"We've discussed your claim, and after considerable debate we have concluded that it is credible."
"You believe me then?"
Anguine inhales. "Yes. We believe you."
"Good. So, what do I do now?"
"Do?" The official raises her eyebrows. "Whatever you wish. After delivering a written statement to this counsel, of course."
"Statement about what?"
"To be blunt, to tell us what you experienced while in the power plant."
"Okay."
~~~
They sit him down at a computer, pulling a keyboard toward him. The screen is black, its casing battered and dented. A lone white cursor blinks at him, waiting. He looks over the keyboard. Just the same. It could be a relic from his own life.
After a brief pause, he inhales and begins to type.
The world I came from is, I believe, the same as the real world at the turn of the century. The technology I remember is much the same as the technology described to me by Skat's crew, and Tristan who was taken from the fields; cars, electric trains, laptop computers, monorails, nuclear weapons etcetera. After viewing information about 1990 onwards in this world, I can say I'm certain that the world I dreamed in the power plant is modelled after the real world as it was approximately one hundred years ago.
"You want more?" he asks Anguine as she reads over his shoulder.
"Not for now."
~~~
Nuala taps on the wall next to his doorway.
"Come in."
She pulls the curtain aside and steps in. Raven lies back on the narrow bed, flicking through a worn out paperback with the cover missing.
"What're you reading?"
"Neuromancer. Skat gave it to me. You read it?"
"Yeah, he made me read it too. It's on his booklist."
"He has a booklist?"
"Since my parents died he kinda looks after me. Either that or I hang around the barracks here."
"Oh." He shuffles up, folding his legs and making room for her to sit. "I'm sorry."
"S'alright. It happened years ago," Nuala perches beside him. "Sentinels."
" . . . Oh."
"So now Skat tries to keep an eye on me. That includes teaching me how to read." She forces a smile; "I brought you a drink."
"Um, thanks," he accepts the metal canister, and takes a sip. He wrinkles his nose at the coppery taste. "It's warm water."
"Would you prefer it cold?"
Raven ducks his head. "Sorry. It must seem all I do is complain."
"It's not your fault. You didn't ask for this. You left your whole life behind, and from what you've said it didn't sound too bad."
"It wasn't bad, but I still wasn't happy with it. It wasn't real."
They sit in silence for a time. Raven passes the water back to Nuala and skims a few pages of the book. The paper is brittle and yellow, the glue in the spine cracked. It's a very old book.
"Hm," he says after a while. "Matrix . . . "
"Pardon?"
"In here," Raven traces a finger under the faded words as he reads aloud. "' . . . jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the Matrix.' Consensual hallucination . . . like a mass dream?"
"If it's consensual it means you're willing to be in there."
"So it's not quite like the power plant." He fades out, going back to reading.
"Raven?"
"Hm?"
"Can you tell me what happened before? With Tristan? We were back with the officials so quick I didn't get to ask."
"I don't really remember. It's blurry."
"He was asking you about what it was like in the plant. He said the dream had a name."
Raven lowers the book, frowning thoughtfully.
"And then you said, the Matrix. Like it meant something."
"I did?"
"Yeah. Don't you remember?"
He doesn't answer, just looks back to the book in his hands like it holds some sort of truth.
~~~
' . . . and still he'd see the Matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void . . . '
Raven smooths the paper flat, running his fingers over the words again and again as if he can find understanding in them and let it seep into his skin.
It's just a book. It's just a story. It's just a coincidence that the words he said to Tristan mean so much in the context of the book's world.
Why had he said that? Of all the meaningless phrases his subconscious could spurt it had to be something that almost made sense. The Matrix . . . Matrix . . .
Raven clicks on the tiny light above his bed. The shadows retreat to the corners of the room, waiting for him to turn his back on them. He reaches for another book on the shelf, a dictionary. Skat seems determined to put him in the same category as Nuala, an orphan in need of copious amounts of reading material. He turns the pages slowly, resting the weight of the book evenly across his lap.
Matrix . . . he runs through the various definitions.
A mould in which a thing is cast or shaped. Perhaps.
An environment in which a thing is developed. That sounds uncomfortably like the power plant.
A womb? He swallows hard, remembering the pod.
A mass of fine grained rock - no.
A rectangular array in rows and columns treated as a single element. He tilts his head to one side. It calls something to mind, but he can't pin it down.
The substance between cells - no.
A gridlike array of interconnected circuit elements. That doesn't really sound right either.
He almost knows what it is. He's sure he's heard the term before.
(or will hear it)
Will hear it?
(something like a vision of the future)
He carefully replaces both books on the shelf, then lies down and flicks off the light. Immediate and total darkness.
Raven closes his eyes.
(remember?)
A black bird flying above a city. Between grey towers, over crisscross lines of streets choked with cars and people, swooping low then soaring up again. A feeling of being loose, cut from all things that tie him to the earth, a feeling of being free to climb as far as the sky goes.
Rain, cascading waterfalls of drop after drop after drop, falling and sliding and running in channels along the crevices in the walls of an old cathedral, rivulets tracing the contours of gargoyles, and hands against the stone. Rock against warm skin, texture of a silk-lined coat and the scent of thunder. Dark hair in his eyes, wet and curling against his neck.
Blink. The water runs green, luminescent and glowing bright and forming a web of lines, a tangle that makes sense to him, a system that tells stories only he can hear.
And although it hasn't happened yet, he remembers what this means.
Standing in the shadows of a belltower, like a raven watching the world, spreading his arms wide to feel the wind reaching for him, throwing his head back and calling for the lightening, and knowing that this dream will only ever be as real as he chooses to make it. Thunder roaring.
Alone in a storm.
And like in all the old stories, the knowledge of a being's true name will give you power over it.
Raven opens his eyes in the darkness of his room, and whispers the name of the dream.
"The Matrix."