NOTICE: I do not own the following characters: Agent Smith, Agents Jones and Brown, Neo, or the location Zion. HOWEVER: I do own the characters Persis, Calyx, Priest, Aei, Seefa, Sol, Titus, Neso, Echo, Syenes, Syllis and the ships Antigone and Apollo.
AHA-Nearly had you thinking that "Persis Takes Back The Gift" was the last chapter in this fanfic, didn't I??
The first chapters of the sequel may be up as soon a tonight, if I have time…Morithil.
14. A Taste Of Freedom To Come.
It didn't seem right to take her back to Zion. She had never been at ease there in life, and in death it seemed unfair to tie her down in a place she had never loved. The Apollo cruised back to the site of the Antigone's destruction.
They laid Persis, Captain of the Antigone in a metal casket made from an old oversized oxygen tank and by welding various pieces of metal together, ironically a hybrid itself. The idea was to lower it down by the wreck of her ship, near the graves of her faithful crew.
Sol refused to look at the body. He said that she wouldn't have looked as he wanted to remember her. She would have looked like an agent.
As the ship pulled towards the wreck Neso turned sadly from the door of Persis' cabin as he cleared it of the sparse items she'd kept in it.
"Rest easy, sir. You're close to what's real now."
* * * * * * *
The agent stepped into the sunlight, surveying the area of the Matrix it was in. The agent was thousands of miles away from where the human had died. It had been a long process, writing this sentient programme; anomalies and other undesirable features had taken a while to eradicate, and this was not entirely successful. Traces of an entity's existence before the agent emerged into the Matrix, wired into the construct, remained in its memory.
The agent put its regulation sunglasses on. It had brown, straight hair. Regulation blue eyes. The sharp suit. It shook off recurring thoughts regarding a human. A human dying on a side street somewhere. The human being in a state of torment. An agent standing close to the human. A distinctive voice. The agent always felt a twinge of-almost sadness at the thought each time it arose, as if it had been familiar with the human concerned. Impossible. Ridiculous.
No matter.
The agent pressed the ear piece closer, and, on hearing instructions, walked off into the city.
It was not human, and did not "live", it thought.
And yet it existed.
The cloning process that had almost taken place in the interrogation room of a government building had taken hold.
The human was gone.
But the agent? She was fully operational.
********
Smith scanned the city skyline, the rooftops, the office blocks, the phone towers. Nothing.
Smith sighed. The sky had turned a lyrical blue around the steel grey clouds on the horizon. It was beautiful. It wasn't real. The Matrix was designed that way. Thousands of people just living out their lives. It wasn't real. He knew that any moment now the human Neo would enter the Matrix to discuss the impending army of sentinels on the surface of the planet with other rebel leaders. Smith was expecting him anyway.
Persis. She had enforced, strengthened his singularity of purpose. Her memory, every sensation of contact with her was stored in the cavity where his heart would have been had he been human. There it would remain, the most complex and extensive of the thousands of files in his system. But one that would never be opened again.
Her body had vanished from the street where it had fallen within hours. She was gone.
Smith realised it was growing dark.
When Anderson had effectively destroyed him he had given him something. Without that event there was a high probability that he would have never encountered Persis. He did not quite understand or recall why, but that fact instilled a faint gratitude in him.
He had a gift for Mr. Anderson.
He hoped he would like it.
After all, he had set him free.
.FINIS.