I drag myself home, and feel sluggish.  My parents stop me at the door however. Time for a weekly check-in with the old units. 

"Emerson, we don't like it when you just leave early, come home and disappear into your room." My mother says, sounding unhappy. My father sits in his usual chair, staring at me.

"We want to talk to you…see how school is going…you know…" she says, prompting me. My dad still just stares.

"School's great," I say falsely. "can I got to my room now?"

Mom doesn't look pleased. Dad frowns, but still says nothing.

"No you can't." her sad tone turning angry.  "I don't like this totally apathetic attitude you always pull with us!  I'm trying to get to know you. Talk to my own son, yet you refuse to let me in."

"Maybe I don't want you in!" I say, my temper rising with hers.

 "Why not?" My mother cries. "Why won't you talk to me?"

"You don't understand me! Nobody does! The only people who do - one moved out to a farm in fucking middle America, and the other you refuse to accept as my girlfriend cause her parents are 'unsavory'!  Maybe that's why Mom! Did that ever occur to you?" My dad rises from his chair, but I'm already leaving.

I storm upstairs and slam the door shut, and latch it.   I turn on my stereo and I vent by taking a few swings at the wall.  My knuckle splits and it starts bleeding.  I wrap it in a dirty bandana and flop down in front of the computer.  Damn that hurt. I'm usually not the violent type…but sometimes my parents just don't understand me at all. Nor do they bother to even try.  I feel kind of bad about cursing in front of my mom. I know she hates that… I try to think of something else.

So I think about hacking.  I do my usual route, seeing if there's any updates on my favorite websites, trying at some sites I still haven't quite cracked…then I do a server-wide search on one of the hacker source pages and something new comes up I've never seen.  It's called – "The Matrix"…and its page owner is under the alias "Trinity".  There are dozens of trinity posers and wannabes out there…but I feel different about this one. Like it's there on that page for me.  I push my mouse over the link and click it.  Immediately my neck starts to tingle like mad.  I shiver slightly, and wait for the page to boot up.   A blank page is showing, but the progress bar is almost done.  I mutter, wanting a better look at this, but I can't see anything. Just as the progress meter reaches one hundred percent my computer blacks out.  The screen is totally blank.  "what the hell?" I murmur, turning my monitor on and off to no effect.  I try to re-boot…no dice.  It's still just sitting there, humming, black screen.

Suddenly with a flash of green letters begin to appear.

"Hello Em."

I nearly fall out of my chair.  It has to be.

"Trinity?" I type so quickly I feel the skin on my knuckle split further.

"Yes."  The three letters appear slowly and at the same time a jolt of excitement surges through me.

I'm about to type something else, but Trinity begins again.

"The world around you is gray. Isn't it, Em? Dull and colorless."

The words hit me like a sledgehammer. How?

"You can't understand it. Everyone else goes about their lives like everything is beautiful. But to you it's just a palette of monochrome.  You see the colors, but they aren't alive."

"How do you know me so well?" I say. In shock, as Trinity voices the things that have always stirred around inside my head but never taken shape as spoken word.

"I was you once." Trinity says.

I pause.

"How can I meet you?" I type slowly.

"The bells will send you to me."

And then the screen flashes, and my computer makes a slight sputtering sound, and then the menu page of my monitor boots up innocently, like nothing ever happened.