had changed since the place still looked like a big white room with no walls or ceiling. "We need a mirror." A full-length mirror appeared. "Step up to it, Amethyst. It'll show you what you look like right now."

Amethyst did so and found herself looking at an image with distorted colors and shapes. "So that's what they mean by 'blurred'."

"Yes."

"Hmm." She turned back to looking at Morpheus. "How come I look blurred?"

"I'm think that since you've never actually seen yourself, that your mind doesn't know how to project you and so shows you as a blur."

"That would make sense. Is there anything I can do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Well…" Amethyst paused. "I'm going to try something."

"What?"

"To make a self image." She didn't have the first clue of where to start, but she figured that if her mind did the projecting, she would just make something up and hope that it transferred out into the Construct. She had only seen two people – Jake and Morpheus – and so had to go by the differences in the way they looked. First, she visualized a general body form with arms, legs, a torso, and a head, and then went on to try and form details that she could remember: five fingers, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and so on. It was rather difficult and so she had to open her eyes to look at Morpheus and try to get a clearer idea of what she needed. She tried to match certain aspects to him such as the curvature of the eyes, the size of the nose, the color of the skin, and the rouge of the lips.

When she had a general idea of what she should look like, she opened her eyes. No sooner had she done that than she heard Morpheus ask her, "How did you do that?"

"Do what?" He pointed to the mirror and she went over to it. Looking at herself, she saw that she had, in fact, turned herself into a copy of the man who stood before her. "Um, that wasn't right, was it?"

"Don't do anything just yet." He pulled out his phone and called Link again. When he answered he then asked to speak with Neo. Once the man was on the phone he said, "I need you to get in here and take a look at something for me."

"Alright. I can see something changed, but I'm not sure what."

"You'll see." He hung up.

Neo appeared a minute or so later in a long, flowing black overcoat and matching black pants. He, too, sported a pair of sunglasses, though his style was a fair bit different and, like with Morpheus, startled Amethyst with his entrance. Neo was also startled to see two Morpheus before him and was only able to tell them apart by their actions and by the voices when Amethyst spoke.

"This is just one big party, isn't it?" Amethyst commented, not sure what else to say.

Morpheus ignored that comment and asked Neo, "Is there a code variance between her and my appearances."

Neo looked carefully past the images and at the code that ran all over their bodies. "On the surface, they're identical. When I look deeper, though, I can see they're different. The code beneath the surface looks jumbled and blurred."

"That's very unusual," Morpheus noted.

"What's unusual?" Amethyst inquired.

"No one's been able to imitate physical appearances. It stands to reason that you could have the ability to change your appearance to emulate anyone you wished."

"Cool," she said quietly. "I want to try it again." Morpheus and Neo decided not to try and stop her, their curiosity overcoming their desire to question her. It took her a few minutes to fit another image in her head, this time using Neo as an example. She had to spend some time looking him over to make sure she had the physical attributes correct, but when she was sure that she did she fitted the image to herself and opened her eyes. She looked over at the mirror and found that she no longer wore Morpheus's visage. Rather, Neo's face stared back her.

"That's not right," she heard the real Neo say.

"Did I screw up on something?" she asked.

"No. It's just that you shouldn't be able to do that."

"Why not?"

Neo stood there for a moment and then shrugged. Then he said, "I think you need to come up with you own look."

Back on the ship Jake was watching the monitor which displayed the three of them in the program. "Isn't that precious? Now there are two of them!"

"How do you tell them apart, though?"

Jake took on her tone of voice that told everyone else that she would be talking for a while and making fun of others because they hadn't figured it out first. It was the tone of voice that people usually took as the cue to zone out and go back to whatever they were doing. "Hmm…that's interesting…huh!...cool…really?...." The string of words continued while Link watched Neo and Morpheus try to help Amethyst create a body of her own.

After watching the process for a while – and zoning Jake out – Trinity decided to take matters into their own hands. "I think this has gone far enough." She sighed and headed over to yet another console. "Trust men to try and form a woman's figure. That'll be the day." Link and Binary hooked her into the Construct and soon Amethyst was startled by yet another figure. "Men."

Amethyst looked at Trinity. "Are they doing something wrong?"

Trinity looked squarely at Amethyst – who now looked halfway between Neo and a woman's image. "They're men. Of course they're doing something wrong. It's their nature."

"If a man goes into the…" Neo began.

"The answer is yes, now go." Amethyst saw Morpheus and Neo smirk, but they eventually left. Then Trinity looked up and said, "Link, I'm going to need you to upload an image of Amethyst's physical body." Seeming to float in midair, one appeared of Amé reclining in a chair back on the Nebuchadnezzar. "That is what you look like physically."

"Ah, I see."