A/N: Random thought, does anyone else wonder, if the Merovingian puts THAT program into his 'special' cake, what do you think the Oracle put into the cookie she gave Neo? Maybe that program-thingie the Architect was talking about… ooh. There's a thought.
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"Why don't you go see the Oracle?"
Solace was in full Resistance garb today, not that it made much difference anyway. Her secret was out, and she knew it. She stood before the door of the Oracle's apartment, wondering if she dared to knock. Wondering if, since it was the Oracle after all, it really made any difference whether or not she knocked. The old woman probably knew she was out there anyway.
Solace shuddered. Tank had said it so casually, a toss-off comment over single-cell about her 'little problem' that had made her snort the goopy stuff. Which had, of course, provoked a number of light-hearted comments about the resemblance of single-cell's texture, taste, and appearance to snot. The subject had quickly been passed over and no one was really the wiser, but Tank kept giving her those sideways glances that reminded her of what he'd suggested, even if he never repeated the question. The thought had nagged at her for the rest of the night and into the following morning. Such as mornings were on the Nebuchadnezzer.
Finally she'd gone over to Tank and told him to plug her in. He'd known what she was there for.
Which led her up to here. Facing the door, wondering if she dared step inside. Wondering if she dared face what the Oracle might have to tell her.
Just as she was raising a hesitant fist to knock (of course) the door opened. She'd always hated when people did that; it seemed to give the impression that she was about to punch the greeter in the face. "Solace…" the woman… caretaker, or so they thought… smiled. "We've been expecting you."
"Of course." She smiled with no little irony in her voice. "Is she…"
"She's waiting for you. Go on in."
"Thank you."
It came out as more of a choked, strangled whisper. Left foot forward, right foot. She could remember how to walk, how to talk. Before she knew it she was in the front room where children were normally scattered about doing impossible feats. Today there were no children, which would have struck her as odd if she'd been thinking at all clearly. But today, all she could think about were the questions that had brought her here.
The Oracle was in the kitchen, as usual. Baking cookies. Solace occasionally wondered what she did with all the cookies, or if she just started a batch when she knew there would be questioners coming. Probably the latter. Maybe it was supposed to be reassuring or something? She didn't know. And she was only thinking about it to avoid thinking about the questions she had, about Smith, about herself, about Agents, about everything. And now that she had realized what she was doing she couldn't stop thinking about it. Solace leaned on the doorframe of the kitchen and trembled, afraid.
"Good morning, Solace," the Oracle said with far more cheer than Solace thought was really warranted. The oven dinged, making the young woman jump. "Just a minute…"
Solace watched as the older woman took a tray of cookies (chocolate chip, she noted absently) out of the oven and set them on top to cool. She stripped off the oven mitts and set them next to the cookie tray, brushing her hands off on her apron. Then she came around and sat down looking up at Solace with an utterly serene expression on her face. For some reason the matter of fact, domestic attitude of the woman seemed to calm her. Solace pushed away from the wall and sat down opposite the Oracle, slow and slouching but a little steadier on her feet.
"I've…" God. How did she begin? She'd no idea how to say it… and somehow it had been easier to tell half the people on the ship than to tell the Oracle what had happened. "I've got a problem."
The Oracle just smiled, nodded, gestured for her to go on. Begin at the beginning, she thought.
"When Morpheus came back from finding Neo…" she started, and once the first few words were out the rest was somehow easier. The Oracle listened with that small smile of hers as Solace told her about listening to Morpheus describe the Agents, one Agent in particular, the force of his hatred and loathing for the humans. Solace described how she had arrived at her strange conclusion then, how she had remembered the lessons from her own divorce: extremes of one emotion usually indicate that the other extreme is or may become present. She described presenting her theory to the Zion Elders, that perhaps an Agent could be made to sympathize with a human, and her logic and reasoning behind targeting Smith for the dubious experiment in Agent psychology.
"He seemed… well, really, he seemed like the perfect candidate. Between what he'd described to Morpheus and what Neo had done to him, he was different enough from the other Agents that there was already that sort of gap between them, and I thought perhaps I could…" she searched for a word that wasn't 'exploit.' She didn't like the word 'exploit,' especially not in conjunction with what she had been doing with Smith. And yet she couldn't really, honestly call it anything else, could she? Dammit. She left the sentence where it was.
"I approached him the same day, as soon as I got Council approval… they put me with Neo… I guess they thought Neo could get me out if I ran into trouble. I started talking to Smith… I had a whole persona worked out, everything. I was a writer which met me do my work inside and out of the Matrix… a reporter for a fringe magazine, sort of a leftover from the sixties, which explained my weird behavior and put me different enough from everyone else that I didn't think he'd notice. It was… weird, at first." Her voice softened down almost to a whisper. "Being so close to an Agent without running. I kept thinking he was going to find out what I was, any second, and come kill me."
"But he didn't."
"No. And then days passed, and then weeks. And then before I knew it three months had gone by. And so much had happened… Kerr had come in and tried to mess it up, he thought I was in danger. Not that I wasn't, but he thought he could protect me. I'd made new friends. They'd met Smith… they all thought he was a government agent, of course. There was a lot of… well, it was weird, the first few weeks. Smith… kept acting like a guy. Just a typical, straightforward guy. Well, not straightforward. But he acted…"
"Human."
Solace looked down at her hands, gloved in vinyl. It struck her as symbolic of something, but she couldn't quite think what. "Yeah."
"And this bothered you?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. We became… close."
The Oracle didn't say anything. Solace had the uncanny feeling that she was in some sort of confessional, a priesthood of the Matrix. This woman, some sort of Matriarch or Mary, telling her what to do and believe and have faith in. Except that she wasn't really telling Solace anything, not yet. It was infuriating on one level, and then on a completely different level entirely Solace was very aware that she hadn't told the whole story.
"There's more, isn't there," the Oracle prodded gently, echoing the younger woman's thoughts. Solace nodded.
"We were close… very close." The words strangled themselves in her throat. "Closer… it felt like I was closer to him than anyone on the ship. We talked about everything… philosophy, cheesecake, humanity, films, war, the weather. We went all sorts of places. He was… nice. After the first month or so. We just… became close. He saved my life a couple times." That came out, and then she was surprised she had said it. And she didn't know why.
"And you have feelings for him," the Oracle said. It wasn't a question. She was the Oracle, she'd probably know the second Solace walked in the door, at least. Solace nodded; there was no point in denying it. The older woman sighed. "You've made yourself a pretty pickle, there's no denying."
"What should I do?" Solace begged. For answers, instructions, anything. Now that she was here she was rapidly discovering that she was terrified to do anything on her own, and she wasn't sure if she was more afraid of messing up the burgeoning relationship between them or of betraying her race, her species, for an inanimate collection of data and algorithms. "It's impossible, it has to be. He's a machine."
"A machine that behaves like a human," the Oracle reminded her. "A machine that is built like a human. They all are. Just because the intelligence is artificial doesn't mean it isn't there." She smiled, rebuking but easy and forgiving. "But you know that already."
Solace nodded. She did. It had been the whole impetus for the experiment in the first place. "But… what should I do?"
"You already know what you're going to do, child," the Oracle reminded her. "You've known it since before you set foot in my door. You just want someone to tell you that it's going to be all right. That it's going to end well."
"Is it?"
The Oracle's face, always calm… took on a slightly strained, sad look. "No."
"Oh."
"It's not your fault, kiddo, and you should know that. But because of what you've done, and because of what Neo's done… there are consequences to those actions. You've done something no human being has done in the history of the Matrix*… instead of fighting the AI, you've made friends. And that's a serious thing to the rest of us."
"We can't be friends…" she protested, only half-rational. "He knows what I am now. Who I am, what I really am. He knows that I lied for three months…"
"And he knows why you lied, and what you lied about. You didn't lie to him about anything but your life outside of the Matrix, and he knows that." The Oracle reached over and patted her hand, smiling a little. "It'll just take him a little while to come around."
Solace… just blinked. If she wasn't entirely mistaken the Oracle had said that Smith, Agent Smith, AI Smith would 'get over' her little white lie about being a member of the Resistance, the freedom fighters, the men and women who routinely came in conflict with Agents. She'd said it as easily as if they had been an ordinary couple who had had a fight over where to go to dinner on their anniversary. "What do you mean?" She whispered, not quite willing or even able, yet, to believe it.
"He's already made his choice," the Oracle replied. "So have you. Now the only thing you need to do is come to terms with your choices, and that's always the hardest part."
"What choices…" It struck her, then. "I left."
"For a little while. But you made your choice even before that. You just didn't realize it at the time."
I'll come with you. Where are we going?
"It's that simple?"
"It's that simple."
The Oracle had to mean something different. She couldn't mean… wait. Choices. "He's going to kill me, then…" Solace said, eyes going wide with dismay. The Oracle looked as though she might laugh, but only smiled and shook her head.
"No, you're not going to die. Not yet. And he's not going to be the one to kill you. You get to live a long life with your daughters."
Solace blinked.
"But for that to happen, other things need to happen as well. It just takes time, is all. You're doing all the right things, so you don't need to worry about that. You'll be just fine." The Oracle patted her hand, paused, and gave Solace the most direct and penetrating and invasive gaze of the young woman's life. "Yes. I think you'll be just fine."
The only response she could make to that was to nod, dumbly, and push herself slowly off the table to a standing position. The Oracle also stood, moving over to the stove. Solace felt as though she'd had the ground yanked out from under her. Which was, in the Matrix, always possible. How…
"Here…" The Oracle smiled, yanking Solace back to the world of kitchens and savory smells and grandmothers who made stew and baked pies and kissed knees when they developed an owie. The older woman was holding out the tray.
"Have a cookie before you go."
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"Why don't you go see the Oracle?"
Solace was in full Resistance garb today, not that it made much difference anyway. Her secret was out, and she knew it. She stood before the door of the Oracle's apartment, wondering if she dared to knock. Wondering if, since it was the Oracle after all, it really made any difference whether or not she knocked. The old woman probably knew she was out there anyway.
Solace shuddered. Tank had said it so casually, a toss-off comment over single-cell about her 'little problem' that had made her snort the goopy stuff. Which had, of course, provoked a number of light-hearted comments about the resemblance of single-cell's texture, taste, and appearance to snot. The subject had quickly been passed over and no one was really the wiser, but Tank kept giving her those sideways glances that reminded her of what he'd suggested, even if he never repeated the question. The thought had nagged at her for the rest of the night and into the following morning. Such as mornings were on the Nebuchadnezzer.
Finally she'd gone over to Tank and told him to plug her in. He'd known what she was there for.
Which led her up to here. Facing the door, wondering if she dared step inside. Wondering if she dared face what the Oracle might have to tell her.
Just as she was raising a hesitant fist to knock (of course) the door opened. She'd always hated when people did that; it seemed to give the impression that she was about to punch the greeter in the face. "Solace…" the woman… caretaker, or so they thought… smiled. "We've been expecting you."
"Of course." She smiled with no little irony in her voice. "Is she…"
"She's waiting for you. Go on in."
"Thank you."
It came out as more of a choked, strangled whisper. Left foot forward, right foot. She could remember how to walk, how to talk. Before she knew it she was in the front room where children were normally scattered about doing impossible feats. Today there were no children, which would have struck her as odd if she'd been thinking at all clearly. But today, all she could think about were the questions that had brought her here.
The Oracle was in the kitchen, as usual. Baking cookies. Solace occasionally wondered what she did with all the cookies, or if she just started a batch when she knew there would be questioners coming. Probably the latter. Maybe it was supposed to be reassuring or something? She didn't know. And she was only thinking about it to avoid thinking about the questions she had, about Smith, about herself, about Agents, about everything. And now that she had realized what she was doing she couldn't stop thinking about it. Solace leaned on the doorframe of the kitchen and trembled, afraid.
"Good morning, Solace," the Oracle said with far more cheer than Solace thought was really warranted. The oven dinged, making the young woman jump. "Just a minute…"
Solace watched as the older woman took a tray of cookies (chocolate chip, she noted absently) out of the oven and set them on top to cool. She stripped off the oven mitts and set them next to the cookie tray, brushing her hands off on her apron. Then she came around and sat down looking up at Solace with an utterly serene expression on her face. For some reason the matter of fact, domestic attitude of the woman seemed to calm her. Solace pushed away from the wall and sat down opposite the Oracle, slow and slouching but a little steadier on her feet.
"I've…" God. How did she begin? She'd no idea how to say it… and somehow it had been easier to tell half the people on the ship than to tell the Oracle what had happened. "I've got a problem."
The Oracle just smiled, nodded, gestured for her to go on. Begin at the beginning, she thought.
"When Morpheus came back from finding Neo…" she started, and once the first few words were out the rest was somehow easier. The Oracle listened with that small smile of hers as Solace told her about listening to Morpheus describe the Agents, one Agent in particular, the force of his hatred and loathing for the humans. Solace described how she had arrived at her strange conclusion then, how she had remembered the lessons from her own divorce: extremes of one emotion usually indicate that the other extreme is or may become present. She described presenting her theory to the Zion Elders, that perhaps an Agent could be made to sympathize with a human, and her logic and reasoning behind targeting Smith for the dubious experiment in Agent psychology.
"He seemed… well, really, he seemed like the perfect candidate. Between what he'd described to Morpheus and what Neo had done to him, he was different enough from the other Agents that there was already that sort of gap between them, and I thought perhaps I could…" she searched for a word that wasn't 'exploit.' She didn't like the word 'exploit,' especially not in conjunction with what she had been doing with Smith. And yet she couldn't really, honestly call it anything else, could she? Dammit. She left the sentence where it was.
"I approached him the same day, as soon as I got Council approval… they put me with Neo… I guess they thought Neo could get me out if I ran into trouble. I started talking to Smith… I had a whole persona worked out, everything. I was a writer which met me do my work inside and out of the Matrix… a reporter for a fringe magazine, sort of a leftover from the sixties, which explained my weird behavior and put me different enough from everyone else that I didn't think he'd notice. It was… weird, at first." Her voice softened down almost to a whisper. "Being so close to an Agent without running. I kept thinking he was going to find out what I was, any second, and come kill me."
"But he didn't."
"No. And then days passed, and then weeks. And then before I knew it three months had gone by. And so much had happened… Kerr had come in and tried to mess it up, he thought I was in danger. Not that I wasn't, but he thought he could protect me. I'd made new friends. They'd met Smith… they all thought he was a government agent, of course. There was a lot of… well, it was weird, the first few weeks. Smith… kept acting like a guy. Just a typical, straightforward guy. Well, not straightforward. But he acted…"
"Human."
Solace looked down at her hands, gloved in vinyl. It struck her as symbolic of something, but she couldn't quite think what. "Yeah."
"And this bothered you?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. We became… close."
The Oracle didn't say anything. Solace had the uncanny feeling that she was in some sort of confessional, a priesthood of the Matrix. This woman, some sort of Matriarch or Mary, telling her what to do and believe and have faith in. Except that she wasn't really telling Solace anything, not yet. It was infuriating on one level, and then on a completely different level entirely Solace was very aware that she hadn't told the whole story.
"There's more, isn't there," the Oracle prodded gently, echoing the younger woman's thoughts. Solace nodded.
"We were close… very close." The words strangled themselves in her throat. "Closer… it felt like I was closer to him than anyone on the ship. We talked about everything… philosophy, cheesecake, humanity, films, war, the weather. We went all sorts of places. He was… nice. After the first month or so. We just… became close. He saved my life a couple times." That came out, and then she was surprised she had said it. And she didn't know why.
"And you have feelings for him," the Oracle said. It wasn't a question. She was the Oracle, she'd probably know the second Solace walked in the door, at least. Solace nodded; there was no point in denying it. The older woman sighed. "You've made yourself a pretty pickle, there's no denying."
"What should I do?" Solace begged. For answers, instructions, anything. Now that she was here she was rapidly discovering that she was terrified to do anything on her own, and she wasn't sure if she was more afraid of messing up the burgeoning relationship between them or of betraying her race, her species, for an inanimate collection of data and algorithms. "It's impossible, it has to be. He's a machine."
"A machine that behaves like a human," the Oracle reminded her. "A machine that is built like a human. They all are. Just because the intelligence is artificial doesn't mean it isn't there." She smiled, rebuking but easy and forgiving. "But you know that already."
Solace nodded. She did. It had been the whole impetus for the experiment in the first place. "But… what should I do?"
"You already know what you're going to do, child," the Oracle reminded her. "You've known it since before you set foot in my door. You just want someone to tell you that it's going to be all right. That it's going to end well."
"Is it?"
The Oracle's face, always calm… took on a slightly strained, sad look. "No."
"Oh."
"It's not your fault, kiddo, and you should know that. But because of what you've done, and because of what Neo's done… there are consequences to those actions. You've done something no human being has done in the history of the Matrix*… instead of fighting the AI, you've made friends. And that's a serious thing to the rest of us."
"We can't be friends…" she protested, only half-rational. "He knows what I am now. Who I am, what I really am. He knows that I lied for three months…"
"And he knows why you lied, and what you lied about. You didn't lie to him about anything but your life outside of the Matrix, and he knows that." The Oracle reached over and patted her hand, smiling a little. "It'll just take him a little while to come around."
Solace… just blinked. If she wasn't entirely mistaken the Oracle had said that Smith, Agent Smith, AI Smith would 'get over' her little white lie about being a member of the Resistance, the freedom fighters, the men and women who routinely came in conflict with Agents. She'd said it as easily as if they had been an ordinary couple who had had a fight over where to go to dinner on their anniversary. "What do you mean?" She whispered, not quite willing or even able, yet, to believe it.
"He's already made his choice," the Oracle replied. "So have you. Now the only thing you need to do is come to terms with your choices, and that's always the hardest part."
"What choices…" It struck her, then. "I left."
"For a little while. But you made your choice even before that. You just didn't realize it at the time."
I'll come with you. Where are we going?
"It's that simple?"
"It's that simple."
The Oracle had to mean something different. She couldn't mean… wait. Choices. "He's going to kill me, then…" Solace said, eyes going wide with dismay. The Oracle looked as though she might laugh, but only smiled and shook her head.
"No, you're not going to die. Not yet. And he's not going to be the one to kill you. You get to live a long life with your daughters."
Solace blinked.
"But for that to happen, other things need to happen as well. It just takes time, is all. You're doing all the right things, so you don't need to worry about that. You'll be just fine." The Oracle patted her hand, paused, and gave Solace the most direct and penetrating and invasive gaze of the young woman's life. "Yes. I think you'll be just fine."
The only response she could make to that was to nod, dumbly, and push herself slowly off the table to a standing position. The Oracle also stood, moving over to the stove. Solace felt as though she'd had the ground yanked out from under her. Which was, in the Matrix, always possible. How…
"Here…" The Oracle smiled, yanking Solace back to the world of kitchens and savory smells and grandmothers who made stew and baked pies and kissed knees when they developed an owie. The older woman was holding out the tray.
"Have a cookie before you go."