Title: Agents: The Extended Edition
Author: Stormhawk
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Matrix universe and associated characters: Wachowski brothers. ATS universe: co-owned by me and Mordax. Stef: Me Agent Recruitment, shifting, requiring: Me
Word Count: 18670
Summary:
Notes: In the tradition of my hobbit-like god (Peter Jackson) and his LOTR extended editions I am rewriting most of season one ATS to deal with errors, inconsistencies and plot holes. In addition there will be more dialogue and in some cases whole new scenes!
And I have split it into chapters.
Please read and Review. ________________________________________________________________________
Twenty years ago.
It was a beautiful and warm March morning when Emma Mimosa and his sister Pam were having morning tea in Emma's living room. Just across from them, near the door to the kitchen was Emma's two-year-old daughter Stephanie who was running around her crib with her new doll.
She stopped running and held it over the side of the crib to show her mother again. Emma loved her daughter dearly but she was growing tired of having to tell her every ten minutes how pretty her doll was just to keep her happy.
Pam saw her sister's tiredness so she took a turn, "it's a lovely doll Stephanie," he aunt said with a broad smile.
Emma smiled wistfully and turned back to her half-finished cup of coffee when the door was knocked in with one mighty kick. They both stood as a man ran in, "who are you?" she demanded of him.
The man, who was dressed in all black, was one of the rebels. At the moment he had two problems: one was that he was a yellow-bellied coward and the other was that an agent was chasing him. And all the rebels knew what happened if an agent caught you. "Get out of my house!" Emma screamed at him as her right hand flew toward the phone that hung on the wall near the table.
"There's no need to call the police," a controlled and calm voice said as a man in a suit stepped over the fallen door and into the house. Agent Smith drew his Desert Eagle and aimed it at the coward of a rebel.
In a quick movement that surprised everyone else, the rebel plucked Stephanie and her new doll from the crib and held her in front of him like a human shield. He would rather her take the bullet for him if it meant he'd have a chance of survival.
"Get away from me agent! Unless you want to shoot one of your precious batteries." Unperturbed Smith merely adjusted the angle on his gun a little and fired. Emma screamed, thinking her daughter had been shot. Smith turned and looked at them, erasing their memories of the last few minutes and tweaking their code so that they would be unconscious until the clean up crew had done it's job. Both Emma and Pam slumped back down onto their chairs.
Smith almost shook his head, after so many years of doing this he felt as though he could complete the task on autopilot. The coward lay dead on the floor, the bullet had killed him instantly. Stephanie was crying because she was scared and unsure as to what was going on and the shot had been very loud. Or perhaps it was because her new doll was broken, the bullet had passed through it to kill the man.
Smith holstered his gun and looked down at the dead rebel, "you brought this on yourself," he said coldly to the corpse.
Being so young and naive she didn't understand the implications of a dead person. Seeing that the thing that had made all the noise was gone she looked up at him in distaste, "you broke my doll," she said plainly then made a face at him.
Smith had suppress a smile, his job would be a lot easier if the rebels were this entertaining. He knelt on one knee and pried her from the dead man's stiff arms. He rose and then looked down at the damaged beyond repair doll.
He shifted Stephanie in his arms so she was supported on his left arm. With his right he down toward the doll, she watched in amazement as the doll's head ran back together and flew up to him.
Even as young as she was Stephanie knew she had just seen something very special. Satisfied the doll was as good as new he handed it back to her. He pressed his earpiece and called for a cleanup crew for the body.
The mental proof had been erased from the adults but there was no need to erase the child's memories.
Humans never remembered anything from their infancy.
The child was covered in blood that had splattered onto her from the dead rebel. He deposited the happy again child back in her crib and required a wet washcloth. He started to wipe the blood off her.
As he cleaned the already drying blood from her she repeatedly tried to pull his sunglasses off. "You're not as viral as the rest of your species yet," as he looked at the cute baby, "shame you'll probably become a rebel when you grow up and I'll have to kill you."
Agent Brown arrived with the clean up crew. As he walked in Smith wiped the smiled from his face and tried to look as though he hadn't been enjoying the child's company but Brown had seen a remnant of it. He tried to dismiss it, Smith was his superior but he detested humans in all their forms and so human-like behavior no matter how slight was a sign of weakness and imperfection.
Later that night.
"Mum? What happened to the angel?" Stephanie asked her mother as she was tucking her in after finishing the traditional bedtime story that unless one of them were very sick was never skipped. Emma needed sleep, for some reason she was very tired and had a slight headache.
"What angel Stephanie?" The last thing she needed at the moment was to play twenty questions with a two-year-old.
"The angel that fixed my doll," Stef said it like it was supposed to be common knowledge. Emma looked at her daughter in confusion; the grizzly Mr. Johnson who worked at the doll hospital was anyone's last idea of what an angel would look like.
"There was no angel," Emma said as she handed the doll to her, "Your doll is fine."
"Only cause he fixed it. Didn't you see him or the other man?"
"What other man?" Emma's head flared in pain, she just wished Stef would go to sleep.
"Mean. He made the angel break my doll."
"I thought the angel fixed your doll."
"He did, after he broke it."
"Well Stephanie what did this angel look like?" Emma asked, expecting to hear about white robes and halos.
"Suit like Uncle Fred. And sunglasses and a gun."
Stef's 'uncle' Fred was Pam's current boyfriend. Fred was a lawyer. "An angel in a business suit that carries a gun?" Emma inquired wondering if two was too young to start therapy.
"Yes mum. It make a big boom."
"Stef. Go to sleep."
Twenty years later. The present.
"What the hell is so hard about spelling my name the right way?" Stef Mimosa mumbled to herself as she flipped through her mail on the way back to her apartment. She had shortened her name to Stef, thinking Stephanie was a little old fashioned. And it was always spelt with an 'f' and never a 'ph'. Mostly people got it right, it was just Mr. Jenkins who insisted on spelling her name with a 'ph', the man was in his sixties so she could forgive him on that basis.
Locking her door she pinned the bills on her notice board in the kitchen, grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and went straight back into her room.
She'd been living there since she moved out of home four, almost five years now. She'd moved out when she was seventeen, with no complaints from her aunt. Having no contact since she wondered if the woman who had raised her for nine years even remembered she was alive.
Then again, she had half raised herself, Pam had been busy with many a party, social occasion and gentlemen caller. Living the high life that was demanded of their status. At least according to Pam they were a high- standing family. What was left of it anyway, the Henderson's money had almost run out. (Her aunt and her mother were born Henderson's; she was a Mimosa because of her father.)
Pam had taken her in because her mother had died of cancer when she was eight.
It had been old money, made in the early days of the family. There was still enough, that she was glad of. Namely her inheritance. Her grandparents had arranged it before they died, and put into a trust fund. It had been just over ten thousand dollars.
That may sound like a lot of money but with bills and rent to consider it really wasn't much. There was little over two thousand left. Mostly she used it to pay the rent, her work paid for everything else.
Not that she did an actual job that involved being employed by a business or company. Her job involved a lot of sitting behind her computer. That she loved, she loved being able to immerse herself into the computer and the world of the net. There was nothing wrong with being connected about half the day and doing offline work the rest of time, except what was required to sleep, eat, shop or other necessities.
Stef wasn't a hacker, she was a webhunter. Someone who would scourer the internet (and private databases) for information or facts that a client needed. It could be a simple order like students too busy or too unfamiliar with the net to look for information for assignments. Other clients used her like a private detective, having her sift through virtual paper trails to look for someone.
It paid well enough, she always had enough, always had a roof over her head and the lights on. And it was the only thing she felt she was good at. There was nothing better than the feeling of being plugged in.
Her net connected and her Yahoo mail account opened up. 'Welcome Unseen Spyder' it said, she felt comfortable by either of her two names. Not that many others besides those hooked up ever used them. The most human contact she had had in months, or that matter years, was when she went shopping and made idle chitchat with the clerks.
Humanity sucked.
An odd thought for a human but a true enough one.
There were several webhunting jobs lined up. A couple of author alerts for stories on Fanfiction.net, junk mail and some quick notes (and a couple of viruses) from some hackers she knew.
Viruses between hackers (or hunters) were like jokes for the rest of the net community, something you sent when you didn't want that person to feel alone in the world, but not something that required a reply.
"Shit," she cried as a pain struck her head. Holding her head, she hoped the pain would pass quickly. They were really irritating her, the headaches.
They had started a few weeks ago and hadn't given up. They would come and go, and no painkillers she took helped.
Unable to focus on the screen in front of her, she crashed the computer and fell over onto her bed, which was easy because it was right next to it. With the heavy curtains drawn, and the door closed, it was dark like night.
Closing her eyes, she fell asleep on the cool sheets.
A couple of hours later she felt a lot better. Rising, she felt hungry. As she walked out to the kitchen her eyes passed on the calendar. Oh, so that's what day it was. She had thought today was something special, just couldn't remember what.
Opening the fridge she pulled out a small white box. The bakery in this neighborhood made nice cakes. And since it wasn't right to make your own birthday cake she had walked down and bought one for herself.
Writing hadn't cost anything extra so it had '22' written in blue icing on chocolate frosting. Chocolate on chocolate, her favorite.
She slipped the cake from the box onto a dinner plate, took a knife and carried it over to the dining room table. Birthdays weren't any harder than any other day of the year, and being alone had never bothered her.
Cutting a slice, she almost considered singing 'happy birthday' to herself, but there wasn't much point in that. No one would hear her. She put the cake back down on the plate, stood and looked around the room.
"Do I even exist?" she asked the world at large. "Well, answer me."
No one answered.
"I need an answer," she said as if admitting something that would make her weak.
Sitting back down, Stef chided herself. She knew she existed, and that would have to be enough.
Maybe it was time to do something else, maybe go to college. Spend more time outside her apartment.
Or maybe she could stay here and die.
She loved her life, no one bothered her, no one controlled her. She loved her life on the Internet. She didn't need anyone else.
That was perhaps the source of the problem; it was always 'no one'.
No one would care if she died, if her headaches were something serious. If was a tumor or something and she died no one would care. No one would notice. It wasn't so bad, it wasn't like she'd be missed or miss anyone.
She finished her slice of cake, stashed the rest back into the fridge and went back to her computer.
*****
"Morpheus, good to see you," the Oracle said as the bald rebel walked into the kitchen.
"You told me you needed to talk to me."
"Yes, I did," she said as she pushed the cookie barrel over to him. He declined.
"What about?"
"There's someone you need to find."
"Who? We have potentials looking all the time."
"No, this one is different. She's not looking for you, specifically, the truth maybe, but you'll never find her."
"We can find anyone, is this potential part of the prophecy?"
"No Morpheus, not everyone is part of the prophecy."
"Then why?"
"Do you trust me enough to look?"
"Of course we do, you've helped us so much."
"The name is Unseen Spyder, and I want you to send her this message," she said handing him a slip of paper.
"I'll do my best," he said bowing his head and leaving.
*****
Stef was in a better mood the next day, the amount of sugar she had ingested at one in the morning may have had something to do with that. There was none of the self-doubt there had been the night before, and none of the angst.
She was herself again.
Microwaving a bowl of popcorn, she got dressed into a pair of loose jeans and a long tee shirt and flopped on the couch to watch a movie.
After it finished, she dialed up and got most of the webhunting orders finished for the day. Sending off messages to the clients and her bank details she just sat back and waited for the money to be transferred to her bank account. Payment before information that was her motto.
As was the motto of all true webhunters, of which there really wasn't that many. There were a couple of others she knew in various parts of the country, and a couple of international ones. The only other one she knew of in the city was some guy named G'Mork, or GMork_the_hunter, as his email stated.
He was good, not as good as her but good enough for some of her clients to transfer to him, because he had cheaper rates. He probably didn't pay the bills with what he did. He covered his tracks well, and she couldn't find anything out about his offline life.
For all she knew, G'Mork could be an eight-five year old woman living in a cardboard box. Not that that was likely but the idea made her smile.
Seeing no money was coming in straight away, she got up to make dinner. Not that she was a gourmet chef but she could cook what she liked to eat.
Tonight, all she felt like was a peanut butter sandwich.
She turned on the kitchen CD player, and took her sandwich out to the tiny balcony. But as she did her eyes caught onto Alexandria who was in the lounge room on a bookshelf as always.
Alexandria stared at her from her one eye, her one lifeless eye. The other side of her skull had been broken long ago.
Alexandria was a doll.
"Don't give me that look Alexandria," Stef said to the doll. When she had first gotten the doll she'd been unable to pronounce the name correctly so it had been 'lexandwa', she had been Stef's favorite doll until it had been broken.
The day Jack, her father, had stomped out of her life he had stood on the doll's head and never even looked back. Jerk.
And the angel hadn't come back to fix it.
"Oh shut up about that Stef," she said to herself. She couldn't believe that still believed she had seen an angel twenty years ago. How the hell was anyone supposed to remember things coherently from that long ago? They didn't. And she was stupid for believing in a thing like an angel. Angels didn't exist, god didn't exist, there was nothing beyond the world that everyone saw.
Was there?
But, she realized as she started to eat her sandwich while overlooking the city. It was still nice on some level to believe that something special like that had happened.
It would be so nice to know that there was someone out there that was looking after her.
She slowly ate the rest of her sandwich as she watched the little lights of the city go out. Not that you got a great view from a third-floor apartment, but those who had lived there their whole lives knew when 'the city that never sleeps' was going to bed.
That was her cue to go back to her computer.
Hopping back onto the net, she jumped over to her site, 'The Spyder's Lair', which had no point, just links to stuff she liked and details on her skills as a webhunter. Though, when she jumped into the guest book she found a new message.
Whoever had placed it was obviously playing a joke; the name read 'Trinity'.
Everyone knew that Trinity was a world-class hacker, what the hell would someone like her.or was it him.no one knew for they were good at covering their tracks, want with a webhunter like her?
Stef clicked it and opened up the message. She was disappointed, it was only a riddle.
"Is this the truth or.or wills c real. Find it to find the truth." She read out loud. She clicked to delete it but something stopped her. Trinity, if this message was really from Trinity, had ties to this mysterious underground hacker movement; they apparently left clues and only those who were smart enough found the truth.
The Truth.
Something about those words resonated in her. The Matrix. The Truth. Maybe they had answers.
But she had to find the answer to the riddle first.
She tried running it through some online translators, but nothing came out that made sense. She knew it was the last part of the message that was the important part. Reading into it, it could mean something to the nature of you had to have a will to see what was real and what wasn't.
"Damn you," she cursed at the computer. She was on the verge of giving it up so she jumped over to a forum she haunted. The last thread that had been replied to was 'Sorry I'm Late' she clicked over to read it. One of the administrators did a rambling apology about something or other and ended his post with a screen cap of the Disney 'Alice in Wonderland.'
Realization dawned over her as she realized what the message meant. Somehow it came to her within an instant, the translation was Lewis Carroll.
Why that was she had no idea, but it was the answer to the riddle.
She jumped back over to her lair and send off a reply to the mysterious person.
About an hour later, she dropped off to sleep.
The next morning she woke to someone incessantly knocking at her door.
Dragging herself out she undid the locks and looked blearily at.a FedEx deliveryman.
"Can I help you?"
He smiled a nice false smile, something that made her want to punch him.
"Stef Mimosa?"
"Yes."
"Package for you," he handed her a clipboard. "Sign here." She grumbled something unintelligible and signed her name on the dotted line. He smiled again and handed her a package.
She slammed the door behind him and dumped the package on the table. She tipped some coffee granules into a cup, "must have caffeine," she muttered as she turned the kettle on.
The package rung.
She looked back at it, "no, that didn't happen," she said shaking her head.
It rang again. Tearing it open she pulled out a cell phone. As a side note it was an expensive cell phone. She answered it.
"Hello?"
"Unseen Spyder?" a man's voice asked on the other end.
"Who is this?"
"Unseen, this is the reply to you answer to the riddle."
"You can call me Stef," she said quietly, "is this Trinity?"
The man laughed, and following the Wonderland theme she thought of the creepy cat. "No, my name is Morpheus."
"I've heard of you," she said in wonder, Morpheus had even more underground fame than Trinity did.
"That's good to hear. I understand you are looking for answers."
For lack of a coherent sentence, she just answered "yes."
"I can give you those answers. Will you meet with me?"
"Just name the place."
"A friend of mine will meet you on the corner of River and Dale."
"When?"
"Nine o'clock tonight, can you make it?"
"Of course."
"Then I shall say goodbye." The call died in her ear, and she put the phone down on her table. She wasn't sure what to do, most hackers waited their entire online lives for a call like this, she had heard about 'contacts' like this. And she had been contacted by Morpheus and Trinity, whatever she had done to deserve this was she glad of.
Nine pm, which was about eleven hours.
Nothing would be the same after that.
Author: Stormhawk
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Matrix universe and associated characters: Wachowski brothers. ATS universe: co-owned by me and Mordax. Stef: Me Agent Recruitment, shifting, requiring: Me
Word Count: 18670
Summary:
Notes: In the tradition of my hobbit-like god (Peter Jackson) and his LOTR extended editions I am rewriting most of season one ATS to deal with errors, inconsistencies and plot holes. In addition there will be more dialogue and in some cases whole new scenes!
And I have split it into chapters.
Please read and Review. ________________________________________________________________________
Twenty years ago.
It was a beautiful and warm March morning when Emma Mimosa and his sister Pam were having morning tea in Emma's living room. Just across from them, near the door to the kitchen was Emma's two-year-old daughter Stephanie who was running around her crib with her new doll.
She stopped running and held it over the side of the crib to show her mother again. Emma loved her daughter dearly but she was growing tired of having to tell her every ten minutes how pretty her doll was just to keep her happy.
Pam saw her sister's tiredness so she took a turn, "it's a lovely doll Stephanie," he aunt said with a broad smile.
Emma smiled wistfully and turned back to her half-finished cup of coffee when the door was knocked in with one mighty kick. They both stood as a man ran in, "who are you?" she demanded of him.
The man, who was dressed in all black, was one of the rebels. At the moment he had two problems: one was that he was a yellow-bellied coward and the other was that an agent was chasing him. And all the rebels knew what happened if an agent caught you. "Get out of my house!" Emma screamed at him as her right hand flew toward the phone that hung on the wall near the table.
"There's no need to call the police," a controlled and calm voice said as a man in a suit stepped over the fallen door and into the house. Agent Smith drew his Desert Eagle and aimed it at the coward of a rebel.
In a quick movement that surprised everyone else, the rebel plucked Stephanie and her new doll from the crib and held her in front of him like a human shield. He would rather her take the bullet for him if it meant he'd have a chance of survival.
"Get away from me agent! Unless you want to shoot one of your precious batteries." Unperturbed Smith merely adjusted the angle on his gun a little and fired. Emma screamed, thinking her daughter had been shot. Smith turned and looked at them, erasing their memories of the last few minutes and tweaking their code so that they would be unconscious until the clean up crew had done it's job. Both Emma and Pam slumped back down onto their chairs.
Smith almost shook his head, after so many years of doing this he felt as though he could complete the task on autopilot. The coward lay dead on the floor, the bullet had killed him instantly. Stephanie was crying because she was scared and unsure as to what was going on and the shot had been very loud. Or perhaps it was because her new doll was broken, the bullet had passed through it to kill the man.
Smith holstered his gun and looked down at the dead rebel, "you brought this on yourself," he said coldly to the corpse.
Being so young and naive she didn't understand the implications of a dead person. Seeing that the thing that had made all the noise was gone she looked up at him in distaste, "you broke my doll," she said plainly then made a face at him.
Smith had suppress a smile, his job would be a lot easier if the rebels were this entertaining. He knelt on one knee and pried her from the dead man's stiff arms. He rose and then looked down at the damaged beyond repair doll.
He shifted Stephanie in his arms so she was supported on his left arm. With his right he down toward the doll, she watched in amazement as the doll's head ran back together and flew up to him.
Even as young as she was Stephanie knew she had just seen something very special. Satisfied the doll was as good as new he handed it back to her. He pressed his earpiece and called for a cleanup crew for the body.
The mental proof had been erased from the adults but there was no need to erase the child's memories.
Humans never remembered anything from their infancy.
The child was covered in blood that had splattered onto her from the dead rebel. He deposited the happy again child back in her crib and required a wet washcloth. He started to wipe the blood off her.
As he cleaned the already drying blood from her she repeatedly tried to pull his sunglasses off. "You're not as viral as the rest of your species yet," as he looked at the cute baby, "shame you'll probably become a rebel when you grow up and I'll have to kill you."
Agent Brown arrived with the clean up crew. As he walked in Smith wiped the smiled from his face and tried to look as though he hadn't been enjoying the child's company but Brown had seen a remnant of it. He tried to dismiss it, Smith was his superior but he detested humans in all their forms and so human-like behavior no matter how slight was a sign of weakness and imperfection.
Later that night.
"Mum? What happened to the angel?" Stephanie asked her mother as she was tucking her in after finishing the traditional bedtime story that unless one of them were very sick was never skipped. Emma needed sleep, for some reason she was very tired and had a slight headache.
"What angel Stephanie?" The last thing she needed at the moment was to play twenty questions with a two-year-old.
"The angel that fixed my doll," Stef said it like it was supposed to be common knowledge. Emma looked at her daughter in confusion; the grizzly Mr. Johnson who worked at the doll hospital was anyone's last idea of what an angel would look like.
"There was no angel," Emma said as she handed the doll to her, "Your doll is fine."
"Only cause he fixed it. Didn't you see him or the other man?"
"What other man?" Emma's head flared in pain, she just wished Stef would go to sleep.
"Mean. He made the angel break my doll."
"I thought the angel fixed your doll."
"He did, after he broke it."
"Well Stephanie what did this angel look like?" Emma asked, expecting to hear about white robes and halos.
"Suit like Uncle Fred. And sunglasses and a gun."
Stef's 'uncle' Fred was Pam's current boyfriend. Fred was a lawyer. "An angel in a business suit that carries a gun?" Emma inquired wondering if two was too young to start therapy.
"Yes mum. It make a big boom."
"Stef. Go to sleep."
Twenty years later. The present.
"What the hell is so hard about spelling my name the right way?" Stef Mimosa mumbled to herself as she flipped through her mail on the way back to her apartment. She had shortened her name to Stef, thinking Stephanie was a little old fashioned. And it was always spelt with an 'f' and never a 'ph'. Mostly people got it right, it was just Mr. Jenkins who insisted on spelling her name with a 'ph', the man was in his sixties so she could forgive him on that basis.
Locking her door she pinned the bills on her notice board in the kitchen, grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and went straight back into her room.
She'd been living there since she moved out of home four, almost five years now. She'd moved out when she was seventeen, with no complaints from her aunt. Having no contact since she wondered if the woman who had raised her for nine years even remembered she was alive.
Then again, she had half raised herself, Pam had been busy with many a party, social occasion and gentlemen caller. Living the high life that was demanded of their status. At least according to Pam they were a high- standing family. What was left of it anyway, the Henderson's money had almost run out. (Her aunt and her mother were born Henderson's; she was a Mimosa because of her father.)
Pam had taken her in because her mother had died of cancer when she was eight.
It had been old money, made in the early days of the family. There was still enough, that she was glad of. Namely her inheritance. Her grandparents had arranged it before they died, and put into a trust fund. It had been just over ten thousand dollars.
That may sound like a lot of money but with bills and rent to consider it really wasn't much. There was little over two thousand left. Mostly she used it to pay the rent, her work paid for everything else.
Not that she did an actual job that involved being employed by a business or company. Her job involved a lot of sitting behind her computer. That she loved, she loved being able to immerse herself into the computer and the world of the net. There was nothing wrong with being connected about half the day and doing offline work the rest of time, except what was required to sleep, eat, shop or other necessities.
Stef wasn't a hacker, she was a webhunter. Someone who would scourer the internet (and private databases) for information or facts that a client needed. It could be a simple order like students too busy or too unfamiliar with the net to look for information for assignments. Other clients used her like a private detective, having her sift through virtual paper trails to look for someone.
It paid well enough, she always had enough, always had a roof over her head and the lights on. And it was the only thing she felt she was good at. There was nothing better than the feeling of being plugged in.
Her net connected and her Yahoo mail account opened up. 'Welcome Unseen Spyder' it said, she felt comfortable by either of her two names. Not that many others besides those hooked up ever used them. The most human contact she had had in months, or that matter years, was when she went shopping and made idle chitchat with the clerks.
Humanity sucked.
An odd thought for a human but a true enough one.
There were several webhunting jobs lined up. A couple of author alerts for stories on Fanfiction.net, junk mail and some quick notes (and a couple of viruses) from some hackers she knew.
Viruses between hackers (or hunters) were like jokes for the rest of the net community, something you sent when you didn't want that person to feel alone in the world, but not something that required a reply.
"Shit," she cried as a pain struck her head. Holding her head, she hoped the pain would pass quickly. They were really irritating her, the headaches.
They had started a few weeks ago and hadn't given up. They would come and go, and no painkillers she took helped.
Unable to focus on the screen in front of her, she crashed the computer and fell over onto her bed, which was easy because it was right next to it. With the heavy curtains drawn, and the door closed, it was dark like night.
Closing her eyes, she fell asleep on the cool sheets.
A couple of hours later she felt a lot better. Rising, she felt hungry. As she walked out to the kitchen her eyes passed on the calendar. Oh, so that's what day it was. She had thought today was something special, just couldn't remember what.
Opening the fridge she pulled out a small white box. The bakery in this neighborhood made nice cakes. And since it wasn't right to make your own birthday cake she had walked down and bought one for herself.
Writing hadn't cost anything extra so it had '22' written in blue icing on chocolate frosting. Chocolate on chocolate, her favorite.
She slipped the cake from the box onto a dinner plate, took a knife and carried it over to the dining room table. Birthdays weren't any harder than any other day of the year, and being alone had never bothered her.
Cutting a slice, she almost considered singing 'happy birthday' to herself, but there wasn't much point in that. No one would hear her. She put the cake back down on the plate, stood and looked around the room.
"Do I even exist?" she asked the world at large. "Well, answer me."
No one answered.
"I need an answer," she said as if admitting something that would make her weak.
Sitting back down, Stef chided herself. She knew she existed, and that would have to be enough.
Maybe it was time to do something else, maybe go to college. Spend more time outside her apartment.
Or maybe she could stay here and die.
She loved her life, no one bothered her, no one controlled her. She loved her life on the Internet. She didn't need anyone else.
That was perhaps the source of the problem; it was always 'no one'.
No one would care if she died, if her headaches were something serious. If was a tumor or something and she died no one would care. No one would notice. It wasn't so bad, it wasn't like she'd be missed or miss anyone.
She finished her slice of cake, stashed the rest back into the fridge and went back to her computer.
*****
"Morpheus, good to see you," the Oracle said as the bald rebel walked into the kitchen.
"You told me you needed to talk to me."
"Yes, I did," she said as she pushed the cookie barrel over to him. He declined.
"What about?"
"There's someone you need to find."
"Who? We have potentials looking all the time."
"No, this one is different. She's not looking for you, specifically, the truth maybe, but you'll never find her."
"We can find anyone, is this potential part of the prophecy?"
"No Morpheus, not everyone is part of the prophecy."
"Then why?"
"Do you trust me enough to look?"
"Of course we do, you've helped us so much."
"The name is Unseen Spyder, and I want you to send her this message," she said handing him a slip of paper.
"I'll do my best," he said bowing his head and leaving.
*****
Stef was in a better mood the next day, the amount of sugar she had ingested at one in the morning may have had something to do with that. There was none of the self-doubt there had been the night before, and none of the angst.
She was herself again.
Microwaving a bowl of popcorn, she got dressed into a pair of loose jeans and a long tee shirt and flopped on the couch to watch a movie.
After it finished, she dialed up and got most of the webhunting orders finished for the day. Sending off messages to the clients and her bank details she just sat back and waited for the money to be transferred to her bank account. Payment before information that was her motto.
As was the motto of all true webhunters, of which there really wasn't that many. There were a couple of others she knew in various parts of the country, and a couple of international ones. The only other one she knew of in the city was some guy named G'Mork, or GMork_the_hunter, as his email stated.
He was good, not as good as her but good enough for some of her clients to transfer to him, because he had cheaper rates. He probably didn't pay the bills with what he did. He covered his tracks well, and she couldn't find anything out about his offline life.
For all she knew, G'Mork could be an eight-five year old woman living in a cardboard box. Not that that was likely but the idea made her smile.
Seeing no money was coming in straight away, she got up to make dinner. Not that she was a gourmet chef but she could cook what she liked to eat.
Tonight, all she felt like was a peanut butter sandwich.
She turned on the kitchen CD player, and took her sandwich out to the tiny balcony. But as she did her eyes caught onto Alexandria who was in the lounge room on a bookshelf as always.
Alexandria stared at her from her one eye, her one lifeless eye. The other side of her skull had been broken long ago.
Alexandria was a doll.
"Don't give me that look Alexandria," Stef said to the doll. When she had first gotten the doll she'd been unable to pronounce the name correctly so it had been 'lexandwa', she had been Stef's favorite doll until it had been broken.
The day Jack, her father, had stomped out of her life he had stood on the doll's head and never even looked back. Jerk.
And the angel hadn't come back to fix it.
"Oh shut up about that Stef," she said to herself. She couldn't believe that still believed she had seen an angel twenty years ago. How the hell was anyone supposed to remember things coherently from that long ago? They didn't. And she was stupid for believing in a thing like an angel. Angels didn't exist, god didn't exist, there was nothing beyond the world that everyone saw.
Was there?
But, she realized as she started to eat her sandwich while overlooking the city. It was still nice on some level to believe that something special like that had happened.
It would be so nice to know that there was someone out there that was looking after her.
She slowly ate the rest of her sandwich as she watched the little lights of the city go out. Not that you got a great view from a third-floor apartment, but those who had lived there their whole lives knew when 'the city that never sleeps' was going to bed.
That was her cue to go back to her computer.
Hopping back onto the net, she jumped over to her site, 'The Spyder's Lair', which had no point, just links to stuff she liked and details on her skills as a webhunter. Though, when she jumped into the guest book she found a new message.
Whoever had placed it was obviously playing a joke; the name read 'Trinity'.
Everyone knew that Trinity was a world-class hacker, what the hell would someone like her.or was it him.no one knew for they were good at covering their tracks, want with a webhunter like her?
Stef clicked it and opened up the message. She was disappointed, it was only a riddle.
"Is this the truth or.or wills c real. Find it to find the truth." She read out loud. She clicked to delete it but something stopped her. Trinity, if this message was really from Trinity, had ties to this mysterious underground hacker movement; they apparently left clues and only those who were smart enough found the truth.
The Truth.
Something about those words resonated in her. The Matrix. The Truth. Maybe they had answers.
But she had to find the answer to the riddle first.
She tried running it through some online translators, but nothing came out that made sense. She knew it was the last part of the message that was the important part. Reading into it, it could mean something to the nature of you had to have a will to see what was real and what wasn't.
"Damn you," she cursed at the computer. She was on the verge of giving it up so she jumped over to a forum she haunted. The last thread that had been replied to was 'Sorry I'm Late' she clicked over to read it. One of the administrators did a rambling apology about something or other and ended his post with a screen cap of the Disney 'Alice in Wonderland.'
Realization dawned over her as she realized what the message meant. Somehow it came to her within an instant, the translation was Lewis Carroll.
Why that was she had no idea, but it was the answer to the riddle.
She jumped back over to her lair and send off a reply to the mysterious person.
About an hour later, she dropped off to sleep.
The next morning she woke to someone incessantly knocking at her door.
Dragging herself out she undid the locks and looked blearily at.a FedEx deliveryman.
"Can I help you?"
He smiled a nice false smile, something that made her want to punch him.
"Stef Mimosa?"
"Yes."
"Package for you," he handed her a clipboard. "Sign here." She grumbled something unintelligible and signed her name on the dotted line. He smiled again and handed her a package.
She slammed the door behind him and dumped the package on the table. She tipped some coffee granules into a cup, "must have caffeine," she muttered as she turned the kettle on.
The package rung.
She looked back at it, "no, that didn't happen," she said shaking her head.
It rang again. Tearing it open she pulled out a cell phone. As a side note it was an expensive cell phone. She answered it.
"Hello?"
"Unseen Spyder?" a man's voice asked on the other end.
"Who is this?"
"Unseen, this is the reply to you answer to the riddle."
"You can call me Stef," she said quietly, "is this Trinity?"
The man laughed, and following the Wonderland theme she thought of the creepy cat. "No, my name is Morpheus."
"I've heard of you," she said in wonder, Morpheus had even more underground fame than Trinity did.
"That's good to hear. I understand you are looking for answers."
For lack of a coherent sentence, she just answered "yes."
"I can give you those answers. Will you meet with me?"
"Just name the place."
"A friend of mine will meet you on the corner of River and Dale."
"When?"
"Nine o'clock tonight, can you make it?"
"Of course."
"Then I shall say goodbye." The call died in her ear, and she put the phone down on her table. She wasn't sure what to do, most hackers waited their entire online lives for a call like this, she had heard about 'contacts' like this. And she had been contacted by Morpheus and Trinity, whatever she had done to deserve this was she glad of.
Nine pm, which was about eleven hours.
Nothing would be the same after that.
