Morpheus.
Nanu
Neo loads her into a very odd simulation. It's a garden, with hedges in orderly rows and large spreading plane trees dappling the sunlight. She can hear birds singing. The air smells fresh and warm.
Damn good programming.
"Nanu," a deep voice makes her turn around.
Morpheus.
He's tall, black. The only relief to his shadowy form is his white smile and mirror shades. He sweeps down the gravel path, his arms folded behind his back.
"At last."
She holds out a hand, steps forward. "It's an honour to meet you."
An odd look crosses his face, but is passes and he says, "No Nanu, the honour is mine," as he shakes her hand.
There is a brief pause.
"May I ask you something?" she says.
"Of course."
"Why did you choose to meet in here?"
"Because I no longer exist out there."
She stops, blank. The birds keep singing.
"You have heard the story of the first One?"
Light begins to dawn.
"His body died but his mind lived on."
"And in much the same principle this is now my home. At the present moment, how is not important."
Nanu smiles a little. He'd guessed her next question.
There is another pause. Although the day is warm, Morpheus seems unaffected in his black leather coat.
Suddenly he gestures to the timber and wrought iron bench beside the path, offering her a seat. Accepting it, Nanu folds her hands on her knees.
"The Oracle told me to see you."
"I remember her," he smiles sadly.
"She told me I had lived before."
"Pardon?"
"She told – "
"I heard you Nanu but I'm not sure I agree."
"She said she remembered me."
He looks away, quirks a sarcastic brow, "Well that really narrows it down."
Nanu gets up off the bench and turns to look down at the man, the jack, the fighter. Trinity's old captain, the man that awoke Neo to the real world.
"The Oracle told me that you could tell me who I once was. I don't believe she was wrong."
He goes still and looks at her closely. Then he gets up, "Come with me."
He leads her down the garden path around a turn in the hedge.
There is a door in the middle of the lawn, stark, institution white in the middle of green grass and flowers.
Morpheus opens it, the doorway shows a mirror, but his reflection is wearing a suit and is standing in the middle of a dark, old fashioned study.
He walks right through the mirror.
Nanu stops. "Oka-ay . . . "
Slowly, she reaches out and touches the mirror. It's like winding her fingers through tendrils of smoke; she can feel nothing.
But she can see the mirror. And she can see her reflection watching her from inside the room.
Her reflection.
When was the last time she considered herself in a mirror?
The girl she sees now is tall, thin, and (can it be?) graceful. Her dark hair is scooped up and back from her face, which is chiselled and fine. Yellow tinged eyes gleam under arched brows and long lashes.
She's dressed all in greys and browns; jeans, boots and jacket. She looks sharp, hard.
Dangerous.
"No way," she swears under her breath. "That can't be real." And screwing her eyes shut she steps through the mirror.
Neo
He smiles briefly as he reads Nanu's reaction to her appearance. Little does she know, she really does look like that. In almost three months, she seems to have aged over a year.
Nanu
Morpheus leads her into a library. The walls are lined, ceiling to floor, with books. No, not books, photo albums.
"These are my memories," his gesture encompasses the room.
Nanu twigs, "No, I really shouldn't – "
"Please," he gives her a small leather bound index. "I think it will help." Then he leaves.
Nanu swears again.
Neo
He frowns, he's having trouble reading the coding for the books on the walls. They seem to be something akin to doorways, but that can't be right, can it?
This dream world of Morpheus is, in parts, far more complex then the Matrix. Neo isn't sure if that's a good or a bad thing, or if it's neither.
Nanu
She looks around the room, running a finger down the cloth spine of the closest album. She remembers Trinity's memories, how they'd been jumbled and buried and hidden away.
Morpheus seems either very trusting or foolish.
Nanu reads the label on the shelf: July. There are five shelves above it, labelled January to June, and six below labelled August to December. Each stack of shelves holds a year, each shelf a month, each album a day.
How many days has Morpheus lived?
She opens the index and flicks to a random page.
Dog – My dog
- Neighbour's dog
- Dog bites
- Puppies
and so on, each with several dates listed behind each topic.
Nanu riffles forward to M : Matrix.
The entry is one line, squeezed in between matriculate and maul. All it says is
For all Matrix related entries, see room 101*
"And where is that I wonder?" she mutters, then checks the asterisk reference at the bottom of the page.
* It's behind shelf 37.
"Oh."
Neo
He jumps as his headset rings. He holds a finger to his ear, clicks the answer key.
"Operator."
- Neo -
It's Morpheus. Who else would it be?
"What's she doing sir? What's in that room?"
- You mean you can't see it? -
"No, the code doesn't make sense. It just shows empty space."
- Well that's not by my hand. I think that's because of Nanu -
"What do you mean?"
- Has she ever explained to you how she reads minds? -
"No."
- Because this world is, like it is, it seems she's seeing things as literal where they used to be analogies -
"What?"
- She compares memories to photo albums. Now when she is scanning through mine she sees a library full of photographs, understand? -
"Sort of - hey!" Neo pulls a keyboard nearer, hammers a command.
Nothing.
He looks over to where Nanu lies in the chair. Her heart is beating, she's breathing, but her brain has flatlined.
"Where is hell is she?"
- Room 101 -
Nanu
Room 101 is not so organised as the rest of the library. Albums with dusty leather covers are piled haphazardly on the single table and chair, and scattered over the floor. A few have words on the cover in texta, like 'Nebuchadnezzar - first day', 'fields', 'powerplant' or 'Zion Detox'.
"Here goes," and she picks up the memory of his first day on the first Neb.
As she opens to the first page, she sees what appears to be a moving photo, like a wizard photo from Harry Potter. But these people are not waving at her.
And no wizard photo would drag her into it.
Neo
He swears as Nanu's eyes flutter open. Only the whites of her eyes are showing.
Carefully, he reaches out and closes her eyes again. She's cold. Her breathing is slow, deep. And yet there's still no brain activity. He bites his lip.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Nanu."
Nanu/Morpheus
She/he opens her/his eyes. She/he sits up slowly, looking around the room. Metal everything.
Predicably, Morpheus looks down at the IV in his arm.
Other memories swarm but Nanu keeps her hold on this one. She catches brief glimpses of pills, darkness, machines, pods, and a woman . . . who looks familiar.
Then the door to his cabin opens and Morpheus starts, looks up.
"Good morning."
He stares up at her.
If Nanu had a body of her own, she'd stop breathing now.
The woman is tall, thin, dressed in ratty grey and blue. She's been unplugged for many years, her hair is long and dark. And her eyes gleam yellowish in her sharp, chiselled face.
She is forty something years old, but this woman looks like Nanu.
Morpheus whispers he name, "Juno."
The woman moves forward, kneels down, and carefully pulls the IV from the boy's arm. He winces, makes a noise.
"I'm sorry that hurt you," Juno says in a soft, dark voice.
"Why did it hurt?" his mind is questioning, anxious.
"Because that socket is in your arm. It's part of you."
A rejecting shake of the head; Morpheus refuses the answer and asks a new question.
"Where am I?"
"No amount of explaining will make this any easier for you Morph. But know for now that it's approximately 2179, not 1999 as you believed it to be. You're in the real world now."
"What?"
She stands up, holds out her hand to him. Plugs glint silver in her bare pale arms.
"Come with me Morph. You have to see this for yourself.
Nanu
The memory slides away as Nanu stands in the middle of the dusty room, shaking.
"Juno? Who was Juno? Who was I?"
Neo
She takes a deep breath, her head tilts and her back arches in the chair. There are no restraints on her, for who would expect anything to go wrong in Morpheus' world?
Neo scans the code as she emerges from room 101, running and calling for his old captain.
Nanu
"Morpheus!"
She comes out through the mirror door into the garden. The bright sun and birdsong sound even more unreal.
"Morpheus!"
Nanu turns, breathing fast and clenching her hands. Nothing. The path leads away from her, twisted and beginning to tilt as she turns around again.
"Morph!"
"Nanu, calm down." And suddenly he's there, catching her arms as she folds to her knees. "Are you alright?"
"Juno was your captain wasn't she?"
He pauses, crouching beside her. "Yes."
"Was she anything more to you?"
"No."
She slumps lower, he head hanging. Morpheus' voice is gentle, and sad.
"You know you'll have to deal with this alone."
"How can I?"
"You've got your search word now. All you need is time."
"Right."
"I don't know that Neo would understand if you tried to talk about this with him."
"No, he probably wouldn't."
"Nor would Gavin."
She looks up with a hollow laugh. "How the hell did you know?"
His smile echoes a younger person. Morph; that's what Juno called him.
"Trinity's favourite line was 'he knows more than you can imagine.'"
She smiles back. The words fit the man of shadows, but are at odds with the boy.
"Do you want to get out now?"
"Yes, thankyou."
He pulls her up, taking her hands.
"Uh, Morpheus?"
"Hmm?"
"Could I see you again maybe?"
His smiles again, even sadder.
"I'll be right here."
Neo
She opens her eyes, inhales. Neo pulls out her plug and lets down her chair.
"My head is spinning," she says, brow furrowing.
"Are you okay?" he checks her stats upon exiting - they're perfectly normal.
"I'm fine, now."
"What did he say?"
"I . . . I think I know who I was."
He gives her a hand to clamber out of the chair. "You believe that?"
"Don't you?"
"Well, yeah. But it's still," he shrugs.
Nanu pulls her jacket tighter around herself.
"Can we go back now? It's cold."
"Sure." Neo follows her from the room, locking the door on the desk and two chairs.
***