Standing before him was his light, the brightness lighting his path, darkenned for many years, for she was none other than Kari, the woman who he loved with all his heart, and whom he had left for placing his studies as his priority, over a perfect relation he could have easily kept. Kari had not asked for much, only a little attention once a week, only five minutes to receive the lifely warmth of a kiss and one occasional call, but no, Jake had been too submerged in his own preparation to see the reality ocurring, to focus on the desperate screams of his own heart.
Kari was standing there, looking better than she had ever looked, her eyes shinning with a life and a brightness he had never observed in her, it was almost as if the time and the torment of memories and thoughts had treated her better than they had treated him.
"hello Jake, long time no see!" she chirped in her brighter and most proffesional voice, as if the encounter with an old boyfriend didn't have more importance than the clients she had to take care of everyday.
Jake's features quickly morphed from shocked to utterly amazed and hurted, the remark of the lack of importance their relation had been to her stabbed him with the ferocity of a hungry tiguer, slashing his heart and tearing his soul with murderous fangs and claws.
"hi Jake, Izzy, you remember Kari right? She has become a lawyer and…" Yoley started explaining obviously noticing the tension acumulating on such thin and delicate threat, and menacing to break any moment now.
"hi Kari, it sure has been time!" Jake answered upon hiding his true feeling behind a shell of coldness and passiveness, his last resort against the cruelty of the world. He still loved her, he had loved her for a long time and still did, her pressence had made him direct his paces away from the path imposed by those priorities that had caused him to risk their love, and now she acted like he didn't matter at all.
"Yoley, you cant imagine what I've found out today, it's the greatest discovery of the whole human history!" Izzy remarked, excitement pouring off his ears like a cascade of melodious water, infecting everyone surrounding them to such euphory.
"oh no Izzy, not Project Matrix again, is it? I told you to drop it, that it was a loss of time!" snapped the programer's wife with a displeased and bored moan, making it obvious that in this past years, Project Matrix had not been a reason to their marriage, but rahter a cause of dispute.
"no, Yoley, this time I've got to a conclusion, or part of the real answer, I'm closer than ever look!" Izzy explained opening his laptop and starting to type frantically in the small keyboard.
"oh no Izzy!" snapped Jake pushing his hands away from the keyboard, restraining his furious need to scream his discovery to the people around them, "no programing more chairs and coffees!" Jake hissed in a silent whisper, explaining the man to keep himself from creating a virtual reality in front of them, something that might alert the supersticious society.
Yoley and Kari exchanged curious glances, "what does he mean with programing coffees and chairs?" inqiured a now rather icy Yoley, unable to understand the coherency of his phrase and growing in the shell of suspicion.
"I'll explain at home!" whispered Izzy shutting down the power boosted laptop and placing it in the security of a hard case, locked with a complicated, computer code he, himself had programed to restrain curious hands from stealing and accesing to his laptop and his precious documents.
"well, I believe we should order our lunch already, Yoley already told me you have got a rather large chalet in the northern area, by the mountain!" Kari inquired curiously, eyes fixed in the worried deepness of Izzy's, never looking at the fantastic brightness of her former boyfriend's.
"indeed we do!" explained Izzy slightly distracted, his mind still roaming about the biggest step he had taken ever since he started Project Matrix.
"we will possibly make a party for Christmas Eve, why don't you join us?" inquired Yoley excitedly, her eyes flashing in a somewhat nostalgic way upon looking at her friend, her completely grown up friend.
Jake, although he remained silent throughout the whole event, kept his eyes fixed upon the figure of the woman he had once loved so much, his gaze blazing with a dreamy expression, yet one which showed him the reality of her departure.
"she has changed" thought the young man never looking away, "she left as a child, and returned as a woman! I wonder where she has been. What made her change like that? It's almost as if she didn't care about us any more, is she married? Has she got a boyfriend? Possibly, a charming woman like her will not pass unnoticed to the male population!" the programer's thoughts kept dashing across his mind, flashes of his past still shining into the dark depths of his memory, like stray stars on an evening sky.
"the lunch has been very pleasant, thank you!" Kari said placing down his napkin, with which she had just cleaned her lips.
"the pleasure was mine Kari, I hope we can meet again soon, after all this years time never seems enough!" beamed the older woman placing a couple of quick but tender kisses on the other girl's cheeks.
"I have got an idea, if you still have time that is, why don't you join me at my house for a coffe?" Inquired Kari, her eyes gleaming with a pleading expression, as ilussion crossed her fine features.
"I have got to work this afternoon, but I have got a couple of hours still, yes, it sounds like a plan!" commented the more experienced programmer, the flaming haired Izzy, as a thoughtful expression contorted his fine features into a face full of concentration.
"oh come on, leave that friggin proyect for later, it's not everyday you encounter someone you haven't seen for five years!" Yoley scolded, a playful slap sounding lightly on his black clothed shoulder.
"they have a perfect relationship!" commented Kari as if it had nothing to do with them, "it's obvious they both love each other so much!" finished the young woman, her eyes staring up at the tall, young man as if they had just met.
"true!" sighed Jake letting a heavy nostalgy flowing lightly with his words, "it's like we have never met before, what's with her? Doesn't she recognize me? Or does she simply wants to ignore the fact that we shared such a tight relationship?" thought the young programer examining the girl as if she was a statue, inch by inch, analizing every detail of her fine body. Jake could feel something that scared him, something that had been there for many years, yet now the little candle was burning with the enraged heat of a forestal fire.
"well, it's not every day I advance so much in…" Izzy started explaining, his voice trying to overpower the noise that the people were making, trying to make himself clear, the typical idea that the one with the reason is the one yelling louder becoming very obvious in this situation.
"YOU KNOW! LET'S GO! People are starting to stare at us!" explained Jake, his voice booming louder to make Izzy's revelation about Project Matrix fade into the busy athmosphere of the restaurant.
Indeed, many eyes were placed on the scandalous and loud group that had become of a fighting couple and a former relationship long broken, and the only cause was the intensive seeking of a maniacal programer in search of an alternate reality that had appeared, many years before, in a very famous movie. However, few, just a few people in the whole planet, would not find the radical and completely fictional theory as irrational at all, and Izzy had slightly demonstrated the reason for this, although only he and his work mate, Jake, knew about it.
"welcome to my house" explained Kari, the door creacked open with a loud and acute shriek, the guests were welcomed by a calid warmth fighting the freezing cold of mid november.
The house was well illuminated, a cozy place with had a not so spacious living room, yet the flood of pure and flashing bright light, altogether with the comfortable yet modern structure of the decoration, gave the room a sensation of vast extentions. The whole house was aproximately similar, and although the style was modern it did not tough the completely unharmonious and frustrationg twists and curves that exagerated the touch of futuristic reality.
"mommy!" screamed a delightful, young voice, echoing in the depths of a large and wide corridor.
All heads turned to see the origin of the voice, a young girl around the age of five, thin and with a beautiful, childish face. Her skin was pale and her wild hair was of a dark chestnut colour. Her eyes shone with a brightness and a light, like astros of the vast universe, however the resemblance was that of a nebula with the fascinating game of colours, of caramel brown and bright, dark blue.
"Chiyo!" screamed Kari, ignoring the shock that drowned the group's mind and knowledge.
The young woman grabbed the girl and spinned her around a few times, beore huggin her with a tight embrace, yet the motherly care was obvious in the tenderness with which her arms held the little girl, and the warmth that flamed in her eyes.
"you have a daughter?" inquired Jake in a shocked voice, yet the pain made it difficult for him to speak clearly, a sword was crossing his throat and made it unable for him to emit his words more clearly than an strangled whine.
"yes, her name is Chiyo, she's very smart!" Kari explained smiling with pride at the group.
"she's a lovely little girl, how old is she?" inquired Yoley with the delight of an aunt upon seeing her little niece.
"four Miss!" Chiyo explained slightly indignated at the fact that the attention given to her was represented as if her young mind could not understand the words spoken around her little ears.
"she will be five in July, which is still far from here!" explained the young woman with a large, happy smile.
The group sat at the soft, sprung sofas, the warmth of the ceramic cup, which contained the space darkness of the coffe, warming their slowly heating hands. Kari still shook her spoon around the creamy darkness of her coffe with added, pale milk, a chiming sound echoed from the depths of her drink. Chiyo had just left with her nanny, who had appeared a brief second just to retreive the curious little girl, keeping her from bothering the guests.
"the problem was Jake that our research started with the basic idea, with the consideration of building a possible Matrix, what we didn't count on was that perhaps it was the reality we were living at, making it impossible for us to rebuild a system of virtual reality within another, not with the medias inplanted within this one!" Izzy explained excitedly, his hand shaking with such delight that his coffe threatened to pour all over his already, night coloured pants.
"but how did you find out about the fact that what we are living at is Matrix?" inquired Jake paying Kari very little attention, as his interest had been drawn torwards one of his favourite topics.
"it was very weird, something clicked in my mind while analizing data, you know each computer software has a code, right? A serie of digits and characters of complicated constitution and order that determines it's uses and it's facts, and the comands neccesary to make it work!" explained Izzy very clearly, as if the people around the small tea table would find it unable to understand such complicated vocabulary.
"indeed, it can be viewed by accesing the main unit of the operative system, the computer's brain to say it, then transforming through a serie of programing, the visual characters in it's digital units!" concluded Jake inflating his chest pridefully, yet he could not find the union between this fact and the recent discovery of the world surounding him.
"exactly!" snapped Izzy pouring a few, minuscule drops of coffe onto his pants, "now this is what I did, I didn't have anything to loose anyways, so I created an item, completely mechanical and digital, that allowed me to view the software and drivers in their digital particles without typing in it. Of course, to do such it has to receive the information, analize it, determine it as digital and finally transform it in the correspondent units!" explained Izzy placing the cup on the table, having contained the gasp caused by the burning sensation of several areas of his legs.
"which item is it?" inquired Jake, now his eyes gleaming with curiosity, his heart beating with a radicalized speed at the expectation of viewing his world as it really was.
"this!" explained Izzy passively, taking out a pair of sunglasses with an applied, cilindrical device on one of the sides, the sparkling center of the cilinder made Jake see, upon picking them up, that it contained a lense.
"you see Jake, upon analizing the computer screen and observing the codification of my operation system, I thought I had nothing to loose if I was to try with observing the world around myself, I would determine my reality, and if nothing was to happen I would have lost nothing because Proyect Matrix would continue!" explained Izzy calmly, solemnly, as if that moment of pure bliss had been the spiritual revelation that brought peace to his insides.
Jake examined the glasses with some respect, his hesitant hands were shaking with excitement and fear, "do I want to?" thought the man making failing attempts to bring the glasses closer to his face, "do I really want to see that my reality was nothing but a systemprogramed to make me see, feel, smell, all those sensations? Or should I believe that my idol is nothing but a maniac and that the things he programed were already there, but I hadnt seen them?" Jake's mind kept across this path of inquires, and deductions, conclusions never approaching the station of his brain.
"then it happened, I placed the glasses on my eyes and observed my office!" kept Izzy going on, ignoring the boy's doubts and fears.
Jake brought the glasses to his eyes and observed, the living room in which he was situated. At first the glasses were completely dark, as if night had reached his vision earlier than engulfing the world in nightshades. Suddenly the glass started forming images before him, he could now see the sofa very clearly, the different decorations, all drowned in shadows, a game of greys and blacks. His heart felt, heavy like nickel, nothing in his vision was digital, everything was as it should be, completely phisical, Izzy, his idol, had been wrong for one time in his life, it had all been his imagination and Proyect Matrix had been a total failure. Jake ignored why was he feeling so deceived since, for one side, he knew that this was the reality they were actually living at, not something formed by a compute program.
"at first I was very deceived!" Jake heard Izzy's voice whisper distantly next to him, it didn't mean Izzy was gone, but that Jake's mind had sank so low in deception his senses faltered.
To Be Continued…
AN: I know this whole Matrix thing might be starting to get annoying, but I've got plans for a future story so it's neccesary I introduce some information and prepare some background for it, just in case any of you is willing to make an effort and continue reading this. Well, it's getting exciting, isnt it? Please, review.