Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me. They are all property of the Wachowski brothers and Warner Bros.

Thanks all for the lovely comments. Yes, I know I'm depressing. Always did love movies like My Best Friend's Wedding or Titanic instead of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or Two Weeks' Notice. Misty, you can always write to me if you like. My addy is on my personals. And yes, Jane, I have to exorcise my obsession with the Snow Queen.

And gee, now that I've watched the MTV movie awards, I'm really thinking of doing a Reloaded parody. Ah well, maybe next time. Stop it girl , this is a serious story.

Chapter 3: The Room Without Time

Rated PG-13.

Neo's palms were sweaty, and he wished he could wipe them on his coat. But he had already stepped out of the bathroom, and he found himself face to face with Persephone. It was the last thing he wanted to do - display nerves in front of her - which was why he kept his shades on. He would only remove them when he absolutely had to. Damn his eyes.

Beside her, Morpheus stood stoically, his face betraying no emotion. Neo wondered if they had been making conversation, and decided against it. Somehow, he didn't see Morpheus trading insults with anyone, unless it was Lock.

But damn it, he was nervous. That woman was making him nervous, eyeing him all over like he was some piece of meat.

It was not an unfamiliar situation, though he still found the going difficult. He wasn't used to being so much the center of attention. Being The One conferred a certain celebrity, if not notoriety. Everyone was looking to him to play some sort of savior role; and for someone as introverted as he had been all his pseudo-life, it took some time getting used to.

Now people were coming up to him for their babies to be blessed, for chrissake. They were kneeling in front of him, offering bread and legumes and whatever they can scavenge from this blasted hulk of Earth. Their devotion was often slavishly uncomfortable. If they could have offered him frankincense and myrrh, he had no doubt they would; though they often used myrrh for embalming, and he wondered what that would have symbolized.

Sometimes they offered him a lot more than bread. Both women and men. Maybe in a past life, before he met Trinity, he might have been tempted.

'All right,' he said to Persephone, hoping he wouldn't stutter. 'I will give what you want. But how can we trust you?'

'You have no choice.' Persephone's eyes glinted in amusement. 'Are you dreading this so, Neo? I should warn you this task is conditional. You have to make me believe I am her.' She gestured to Trinity, glowering in the doorway.

'You said twenty minutes,' Morpheus interjected.

'Yes. Twenty minutes. I will have him back here before you know it. Then I will take you to the Keymaker.'

'And if you're not back by twenty minutes?' Trinity asked in a strangled voice.

'Then you can tear this place apart. You will just have to trust me.'

'What's to stop you from taking him away and killing him?'

'Trinity,' Neo said softly, 'I can take care of myself.' He knew what she was thinking. No you can't, really. You need me to take care of you. It doesn't matter if you're The One, and that you have all these superpowers. To me, you'll always be vulnerable as hell.

Persephone seemed to turn inwardly pensive. When she finally spoke, the expression on her face was wistful. 'Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to kill him.'

*

She led him down the corridor to a door. Producing a key from her purse, she inserted it into the lock and turned it. The doorway yawned open, revealing an enormous hall flanked by two curving staircases. The entire place was lit with candelabra from gleaming chandeliers, and decorated with marble busts and statuary in the mode of a French palais. On the walls, myriad pieces of medieval weaponry hung like an echo of sinister times.

'This is where you live?' Neo asked. He was trying to make conversation. Since he was going to get to know her a lot better, it wouldn't hurt to be amicable.

'Most of the time. Follow me.'

He followed her upstairs, silently noting all the exits and doorways, just in case he had to make a quick run. Was there no one around? His boots sank into the plush carpeting, and he felt as though he was taking a museum tour. He had been to the Palace of Versailles once - in virtual reality naturally - since he had never been outside the state his entire life.

Oh boy, had he been sheltered. And now...

They arrived at another door. She produced another key. He understood. The locks were encryptions and the keys the residual images of passwords.

'Where are you taking me?'

'This is the Room Without Time.'

She opened the door.

He was amazed at the sight that greeted him. He was standing in front of a vast hallway, with white chilly columns and massive windows covered with stained glass. Outside, the sun was streaming through, scattering a kaleidoscope of red and blue patterns onto the marble floor. It felt Gothic, like a cathedral. How fitting, he thought.

'You programmed this?'

'Think of it as a construct,' she said. 'Here, we are in a microcosm. Time moves differently here than outside.'

'Faster or slower?'

'There are no parallels. The time we have here is of our own making.'

'Wow.' In all his years of programming, he had never encountered anything like this. And they called him a maestro.

'Are you always this contemplative?'

'Just trying to work out the puzzle, that's all.' A code that sliced through the fabric of the time space continuum. It was a major mind bend, one that he could spend a lifetime poring over.

'Once a hacker, always a hacker,' she said pleasantly. 'But enough of this. We have business to attend to.'

Ah yes, uncomfortable business. He suddenly remembered why they were here. It was a pity. He would have liked her a whole lot better if she had wanted to talk code with him instead of getting down to business.

That's been your problem your whole life, he thought in chagrin. You've always preferred talking shop to making out.

All through high school, through college, and then through his working life, he had not been averse to getting attention from the opposite sex. It seemed the more he withdrew from women, the more they were interested in him. They made him uncomfortable, the way they fawned all over him; he had no illusions they were all about his looks. He would rather they be interested in his cyber-genius; at least they would have something in common to talk about when they weren't having sex.

And no, he wasn't that interested in sex either, though at that time he couldn't speculate as to the reason why. He had even flirted with the idea he could be gay, but dispelled it as soon as he found out he wasn't interested in guys. Whatever little experience he had in love affairs ended up in disaster. His girlfriends always claimed he was too remote, too walled-up; they claimed he wasn't there even when he was physically there.

'You know,' one of them told him, sitting up on his narrow bed in his little room, in the green glow of his computer light, 'most people have a life outside their computers. But not you. The first thing you do when you get up is to turn that fricking thing on. Then you're on it for hours. You even forget to eat.'

He felt embarrassed, because he knew it was true. But he couldn't describe to any of them this compulsion he had to connect with whatever was calling him from inside his computer. They would think him mad. Possessed even.

They even complained about his lovemaking. 'You're so uninvolved,' said another. 'You don't make an effort. You never initiate anything.'

It was only much later, when he was unplugged from the Matrix and he found himself in the real world, that he understood the reason for his ennui. Some subconscious part of him had always known that nothing and nobody in the world he had known all his life - his parents, his brother, his friends, his lovers - were real. And when he was reborn into the desert of Earth as it was today, his senses all were magnified a hundred-fold, primed to be synaptically alive for the very first time. The feeling was exhilarating, like a dozen electrical currents coursing through his body at the same time; and if he had ever known the true experience of it - a dozen orgasms. It was like waking up from a surrealist Dada-world into another poignantly different one.

He had never realized how hungry he was for life until he met Trinity.

For once, he had wanted someone as much as she wanted him. They had consummated their relationship for the first time in Zion, in her rusted metallic little room, when the Nebuchadnezzar had been forced to dock after the Sentinel attack. It was the singular most erotic experience of his life. He could still remember the taste of salt on the tangy sweat of her skin, the feel of her hair brushing against his neck, the twining and untwining of their limbs, the softness of her body enveloping his, sucking him into a blessed comfort, like a womb. He had wanted to burrow himself into her and never leave her warmth forever.

He loved Trinity with a deep, deep fervor that could only come to those who lived life dangerously, on a razor edge; as though every day would be the last they would have together. He lived in perpetual terror of losing her, because he was as close to being invincible as any human being could be, and she was painfully mortal. The thought of her succumbing to one of the perils that wrecked their lives - either in the Matrix or out of it - filled him with dread. It was something too ominous to even speak about.

And now he was expected to reproduce that passion; that spellbinding overwhelming abandonment that would come only fleetingly in a lifetime with this consort who was pure digitized code, not even flesh or bone, but possessing the sentience of a full-blooded paramour.

He had never been good at expressing himself. It was going to be more difficult than he initially thought.

Persephone led him through the hallway, their footsteps echoing in the chilly silence, past a jungle of Doric columnade and into another smaller hallway, speckled with smooth black and white tiles. At the end of the hallway was an awaiting elevator, its doors invitingly open.

'Do you come here often?' he asked her.

'As and when.' A bemused smile twitched on her features. 'Are you always this polite?'

He had no answer to that. Inside, she depressed the top button, and he privately noted that they were 23 floors altogether. He wondered about the number. In the world of code and computer simulation, every number had a significance.

The elevator doors slid apart and she beckoned to him to follow. They were in a boudoir, decorated in an 18th century Louis XVI manner, with heavy draperies and gold tassels, and embroidered rugs and furniture depicting scenes of lords and ladies in courtship. It was a very feminine room. Not to his taste, but he supposed it was comfortable enough.

In one corner, there was a table laden with a bowl of fruits.

'Would you care for some wine?' She asked.

'Yes please.' He hoped that would help him relax. The bourdoir opened into several rooms, one of which was the bedroom. The door to that was ajar, and he could make out a huge bed with mahogany bedposts, gleaming with white silk and an inviting eiderdown comforter.

He really didn't want to venture there yet.

He took off his dark glasses, and found himself looking into her eyes. She was staring at him with an expression of what he could only describe as wonder.

'You have such innocent eyes,' she remarked after a period. 'So pure. And so beautiful. I never expected them to look like that.'

'I'm not as innocent as I look,' he said wryly.

She seemed to collect herself. 'I'll go get the wine. Chilled?'

'Yes, thank you.'

He watched her disappear, and began to unbutton his long black coat. Underneath, he wore a black clingy sweater that Trinity had always insisted he looked so good in. In fact, every article of his clothing had been picked out by her.

'We all dress like slobs in the real world,' she said. 'There's no reason why we shouldn't look good in the Matrix. Especially if we don't have to pay for it.'

He had bemusedly agreed.

Gosh, even in this timeless alien construct, he could find traces of her. Maybe that was a good thing. If he psyched himself to truly believe she was there, and if the bedroom was pitch black - with a really good imagination, he could sustain that pretence for half an hour or so. If that was all it took.

Morosely, waiting for Persephone to reappear, he sat himself down at the table and reached for the pomegranates.