Chapter Seven Only Human

Leet stared down at his breakfast, prodding at it, but not really eating. He had been in Zion for four days now, and in those four days he had gotten less than twelve hours of sleep, combined. He spent almost all his time in the Zion library, plugged into the archives system, devouring more and more information. It was the only thing he could think of to do with himself.

"Okay, you're really starting to worry me now," Arwen muttered, pulling up a seat opposite of Leet. "You're not going to pull a Cypher on us, are you?"

Cypher's betrayal of the Nebuchadnezzar two years ago was now infamous.

"No," Leet replied tiredly, not looking up. "It's nothing."

"It's always something. Look, it's never easy waking up, but it's at least slightly easier if you talk with somebody about it."

Leet, sighed, and took a gulp of oatmeal. "Okay, waking up is part of it. I miss a lot of things from The Matrix. I mean, I left a lot of stuff I took for granted behind. Friends, family, even school. But that's not the only thing." He paused, and shuddered. "I usually don't remember my dreams, but ever since I came to Zion . . . I've been having nightmares."

Arwen's eyes flashed with concern. "Tell me about them."

Leet snickered. "Who are you, my psychologist now?"

Arwen responded to the joke as if it had been a serious question. "No. You just look like you need a friend."

Leet stared down at his food, and took in a deep breath. "It's the same thing every night," he finally said. "Those programs, whatever you call them, the agents, are chasing after me. Three of them. I'm running through the city, jumping over buildings, charging through apartments, leaping out windows, jaywalking . . . but they always eventually catch up with me. Two of them pin me to the wall, and the other one, he takes this syringe out of his pocket, and he says something like: 'Only human.' Then he injects something into my neck, and they all just . . . disappear."

"Then you wake up?"

"No, the worst part comes next. Because then I look down at my hands, and I see blood on them. But here's the thing; it's not my own blood. I have somebody else's blood on my hands. And then I look up, and there are those three agents again, standing around me. And they're actually smiling at me, like proud fathers or something." Leet shuddered. "And that's where I wake up."

Arwen didn't respond, but just stared at him.

"This isn't just a dream," Leet explained. "It's more than that. There is something locked away, inside my own mind, and as hard as I try, I can't reach it!"

"What do you think it is? Is it the future, or-"

"No, I don't believe in pre-cognition or crap like that. This is some kind of sub-conscious suggestion, hardwired into my brain. A repressed memory, maybe, or something else." He rubbed his forehead tiredly, and then suddenly nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wait, I've got it. God, I hope I'm wrong. Look, the human mind is like a computer, right? It processes information in similar ways, and so on."

"Uh-"

"What if you could hack into somebody's brain? Think about the possibilities, then. Think about the commands and data you could input."

"What are you saying?"

Andy paled, starting to look truly frightened. "What if the machines wanted me to wake up? What if I'm here because my mind has been hacked by a machine?"