Vick says: chapter 4 of the FIREWALLS saga, keep reading!...Sonic is dead...I bet you have a lot of questions but answer will be given in time...Smith will pay for it.
Feedback point : vickpena@yahoo.com.mx please use encrypted email engine with fake DNS address, I suspect agents have been chasing me...
Disclaimer. Agent Smith, the Matrix and other characters related are property of other very creative persons and not mine, a fan who wants to write an entertaining and interesting Sci Fi piece based in this outstanding saga.
THE MATRIX:
Firewalls
By Vick
Vickpena@yahoo.com.mx
Book 1: The Agent and the Hacker.
Chapter 4
Living in the blue pill
"Big party, huh?"
The paramedic smiled at Gillian as she cleaned her eyes with a solution to remove the effects of the pepper gas.
"Big enough," she said.
"They say one of them escaped and the other is, well, dead." June, the paramedic, leaned back and looked at Gillian professionally. "How does that feel?"
"Fine...but my throat hurts."
"Oh, just some side effects of the gas...it'll disappear in an hour or so."
June used the stethoscope to hear her heart and lungs.
"You sound good," she said. "Are you dizzy?"
"No."
June removed the stethoscope from her ears and left it hanging in her neck.
"You can go now."
Gillian smiled and stepped down the ambulance to find Smith there.
"One escaped," he said.
"Yeah...I heard..."
"You are very lucky ... They wanted to kill you," Smith said, sounding positively hypocrite.
"Well, thanks for saving me." She started to walk away.
"Agent McPherson," Smith called "did they gave you something?"
"Like what?" she asked but she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"A pill."
Gillian shook her head "He gave me nothing."
"Good..." Smith said. "Let Agent James take you home."
Agent James suddenly appeared next to her.
Wow, this guys really move like cats, she thought, shaking her head.
"No, thank you, my car is around the corner."
On the way home Gillian thought about what Sonic said...he said he'd give her tangible proof of the Matrix...he said...he said Smith would kill her once he was arrested or dead...well, now he was dead...would that mean her doom? Hard to know but definitively strange...that Smith character was a real piece of something...
The pills.
How had he known about the pills?
How had he known she was there?
How in the name of god can a man endure a cloud of pepper gas without even blinking?
She didn't know.
Gillian accelerated to pass a slow bus and headed south toward her home...it was late...midnight...and she was tired but...her mind was alert...her natural curiosity asked so many questions...maybe a good snack would help her.
With her mind busy with the idea of a hamburger she tried to remember where the nearest Carl's Jr. was.
Sonic was dead.
But his voice still echoed in her mind...if you want your life as it is you'll eat the blue pill...well...she extracted it from her pocket...a blue pill...the life she wanted.
And a red one...the key to find out whether he was telling the truth or not.
The Matrix...
A hacker's hocus-pocus...
And yet...so true...true in the sense of their belief ...Sonic and that woman, Joyce wanted to show her something...what? The Matrix?
A car approached too much so she slowed down.
This is the real world...she thought...a world of idiots who wouldn't drive in their lane...a world of criminals and cops willing to find them...a world of days and nights, rain and heat...this is the world that is real...the world I live in.
I'll show you the real world...Sonic said.
The red pill.
She then laughed...the comic side of the matter ...please, she thought, be realistic...this is just bullshit...real life? The Matrix?
She'd eat the red pill. Yeah...and then she'd eat the blue one...
Right there, while driving...
She was about to put the blue pill in her mouth when she heard the buzz of a cell phone in the back seat.
That was too much for a single day...too much...Sonic, Smith, the pills and the Matrix...
Now what?
She pulled her car to the curb and stopped.
The phone buzzed again.
She picked the phone.
"My name is Jeremy."
"What do you want?"
"Don't eat the pills...not until some of us is with you...if you do it then you'll die and we won't have a chance to help you."
Gillian rolled her eyes.
"Listen, mister I don't know what kind of sick people you are but I won't play along...ok?"
"Sonic died because he thought he could rescue you...he thought you'd be perfect for our rebellion against the machines."
"He is dead," Gillian said.
"Do you want to keep living a lie?"
"Leave me the fuck alone!" she yelled in the phone.
"We'll be in the De Kanter Hotel, in the corner of..."
"I know where it is..."
"Fine...make your choice but do not waste time calling Smith...he is looking for you and...If you don't want to find out who is the liar by the hard way I'd suggest you to meet us before he finds you."
"He knows I am going home," she said, likely to herself.
She heard the man chuckling.
"See? And I bet he tried one of his friends to take you home."
"Yes..."
"We'll be here." the man called Jeremy hung up.
Shiva sighed and accelerated, U turning in the next intersection, the hotel was near and so was her home.
"What are you doing?" She asked herself, aloud.
I am trying to see what is going on here.
The red pill, the flight of Dorothy
"This guys have a fetish for old buildings." Gillian thought when she parked her car in front of an abandoned Hotel.
The De Kanter Hotel was a six stories building with all the signs of being built in the forties...and was condemned to demolition as an official paper said to all who wanted to read it.
The door was blocked.
But she knew the people who called her weren't joking and that they were there, waiting.
She walked into an alley that led her to the back of the building.
A door was open.
She stepped in.
It was dark and no noises could be heard.
She cursed her luck...her gun was in the car.... what was she thinking? That those people were not dangerous? ...Well...Sonic could've kill her and he didn't...they seemed to want something from her and that was an advantage point for her...whatever it was they wouldn't hurt her until they got what they were looking for.
She folded her arms when she walked in the lobby.
Nothing...
Just when she was about to quit all that and go out a voice was heard.
"So glad you could make it," a male's voice said.
"Jeremy..." she said, although she couldn't see him.
"Yes." the voice replied and a flashlight lit in the stairwell to her left. " I'd turn the lights on but It'd be strange for passing people and attract your friend here...please...come with us."
"Us?" she asked and then felt the gun in her back.
"Joyce won't shoot you unless necessary, Shiva..."
"Walk."
"I am sorry about your friend," Shiva said as she walked up the stairs.
"Shut up."
"I didn't know he was following me."
"If you're not one of us then you're one of them." Jeremy's voice said from a floor above. "Joyce knows that but she liked Sonic like all of us."
"He was a criminal."
Joyce pushed her, Shiva almost tripped "I said shut up."
They continued in silence until they reached the sixth floor, room 615.
There was light in there.
And a copy of the equipment she saw in the cinema, every piece was there...the monitors...the chairs...the computers...the modems...everything...
The man seated in front of the equipment dedicated just one second to look at her...in his eyes she saw anger.
"We're online," was all he said.
"Welcome, Shiva."
Jeremy was tall, strong and Caucasian, his eyes were green and his hair short and blonde, he was dressed in leather and wearing sunglasses.
"What's all this?"
"Your way out if you want it."
"Would you stop talking like that?" she asked, exasperated... "Why you keep talking like if you knew something I don't?"
"Because it is the true."
"Really?" she laughed, sarcastic " what are you, Merlin?"
"No." Jeremy smiled "but I can do some tricks ...one of them is taking you out of the Matrix."
"Listen...your friend Sonic died for this bullshit...why don't we all go home and continue with our lives?"
"Why you are here?"
"Because I want to see what is all this..." She pointed at the equipment Abraham was manipulating "This Matrix stuff is driving me crazy...Smith and all of his Terminator-like zombies seems to want to know everything about it and you...you too...tell me...are you like some sort of sect? A new religion?"
"I can't tell you ...but I invite you to look at it with your own eyes."
Silence.
Joyce closed the door and walked to help Abraham.
"Who are you?" Shiva's heart was pounding hard "What's all this?"
"Are you afraid?"
"Hell yes."
Jeremy removed his glasses and where she expected to see nothing but a cold expression she found warmth and understanding.
She couldn't help to feel better.
"You still have the pills, Shiva."
It was not a question.
"Yes."
"Have you chosen?"
Gillian McPherson ate the pill and her world changed forever...in fact, she died to the world and never was seen again...at least...not like agent McPherson.... not like a human who paid her taxes and had a mother and a father...no.she died to give birth to Shiva.
The last thing she heard was her own scream and then fell in a world of nightmare.
Secretly, she would regret her decision forever.