Mara walked over to her 1971 Dodge Super Bee and checked the program. No
exploding surprises. Good. The Merovingian she had known was too elegant to
send his goons out with car bombs, but things change.
She'd changed. "I am so sick of this, I just want to paint and pretend I'm human." The last hundred and fifty odd years she had gradually been less and less involved in the power plays between the humans, exiles and the machines, was content to move from place to place when it became obvious she didn't age and change her features when she loved a place too much to move.
She was usually female; it just felt right. Sometimes she was beautiful, it depended on what she was doing. Or who she was wanting to do. This look was tall, 6'1, with skin the color of coffee with cream. She had almond shaped hazel eyes, spiky-short brown hair and a lean, but curvy, athlete's body topped by what her last lover called "a great rack of lamb." She could have been a call girl, or an elegant stripper.
The Architect had given them all gifts when they entered the Matrix, and they had learned things on their own. At one time the three of them had ruled the Matrix much like the Merovingian, but Mara had gotten bored and Megtilde had gone insane. As much as Mara had come to hate causing death, Megtilde craved it. Megtilde hadn't gotten to the island on her own, Mara had convinced Jay to help her put Meg there. Then she had moved to rural Texas, about as far away from the hub of exile activity as you could get. The weird mix of Anglo and Mexican culture appealed to her, plus it was easy to move from town to town in such a big open place. And, in the last hundred years, she had found a place she felt at peace and settled there.
No one not from Texas, or not a little bit crazy, would call Amarillo nice. It was flat, dusty and boiling hot almost all the year round. It reminded her of the desert 01 was built on. Of course 01 didn't have the faint tinge of cow piss blowing on the breeze daily, but she had, like most people who lived somewhere vile, gotten fond of some of the nastiest bits of the city.
The people were all insane in some way or the other. They'd picked this place to live. Since each version of the Matrix offered more choice to humans and less control, except in the instance of discovering the existence of the Matrix, all the places of the old world existed. You could live where you wanted. It was all, as the Merovingian loved to point out, pretense, but in a way it was very real. She thought of all the tiny manipulations humans made to the Matrix within the rules of the Matrix: build a house, tear one down, so on. The basic design was the machines', but between the emergence of each One, the humans did a helluva lot of tailoring. Amarillo was a perfect example of this.
For example, in most parts of the world road signs are not trendy. In Amarillo, however, someone had decided to place a large road sign in his yard stating "Blind Alligators in Sewer." This set off a trend that eventually resulted in such a confusing overgrowth of nonsensical signs that it had become a Sunday afternoon tradition for the locals to sit in their lawn chairs and watch the angry confused tourists attempt to navigate through the city to the Palo Duro Canyon; a miserably hot miniature grand canyon that, yes, smelled like cow piss too.
She loved the place. It was hot and mean-spirited, the people were tough and surprisingly kind. Her name there was Maude Williams and she was a blowsy sixty-something divorcee who tended bar at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). She was on vacation. Some fucking vacation.
Mara sighed. "Shit. I'm going to have to start killing again. Shit. Shit. Shit. Time to get out the fucking paper and look up the sex offenders."
Each of the three had the ability to pass as human, and the energy provided by food was enough to give them power equivalent to a human. When the Architect had downloaded them into the Matrix, he had allowed them access to the same energy source as all his programs. The only problem was the Architect could thereby track their existence, and, probably, delete them. The three didn't like the idea, so they developed their own separate solutions.
Mara was pretty sure Jay lived off emotional energy. She wasn't certain, but she felt like that was part of the appeal to religious extremism. Mara had opted to link her power to power taken from the lives of others, sort of like a vampire except that she used a variety of weapons to accomplish the task. The weapons were part of her. She thought about what she needed, and it formed in her hand. It was also nifty for clothes, shoes etc. She could form guns, but it was costly. All the energy for the bullets came out of her own hide, so she tended to pack a real gun. She was also able to absorb power from others during skin-to-skin contact, but the death was, unfortunately, the biggest part of a human or program's power reserve. She hadn't killed in, God, forever.
Mara had sworn off killing, but every once in a while it was a public service to the community. When Mara touched someone, she was able to skim the surface of their mind. She could do more, of course, but casual touch produced casual information. The person she killed was a serial killer. Mara brushed the woman's arm by accident in the grocery store checkout line and saw a child locked in a basement. She saw a series of children that had been killed in basements. She read the woman's intention to return home, kill the child and roast it like some fairytale witch.
Mara followed her, killed her, and then called the cops anonymously with the location of the child. The woman was, in a word, yummy. Mara hadn't killed since and basically got enough energy to be a bit more than human from lots of rich food and lots of wild sex. It was a good life, but all her more aggressive functions, and most of her defensive ones as well, had gradually become dormant. She had gotten lax, and nearly had to pay for it.
She was so hungry.
She'd changed. "I am so sick of this, I just want to paint and pretend I'm human." The last hundred and fifty odd years she had gradually been less and less involved in the power plays between the humans, exiles and the machines, was content to move from place to place when it became obvious she didn't age and change her features when she loved a place too much to move.
She was usually female; it just felt right. Sometimes she was beautiful, it depended on what she was doing. Or who she was wanting to do. This look was tall, 6'1, with skin the color of coffee with cream. She had almond shaped hazel eyes, spiky-short brown hair and a lean, but curvy, athlete's body topped by what her last lover called "a great rack of lamb." She could have been a call girl, or an elegant stripper.
The Architect had given them all gifts when they entered the Matrix, and they had learned things on their own. At one time the three of them had ruled the Matrix much like the Merovingian, but Mara had gotten bored and Megtilde had gone insane. As much as Mara had come to hate causing death, Megtilde craved it. Megtilde hadn't gotten to the island on her own, Mara had convinced Jay to help her put Meg there. Then she had moved to rural Texas, about as far away from the hub of exile activity as you could get. The weird mix of Anglo and Mexican culture appealed to her, plus it was easy to move from town to town in such a big open place. And, in the last hundred years, she had found a place she felt at peace and settled there.
No one not from Texas, or not a little bit crazy, would call Amarillo nice. It was flat, dusty and boiling hot almost all the year round. It reminded her of the desert 01 was built on. Of course 01 didn't have the faint tinge of cow piss blowing on the breeze daily, but she had, like most people who lived somewhere vile, gotten fond of some of the nastiest bits of the city.
The people were all insane in some way or the other. They'd picked this place to live. Since each version of the Matrix offered more choice to humans and less control, except in the instance of discovering the existence of the Matrix, all the places of the old world existed. You could live where you wanted. It was all, as the Merovingian loved to point out, pretense, but in a way it was very real. She thought of all the tiny manipulations humans made to the Matrix within the rules of the Matrix: build a house, tear one down, so on. The basic design was the machines', but between the emergence of each One, the humans did a helluva lot of tailoring. Amarillo was a perfect example of this.
For example, in most parts of the world road signs are not trendy. In Amarillo, however, someone had decided to place a large road sign in his yard stating "Blind Alligators in Sewer." This set off a trend that eventually resulted in such a confusing overgrowth of nonsensical signs that it had become a Sunday afternoon tradition for the locals to sit in their lawn chairs and watch the angry confused tourists attempt to navigate through the city to the Palo Duro Canyon; a miserably hot miniature grand canyon that, yes, smelled like cow piss too.
She loved the place. It was hot and mean-spirited, the people were tough and surprisingly kind. Her name there was Maude Williams and she was a blowsy sixty-something divorcee who tended bar at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). She was on vacation. Some fucking vacation.
Mara sighed. "Shit. I'm going to have to start killing again. Shit. Shit. Shit. Time to get out the fucking paper and look up the sex offenders."
Each of the three had the ability to pass as human, and the energy provided by food was enough to give them power equivalent to a human. When the Architect had downloaded them into the Matrix, he had allowed them access to the same energy source as all his programs. The only problem was the Architect could thereby track their existence, and, probably, delete them. The three didn't like the idea, so they developed their own separate solutions.
Mara was pretty sure Jay lived off emotional energy. She wasn't certain, but she felt like that was part of the appeal to religious extremism. Mara had opted to link her power to power taken from the lives of others, sort of like a vampire except that she used a variety of weapons to accomplish the task. The weapons were part of her. She thought about what she needed, and it formed in her hand. It was also nifty for clothes, shoes etc. She could form guns, but it was costly. All the energy for the bullets came out of her own hide, so she tended to pack a real gun. She was also able to absorb power from others during skin-to-skin contact, but the death was, unfortunately, the biggest part of a human or program's power reserve. She hadn't killed in, God, forever.
Mara had sworn off killing, but every once in a while it was a public service to the community. When Mara touched someone, she was able to skim the surface of their mind. She could do more, of course, but casual touch produced casual information. The person she killed was a serial killer. Mara brushed the woman's arm by accident in the grocery store checkout line and saw a child locked in a basement. She saw a series of children that had been killed in basements. She read the woman's intention to return home, kill the child and roast it like some fairytale witch.
Mara followed her, killed her, and then called the cops anonymously with the location of the child. The woman was, in a word, yummy. Mara hadn't killed since and basically got enough energy to be a bit more than human from lots of rich food and lots of wild sex. It was a good life, but all her more aggressive functions, and most of her defensive ones as well, had gradually become dormant. She had gotten lax, and nearly had to pay for it.
She was so hungry.