Disclaimer: Fan Fiction Inspired by the film The Matrix by Larry and Andy Wachowski © Warner Bros. Entertainment (1999).  The Ghost in the Machine and The Hecate Cycle © oqidaun / M.L. Nicholson (2002)

Credits:  Opening lyrics from Head Like a Hole (Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine)

Ratings:

± Complete work:  R for Language and Violence.

± Chapter Ten: R for Language. 

Chapter Ten The GingerBread Man

Head like a hole

Black as your soul

I'd rather die than give you control.

The dirty towel did little to clean up the mess other than smearing the bitter espresso across the bar and sloshing it onto the floor.  Camus wrapped the broken pieces of the demitasse in his towel and chunked it all into the sink behind him. Kai rested on her elbows inches away from the soppy mess amused with his clumsiness, yet impatient for a new cup of espresso. Obliviously he hummed, as he restored the order to his little world and took the insignificant disruptions in stride.  In the broader scheme of things, what difference did one rebellious cup of espresso make?

"You did not come in yesterday. Why not?"

"Damn, Camus, can't you be just a little more obvious?"

The new demitasse rattled against the marble counter. "Perhaps." With a snap of his fingers, he delved into his apron, produced a slightly wrinkled white linen envelope and balanced it on top of the cup.  The coffee stained the linen and the steam neutralized the glue.  "This is for you."

She picked up the envelope and groaned. "Letters?  We're not to the letters stage are we, Camus?"  She paused to push her dark glasses down her short nose.

"Is not from me.  Is from a man who came here the other night." 

Kai respected the mystery and in silence she held the envelope up soaking in the handwriting.  The elegant long strokes transformed a simple word into a chain of beautifully entwined letters.  The ink was of good quality and the paper smelled not just coffee, but of spices.  Frankincense?

"Your name is really Kathleen?" He chuckled and retrieved a clean towel.  "Maybe now you'll want to know my real name too—"

She ignored him. The handwriting captured her. . "What did he look like?" Her eyes remained fixed on the envelope as she slipped the paper out.  It was intoxicating. 

"I don't remember.  He had a very soft voice."

The change registered. "Your English is better."

"I know.  I've been working on it the past two days.  It comes easier now."

For a moment she started to say something characteristically snide, yet stopped. She set the paper on the counter and exhaled trying to clear her head. The baby-faced Moroccan slung his striped dishtowel over his shoulder and draped himself across the counter inches away from her. "What does that say?"

She held up the paper and the words taunted her.  The sweet intoxication vanished and reality reared its perverse head. "It says something I wasn't wanting to hear, Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis, all things change and we change with them, it's Latin."

"Oh." He cocked his head. "Why do you not want to hear that? It is true."

"What?"

"Everything changes, people change.  You don't have to be the same way forever."

"So you think?" The sarcasm broke free.  "I know that, I just didn't want this." She shook the letter at him. "People change—big deal—but he's been here, Camus."

"Yes?"

"That's a bad thing."  She folded the paper to keep the words at bay. "You've got to remember something about him."

"I want to remember, but I just can't.  I want to say something, but I can't find the words." He shrugged and steadied his hands against the cool marble.  "I can see him, but there are no words to talk about him with. His voice was soft, like it wasn't really a voice.  We talked for only a few minutes. It's like I'm going mad.  I remember talking—"

"About what?"

"About you."

"Me?  Camus, why in the hell—" She broke off when the heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder. 

"Agent Thoreau."

Innocently, she crumpled the folded paper into a ball and skidded it across the counter.  A superficial smile surfaced. "Jones, I don't think we've had the pleasure."

"That's not going to happen."

"Well, I—"

"We should leave the counterman to his business and speak privately." He pointed to a corner and placed his firm hand on her back.

A tattered print of Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy clung to the wall above the pair of sage wing chairs. Kai deposited herself next to the fake oil lamp and maneuvered her satchel away from Jones.  The burly agent conquered the elegant chair.

Jones was of a single focus.  His tight glasses left deep depressions in his skin and a cold sneer was chiseled into his face.  Each of his cumbersome hands dominated a knee, his long middle fingers aligned with the crease of his trousers. Kai toyed with the blue tassel suspended from the false lamp and waited for the monolith to speak.

Silence.

"What is the meaning of all this?  Does Smith know you're out of your cage?"

The giant shifted his weight and popped his thick neck. "Agent Thoreau, you are not in a position to ask questions.  I am here to inform you of the status of psychological operations.  In twenty four hours, you will be reorganized and transferred to an appropriate division of Enforcement."

She did not blink. "So, Smith sends you?  Instead of having the balls himself to tell me he sends you."

"Agent Thoreau, this is not an issue concerning recreational equipment and it does not have anything to do with Agent Smith.  These recommendations come from me.  I have reviewed your service records, interfaced with other agents knowledgeable of your capabilities and made independent observations. You are not operating at maximum efficiency for the complexity of your required tasks and I have deemed it necessary to reassign you to a division where you can be adequately supervised."

"The company man, I should have known.  You incredible fuck," she spat. "What happens to my investigation?"

"It will be transferred to Agents Smith and Brown.  You are expected to organize you evidence and conclusions in such a manner as to facilitate the continuation of the investigation in your absence." 

"I am to hand it all over just like that?  You have no idea what you're dealing with—"

"I really do not care about your investigation.  My priority was you."  He rose to his feet and looked down at her noting the inconsistencies in her appearance.  The unevenness of her hair color, the scratch along the top of her glasses, an irregular shaped mole on the back of her neck—he absorbed it all. 

"You really know how to make a girl feel special, Jones."  He permitted one final glance and walked away dismissing her thinly veiled rage.

Drowning in her frustration, she threw herself against chair and yanked her cigarettes out of her satchel. A weakness?  She imagined herself being assigned to an Enforcement division in an Albanian village of 200 people.  She did care if she had any weaknesses. Over a century of service washed away like a newsprint smudge on a door jam. The lion turned its attention from sleeping gypsy and offered its sympathy; however, she felt like she was the sleeping gypsy.  She kicked at the edge of the ottoman and shook her lighter in a vain attempt to bring it back to life. 

"Hey," she snapped at an aristocratic looking young man coming from the bar where he had been speaking with Camus.  He froze as though accosted by an evil spirit.  Fine beads of sweat gathered on his stately caramel colored brow. 

"Yes?" His rich baritone purred.

"You got a lighter?  Mine is all used up."

The young man tossed her a 'gimme' lighter from a run-down hotel across town and winked.

"Thanks." She nodded and took a drag.  "I like your shades. You ever get the feeling like the whole fucking world is out to get you?"

"Every day."  He started off towards the payphone.

"You want your lighter?"

"Keep it, I imagine we'll meet again."

* * *

Kai took a long walk through China Town turning over in her mind cryptic Latin phrases and an elaborate fantasy of castrating her male co-workers.  Mixed in with the bokchoy, cheap plastic shoes and feng shui ornaments she found an inviting teashop of questionable sanitation.   The elderly waiter tottered by and dropped off a dented aluminum kettle and a delicate jade colored cup.  With her eyes fixed on the faded paper lanterns, she drank the tea and cursed the world.

The same elderly waiter returned with the check on a cracked plastic tray that smelled like sour milk.  Kai handed him a five for the ninety-cent cup of green tea and paused to offer thanks to any supreme being listening that AI could not contract typhoid.  She was forever at the bottom.  The waiter shook his head at the five. "We have no change here.  If you want change, you gotta go get it.  You needa leave something behind, but you go get your own change." 

She let the waiter keep the five.

* * *

A car alarm punctured the night and a chill invaded the building.  Patel was out, Mira gone for the day and only the steady hum of the communications server competed the repetitious drone of the alarm. She closed the door and turned the heavy dead bolt.  Ambitious bits of the fragmented streetlight pushed through the old style wooden blinds and danced across the checked tile floor. The room was blue and switching on the light would have dispelled the myth.  The telephone began to ring and she glared at it.  The bell taunted her demanding attention like a spoiled child.  Her hand hovered over the shiny black receiver before she realized what she was doing and yanked the cord out of the wall. 

Kai picked her way through the clutter in her dark office. She snatched her leather jacket off the back of the couch and scooped up the pile of folders on the corner of the desk along with two nondescript high-density disks.  Hands on her hips, she scanned the room, before moving to the bookcase and recovering a tattered copy of 1984 from the bottom shelf. Time was wasting and she hurried to the door, pausing one last time to retrieve the goldfish bowl from the top of the file cabinet.  The old window had been painted over several times, but she pried it open and placed the glass bowl and its little resident onto the fire escape.  She did not close the window and the cool evening breeze stole through the office scattering papers and causing mischief.

The server hummed complacently behind its metal door and did not notice when Kai entered violating the sterile room. She sat down in front of a blank screen and propped the paperback up against the keyboard.  Her pale fingers flipped through the yellowed pages until she found her blue highlighted line.  Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me…She keyed in the phrase and drummed her fingers impatiently before the black screen melted into an intricate green code.  Biting the inside of her lip, she scrolled through the line numbers and typed in Freedom is Slavery on line number 1984.  A pop-up box appeared prompting a user name.  Again, she thumbed through the pages looking for another blue highlighted line—part of a name she dared not to commit to memory.  The hum of the server intensified as it clicked through its older files. Embraced in obscure late twentieth century code, the details of her entire existence materialized in front of her. 

Ten minutes later, she pushed away from the little workstation and picked up her satchel. Kai gave the gentle server a last glance as she inserted the timer into the three and a half pound block of C-4. "Sorry about this ol'gal, but you always said I was a fighter."