AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once again thanks to alocin and Selina Enriquez, for their unfailing enthusiasm and helpful comments. You guys rule!
Morithil.
NOTICE: Unfortunately, I do not own any of the original characters from the Matrix trilogy. HOWEVER: All other characters in this fanfic do belong to me, as they're all products of my overactive imagination.
4. Different, Yet The Same.
The chair is minimal in design.
It is comprised chiefly of metal, its particles demonstrating the nature of the material it has been fashioned from.
It is relatively cold to the touch. Nerve endings respond to the slight nuances in temperature to surfaces that the skin comes into contact with.
It is a solid structure. Hard, durable material that is resistant, but not impossible to mould or demolish.
Agent Carlisle sat in the metal chair by the window, the chair facing the wall to the left of the room, her profile starkly outlined against the bare light from the overhead strobes and the supposedly natural light streaming in the through the window.
The mildly severe, austere ponytail that her brown hair was tied up in accentuated her finely honed features and high cheekbones. Her hair would look more pleasing in tumultuous, darker waves, or perhaps in a dense multitude of thin braids that would easily reach below her shoulder blades. But agents have no need or desire for such frivolous details. They are programmes, and their aesthetic appearance is more to inspire fear and respect rather than admiration of any form.
Carlisle embodies such guidelines.
And yet she is still here, the subject of an assessment that would have normally been deemed unnecessary and the whole matter ended via her deletion-but then Carlisle has always known there's something not quite regulation about her. There's an intangible, ambiguous something that instils behavioural patterns and a solitary persona in her that are dangerously human. This meeting has been held to introduce her to the programme (she assumes after some logical deliberation) that will monitor her over the allotted period of time and determine her fate.
Deletion. Or an opportunity to further prove her capabilities.
Carlisle is not nervous. Sentient programmes do not feel. And yet-there it is again, the flicker of consternation on a face like a temporarily inactive computer screen. Alert, but not revealing of anything. The flicker is a glitch in her making, surely. The symptom not unlike the dejâ vu that humans (how she detests them) experience whenever the Matrix is modified in some way.
Not unlike a human. This is what plagues her, not every conscious moment, but an awareness that appears sporadically and has done since her installation into the Matrix and the wiring process into the construct.
The door opens and three agents-no wait, one is not wired in. His earpiece is absent. Other than that, to all appearances, he is another agent. Carlisle rises from the cold chair and stands rigidly straight to greet her fellow programmes.
There's something not quite right about the third programme.
There's something independent about him. He looks exactly, bar the earpiece, like the other agents, and yet-
He's so consciously separate from them, it's as if he's standing in a room by himself and she's watching him through the double edged glass of an interrogation room mirror.
The programme emits a strange kind of, not literal, as he does not radiate heat in terms of degrees celsius and/or fahrenheit, but almost completely intangible, an almost emotional and barely detectable-
Warmth.
It was only then that Carlisle registered the fact that the programme in question was studying her with more than a hint of curiosity and-accessing databases-confirmed, with a look similar to well disguised, but nevertheless present surprised recognition.
********
Narada settled into the easy comfort of the soft seat in the room that lay some distance away from where he had talked with Titus. Two levels up, at least a ten minute walk to the room itself.
The former operator of the Apollo swayed round the doorframe of his small kitchen and made his way over to the equally soft chair opposite Narada's in a corner of the small lounge.
He limps slightly with each step.
His left leg is battle scarred. It was in a metal brace for some time, Titus informs Narada as his long time friend departed for the other room. It happened before they got home. Narada remembered the arrival of the Apollo well. He had rushed from work, late as usual. By that time the crew had disembarked and the ship's fate was being decided. His brother showed up outside his door, weary as an old pro should never appear to be, a dullness in his gaze, a painful authority in his stance. Narada had welcomed him awkwardly and he had spent the night in his rooms, talking, or rather making small talk until both had retired to bed. Narada studied Neso.
The operator's trademark, his likeable gentle persona is there somewhere, under the scars.
"Laser injury", Titus had rumbled, "he's damn lucky to be here; any closer and it would've cut him in half like a piece of wood".
Neso disregards the limp like a dead fly on a windowsill; it's there, but it's not mentioned, not by him or anyone else. It lingers, but the operator has a strong frame of mind and his quiet strength of character had dealt with the fact that almost all of his calf is missing. He's grown his hair since his days on the Apollo, Titus notes, and is beginning to look like a defiant Vietnam veteran, with just the right amount of hard earned toughness about his person.
There are hot drinks handed round and Narada drinks his gratefully. His work has overshadowed his personal investigation, injuries from many ships crowding his workplace, but he does what he can to help all the fighters recover, recuperate, and then he watches. He watched them leave his small office and go out to fight again, defiant in their new health. He's still recovering from the shock of who Persis was, having never connected the name of the woman who had affected Sol so much with the quietly legendary figure.
"Captain?"
Titus steps in to explain.
"She was Captain Persis, Narada; surely you heard of her? One of finest in all of Zion's fleet, she was. Second only to, and this had nothing to do with the fact she was a woman", Titus points to confirm his status as a man who judges status on ability, not gender, "'cos she was something else. Tougher than a lot of guys who did the same job-but she was second, I'd say, only to Morpheus and perhaps Niobe. Not as proud as Niobe, but she had that whole silence is power thing going on sometimes. You know, still waters run deep".
Neso nods his approval at Titus' summary of the woman they both knew.
Narada's jaw had dropped in disbelief.
"That Persis? But-surely-surely not, I mean, she was practically infamous, in a select kind of way. Not everyone knew about her, right? But somehow, those who did seemed to be full of nothing but praise for her, that much I remember".
The other two men had silently voice their agreement.
Titus and Neso started with the basics, literally. Narada pushes forward, absorbs the train of events from the Antigone's destruction, Persis' stay on the Apollo. Her death, my God, what a controversial way to go. He had wondered, only once to his knowledge, why the praise had not continued, and how it always seemed to be directed at the past. Narada realised the policy of secretive silence that the Apollo's crew had taken when it came to the demise of Captain Persis, of the Antigone, one of Zion's finest.
"So what happened then?"
Operator and co-pilot look at each other for points of reference.
"Sentinel attack. Near the old service and away stations. We were heading back to the what was left of the Antigone to leave the Captain there".
"The Captain? But Sol-"
"I mean Persis", Neso explained, "We called her captain too, even on the Apollo. She just-she just inspired that kind of respect, really. Right Titus?"
"And that's the truth".
The story emerges over more drinks. On their way to deposit the body of Persis, somewhat fittingly, with those of her crew, sentinels attacked. The Apollo must have been blessed with a charmed speed to even make it out of there at all; such was the speed and ferocity of the assault. It was not without it's losses, though. Part of the ship's hull had been cut and torn away, taking with it the metal tank containing the Persis' remains, and two members of the crew.
Syenes and Syllis.
"Goddamn", Titus swore under his breath, "but that was a hard day. Lot to take in when we got back".
Narada closed his eyes to block out the images of two women being sucked out of the ship's gaping hull and into darkness at high speed.
"Echo got reassigned to another ship after we got back", Neso remembered, cradling the cup in his still-gloved hands, reminders of his operating days, "the Golem, if I remember. Needed to get back into the swing of things, Echo said. Helped to forget all the stuff that we saw happening on the Apollo. Heard from him a while back last time it docked. Said it was the same as the Apollo had been. Different, of course, but in some ways the same".
Narada thanked them both on his way out. There was a lot to digest from what the two men had disclosed to him. So it was true, and the rumours of Persis, as that was her name, being accepted could be more realistic than anyone knew.
A ghost. A face from the past. The woman his brother imagined he loved more than his pride, and who, in death, managed to hurt him more than that fickle emotion ever did.
* * * * * * *