Nanu's Story - More Training

Nanu

She wakes up again.

Another artificial dawn. Gavin sleeps on. She wonders what woke her.

"Good morning," says a soft voice. Nanu rolls over and sees Achi in the doorway. "You hungry?"

"Yes," Nanu sits up slowly. The air doesn't seem as cold as it did on her first morning. Achi passes over her boots, and Nanu slips into them. She pulls up her socks, then tightens and clips down each buckle of the boots from her knees to her ankles. The baggy trousers go over the top.

They leave the infirmary quietly, Gavin oblivious to their actions.

***

"You're not asking anything," Nanu says to Achi as they eat breakfast.

"If you have anything to tell me, you'll tell me."

Nanu smiles. "There aren't enough people in the world like you."

They eat without speaking. The only sounds are the hum of the steam drier and the clunk of spork against bowl.

"If I knew myself what happened, I'd tell you," Nanu sighs, thinking of her rememberings. "But I can't seem to make sense of anything."

***

Key intercepts them on their way to the Main Deck, and does an impromptu examination in the corridor. She plugs a gadget into the plug in Nanu's upper arm, shines a light in her eyes, runs her hands over Nanu's short spikes of hair and makes her say "Aahh."

When it's finished she looks baffled.

"I just don't get it. There's nothing wrong . . ." she trails off as she leaves for the infirmary to scan the data from Nanu's plug.

Achi shrugs, not knowing what Key's worried about. They continue up to the Main Deck.

***

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Tank smiles, on deck with Neo and Tod. Neo's in a program. Tod doesn't look at her.

"What's he doing?" Nanu asks Tank.

"Sparring, I'll get him out."

"No," she moves to a chair, "Send me in where he is."

***

He's fighting. Opponents come at him, five, six at a time. Again, again, he beats them, moving so fast he blurs, but they only disappear for an instant before returning. Six near identical men in dark brown suits.

Agents.

Nanu hesitates at the entrance. This simulation is an old, abandoned subway. Piles of wood and concrete rubble litter the platform and tracks. Faded posters for alcohol and computer companies are stuck haphazardly on the walls.

Then one Agent is on the ground, two, then three. Neo's guns sound again, and another falls. Within seconds there is another shot, then he throws the last Agent into the wall where it flops to the ground, neck broken.

Neo stands still in the sudden hush. All in black, made grey by cement dust, he is so still Nanu almost cannot see him in the shadows.

"Neo?"

"Nanu?" he bursts into movement and runs down the platform to where she stands by the stairs. "You're okay?"

"I'm fine, but you're not."

He goes quiet again.

"Why are you in this program?"

"It's just practice -

"Don't lie to me Neo. You don't need practice for this."

A pause. He half turns away, shoving his thumbs through his belt.

"I - " he breaks off. "Call it stress relief, whatever. I was worried about you, you've been unconscious for days and it was my fault, I took you on the run after all . . ."

He stops abruptly, turns back to her.

"I said all that aloud?"

She nods.

"I didn't mean to."

"Call it a very long Freudian slip."

"You didn't . . .?"

"No."

He shakes his head. "You have training to do."

***

The Agent training program is like a busy city street, a sea of humanity around Nanu and Neo.

"Every person you see here is an RSI. You know what that stands for?"

She dodges a businessman who is walking straight for her, and swerves to avoid being hit by a bride. "Residual self image."

"Which is projected by the carrier signal of the person in the power plant."

Neo glances over his shoulder as he talks, as he sweeps through the crowd. "And each and every person we have not unplugged is still connected to the Matrix this way."

People seem to make way for him. Nanu has to break into a run to keep up, skipping around two identical women in identical black suits who threatened to cut her off from Neo. "They are still a part of the system, and that makes them . . ."

Nanu tunes out for a second as a shoulder brushes hers. She turns as a girl in a tight red shirt and baggy faded jeans slips past her. She walks backward for a moment, looking at Nanu, and she has time to see her smile at her before Neo says

"Were you listening to me Nanu?"

She spins.

"Or were you looking at the girl in the red shirt?"

"I was - "

"Look again."

She turns, and in place of the good-looking girl is a man in a brown suit holding a gun to her head. A desert eagle, she remembers it from weapons training.

"Freeze it."

A hush falls. Nothing moves. Nanu cannot help but appreciate the detail taken by the programmer. This is almost exactly like the Matrix.

"Meet Agent Smith," Neo gestures to the man in the brown suit. "He's one of the six main models of Agent, a little outdated now, but still the most common. His 'colleagues' include Brown, Jones, Williams, Lang, and the newest, Cunningham."

Nanu puts her hands in her pockets and keeps listening.

"An Agent is a sentient program, like, and unlike a virus. They need a host to survive, but as far as we know they cannot duplicate themselves, at least, not yet."

"A host? You mean a person?"

"A coppertop. Anyone still plugged into the Matrix. The Agent hooks into their carrier signal like mistletoe on a tree, and the program overrides the human's RSI."

"So anyone who isn't yet unplugged is potentially an Agent?"

"Got it in one."

"You're the only one who can beat them?"

"I don't know . . ." the expression on his face finishes his sentence.

"Oh no," she whispers. She's seen how fast those things are. "You don't mean me."

"Agents can punch though concrete walls. I've shot entire clips at them and they've dodged every single bullet. But their strength and speed are defined by the rules and limits of the Matrix. Those rules don't apply to me because I'm the One. But you're the next best thing."

"No way. No way in hell am I going to fight that."

"Nanu, think about it - "

"No," she backs away. The Agent looks like the man that followed her that day in her other life, the day she'd found a worm in her apple at the train station. But she can't be sure.

"Really Nanu. Think for a second. If you can change and ignore the rules sufficiently to fly, you can do this. You'd need to practice of course, but I think you can do it."

She hesitates. "Practice? How?"

"That sim we were in before is the closest our programmers can come to Agents. It's usually used for rookies who don't understand how dangerous AI can be."

Nanu tries to breathe evenly. She sizes up the flat, expressionless face of Smith.

"Okay?" Neo asks.

"Okay. But not today or I'll be unconscious for a week."

"Pardon?"

"When I change anything in here, it hurts. Not so long as I'm jacked-in, but I have a headache once I'm out."

"Oh."

"So it wasn't your fault that I've been out of it. It was because I flew."

"Oh." To an extent, he looks relieved.

Trinity

About two weeks later, Trinity is in the operator's seat. She types in code, then jumps up from her chair and moves to where Nanu lies, jacked in. The girl opens her eyes with an intake of breath. Then quickly shuts them again.

"Are you okay?"

"Not exactly."

Carefully Trinity removes the plug and lowers the chair. Nanu sits up gingerly, rubbing her temples.

"I can't quite believe it."

"Believe what?" Nanu looks up.

"You just beat two Agents."

"Neo wants me to beat six or more."

"Well for now, I think two is enough." She helps Nanu up, trying to get her head around it. This sixteen-year-old girl was withdrawn only a few months ago, now she brushes off her win over two Agents. Saying it's not enough.

Like someone else, who dodged all but two bullets, then shrugged, 'It wasn't fast enough.'

"I think you've learnt most of what these sims can teach you."

"Really?"

"Of course there's still everything you have to learn by hand. Mechanics; Achi will teach you the more practical aspects of how the ship works and how to repair it. Key will give you basic medical training - "

"That got downloaded - "

"Yet you have no practical experience. All you know now is theory."

Trinity swallows at the sudden crushed expression in Nanu's eyes. The girl just beat two agents and she's upset because she doesn't know how to use a welder.

Jesus Christ.

"And Tod will help you in programming. You have to know everything when you're working on a ship, for example, if we lost Key and no one else had any medical training we'd be in real trouble. A jack has to be a . . . jack of all trades."

Nanu looks up quickly. A surprised smile tugs at her mouth.

Captain Trinity the machine just made a joke. I feel like an idiot.

But Nanu refrains from comment, only saying, "And here I was thinking I'd finished school."

"For your next run you've learnt enough." Slowly Trinity begins to walk toward the ladder. "I'll have to talk to Neo. I think you're ready to see the Oracle. She asked for you."

"Who is she exactly?"

"She's a coppertop, we think. She's a very old lady."

"Can she tell the future?"

What has she heard?

Breathe in, and consider. "I'm not sure. She tells us things that more often than not come true. But Morpheus always said she was a guide. She's more than a fortune-teller; she can help you, it doesn't matter if she can 'tell the future' or not."

Nanu

Morpheus again, she thinks. Although he's gone, he still has an effect on his ex-crew. Of which only three are left.

"Did you go to her?"

"Most people do sooner or later."

"What did she tell you?"

Trinity halts. Her face unreadable, she turns to Nanu.

"What did I say?" the girl asks, baffled.

"Neo said that. He asked me that."

"So?"

"No, I mean with the same intonation and everything."

Trinity's memory floods over Nanu, sudden and strong.

Trinity

The tone of those words sends her momentarily back four years, until she is almost there -

But Trinity snaps out of reverie as Nanu closes her eyes suddenly, and folds to her knees.

Nanu/Trinity

She's sitting in a car. The world is dim through her shades. They are driving through the City; Neo is in the backseat on her left, looking out the window.

"I have these memories from my life," halfway through a thought he turns to her.

(He looks very much the same as he does in the present, perhaps a little softer, a little smoother. His eyes are open and wide and dark; they have none of the mercury depth Nanu has seen in them when he controls the Matrix. This is a long while ago. He is not yet the One.)

"None of them happened." He searches her face for an answer. "What does that mean?"

"That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are."

"But an Oracle can?"

"That's different."

He raises his hand, rubs the back of his neck.

(It's a familiar gesture.)

"Did you go to her?"

Trinity looks out her window. Breathe in, "Yes."

"What did she tell you?"

She looks back. Scans his open gaze from behind her polaroid shields. "She told me . . . "

(Then the whirlwind of association pulls her deeper into another memory.)

***

(Author's Notes: I've had comments about Nanu quoting the movie. It may sound weird, but there is a reason she repeats Morpheus' words.

The lines in italics are thoughts. I believed I'd finally made non-schizophrenic characters but it seems that I was wrong.

Again.

I know this is an annoying place to cut the chapter off, but I promise you'll have more by New Year. I swear on the grave of my . . . budgie.)