"Something is entirely rotten in the state of Denmark."
Persephone rolled her eyes at her overly melodramatic husband who, true to form, was twirling a martini glass in his fingers as he made that dire pronouncement. Today was a slow day at La Verite, and it would likely be a slow night at either Club Hell or the Palace of the Moon, wherever they chose to spend their evening that night. Slow days invariably meant that the Merovingian would consider himself forced to make his own fun. While his idea of fun had been pleasant enough for her at first the novelty had died, and fast. He was like a child who moved from toy to toy looking for satisfaction and never containing his distaste when he failed to discover it. She honestly didn't understand why he hadn't given up by now.
"Something is always, as you say it, rotten in the state of Denmark," she replied. It was a belated reply, since she hadn't noticed till his expression became slightly sour that he wanted an answer. "What makes this time different from the last five?"
She fully expected him to make some sort of sarcastic yet (to him) witty remark. His silence took her by surprise. "I'm not ..." he started, then paused in mid sentence to spear his martini olive. "I haven't yet managed to pin it down. But there is something different, something fresh and new about this time that makes it more dangerous than all the others."
That word, that one word more than anything else he'd said got her attention. The Merovingian rarely called anything dangerous unless it referred to himself or one of his possessions, the Twins, for example. Who were even now perking up at the implication that there might be work for them ahead. They grew bored even more quickly than the Merovingian.
"Something that might pose a danger to us?" Practicality was usually first on her mind; in their marriage, someone had to be ruthlessly practical.
"I doubt it," he said, making a disdainful sniff. "They have not yet made the program nor birthed the human that can pose a threat to our domain. But there are changes in the air..." he glanced around the restaurant as though one of those changes might be sitting at a table at that very moment. "Many changes."
His eyes fixed on something, and Persephone followed his gaze. It looked almost like the rogue Agent, Smith, except that it was clearly a human to her unaugmented sight. She wasn't sure what that boded, well or ill. She hadn't felt easy in his presence since he'd brought that woman to dinner at the restaurant. Especially not when her philandering husband snuck off for a washroom rendezvous. The Agent had been furious with the Merovingian; Persephone would have called it jealousy if she dared. Her husband looked away again, unconcerned.
"You think that this Smith and his woman, that they are a part of it." Persephone had pegged her for an interesting creature straight off. She had the glow of a woman in love all around her, but she was keeping company with an AI.
"They are at the core of it," the Merovingian agreed. "The former Agent, for certain. He is not like the others of his kind, he is independent, thoughtful and emotional without any of the natural controls that the humans have over his emotions."
"You sound as though you envy them." Sometimes Persephone did, really. Sometimes she envied the humans their imperfect memories and the way time could cloud over their judgment again, rendering them free to re-discover enchantment. She, herself, was not made that way.
He didn't answer immediately. "There are some things I envy, yes," he said finally, surprising her again. "Their simple lives, the passion of their mortality. I wish that I could capture some of it. But it's not in our nature, alas. N'importe quoi."
It was a verbal shrug, so very Gallic, and Persephone rolled her eyes in the discreet head-turning motion he couldn't see. "You have the report on the human Resistance agent, Kerr?" she asked when she knew she could speak with a steady voice again.
"I've taken the report," the Merovingian nodded. "An... interesting fellow. Although his record is spotty at best he has lately been seen in the company of Chimera's men, odd for someone so young and impetuous."
"Not that young," she pointed out, "by their reckoning."
"Chimera has been seen forty years now, and rumors have all but confirmed that he was one of the first to be freed. And neither he nor Smith's young human woman are the only anomalies to be connected with the rebel Kerr. Two other former shipmates have turned up leading guerilla forces of their own, two women who call themselves Static and Sidhe." He put just the slightest lisp on the final name, enough to let Persephone know the real meaning.
Persephone rolled her eyes again, this time where he could see. "They carry such ridiculous names." Although Solace didn't seem so farfetched, upon meeting her. "Why is this of interest?"
"Perhaps Solace is not quite as innocent as she has managed to convince the Agent."
She set down the drink she had been about to taste very slowly, and considered the implications. In her left-hand corner the Twins were grinning identical, cadaverous smirks. It would explain a great deal about the woman if she were Resistance, although it brought up an entirely new set of troubling questions as well. Not the least of which... "If she is Resistance, then what is she trying to accomplish by going about with the former Agent, Smith?"
"Some nefarious and ultimately futile plan of the Resistance, do you think?" The Merovingian seemed to be taking it all as a great joke. Which, to be truthful, perhaps it was. "Or maybe she is rebelling in her own way against their strictures."
"Which exist for good reason," she pointed out dryly. "No Agent in recorded history, not even one of their predecessors has reacted in any way other than to chase down all members of the human Resistance. They are single- minded creatures, and the humans are not stupid. They know what the Agents are capable of, and they know that they do not stand a chance against them."
"Except for the One."
"Always. Except for their Savior, child of their own tin god. And their Judas as well." It amused her to turn their mythology against them.
"Do you think he is aware of who and what she is? Assuming, of course, that my surmise is correct."
Persephone considered this a while, watching the play between human and human on the restaurant floor. She wondered if it was different between Smith and Solace. It hadn't appeared to be, not very, not from the one- night glimpse she'd gotten of them. "I don't believe he does..." she said finally. "He can't know what she is. He hasn't yet strayed far enough from what he used to be that he would tolerate her near him if he thought she was anything other than a clever, attractive, misguided human."
"Then what the bloody hell is she doing?"
Persephone glanced at her husband, amused and intrigued by his outburst. Perhaps it had not occurred to him that a human would cleave to an AI of her own free will, knowing fully what transpired in the so-called real world. It had occurred to her, certainly, although she hadn't yet found the human who chose to encompass luxurious illusion and harsh reality in his life. "Perhaps," she said then, "She sees something in him."
The Merovingian stared at his wife as though she'd turned into an Agent before his eyes. "What in the name of all that is could she see in that..." he actually sputtered for a little while, trying to find a word that was denigrating and commonplace enough for the Agent, and finally gave up trying. The Twins tittered their grating laughter, and she didn't register her customary objection to their presence, too delighted by her husband's incomprehension.
"I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps he has... other qualities." She affected a bored tone, but she knew the pause in the sentence would imply that Smith's good qualities were confined to the bedroom. Since she was also aware that Solace had turned down the Merovingian's advances, albeit with a bit of an internal struggle, it would only further enrage her husband.
"Other qualities..." he sputtered for a second, rattling off imprecations and sexually-based insults in a various number of tongues before he finally settled back down.
"The Architect decided to introduce a new element into his human experiment," Persephone pointed out, when her husband had finally ceased to mutter and grumble. "If he is tempting the created Savior with love, if that is this new facet and quality he is reaching for in his attempt to eliminate the uprisings and element of uncertainty, perhaps ..." she wasn't certain how to phrase what she meant, but the meaning came across quite clear.
"What are you babbling about, woman?" he muttered, in the grumpy tone that said he knew exactly what she was talking about. "What love?"
"She reeks of it. Although I'm quite certain she doesn't know it yet, and it may not even be of the romantic sort that humans are so fond of tricking themselves into. There is love there, and for a member of the AI force that hunts down and kills her kind."
"What madness are you espousing now," he grumbled. "Next you'll be telling me that the AI is fallen in love with the human."
"Likely not. But there is a sense of possession to him. He did not indebt himself to you merely to find out about a potential threat to the Matrix when the Agents could as easily have done it themselves. He is like a child who thinks he has found a precious toy and doesn't want to share."
"As is the human he no doubt imagines he is trying to protect her from," the Merovingian said in a rare flash of insight. "Two dogs over a bone."
Persephone hated that analogy, but she couldn't deny that it was accurate in this case. "No doubt he imagines he is taking action for her own good, thinking that surely she must be aware of what danger she's in. And Smith is caught in the unenviable position of knowing what Kerr is but believing Solace to be one of the uninitiated, and therefore having to couch all of his explanations in such terms as an ignorant human would believe."
"And the Agents never were exactly long on creativity." He smirked.
They'd come around nearly full circle in the conversation. Although it had brought up some interesting ideas, Persephone was at a loss as to how to deal with it. For that matter, she was at a loss to explain how she knew it was a matter to be dealt with. The Merovingian had his own reasons, but then he needed no reason other than his own whim to do a thing. She liked to have a more solid motivation. Even if it was nothing more than the pursuit of her own happiness, she liked to have reasons why her actions might result in surcease from boredom.
"What are you going to do about them?" she asked abruptly, drawing all the attention of their bodyguards and under-men to her again.
"The human and the program?" he frowned. "I've not decided yet. Except that they are worth watching, and so I will watch and wait and gather as much information as I can. Do they interest you?"
"Very much..." she said, but absently, as though her attention had been drawn by something else in the room. It wouldn't do to show him how much they interested her, not yet anyway. "They interest me very much, not only for what they are but for what they might mean."
"Good." She was startled by how much her answer seemed to satisfy him. "That's exactly what I thought."
Persephone rolled her eyes at her overly melodramatic husband who, true to form, was twirling a martini glass in his fingers as he made that dire pronouncement. Today was a slow day at La Verite, and it would likely be a slow night at either Club Hell or the Palace of the Moon, wherever they chose to spend their evening that night. Slow days invariably meant that the Merovingian would consider himself forced to make his own fun. While his idea of fun had been pleasant enough for her at first the novelty had died, and fast. He was like a child who moved from toy to toy looking for satisfaction and never containing his distaste when he failed to discover it. She honestly didn't understand why he hadn't given up by now.
"Something is always, as you say it, rotten in the state of Denmark," she replied. It was a belated reply, since she hadn't noticed till his expression became slightly sour that he wanted an answer. "What makes this time different from the last five?"
She fully expected him to make some sort of sarcastic yet (to him) witty remark. His silence took her by surprise. "I'm not ..." he started, then paused in mid sentence to spear his martini olive. "I haven't yet managed to pin it down. But there is something different, something fresh and new about this time that makes it more dangerous than all the others."
That word, that one word more than anything else he'd said got her attention. The Merovingian rarely called anything dangerous unless it referred to himself or one of his possessions, the Twins, for example. Who were even now perking up at the implication that there might be work for them ahead. They grew bored even more quickly than the Merovingian.
"Something that might pose a danger to us?" Practicality was usually first on her mind; in their marriage, someone had to be ruthlessly practical.
"I doubt it," he said, making a disdainful sniff. "They have not yet made the program nor birthed the human that can pose a threat to our domain. But there are changes in the air..." he glanced around the restaurant as though one of those changes might be sitting at a table at that very moment. "Many changes."
His eyes fixed on something, and Persephone followed his gaze. It looked almost like the rogue Agent, Smith, except that it was clearly a human to her unaugmented sight. She wasn't sure what that boded, well or ill. She hadn't felt easy in his presence since he'd brought that woman to dinner at the restaurant. Especially not when her philandering husband snuck off for a washroom rendezvous. The Agent had been furious with the Merovingian; Persephone would have called it jealousy if she dared. Her husband looked away again, unconcerned.
"You think that this Smith and his woman, that they are a part of it." Persephone had pegged her for an interesting creature straight off. She had the glow of a woman in love all around her, but she was keeping company with an AI.
"They are at the core of it," the Merovingian agreed. "The former Agent, for certain. He is not like the others of his kind, he is independent, thoughtful and emotional without any of the natural controls that the humans have over his emotions."
"You sound as though you envy them." Sometimes Persephone did, really. Sometimes she envied the humans their imperfect memories and the way time could cloud over their judgment again, rendering them free to re-discover enchantment. She, herself, was not made that way.
He didn't answer immediately. "There are some things I envy, yes," he said finally, surprising her again. "Their simple lives, the passion of their mortality. I wish that I could capture some of it. But it's not in our nature, alas. N'importe quoi."
It was a verbal shrug, so very Gallic, and Persephone rolled her eyes in the discreet head-turning motion he couldn't see. "You have the report on the human Resistance agent, Kerr?" she asked when she knew she could speak with a steady voice again.
"I've taken the report," the Merovingian nodded. "An... interesting fellow. Although his record is spotty at best he has lately been seen in the company of Chimera's men, odd for someone so young and impetuous."
"Not that young," she pointed out, "by their reckoning."
"Chimera has been seen forty years now, and rumors have all but confirmed that he was one of the first to be freed. And neither he nor Smith's young human woman are the only anomalies to be connected with the rebel Kerr. Two other former shipmates have turned up leading guerilla forces of their own, two women who call themselves Static and Sidhe." He put just the slightest lisp on the final name, enough to let Persephone know the real meaning.
Persephone rolled her eyes again, this time where he could see. "They carry such ridiculous names." Although Solace didn't seem so farfetched, upon meeting her. "Why is this of interest?"
"Perhaps Solace is not quite as innocent as she has managed to convince the Agent."
She set down the drink she had been about to taste very slowly, and considered the implications. In her left-hand corner the Twins were grinning identical, cadaverous smirks. It would explain a great deal about the woman if she were Resistance, although it brought up an entirely new set of troubling questions as well. Not the least of which... "If she is Resistance, then what is she trying to accomplish by going about with the former Agent, Smith?"
"Some nefarious and ultimately futile plan of the Resistance, do you think?" The Merovingian seemed to be taking it all as a great joke. Which, to be truthful, perhaps it was. "Or maybe she is rebelling in her own way against their strictures."
"Which exist for good reason," she pointed out dryly. "No Agent in recorded history, not even one of their predecessors has reacted in any way other than to chase down all members of the human Resistance. They are single- minded creatures, and the humans are not stupid. They know what the Agents are capable of, and they know that they do not stand a chance against them."
"Except for the One."
"Always. Except for their Savior, child of their own tin god. And their Judas as well." It amused her to turn their mythology against them.
"Do you think he is aware of who and what she is? Assuming, of course, that my surmise is correct."
Persephone considered this a while, watching the play between human and human on the restaurant floor. She wondered if it was different between Smith and Solace. It hadn't appeared to be, not very, not from the one- night glimpse she'd gotten of them. "I don't believe he does..." she said finally. "He can't know what she is. He hasn't yet strayed far enough from what he used to be that he would tolerate her near him if he thought she was anything other than a clever, attractive, misguided human."
"Then what the bloody hell is she doing?"
Persephone glanced at her husband, amused and intrigued by his outburst. Perhaps it had not occurred to him that a human would cleave to an AI of her own free will, knowing fully what transpired in the so-called real world. It had occurred to her, certainly, although she hadn't yet found the human who chose to encompass luxurious illusion and harsh reality in his life. "Perhaps," she said then, "She sees something in him."
The Merovingian stared at his wife as though she'd turned into an Agent before his eyes. "What in the name of all that is could she see in that..." he actually sputtered for a little while, trying to find a word that was denigrating and commonplace enough for the Agent, and finally gave up trying. The Twins tittered their grating laughter, and she didn't register her customary objection to their presence, too delighted by her husband's incomprehension.
"I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps he has... other qualities." She affected a bored tone, but she knew the pause in the sentence would imply that Smith's good qualities were confined to the bedroom. Since she was also aware that Solace had turned down the Merovingian's advances, albeit with a bit of an internal struggle, it would only further enrage her husband.
"Other qualities..." he sputtered for a second, rattling off imprecations and sexually-based insults in a various number of tongues before he finally settled back down.
"The Architect decided to introduce a new element into his human experiment," Persephone pointed out, when her husband had finally ceased to mutter and grumble. "If he is tempting the created Savior with love, if that is this new facet and quality he is reaching for in his attempt to eliminate the uprisings and element of uncertainty, perhaps ..." she wasn't certain how to phrase what she meant, but the meaning came across quite clear.
"What are you babbling about, woman?" he muttered, in the grumpy tone that said he knew exactly what she was talking about. "What love?"
"She reeks of it. Although I'm quite certain she doesn't know it yet, and it may not even be of the romantic sort that humans are so fond of tricking themselves into. There is love there, and for a member of the AI force that hunts down and kills her kind."
"What madness are you espousing now," he grumbled. "Next you'll be telling me that the AI is fallen in love with the human."
"Likely not. But there is a sense of possession to him. He did not indebt himself to you merely to find out about a potential threat to the Matrix when the Agents could as easily have done it themselves. He is like a child who thinks he has found a precious toy and doesn't want to share."
"As is the human he no doubt imagines he is trying to protect her from," the Merovingian said in a rare flash of insight. "Two dogs over a bone."
Persephone hated that analogy, but she couldn't deny that it was accurate in this case. "No doubt he imagines he is taking action for her own good, thinking that surely she must be aware of what danger she's in. And Smith is caught in the unenviable position of knowing what Kerr is but believing Solace to be one of the uninitiated, and therefore having to couch all of his explanations in such terms as an ignorant human would believe."
"And the Agents never were exactly long on creativity." He smirked.
They'd come around nearly full circle in the conversation. Although it had brought up some interesting ideas, Persephone was at a loss as to how to deal with it. For that matter, she was at a loss to explain how she knew it was a matter to be dealt with. The Merovingian had his own reasons, but then he needed no reason other than his own whim to do a thing. She liked to have a more solid motivation. Even if it was nothing more than the pursuit of her own happiness, she liked to have reasons why her actions might result in surcease from boredom.
"What are you going to do about them?" she asked abruptly, drawing all the attention of their bodyguards and under-men to her again.
"The human and the program?" he frowned. "I've not decided yet. Except that they are worth watching, and so I will watch and wait and gather as much information as I can. Do they interest you?"
"Very much..." she said, but absently, as though her attention had been drawn by something else in the room. It wouldn't do to show him how much they interested her, not yet anyway. "They interest me very much, not only for what they are but for what they might mean."
"Good." She was startled by how much her answer seemed to satisfy him. "That's exactly what I thought."