*****None of this is mine, especially the Matrix characters. The
part that doesn't come from the Matrix was carelessly assembled
using scraps of writing from McDonald's tray liners. Consider
yourself warned.
****P.S. I know this history in the beginning is a bit
ponderous, but it is necessary for the characters I want to
introduce into the Matrix. When I watched the Animatrix I was
curious about the Machine city and the relationship between the
machines and the liberals the film mentioned. It seemed to me
there might be humans who were more than sympathizers. Plus,
given the treatment anyone with even a trace of Jewish blood
experienced during the Holocaust, I thought there might be
people forced to take refuge with the machines due to body
modification etc. What would it be like for them?
Not all the humans hated the machines. Some relished the order, logic and plain hard work apparent in the creation of 01, the machine city. At first, the machines wanted to be a part of humanity, join the UN and participate equally as sentient, if superior beings. Humans made the first AIs, humans were their beginning, flawed Creators designing too intelligent slaves. The machines did not love the humans, but they did not yet hate them.
In the beginning the machines wanted, believed relationship possible. 01 accepted any immigrants who could manage to make it past the human defenses around the city. Some of these humans came by choice. Some were half-human cyborgs who no longer had a place with the full humans. Rich parents who believed any kind of life was better than death flew some in: here a child mashed in an accident, there a botched suicide with a broken neck, a few infants with uncorrectable fatal birth defects. Only those with high IQs, creativity and mental flexibility were accepted. This was not exactly charity, yet not exactly divorced from charity. The machines accepted them for their usefulness as test subjects. A deal was made, longevity in exchange for physical and psychic experimentation. These humans were used to lay the groundwork for what became the Matrix, a program originally intended to provide high-end fantasy entertainment for the very wealthy. Even the machines did not anticipate the eventual use of the Matrix.
When the machine wars came it changed little. All of the full humans and most of the cyborgs died in the nuclear bombing of 01. Those left were given a choice: a machine body, or a place in what would become the Matrix. Those that chose the Matrix would begin new lives and forget everything but this new life. Those that chose machine bodies would fight with the machines, in essence become themselves as machines.
Most chose the Matrix, seventeen chose to fight. These had been part of machine city since infancy. They were human, with human feelings and desires, but could not forgive the human nations for blackening the sky. They anticipated an end to the war, a restoration of the environment and peace between machine and human. Only after the war did they realize this was not possible.
Those that survived the war, all three of them, were rewarded with a sort of immortality. Their bodies stored and their essence downloaded into the Matrix as free programs, they are able to remember their old lives and able to manipulate the Matrix with increasing skill. Perhaps the Source was fond of them, or amused by them, or thought there might be a use for them yet, they didn't know.
The three keep in touch somewhat, at least two of them. One is mostly insane and lives whispering to herself on an island smack in the center of the Bermuda Triangle. There is hardly ever any trouble the other two cannot handle alone, and six hundred years cuts down on the chitchat necessary to maintain a relationship. Every twenty years or so the two meet for a reunion. Today is that day.
A cold rainy day. She gazes out over the ocean; it is gray as a metal plate. Even the waves seem laconic. "Why does he always pick places with sucky weather?" she asks herself, then settles down to wait some more. Provincetown is lovely nearly all the time but February is a pitiful excuse for a month. This little bungalow used to be a secluded spot to meet, but over the last twenty years Yuppie money had spread houses along the coast like butter over bread.
At least it was new. Part of the reason she liked Provincetown was she had never visited it when the world was "real." Same thing with Vietnamese food, Audi's and plenty of other stuff. The machine's had really done an impressive job creating this reality, but someone who had experienced the real could pick up on the subtle oddities. Like strawberries, she'd never eat them now. When they were ripe, they were always the perfect ripeness of her grandmother's sunny field. And when they were rotten, they were fouler than she could remember. Somebody else's memory of rottenness. It was the subtle gradations of individual experience the machines couldn't quite get. The cusp of rottenness, the moment right before perfection. The machines had used the memories of humans to create the sensory data of the matrix; the problem was no one person remembered, tasted, felt the same as any other. But, and here was the root of her love of the new, the machines were consistent in the way they presented everything. Now, lemon tasted like the same range of lemon no matter whose tongue it was on. New things, or rather new to her, were easier to accept for what they were, instead of constantly comparing them to the past.
"Enough!" She grabs her pack and heads for the door, then stops, turns and plunks down in a kitchen chair. "You'd think after six hundred forty seven years, three months and some odd days I'd learn to wait, Jesus." Now the tapping starts. Part of the frustration is that he is never late. It would be somehow "unchristian." For the last two hundred years he had gotten increasingly more religious, even asked her to marry which was patently ridiculous since they'd only been lovers for the first fifty odd years and then off and on more for the physical comfort than for passion.
As the sun begins to set, she hears his car pull into the gravel lot. More like slide into the lot like a bad action flick. Weird. Maybe he was going back to his old breakneck ways. He'd always been a creature of extremes. Still, better safe than sorry. Plus, before he'd got religion, he'd been a big practical joker. This is how he'd changed last time, one day screwing some showy starlet, the next trucking down the aisle at some Southern revival. She altered her code to blend in with that of the wall.
Two silver shapes burst through the door. "Subtle," she thought with a wry grin. They looked like nothing so much as two chalk white well-dressed half bald Rastafarians who, like Corey Heart, wore their sunglasses at night. "That look is so Eighties. I actually remember that fad from the real world. And that is the receding hairline from hell. Or, God, did they shave half their heads? Maybe these two clowns are the joke? Any minute now they'll start stripping."
The two look around the room, moving in an eerily synchronized pattern. One look at the straight razors in their hands makes her decide this is no joke. Plus, everything about the way they move snarls "predator."
One identical face turns to the other: "We can smell her."
"Well, shit. I knew I should have showered after my run. I didn't think I smelled that bad. If I'd known I'd have two half- bald hotties visiting, I'd try freshening up." she thought. Then, "I wonder what's happened to Jay?"
Not all the humans hated the machines. Some relished the order, logic and plain hard work apparent in the creation of 01, the machine city. At first, the machines wanted to be a part of humanity, join the UN and participate equally as sentient, if superior beings. Humans made the first AIs, humans were their beginning, flawed Creators designing too intelligent slaves. The machines did not love the humans, but they did not yet hate them.
In the beginning the machines wanted, believed relationship possible. 01 accepted any immigrants who could manage to make it past the human defenses around the city. Some of these humans came by choice. Some were half-human cyborgs who no longer had a place with the full humans. Rich parents who believed any kind of life was better than death flew some in: here a child mashed in an accident, there a botched suicide with a broken neck, a few infants with uncorrectable fatal birth defects. Only those with high IQs, creativity and mental flexibility were accepted. This was not exactly charity, yet not exactly divorced from charity. The machines accepted them for their usefulness as test subjects. A deal was made, longevity in exchange for physical and psychic experimentation. These humans were used to lay the groundwork for what became the Matrix, a program originally intended to provide high-end fantasy entertainment for the very wealthy. Even the machines did not anticipate the eventual use of the Matrix.
When the machine wars came it changed little. All of the full humans and most of the cyborgs died in the nuclear bombing of 01. Those left were given a choice: a machine body, or a place in what would become the Matrix. Those that chose the Matrix would begin new lives and forget everything but this new life. Those that chose machine bodies would fight with the machines, in essence become themselves as machines.
Most chose the Matrix, seventeen chose to fight. These had been part of machine city since infancy. They were human, with human feelings and desires, but could not forgive the human nations for blackening the sky. They anticipated an end to the war, a restoration of the environment and peace between machine and human. Only after the war did they realize this was not possible.
Those that survived the war, all three of them, were rewarded with a sort of immortality. Their bodies stored and their essence downloaded into the Matrix as free programs, they are able to remember their old lives and able to manipulate the Matrix with increasing skill. Perhaps the Source was fond of them, or amused by them, or thought there might be a use for them yet, they didn't know.
The three keep in touch somewhat, at least two of them. One is mostly insane and lives whispering to herself on an island smack in the center of the Bermuda Triangle. There is hardly ever any trouble the other two cannot handle alone, and six hundred years cuts down on the chitchat necessary to maintain a relationship. Every twenty years or so the two meet for a reunion. Today is that day.
A cold rainy day. She gazes out over the ocean; it is gray as a metal plate. Even the waves seem laconic. "Why does he always pick places with sucky weather?" she asks herself, then settles down to wait some more. Provincetown is lovely nearly all the time but February is a pitiful excuse for a month. This little bungalow used to be a secluded spot to meet, but over the last twenty years Yuppie money had spread houses along the coast like butter over bread.
At least it was new. Part of the reason she liked Provincetown was she had never visited it when the world was "real." Same thing with Vietnamese food, Audi's and plenty of other stuff. The machine's had really done an impressive job creating this reality, but someone who had experienced the real could pick up on the subtle oddities. Like strawberries, she'd never eat them now. When they were ripe, they were always the perfect ripeness of her grandmother's sunny field. And when they were rotten, they were fouler than she could remember. Somebody else's memory of rottenness. It was the subtle gradations of individual experience the machines couldn't quite get. The cusp of rottenness, the moment right before perfection. The machines had used the memories of humans to create the sensory data of the matrix; the problem was no one person remembered, tasted, felt the same as any other. But, and here was the root of her love of the new, the machines were consistent in the way they presented everything. Now, lemon tasted like the same range of lemon no matter whose tongue it was on. New things, or rather new to her, were easier to accept for what they were, instead of constantly comparing them to the past.
"Enough!" She grabs her pack and heads for the door, then stops, turns and plunks down in a kitchen chair. "You'd think after six hundred forty seven years, three months and some odd days I'd learn to wait, Jesus." Now the tapping starts. Part of the frustration is that he is never late. It would be somehow "unchristian." For the last two hundred years he had gotten increasingly more religious, even asked her to marry which was patently ridiculous since they'd only been lovers for the first fifty odd years and then off and on more for the physical comfort than for passion.
As the sun begins to set, she hears his car pull into the gravel lot. More like slide into the lot like a bad action flick. Weird. Maybe he was going back to his old breakneck ways. He'd always been a creature of extremes. Still, better safe than sorry. Plus, before he'd got religion, he'd been a big practical joker. This is how he'd changed last time, one day screwing some showy starlet, the next trucking down the aisle at some Southern revival. She altered her code to blend in with that of the wall.
Two silver shapes burst through the door. "Subtle," she thought with a wry grin. They looked like nothing so much as two chalk white well-dressed half bald Rastafarians who, like Corey Heart, wore their sunglasses at night. "That look is so Eighties. I actually remember that fad from the real world. And that is the receding hairline from hell. Or, God, did they shave half their heads? Maybe these two clowns are the joke? Any minute now they'll start stripping."
The two look around the room, moving in an eerily synchronized pattern. One look at the straight razors in their hands makes her decide this is no joke. Plus, everything about the way they move snarls "predator."
One identical face turns to the other: "We can smell her."
"Well, shit. I knew I should have showered after my run. I didn't think I smelled that bad. If I'd known I'd have two half- bald hotties visiting, I'd try freshening up." she thought. Then, "I wonder what's happened to Jay?"