Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Those damn Wachowski bros have it all. Damn them all to hell! Also, the song at the beginning and end belongs to Evanescence.
Title: No Results Found
Summary: Somebody had to miss Thomas A. Anderson when he disappeared from the Matrix. But why only her?
Rating: PG (pretty much just for the cursing in the disclaimer)
Author: Punk up the Volume
A/N: Hello to all who are taking the time to read this. I just thought this was a pretty good idea when I thought of it in the car on the way to school. Of course, it only took me a month to put it down on paper...I mean...computer. Anyway, I think this is really sad and sweet, my poetic masterpeice I hope (crosses fingers). So don't forget to review.
You don't remember me
But I remember you
I lie awake and try so hard
Not to think of you
But who can decide what they dream?
And dream I do....
I believe in you
I'd give up everything just to find you
I have to be with you
To live to breath
You're taking over me
"Taking Over Me", Evanescence
Searching...searching...no results found.
These words, so familiar, seem so distant now. Where are you? I question only to myself as I wait for the white hot tears to come. But the won't. They can't. Not until I find something. Not until I find him. Where are you, Tommy?
How long has it been since I saw him? Two months? Three? How many days? How many hours? How many seconds? Is he gone forever? Is he coming back? Has he forgotten me? Has he forgotten? The ever present questions begin to knaw away at what little sanity I have left.
Searching...searching...
How long can I keep this up? How many more days of work can I possibly miss?
Searching...
I should be used to it now. The cold night. I sleep in his apartment now, pay the rent, use his computer. It's my last hope I suppose. I feel like if I leave here, I'm leaving him.
How can one person disappear so suddenly? so randomly? How can the world sit by and let it pass while one person is loaded down by the unbearable guilt and sadness and misery? Where are you Tommy? Where did you go and why did you leave me behind? Why did you leave me behind to try and find you? It's not fair!
And the anger comes. Then the tears. How much longer can I go on like this? Waiting for a sign...any sign.
Flowers.
Flowers again. It was the first thing I saw when Tommy stepped out of the elevator. A bundle of flowers in his hand, a sheepish grin on his face. He walked heavily toward my desk and grinned down at me.
"I'm sorry, Cassie." he says simply. I take the flowers and lay them down on the counter behind me.
"You're always sorry." I answer. The last night we were to meet downtown and have dinner, but I had stood alone in the cold for an hour and half before heading home. Why had I waited that long? Tommy was either on time or he wasn't coming. I had known that since the third grade. Why had I waited so long.
"Cassie, please. I'm so...so close. I just-"
"Fell asleep at your computer again."
The grin pops up again, but this time, he was embarressed. "I'm so close. I know I've almost found him. He's almost..."
"Who?" I questioned, tired of all of his secrecy. I was his best friend, was I not? If he couldn't talk to me...
"Neo." he replied, staring down at the ground. "I'm almost...I've found me."
"What?" I asked him. It seems like all I did what ask him questions, yet he never answered.
"Nothing." he answered, spinning on his heel nervously.
"Honestly, Tommy!" I sneered. "Sometimes I think you know more about living inside a computer than outside of it."
"Cassie...come on, please. Let me make it up to you. We can take in a movie, I'll take you dancing even."
"You hate to dance." I pulled on my coat and grabbed my purse. I was always the last one to leave the office. Tommy grabbed my hand, but I pulled it out of his grasp.
"Please?" he was practically begging. He must have really been sorry, but I didn't care.
"Not tonight." I shake my head, feeling a dull ache come on. "I don't want to see you tonight."
I think of that night and I cry. What had I done? That was the last thing I had ever said to him.
I don't want to see you tonight...
I miss him more than life itself. Where are you, Tommy? You can't just leave in the middle of the night and not tell me, not tell anyone. He wouldn't do something like that.
I don't want to see you tonight...
Was there anything worse that I could have said? No, there was nothing worse. Did Tommy know that I loved him? That I had loved him for so long? Did he know, that when he touched my hand for the first time in third grade, I knew. I just knew. I always thought he was so dense. How could he not see? For so many years I settled as the best friend. I would give up everything just to take back all the mean things I had ever thought or said about him. I would give everything up just to see him one more time. Just to tell him about that time in the third grade when I knew I would always love him.
"Why're you crying?"
I looked up. Even at eight years old, Tommy was the tallest boy I knew. He was staring down at me his big brown eyes and a frown. He looked so concerned to see me sitting on the sidewalk, crying.
"Because." I answered, sniffling. "Because...my daddy is gone."
"Did he die?" Tommy asked, his eyes wide. He was never one for tact.
"No." I answered, the tears flooding down my cheeks.
"Oh." he answered, kicking a rock down the street. "My daddy died last year. He was in a car accident."
"I'm sorry." I answered. It was standard response. I didn't yet know that Tommy's dad had cheated on his mom several times and kicked the crap out of Tommy and his brothers whenever the mood struck him. I didn't know anything about the boy standing in front of me, trying to help me.
"It's ok." He kicked another rock, this time further. "What happened to your Dad?"
"He left." The tears were back. "He's just gone..."
"Here." Tommy held out his hand. It was small and rough, but mine fit in it perfectly. He helped lift me up and he smiled as I brushed off my pants. "What's your name?"
"Cassie." I answered, sniffling again, but there were no more tears. "You?"
"Thomas." he replied with a dignified tone, the way his mother had taught him to introduce himself to adults. "Thomas A. Anderson."
"Thank you, Thomas A. Anderson."
It's been so long since I really slept. So many night in his bed, trying to remember. All I have now are memories. The pictures I had, so many pictures, they're all gone. It's like a sickness. Every trace that Tommy ever existed is gone. His work denies he was ever employed. His landlady assures me that she has never rented his apartment out to anyone by the name of Thomas Anderson.
It's like a sickness...It's like somebody doesn't want him to have existed. Have they erased Tommy, too? Or just everyone's memory of him?
Where are you, Tommy? It is my mantra and I will continue to repeat it until he is here. Until he is here in my arms, safe and home. Where are you, Tommy? I know you're alive. I can feel you. I know that you're somewhere. Is it cold? Are you scared? Or are you happier than you've ever been? You never were very happy in the real world. Ever since junior year, he absorbed himself in you computer. It was like it had suddenly become a part of him. Like he needed it to live. What about me, Tommy? Did you need me, Tommy? Is it easy to forget me, Tommy?
I can't forget you. This search, this endless search, it's taking over me.
I see him in my dreams. He's happy. He's smiling. He's with a man with a heavy, dusty voice. And a girl. A girl who looks nothing like me.
Sometimes I want to forget. I want to have this burdon lifted off of my shoulders. I don't want to be the only one who remembers. It burns me, it scars me, and sometimes I can't handle the pain. I want to forget. I want to forget you just like everyone else.
"Pick up the goddamn phone, Tom!" I yelled into the receiver.
I had gone a week without calling him. A week without seeing him and now, when I tried to call, to apologize for saying what I had said, he wouldn't pick up. I had tried calling for two days and each time, I got his answering machine. And then, on the third day, nothing. Only a mechanical voice on the other end, telling me that the number had been disconnected. Even though I knew something was wrong in the pit of my stomach, the voice in the back of my head told me that he had probably forgotten to pay his bill again.
I waited another day before I finally went to him apartment. The door was unlocked; Tommy never had enough sense to remember to lock his door. I suppose he had much larger things on his mind.
When I walked into his apartment, I knew something was wrong. There was a pile of dishes stacked up to the ceiling in the sink. They looked days old. Sure, Tommy was a slob, but he knew how to run a dishwasher. It didn't really sink in that something was wrong until I saw his computer in the middle of the room. On the screen was a webpage about a man named Morpheus and a pop up message.
A pop up message that said he had been disconnected for four days. Four days? There was no way Tommy could be pulled away from his computer for four days! It was impossible.
I hoped to God that nothing was wrong. I rationalized that he had probably just gone home for the weekend, to see his mother. She had been diagnosed with cancers four years ago and had gone in remission a year ago. Tommy had been going up to see her more and more often. Sometimes I would go with him; Mrs. Anderson had been like a second mother to me. My own was far to involved in having a perpetual pit party to worry about anyone other than herself.
I spent the entire train ride "home" hoping to God he was there.
The Anderson's didn't have a phone. I'm not sure why. Maybe they had no one to call, maybe they couldn't afford it after Mr. Anderson died. Either way, there was no way to know other than going up there.
When I reached the old Anderson home and knocked on the door, Mrs. Anderson greeted me like she had never met me before in her life. Like someone had erased me from her memory. She invited me in for a cup of tea, but I declined.
"You...don't remember me?" I questioned politely. What was going on?
"I'm sorry, dear. Are you one of Luke's friends? Or maybe Johnny or Peter's?"
Luke? Johnny? Peter? I hadn't seen Tommy's brothers since I graduated from highschool.
"N-n-no." I stuttered, not sure how to reply. "I'm a friend of Tommy's. Is he here?"
"Tommy?" she repeated, confusion shining in her eyes.
"Yes, your son, Tommy." I shook my head, trying to prompt her to remember. "Is he here?"
"I'm sorry," she answered with a small frown. "You must have the wrong house. I don't have a son named Tommy." And then she shut the door.
But I didn't have the wrong house. I was standing immobilized on the correct front porch. The front porch I knew so well as a child. I had no idea what to do next. Was there some reason that Tommy's family had to pretend like he didn't exist, or had she really forgotten her own child. Either possibility didn't seem write.
That's when I began searching.
Searching...searching...no results found.
I am beginning to feel like a computer myself. I am always searching for him. But like I asked before. How long can I search. I know something is coming. I can feel it in my blood. I know that I'll see him again, that I'll get to tell him how sorry I am.
I don't want to see you tonight.
I shut down his computer for the first time in months and walk away through the darkness. It's time to go home. But I go with hope. I know whatever it is that's coming will find me. And whatever or whoever it is, they'll lead me to him. I know I don't have to keep searching for long.
I turn around as I place my hand on the doorknob of the door leading towards the hallway. Leading home. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Tommy. I love you. I'm sorry.
I saw him once. Or, I thought I saw him. It was noon, one day a few weeks ago. I was had just had lunch alone at the Chinese restaurant where we used to go sometimes. I sat alone at the back table, one of my few times when I left his apartment and ventured into the real world. I was reading the paper and staring at people out the window, giving them stories. We used to do that all the time together.
"His name is Dennis." Tommy would say thoughfully if he saw a man rushing by. "He's running late for work. He's afraid that his boss will fire him, but what he doesn't know is that his boss his is having an affair with his wife.
"For all you know, he could be rushing because he wants the last copy of the paper at the newstand down the street." I would grin at him.
Tommy would shrug and reply, "Yeah, sure. But isn't it much more exciting my way?"
He wanted an adventure. He had always though his life was so boring. Had he found his adventure? His excitement?
So there I sat at our corner table, wondering where all the people running past the window were running to. And then I saw him. A long black coat, black hair, pale computer bleached skin, dark sunglasses. It took me a minute to figure out who it was. My brain was telling me that I should know who that was, but it took me a minute. When I realized, I sprinted out the door so fast that I ran into a waitress and spilled a pitcher of water all over another customer. Normally I would have stopped and helped her, but this time I couldn't. I though that maybe, just maybe, I had found what I was looking for.
I searched through the crowd for another glimpse of him. I darted my way through crowds of annoyed looking people, searching for just another glance. And then, twenty feet ahead of me, there he was. I was so sure. It was Tommy! He had come back!
But he was disappearing again. Disappearing too fast. "Tommy!" I cried so loud that numerous people stopped to stare. Tommy stopped as well and started to turn, but then he was gone, blocked out by a large man in a tweed blazer passing in front of me. He was gone again. All I wanted was gone again. I hated him right then. For leaving and going where I couldn't follow. Why...it was the only question I could think of him. I hated him so much right then.
That was the only time. The only time I hated him for what he did.
I knew it would come! I knew! The feeling in my heart was right. I'm going to see him, I know. The unbelievable guilt I felt, walking home for the first time in weeks was lifted as soon as I walked in the door. The phone was ringing off the hook and I felt my heart jump. And I knew. I knew it was him.
But it wasn't. It was a strange voice on the other end, one I had heard in my dreams. It was musty and heavy, like he knew worlds more than I could even imagine. Before I could even say hello, he said, "You're looking for him."
I dropped the bag of groceries I had bought on my way home. I could hear the eggs break, but I didn't care.
"Yes." I breathed, my heart stopped. "Yes."
"He is safe. You no longer need to search."
"But why...why do I remember and no one else..." I was on my knees now, tears streaming out of my eyes. It was one of the few times since Tommy had gone that I had allowed myself to cry. Before my father left, he always told me that tears meant defeat. Tears meant you were giving up. I couldn't give up on Tommy. I wouldn't. These weren't tears of defeat; they were tears of complete and utter joy.
"No matter how powerful. No matter how strong. No matter how much control they think they have over us, it is an illusion. Nothing can erase the human will. And your memories are your will. No matter how strong, they can never overcome your longing to remember. Do you want to see him? Do you want to see the truth."
"Yes." I answered.
"Then you will. Come to the Adams Street bridge at midnight. You'll see him again."
Click. Click. Click.
The line went dead.
It's two past midnight and I wait under the bridge and I see headlights in the distance. Tommy is always either late or not coming, but this time, I think I can give him a few extra minutes.
I believe in you
I'll give up everything
Just to find you
I have to be with you
To live to breathe
You're taking over me
"Taking Over Me", Evanescence