Log 1
"I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here," Captain Duvian spoke to the audience. Nearly the entirety of Zion's inhabitants was gathered in a central meeting area inside the temple. Murmurs broke out in the crowd. Morpheus and the crew of his ship stood by the side of the meeting area along the outer wall. They remained silent, knowing for the most part what the issue at hand entailed. In fact, Morpheus and Trinity had both been on the developing team for the mission, and were rightfully nervous about the reaction of their work.
"Our team of scientists and engineers has been presented with the exceedingly difficult task of developing an alternate method of defense using the reserves that are available to us in our present position to wage the inevitable war against the machines using some option other than guns and ammunition. Some figure we have a secret weapon right beneath our feet, so to speak.
"Well ladies and gentlemen, we have succeeded. And yes, the answer was literally under our feet." The room of full of people broke out in commotion. The assembly leader cracked the gavel once, twice, and the voices hushed. Captain Duvian cleared his throat.
"As most of you may know, this great city of Zion is centered within close range of the core of the Earth. The Earth has a rapidly spinning molten outer core of lava, where directly in the center is an extremely dense and great amass of the heaviest of Earth's metals - mostly iron and nickel. These two factors give the Earth a strong, detectable magnetic field, extending from the inner core of the earth thousands of kilometers out into space." The captain paused.
"Continue," one of the assemblymen ushered.
"As Zion prepares for the oncoming war, it is our suggested plan of action to use a medium to concentrate the abundantly supplied and equally powerful magnetic field of the Earth's core and use it to our advantage. Should we be able to successfully concentrate the natural resource of magnetism around us, a large enough pulse would destroy the machines' main army before it ever breached the walls of our city." Voices broke out in commotion again. This time, the assembly spoke amongst themselves as well.
"It's an altogether fine plan," sarcastically grumbled one of the leaders, "but have you come to this assembly with an unfinished idea? You have no medium for such a large and unresearched task. We have but precious hours before our city comes under attack, and you venture to waste our time?"
"The machine is being built at the present time. It will be only a matter of days before it is finished. We are confident in the outcome of the mission." Captain Duvian remained steady.
"DAYS?" Bellowed the leader. "We haven't got days. Why is this project taking so long?"
"We haven't been able to develop a machine properly equipped to withstand the high amounts of magnetism long enough to fully concentrate a pulse. The previous models have been built of metals and parts too weak to survive the initiation, not only from the pressure alone but the gravity. The machine destroyed its own hardware in the sense of its own purpose, in the same way we would use it for our defense. I assure you it is only an issue of trial and error before a withstanding machine is designed," he trailed off, insecure in his promise.
"This is an outrage. This is the best you could come up with? What good is an idea that remains in the concept stage! Throw it out and start from scratch."
"We cannot end the project, sir. It is almost complete and I have faith in my team. Brainstorming another idea is out of the question. We haven't the parts nor the foundation to begin again. We will have the means necessary with time to spare"
"There is no longer such a thing as time to spare. You get me a solution now. For the sake of Zion we don't need half-assed ideologies! Meeting adjourned." The gravel cracked and the audience broke into fervor. Morpheus and Trinity cringed away from the final blow. The idea, because of its own self-destructive nature, didn't fly with the assembly. The plan was a potentially excellent and successful one, but the issue at hand was one of modern technology. The machine couldn't handle its own purpose. Although the enemy of the human race could perfect its own being enough to have a successful, and at the moment dominant civilization, human technology and knowledge of the machine had yet to reach such advances. The group headed back to the ship to do some more research. The imminent war was hovering mere days away, and an answer had to be found. The fate of existence rest in their hands.
Neo lay in the darkness of his room resting. His long day of training was catching up with him, mental exhaustion in the form of physical pain, weakness slowly tracing circles throughout his body. He felt the next morning would be one of sore dread.
He rolled over and closed his eyes, waiting for the sweet bliss of sleep to envelop his body. Outside his door, however, he heard a commotion in the main room.
It had been a long, solemn night on the Nebuchadnezzar. Members of the developmental team - namingly Morpheus, Trinity and Link - had been downhearted by the initial rejection of the project. Dinner was quiet, cleanup was solitary and everyone was meandering about the ship in their own off kilter world. "Guys, you better come take a look at this. I'm getting some crazy off-the- chart readings here," Link called. Morpheus and Trinity came over to the monitors, analyzing the dripping code. Their expressions became one of puzzlement.
"That's neural activity," Morpheus murmured, his fingers tracing code falling on the screen. His eyes darted from left to right. "Neural activity that I've never seen on such a wavelength. Link, can you bring up readings in the database? I'd like to have a look at this." He sat down. Trinity stared at the screen.
"Look at that. The code is screaming for mercy. I've never seen such a reaction before." Link's fingers flew gracefully across the keys. He flipped some switches and pressed a blinking blue button. One of the dead monitors on the right of the station switched on. The screen spliced into four quarters, each scanning and displaying a different three-dimensional image of the brain. Wavelength frequencies and data ran rampant on the screen.
"From what I can tell, there are neurotransmitters intensely firing in the parts of the brain that aren't normally activated," Trinity said, her eyes following the data. "What could it mean?"
The smell of incense and candles was piecing the room with a burning fume. Shadows danced upon the wall in eager rhythm, lighting the room with flickering waves.
A figure sat amidst the shadows; from time to time her face was light by a frolicking flame. She set the book she had been reading on the ground next to her. Her eyes focused on a single point in the distance, then closed.
Minerva Walker sat cross-legged in front of the mirror with her arms out in front of her. Humming almost inaudibly, she flinched her hands and concentrated furiously. She felt it was time to know.
For a few moments, Minerva was absolutely still. Her breathing was hushed almost to nonexistence, her being and soul meshed into one burning source of energy. Minerva consciously drew energy from the field around her, extracting it into her own aura. A small buzzing feeling somewhere deep inside of her was born, a feeling that set in rhythm the wavelengths of her mind. She felt the air around her humming and alive with her own energy. Experimenting with the forces of what appeared to be her own controllable nature, Minerva was mastering her own field of power.
In an instant, she felt a slipping away, free-falling into nothingness. The humming faded slowly, the vibrations around her steadying to a smooth end. The world was black and spinning, an eternity in a vacuum of time. Before she knew it, the dreaming seemed to have stopped. Or was it only beginning?
She looked around, unsure of what universe she was in. The last thing she could remember was fleeing quickly from her mind, and that was the sense of conscious being. Here, wherever she was, time wasn't just standing still. It was nothing more than a metaphor.
"Where'd she go? I lost her," Link exclaimed, quickly searching the Matrix for the girl he had just been analyzing. The presence of her neural activity was no longer an obviousity.
"She cannot just disappear," Morpheus grunted. The monitors that were once displaying her neural activity were blank.
"She's awol, sir," Link sadly spoke. His searched failed to turn up any remaining traces of her. Some stagnant remnants of her frequencies burned in the hole where she once was. It was as if she detached herself from the Matrix and escaped into the nether regions of some plane between the Matrix and the real world.
"I want you to keep an eye out for her. Where the hell she could have got to is the question. Even dreams don't extend beyond the Matrix. Alert me the moment she returns," he boomed, and walked out of the room.
"I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here," Captain Duvian spoke to the audience. Nearly the entirety of Zion's inhabitants was gathered in a central meeting area inside the temple. Murmurs broke out in the crowd. Morpheus and the crew of his ship stood by the side of the meeting area along the outer wall. They remained silent, knowing for the most part what the issue at hand entailed. In fact, Morpheus and Trinity had both been on the developing team for the mission, and were rightfully nervous about the reaction of their work.
"Our team of scientists and engineers has been presented with the exceedingly difficult task of developing an alternate method of defense using the reserves that are available to us in our present position to wage the inevitable war against the machines using some option other than guns and ammunition. Some figure we have a secret weapon right beneath our feet, so to speak.
"Well ladies and gentlemen, we have succeeded. And yes, the answer was literally under our feet." The room of full of people broke out in commotion. The assembly leader cracked the gavel once, twice, and the voices hushed. Captain Duvian cleared his throat.
"As most of you may know, this great city of Zion is centered within close range of the core of the Earth. The Earth has a rapidly spinning molten outer core of lava, where directly in the center is an extremely dense and great amass of the heaviest of Earth's metals - mostly iron and nickel. These two factors give the Earth a strong, detectable magnetic field, extending from the inner core of the earth thousands of kilometers out into space." The captain paused.
"Continue," one of the assemblymen ushered.
"As Zion prepares for the oncoming war, it is our suggested plan of action to use a medium to concentrate the abundantly supplied and equally powerful magnetic field of the Earth's core and use it to our advantage. Should we be able to successfully concentrate the natural resource of magnetism around us, a large enough pulse would destroy the machines' main army before it ever breached the walls of our city." Voices broke out in commotion again. This time, the assembly spoke amongst themselves as well.
"It's an altogether fine plan," sarcastically grumbled one of the leaders, "but have you come to this assembly with an unfinished idea? You have no medium for such a large and unresearched task. We have but precious hours before our city comes under attack, and you venture to waste our time?"
"The machine is being built at the present time. It will be only a matter of days before it is finished. We are confident in the outcome of the mission." Captain Duvian remained steady.
"DAYS?" Bellowed the leader. "We haven't got days. Why is this project taking so long?"
"We haven't been able to develop a machine properly equipped to withstand the high amounts of magnetism long enough to fully concentrate a pulse. The previous models have been built of metals and parts too weak to survive the initiation, not only from the pressure alone but the gravity. The machine destroyed its own hardware in the sense of its own purpose, in the same way we would use it for our defense. I assure you it is only an issue of trial and error before a withstanding machine is designed," he trailed off, insecure in his promise.
"This is an outrage. This is the best you could come up with? What good is an idea that remains in the concept stage! Throw it out and start from scratch."
"We cannot end the project, sir. It is almost complete and I have faith in my team. Brainstorming another idea is out of the question. We haven't the parts nor the foundation to begin again. We will have the means necessary with time to spare"
"There is no longer such a thing as time to spare. You get me a solution now. For the sake of Zion we don't need half-assed ideologies! Meeting adjourned." The gravel cracked and the audience broke into fervor. Morpheus and Trinity cringed away from the final blow. The idea, because of its own self-destructive nature, didn't fly with the assembly. The plan was a potentially excellent and successful one, but the issue at hand was one of modern technology. The machine couldn't handle its own purpose. Although the enemy of the human race could perfect its own being enough to have a successful, and at the moment dominant civilization, human technology and knowledge of the machine had yet to reach such advances. The group headed back to the ship to do some more research. The imminent war was hovering mere days away, and an answer had to be found. The fate of existence rest in their hands.
Neo lay in the darkness of his room resting. His long day of training was catching up with him, mental exhaustion in the form of physical pain, weakness slowly tracing circles throughout his body. He felt the next morning would be one of sore dread.
He rolled over and closed his eyes, waiting for the sweet bliss of sleep to envelop his body. Outside his door, however, he heard a commotion in the main room.
It had been a long, solemn night on the Nebuchadnezzar. Members of the developmental team - namingly Morpheus, Trinity and Link - had been downhearted by the initial rejection of the project. Dinner was quiet, cleanup was solitary and everyone was meandering about the ship in their own off kilter world. "Guys, you better come take a look at this. I'm getting some crazy off-the- chart readings here," Link called. Morpheus and Trinity came over to the monitors, analyzing the dripping code. Their expressions became one of puzzlement.
"That's neural activity," Morpheus murmured, his fingers tracing code falling on the screen. His eyes darted from left to right. "Neural activity that I've never seen on such a wavelength. Link, can you bring up readings in the database? I'd like to have a look at this." He sat down. Trinity stared at the screen.
"Look at that. The code is screaming for mercy. I've never seen such a reaction before." Link's fingers flew gracefully across the keys. He flipped some switches and pressed a blinking blue button. One of the dead monitors on the right of the station switched on. The screen spliced into four quarters, each scanning and displaying a different three-dimensional image of the brain. Wavelength frequencies and data ran rampant on the screen.
"From what I can tell, there are neurotransmitters intensely firing in the parts of the brain that aren't normally activated," Trinity said, her eyes following the data. "What could it mean?"
The smell of incense and candles was piecing the room with a burning fume. Shadows danced upon the wall in eager rhythm, lighting the room with flickering waves.
A figure sat amidst the shadows; from time to time her face was light by a frolicking flame. She set the book she had been reading on the ground next to her. Her eyes focused on a single point in the distance, then closed.
Minerva Walker sat cross-legged in front of the mirror with her arms out in front of her. Humming almost inaudibly, she flinched her hands and concentrated furiously. She felt it was time to know.
For a few moments, Minerva was absolutely still. Her breathing was hushed almost to nonexistence, her being and soul meshed into one burning source of energy. Minerva consciously drew energy from the field around her, extracting it into her own aura. A small buzzing feeling somewhere deep inside of her was born, a feeling that set in rhythm the wavelengths of her mind. She felt the air around her humming and alive with her own energy. Experimenting with the forces of what appeared to be her own controllable nature, Minerva was mastering her own field of power.
In an instant, she felt a slipping away, free-falling into nothingness. The humming faded slowly, the vibrations around her steadying to a smooth end. The world was black and spinning, an eternity in a vacuum of time. Before she knew it, the dreaming seemed to have stopped. Or was it only beginning?
She looked around, unsure of what universe she was in. The last thing she could remember was fleeing quickly from her mind, and that was the sense of conscious being. Here, wherever she was, time wasn't just standing still. It was nothing more than a metaphor.
"Where'd she go? I lost her," Link exclaimed, quickly searching the Matrix for the girl he had just been analyzing. The presence of her neural activity was no longer an obviousity.
"She cannot just disappear," Morpheus grunted. The monitors that were once displaying her neural activity were blank.
"She's awol, sir," Link sadly spoke. His searched failed to turn up any remaining traces of her. Some stagnant remnants of her frequencies burned in the hole where she once was. It was as if she detached herself from the Matrix and escaped into the nether regions of some plane between the Matrix and the real world.
"I want you to keep an eye out for her. Where the hell she could have got to is the question. Even dreams don't extend beyond the Matrix. Alert me the moment she returns," he boomed, and walked out of the room.