Anne watched him leave, and wasn't sure whether or not she was making
progress. She was however, sure that she needed a shower, as she was
perspiring heavily. She was also sure, as she walked back towards her room,
that whatever else Greer might be, he was a big fat jerk. How dare he treat
her like that! But he was human, plain enough. The ass.
She wiped her brow feeling the thick perspiration on her arm. First he insults her, the he insults her again, and the he has the nerve to, to...continue insulting her! And all she had been trying to do was be nice to him. Why was he so suspicious? Well, okay, so she was just being nice to him in order to get him into bed, so she could prove to everyone that he wasn't some super-human monster. Freak of nature yeah, but not superhuman. Well, at least not any more than any other recruit.
Anne opened the door to her 'apartment' and collapsed onto the couch. If you had told her a few months ago where she would be now, she never in a million years would have believed you. In fact, she probably would have had you committed and then gone into intense therapy herself, just for having the idea suggested. Less than a year ago Anne was a nineteen year old college co-ed with a rich father and a future in modeling. Now she was a whacko secret agent.
It had all started with that serial killer a few months ago, the one who tortured his victims and destroyed their faces. Anne had been out, palling around with her fake ID, and she'd been drunk, the reason she hadn't seen the guy in the first place. Someone came up behind her, and put something over her face, so that she passed out.
When she woke up she was shackled to a table, and a man was standing over her with an array of knives and surgical tools. She's started screaming, and when he'd gotten close to her she'd wrenched her body away, and somehow broken the thick chains that bound her. Not gotten loose from, broken. The killer had attacked her while she was trying to run, and they fought. Despite him being nearly twice her size she threw him into a wall. He'd only cut her once, and thank god, it didn't scar. When she'd gotten out of the building, which turned out to be the basement of an abandoned warehouse, she'd immediately gone to the police, who in turn got the FBI.
It tuned out that the chains she'd broken through had not been rusted or compromised in any way beforehand. They were thick stainless steel. That was when she was questioned by the men in dark glasses.
When they sprang the choice on her she was in shock. She didn't know what to believe, if they were crazy, if she was crazy, or what. But here she was with these brand new talents and nothing to do with them. Her then- boyfriend Mike had been a big fan of action movies, and had dragged her along to more than a few. That was what the whole thing sounded like, an action movie, and the girls in those movies were glamorous, smart and sexy.
She said yes.
Anne hugged one of the couch cushions close to her body. Little had she known that with that choice she was forsaking her great big beautiful do- anything life for a continual battle arena. Yes it was glamorous, and sexy, and action-packed, but it was tiny. Her days were those of continual training and fighting. She got three hours of free-time a week, and that was a special privilege the Agents had tossed them just recently.
James Bond traveled the world and gambled in casinos; Charlie's Angels got vacations on the beach.
Action movies lied.
It was rare for Jones to have occasion to look at images from the 'real' world, but that was what was currently being displayed on his main monitor. It was a pod, the pod that had once held Nicolas Edmund. Or rather a complete computer model of it, since the actual pod was currently occupied. Along the edges of the image were dissections of the function of various parts and their workings. The representation was so minutely detailed that in even included the little points of wear, which was good because they were exactly what Jones needed.
It had taken Jones two hours to locate the male Edmund's pod number, and another hour to call up the schematics and model. He had been inspecting it with the proverbial fine toothed comb for several hours besides, having so far discovered nothing remotely unordinary about the pod. But he kept looking, because he knew the answer was here somewhere. How he knew was a mystery, but he could tell that this vulgar shell held answers. So patiently he went over it again.
He was not so engrossed however, that he did not notice that Greer had not yet been in this morning. Normally the recruit would have been in to see him soon after he'd awoken, but it was past noon and still made no appearance. Worried, but feeling vaguely intrusive, Jones had checked up on him on the monitors several hours ago. At that point he had still been training. Jones supposed it was best to let him. Surely he would come in later.
Jones' eyes were on the screen, and his mind was sharply analyzing what it saw. There was no damage to the feed-tubes, and nor any on the pumps. He focused the view on the gleaming metal spike that connected the occupant to the Matrix. That spike was both a doorway and an anchor. It brought a human into the Matrix, but still tied them to that world of hard reality. And it gleamed sliver, seeming never to loose it's polish, although, there was one spot of dullness.
Jones blinked suddenly and narrowed his eyes at the screen. That definitely should not be there. It was a dull, darkened spot on the metal near the base, and Jones had no idea what could have caused it. He tightened the angle of vision and magnified it by ten. It looked as though the metal had been somehow burned. He ran an inquiry. Several minutes later it came back with the answer that yes the metal had been burned, by electricity in fact, but there was no indication as to how it had been caused.
By all rights there was in fact no way it could have been caused, since the part of the metal where the spot was, was inserted into the plug at the base of the human's neck.
What a puzzle this was.
There was a knock at the door, and Jones looked up sharply at the monitor showing the hallway. It was Greer.
"Come in," he said, after hastily saving his work and switching the pod display to scrolling code.
The recruit opened the door, stepped through, and closed it again. He was freshly showered, and wearing a blue sleeveless, and black jeans.
"Hey Jonesy," he greeted with a grin, and gave the agent a quick kiss. Jones felt the thrill he always did when Greer touched him.
"Good morning," he replied.
"Is it still morning?" Greer wondered aloud.
"For a short time, yes. I take it you were busy?"
"Uh yeah. Sorry, I would have been around earlier but I kind of lost track of time," he apologized.
"I'm not upset," Jones assured him, "simply glad that you are here now."
Greer grinned at him. "So, you wanna go a few rounds..?" he asked suggestively.
Jones eyes widened and he nearly choked. "It's the middle of the day!" he protested.
"Well I know where your mind is Jones," the recruit chuckled. "I meant of VWS."
Jones crossed his arms. "You intended for me to believe..." he trailed off, a bit embarrassed.
"Couldn't help it," Greer shrugged. "That was a beautiful face you made."
"What ever possessed me to take up with such a scoundrel?" the agent demanded in mock exasperation.
"Yeah, well, what would my mom say if she knew I was dating a fed? And more than twice my age," Greer raised his eyebrows with a grin.
Jones sighed and shook his head. "Such is our forbidden love," he said playfully. But he meant it to. The unworkability of their relationship plagued the two of them every day. They lapsed into silence for a moment.
"So I'm patrolling with the whore of Babylon tonight," he said finally.
"I was unaware we had any such religious figure in the agency," Jones said, knowing full well who he meant. He'd seen the two of them sparring earlier and with Greer's notoriously mutual dislike of the other recruits he had been curious.
"You know who I mean," Greer said. "Anne. If there's a male recruit she hasn't slept with, well, it's me."
"Good to hear," the agent said with a slight tinge of jealousy.
"Yeah," Greer said, running his fingers through his hair. "Funny thing is she came over to talk about it this morning."
"The fact that you had not slept with her?" Jones asked eyes wide.
"No!" Greer said with a chuckle, "although I can fully imagine her doing that; she wanted to talk about patrol."
"Ah." Perhaps Greer was right about the agent and where his mind was today.
"So anyway, first she comes over and offers me a glass of water, which I decline, since I think she probably has it poisoned or aphrodisiacked, or something."
"I do not believe that 'aphrodisiacked' is a word, Greer."
"It is now. Add it to your spell-check, Jonesy."
"Oh yes, I am certain my fellow agents would be highly amused if it turns up in a report, wouldn't they?"
"Brown would love it. We should send it to him as a birthday present. Happy Birthday Agent Brown. Aphrodisiacked."
Greer laughed, and Jones joined him.
Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with him, Jones thought. He seemed normal now. Maybe he was just moody. Maybe the power had nothing to do with the Edmund twins' insanity. But much as Jones wished it were so, he couldn't really bring himself to believe it.
"Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Anne. I think she was trying to seduce me."
"It was not working, I would assume."
"Of course not," Greer rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I think she thought she was doing it for her own safety."
"You are going to have to explain that to me."
"Did you know there's a rumor going around about me?"
"That you are a homosexual?" Jones asked with a wry smile.
"Haha," Greer replied dryly. "Actually there are two versions of the rumor. The first is that I'm 'cursed' so that all my partners die. The second is that I kill them."
The agent sighed. "I must confess that I was aware of such a rumor."
"And?"
"Are you deliberately killing your partners?"
"Of course not!" Greer said indignantly.
"I thought not. And you are not to my knowledge under any such curse. Therefore I would advise you not to worry about the matter."
What Jones did not say was how perhaps it was his reckless fighting style that caused his partners' frequent deaths. In battle he seemed to care very little about even his safety, let alone his partners, when he was going for the kill. Rather like the Celtic Berserkers of ancient human history.
"So, are we going to play VWS or what?" the recruit then asked.
"Certainly," Jones said with a smile, and with a few keystrokes the brightly colored mélange that was the Virtual World Smackdown title screen appeared. In the past few weeks of their relationship Jones had been trying to worry too much about possible futures, and to enjoy the time he did have with Greer.
He was trying, but sometimes it was very, very hard.
Greer straightened his hair and clothes as his walked down the corridor. As often happened these days their innocent VWS session had turned into a furtive and rather less innocent make-out session. The clandestine nature of their relationship not only called for the careful use of any time they had together, but also seemed to make it even more appealing.
It hurt Greer every time he thought about Agent Jones' immortality. It was unfair that their time together would be so brief. It was doubly unfair that Jones would have to live forever without him. Would Jones forget about him after a few centuries? Would the pain lessen? Greer didn't know if he which he would wish for, to be forgotten and ultimately unloved, or to have Jones carry that hurt through eternity. It was selfish of him to want to be remembered, but...
Damnit, why couldn't he just be made an Agent like Stef had been? Right now. Why did it have to wait until he died? And even then, Jones had told him it was no certain thing at all that it would happen. The mainframe had to be convinced.
It wasn't wrong for him to want to live forever, was it? Not when he was surrounded by immortals. They would never die, never grow old. And if he didn't die fighting a rebel? What if he just kept fighting as he got older and older? Did the Agency have a mandatory retirement age for recruits? Would he one day, when they deemed his usefulness gone, have his memory erased and be sent back to the world of humanity to live the rest of his life with a false identity he thought was real? Like Agent K in Men in Black. That was how it worked. He would not remember the truth, or the Agency, or Jones, or any of it. And that was a fate worse than death, wasn't it?
He was almost to his room when he saw Stef Mimosa coming down the hall, the lady in the black suit, the Agency's nod to women's rights. Greer couldn't help grinning as he saw her.
"Hey Stef," he greeted.
"Hi Greer," she said with a smile, stopping to chat with him. "How are you?"
Greer shrugged. "What've you been up to?"
"Not much," she said, and lowered her voice, "I swung by the mansion."
"Oh, how's Brooke?" he'd only met her once, but Greer liked the idea of Smith having a daughter.
"Pretty good."
"And you?"
"Pretty good," she said with a smile. "What about you?"
"Eh," he shrugged again. "Can't tell really."
"What do you mean?"
"First I'm bad, then I'm good, then I'm not so good again. You know what I mean?"
Clomping footsteps echoed through the hallway, coming towards them. Agent Brown turned the corner, and came towards them. They fell quiet. For a moment it looked like he was going to stop and admonish them, but he walked past, giving them only a long, cold glare from behind mirror shades as he walked by, turned another corner, and was out of sight.
They stayed silent until they were sure he was out of casual listening distance.
"You know," Greer said. "I think we're his two least favorite people."
"That's fairly accurate."
"Wonder where he was going in such a hurry? I mean, he didn't even stop to yell at us. And he looked grouchier than usual."
"Probably out hunting Exiles," Stef said with a frown.
Greer wrinkled his brow. "Exiles. What exactly are Exiles? I've heard you and Jones mention them, but that's it."
Mimosa looked at him. "Didn't I tell you before?"
He shook his head. "Not that I recall."
She shrugged. "Well, I'll tell you. But let's go back to your room in case Brown comes back. Recruits aren't technically supposed to be informed on that particular subject."
"Why not?" he asked, as they began walking.
"It's not 'necessary' information."
"Oh."
Greer put his hand on the knob and opened his door. None of the recruits' rooms had lock, it was pointless, since no malicious party could possibly enter the Agency, and any recruit could simply 'require' a key.
Greer couldn't remember if this was Stef's first time in his room, and so he was a little self-conscious about it. It looked a lot like his old apartment, computer and CD player in one corner, strew about with disks and cds, TV and game systems in another corner, the games neatly packed in shoeboxes, another corner held his unmade bed with thick black comforter, and spider-man sheets. The final corner held his kitchenette, there were doors to a bathroom and a closet, and there was a black leather couch and wooden coffee table in the middle of the room, covered in magazines and comics which sprawled their mess onto the floor; it was badly lit and there were a multitude of posters wallpapering the room, most for games or anime, some for movies or bands, or comics. The carpet was deep blue.
"Er, sorry about the mess," he said.
Stef rolled her eyes and closed the door behind her. "It's okay." she assured him. "It looks better than my apartment." She plopped down on the couch, immediately making herself at home.
"Glad you like it," he said with a half-raised eyebrow. "Wanna cup of coffee?" he asked, sitting down on the couch as well.
"Sure."
He required two mugs and handed one to her.
"What service," Stef said with smile, and glanced at her coffee nonchalantly. It changed color slightly; she had just required a large amount of sugar in it.
Greer drank his black.
"So," Stef said after a minute. "You want to know about Exiles."
"I figure I might as well," he said with a shrug, sipping his coffee. "Unless it's really boring, I guess," he added.
"Nope, it's not boring."
"Then I'm all for them," he said with a grin. "Especially if they make Brown unhappy."
"Oh that they do," she assured him.
"More power to them."
"Do you want to hear what they are or just send them funding checks now?" Stef laughed.
Greer chuckled. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Okay then. You know there are more programs than just Agents, right?"
He nodded.
"Sometimes a program is deleted, whether it's because a more efficient program has been created, or because the program has decided it doesn't want to do it's job, or is 'misbehaving' in some conspicuous way. Got that?"
"Got it." Like how Jones would be deleted if anyone found out about them, or simply just for having a personality.
"After a program is deleted it is given a choice, to stop existing or to become an Exile. If they choose Exile they return to the matrix, to do whatever they want, a purposeless program, living for its own sake. Another job of the agents, one that Brown takes very seriously, is to hunt down and destroy these 'corrupted' programs, because they are a danger to the system."
Like ronin, Greer thought, the masterless samurai of ancient Japan. "So what do they do, just hang around?"
"Some do fight against Agents with the rebels," she told him, "but not many, they prefer to avoid us altogether. Like I said, they do whatever they want, hang around, watch TV, drive cars, work at McDonalds."
"You're kidding."
"How else are they going to support themselves? Some of them have special talents, but they can't require."
/-don't know what you wanted the limes for-/
Greer winced, and pushed his power to the back of his mind for the third time today. He tried to ignore what was happening, and he hadn't told Jones, because he was scared, and he didn't want to worry him any more. But the power was slowly swallowing him whole.
"What kind of special talents?" he asked.
"Sometimes it relates to what their duty was as a program, sometimes not. There's a whole number of them, left off from the first matrix, whose coding doesn't quite mesh with this world. Do you want to guess what they are?"
He held his hands up. "I give up."
"Vampires."
"Vampires?" he demanded, eyes wide.
"And werewolves, and ghosts, and the creature from the black lagoon, UFOs, Angels, demons, the loch ness monster, they're all Exiles."
"They really exist?" he asked, still stunned.
She nodded. "They do exist. There's a whole little world of Exiles, they're very human."
"That's probably why Brown hates them."
"I'd imagine so. But it's an Agent's duty to track and destroy Exiles," she said distastefully.
"Kind of a shame," Greer mused.
"Yeah, it is." Stef finished her coffee and set the cup down on the table.
"Wanna play some Mortal Kombat?" Greer asked, after a moment of mutual quiet reflection, and gestured at the television.
She shook her head. "I'd like to but I can't. I was actually heading over to see Smith when I bumped into you."
The recruit nodded. "Well, it was nice seeing you. You'll have to drop by again some time." He grinned
"I certainly will," Stef stood and stretched, she wasn't tall, but her form was slendered and well-formed from her battles, and the suit was rather flattering on her. Trade the pants and shoes for a skirt and high heels, Greer thought she'd look a lot like Elena from the Turks, in FFVII. Stef probably had great legs.
Greer watched her leave, turning to give him a last nod before closing the door. She left him sitting on the couch, mind full of vampires, Exiles, his intruding power, and other, equally strange thoughts.
He looked down at his coffee, and required it intro sake liquor instead.
She wiped her brow feeling the thick perspiration on her arm. First he insults her, the he insults her again, and the he has the nerve to, to...continue insulting her! And all she had been trying to do was be nice to him. Why was he so suspicious? Well, okay, so she was just being nice to him in order to get him into bed, so she could prove to everyone that he wasn't some super-human monster. Freak of nature yeah, but not superhuman. Well, at least not any more than any other recruit.
Anne opened the door to her 'apartment' and collapsed onto the couch. If you had told her a few months ago where she would be now, she never in a million years would have believed you. In fact, she probably would have had you committed and then gone into intense therapy herself, just for having the idea suggested. Less than a year ago Anne was a nineteen year old college co-ed with a rich father and a future in modeling. Now she was a whacko secret agent.
It had all started with that serial killer a few months ago, the one who tortured his victims and destroyed their faces. Anne had been out, palling around with her fake ID, and she'd been drunk, the reason she hadn't seen the guy in the first place. Someone came up behind her, and put something over her face, so that she passed out.
When she woke up she was shackled to a table, and a man was standing over her with an array of knives and surgical tools. She's started screaming, and when he'd gotten close to her she'd wrenched her body away, and somehow broken the thick chains that bound her. Not gotten loose from, broken. The killer had attacked her while she was trying to run, and they fought. Despite him being nearly twice her size she threw him into a wall. He'd only cut her once, and thank god, it didn't scar. When she'd gotten out of the building, which turned out to be the basement of an abandoned warehouse, she'd immediately gone to the police, who in turn got the FBI.
It tuned out that the chains she'd broken through had not been rusted or compromised in any way beforehand. They were thick stainless steel. That was when she was questioned by the men in dark glasses.
When they sprang the choice on her she was in shock. She didn't know what to believe, if they were crazy, if she was crazy, or what. But here she was with these brand new talents and nothing to do with them. Her then- boyfriend Mike had been a big fan of action movies, and had dragged her along to more than a few. That was what the whole thing sounded like, an action movie, and the girls in those movies were glamorous, smart and sexy.
She said yes.
Anne hugged one of the couch cushions close to her body. Little had she known that with that choice she was forsaking her great big beautiful do- anything life for a continual battle arena. Yes it was glamorous, and sexy, and action-packed, but it was tiny. Her days were those of continual training and fighting. She got three hours of free-time a week, and that was a special privilege the Agents had tossed them just recently.
James Bond traveled the world and gambled in casinos; Charlie's Angels got vacations on the beach.
Action movies lied.
It was rare for Jones to have occasion to look at images from the 'real' world, but that was what was currently being displayed on his main monitor. It was a pod, the pod that had once held Nicolas Edmund. Or rather a complete computer model of it, since the actual pod was currently occupied. Along the edges of the image were dissections of the function of various parts and their workings. The representation was so minutely detailed that in even included the little points of wear, which was good because they were exactly what Jones needed.
It had taken Jones two hours to locate the male Edmund's pod number, and another hour to call up the schematics and model. He had been inspecting it with the proverbial fine toothed comb for several hours besides, having so far discovered nothing remotely unordinary about the pod. But he kept looking, because he knew the answer was here somewhere. How he knew was a mystery, but he could tell that this vulgar shell held answers. So patiently he went over it again.
He was not so engrossed however, that he did not notice that Greer had not yet been in this morning. Normally the recruit would have been in to see him soon after he'd awoken, but it was past noon and still made no appearance. Worried, but feeling vaguely intrusive, Jones had checked up on him on the monitors several hours ago. At that point he had still been training. Jones supposed it was best to let him. Surely he would come in later.
Jones' eyes were on the screen, and his mind was sharply analyzing what it saw. There was no damage to the feed-tubes, and nor any on the pumps. He focused the view on the gleaming metal spike that connected the occupant to the Matrix. That spike was both a doorway and an anchor. It brought a human into the Matrix, but still tied them to that world of hard reality. And it gleamed sliver, seeming never to loose it's polish, although, there was one spot of dullness.
Jones blinked suddenly and narrowed his eyes at the screen. That definitely should not be there. It was a dull, darkened spot on the metal near the base, and Jones had no idea what could have caused it. He tightened the angle of vision and magnified it by ten. It looked as though the metal had been somehow burned. He ran an inquiry. Several minutes later it came back with the answer that yes the metal had been burned, by electricity in fact, but there was no indication as to how it had been caused.
By all rights there was in fact no way it could have been caused, since the part of the metal where the spot was, was inserted into the plug at the base of the human's neck.
What a puzzle this was.
There was a knock at the door, and Jones looked up sharply at the monitor showing the hallway. It was Greer.
"Come in," he said, after hastily saving his work and switching the pod display to scrolling code.
The recruit opened the door, stepped through, and closed it again. He was freshly showered, and wearing a blue sleeveless, and black jeans.
"Hey Jonesy," he greeted with a grin, and gave the agent a quick kiss. Jones felt the thrill he always did when Greer touched him.
"Good morning," he replied.
"Is it still morning?" Greer wondered aloud.
"For a short time, yes. I take it you were busy?"
"Uh yeah. Sorry, I would have been around earlier but I kind of lost track of time," he apologized.
"I'm not upset," Jones assured him, "simply glad that you are here now."
Greer grinned at him. "So, you wanna go a few rounds..?" he asked suggestively.
Jones eyes widened and he nearly choked. "It's the middle of the day!" he protested.
"Well I know where your mind is Jones," the recruit chuckled. "I meant of VWS."
Jones crossed his arms. "You intended for me to believe..." he trailed off, a bit embarrassed.
"Couldn't help it," Greer shrugged. "That was a beautiful face you made."
"What ever possessed me to take up with such a scoundrel?" the agent demanded in mock exasperation.
"Yeah, well, what would my mom say if she knew I was dating a fed? And more than twice my age," Greer raised his eyebrows with a grin.
Jones sighed and shook his head. "Such is our forbidden love," he said playfully. But he meant it to. The unworkability of their relationship plagued the two of them every day. They lapsed into silence for a moment.
"So I'm patrolling with the whore of Babylon tonight," he said finally.
"I was unaware we had any such religious figure in the agency," Jones said, knowing full well who he meant. He'd seen the two of them sparring earlier and with Greer's notoriously mutual dislike of the other recruits he had been curious.
"You know who I mean," Greer said. "Anne. If there's a male recruit she hasn't slept with, well, it's me."
"Good to hear," the agent said with a slight tinge of jealousy.
"Yeah," Greer said, running his fingers through his hair. "Funny thing is she came over to talk about it this morning."
"The fact that you had not slept with her?" Jones asked eyes wide.
"No!" Greer said with a chuckle, "although I can fully imagine her doing that; she wanted to talk about patrol."
"Ah." Perhaps Greer was right about the agent and where his mind was today.
"So anyway, first she comes over and offers me a glass of water, which I decline, since I think she probably has it poisoned or aphrodisiacked, or something."
"I do not believe that 'aphrodisiacked' is a word, Greer."
"It is now. Add it to your spell-check, Jonesy."
"Oh yes, I am certain my fellow agents would be highly amused if it turns up in a report, wouldn't they?"
"Brown would love it. We should send it to him as a birthday present. Happy Birthday Agent Brown. Aphrodisiacked."
Greer laughed, and Jones joined him.
Maybe there wasn't anything wrong with him, Jones thought. He seemed normal now. Maybe he was just moody. Maybe the power had nothing to do with the Edmund twins' insanity. But much as Jones wished it were so, he couldn't really bring himself to believe it.
"Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Anne. I think she was trying to seduce me."
"It was not working, I would assume."
"Of course not," Greer rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I think she thought she was doing it for her own safety."
"You are going to have to explain that to me."
"Did you know there's a rumor going around about me?"
"That you are a homosexual?" Jones asked with a wry smile.
"Haha," Greer replied dryly. "Actually there are two versions of the rumor. The first is that I'm 'cursed' so that all my partners die. The second is that I kill them."
The agent sighed. "I must confess that I was aware of such a rumor."
"And?"
"Are you deliberately killing your partners?"
"Of course not!" Greer said indignantly.
"I thought not. And you are not to my knowledge under any such curse. Therefore I would advise you not to worry about the matter."
What Jones did not say was how perhaps it was his reckless fighting style that caused his partners' frequent deaths. In battle he seemed to care very little about even his safety, let alone his partners, when he was going for the kill. Rather like the Celtic Berserkers of ancient human history.
"So, are we going to play VWS or what?" the recruit then asked.
"Certainly," Jones said with a smile, and with a few keystrokes the brightly colored mélange that was the Virtual World Smackdown title screen appeared. In the past few weeks of their relationship Jones had been trying to worry too much about possible futures, and to enjoy the time he did have with Greer.
He was trying, but sometimes it was very, very hard.
Greer straightened his hair and clothes as his walked down the corridor. As often happened these days their innocent VWS session had turned into a furtive and rather less innocent make-out session. The clandestine nature of their relationship not only called for the careful use of any time they had together, but also seemed to make it even more appealing.
It hurt Greer every time he thought about Agent Jones' immortality. It was unfair that their time together would be so brief. It was doubly unfair that Jones would have to live forever without him. Would Jones forget about him after a few centuries? Would the pain lessen? Greer didn't know if he which he would wish for, to be forgotten and ultimately unloved, or to have Jones carry that hurt through eternity. It was selfish of him to want to be remembered, but...
Damnit, why couldn't he just be made an Agent like Stef had been? Right now. Why did it have to wait until he died? And even then, Jones had told him it was no certain thing at all that it would happen. The mainframe had to be convinced.
It wasn't wrong for him to want to live forever, was it? Not when he was surrounded by immortals. They would never die, never grow old. And if he didn't die fighting a rebel? What if he just kept fighting as he got older and older? Did the Agency have a mandatory retirement age for recruits? Would he one day, when they deemed his usefulness gone, have his memory erased and be sent back to the world of humanity to live the rest of his life with a false identity he thought was real? Like Agent K in Men in Black. That was how it worked. He would not remember the truth, or the Agency, or Jones, or any of it. And that was a fate worse than death, wasn't it?
He was almost to his room when he saw Stef Mimosa coming down the hall, the lady in the black suit, the Agency's nod to women's rights. Greer couldn't help grinning as he saw her.
"Hey Stef," he greeted.
"Hi Greer," she said with a smile, stopping to chat with him. "How are you?"
Greer shrugged. "What've you been up to?"
"Not much," she said, and lowered her voice, "I swung by the mansion."
"Oh, how's Brooke?" he'd only met her once, but Greer liked the idea of Smith having a daughter.
"Pretty good."
"And you?"
"Pretty good," she said with a smile. "What about you?"
"Eh," he shrugged again. "Can't tell really."
"What do you mean?"
"First I'm bad, then I'm good, then I'm not so good again. You know what I mean?"
Clomping footsteps echoed through the hallway, coming towards them. Agent Brown turned the corner, and came towards them. They fell quiet. For a moment it looked like he was going to stop and admonish them, but he walked past, giving them only a long, cold glare from behind mirror shades as he walked by, turned another corner, and was out of sight.
They stayed silent until they were sure he was out of casual listening distance.
"You know," Greer said. "I think we're his two least favorite people."
"That's fairly accurate."
"Wonder where he was going in such a hurry? I mean, he didn't even stop to yell at us. And he looked grouchier than usual."
"Probably out hunting Exiles," Stef said with a frown.
Greer wrinkled his brow. "Exiles. What exactly are Exiles? I've heard you and Jones mention them, but that's it."
Mimosa looked at him. "Didn't I tell you before?"
He shook his head. "Not that I recall."
She shrugged. "Well, I'll tell you. But let's go back to your room in case Brown comes back. Recruits aren't technically supposed to be informed on that particular subject."
"Why not?" he asked, as they began walking.
"It's not 'necessary' information."
"Oh."
Greer put his hand on the knob and opened his door. None of the recruits' rooms had lock, it was pointless, since no malicious party could possibly enter the Agency, and any recruit could simply 'require' a key.
Greer couldn't remember if this was Stef's first time in his room, and so he was a little self-conscious about it. It looked a lot like his old apartment, computer and CD player in one corner, strew about with disks and cds, TV and game systems in another corner, the games neatly packed in shoeboxes, another corner held his unmade bed with thick black comforter, and spider-man sheets. The final corner held his kitchenette, there were doors to a bathroom and a closet, and there was a black leather couch and wooden coffee table in the middle of the room, covered in magazines and comics which sprawled their mess onto the floor; it was badly lit and there were a multitude of posters wallpapering the room, most for games or anime, some for movies or bands, or comics. The carpet was deep blue.
"Er, sorry about the mess," he said.
Stef rolled her eyes and closed the door behind her. "It's okay." she assured him. "It looks better than my apartment." She plopped down on the couch, immediately making herself at home.
"Glad you like it," he said with a half-raised eyebrow. "Wanna cup of coffee?" he asked, sitting down on the couch as well.
"Sure."
He required two mugs and handed one to her.
"What service," Stef said with smile, and glanced at her coffee nonchalantly. It changed color slightly; she had just required a large amount of sugar in it.
Greer drank his black.
"So," Stef said after a minute. "You want to know about Exiles."
"I figure I might as well," he said with a shrug, sipping his coffee. "Unless it's really boring, I guess," he added.
"Nope, it's not boring."
"Then I'm all for them," he said with a grin. "Especially if they make Brown unhappy."
"Oh that they do," she assured him.
"More power to them."
"Do you want to hear what they are or just send them funding checks now?" Stef laughed.
Greer chuckled. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Okay then. You know there are more programs than just Agents, right?"
He nodded.
"Sometimes a program is deleted, whether it's because a more efficient program has been created, or because the program has decided it doesn't want to do it's job, or is 'misbehaving' in some conspicuous way. Got that?"
"Got it." Like how Jones would be deleted if anyone found out about them, or simply just for having a personality.
"After a program is deleted it is given a choice, to stop existing or to become an Exile. If they choose Exile they return to the matrix, to do whatever they want, a purposeless program, living for its own sake. Another job of the agents, one that Brown takes very seriously, is to hunt down and destroy these 'corrupted' programs, because they are a danger to the system."
Like ronin, Greer thought, the masterless samurai of ancient Japan. "So what do they do, just hang around?"
"Some do fight against Agents with the rebels," she told him, "but not many, they prefer to avoid us altogether. Like I said, they do whatever they want, hang around, watch TV, drive cars, work at McDonalds."
"You're kidding."
"How else are they going to support themselves? Some of them have special talents, but they can't require."
/-don't know what you wanted the limes for-/
Greer winced, and pushed his power to the back of his mind for the third time today. He tried to ignore what was happening, and he hadn't told Jones, because he was scared, and he didn't want to worry him any more. But the power was slowly swallowing him whole.
"What kind of special talents?" he asked.
"Sometimes it relates to what their duty was as a program, sometimes not. There's a whole number of them, left off from the first matrix, whose coding doesn't quite mesh with this world. Do you want to guess what they are?"
He held his hands up. "I give up."
"Vampires."
"Vampires?" he demanded, eyes wide.
"And werewolves, and ghosts, and the creature from the black lagoon, UFOs, Angels, demons, the loch ness monster, they're all Exiles."
"They really exist?" he asked, still stunned.
She nodded. "They do exist. There's a whole little world of Exiles, they're very human."
"That's probably why Brown hates them."
"I'd imagine so. But it's an Agent's duty to track and destroy Exiles," she said distastefully.
"Kind of a shame," Greer mused.
"Yeah, it is." Stef finished her coffee and set the cup down on the table.
"Wanna play some Mortal Kombat?" Greer asked, after a moment of mutual quiet reflection, and gestured at the television.
She shook her head. "I'd like to but I can't. I was actually heading over to see Smith when I bumped into you."
The recruit nodded. "Well, it was nice seeing you. You'll have to drop by again some time." He grinned
"I certainly will," Stef stood and stretched, she wasn't tall, but her form was slendered and well-formed from her battles, and the suit was rather flattering on her. Trade the pants and shoes for a skirt and high heels, Greer thought she'd look a lot like Elena from the Turks, in FFVII. Stef probably had great legs.
Greer watched her leave, turning to give him a last nod before closing the door. She left him sitting on the couch, mind full of vampires, Exiles, his intruding power, and other, equally strange thoughts.
He looked down at his coffee, and required it intro sake liquor instead.