Chapter Twelve: Interlude
I open my eyes. I'm sitting on the couch in my office, Harris in front of me in a chair. The diagnostic is over. I feel all the way back to normal, a great change from the isolated and slowly going crazy me that had been set free.
"Two minor errors were found in your thought processing subprograms," says Harris, "Very likely caused by the stress of your isolation. They have been fixed. In addition, a probable counter for the capture device was discovered and has been added to the antiviral subprograms of all agents."
I am relieved that nothing major was found. Also that there wasn't any lasting affect from Persephone. I'm even more relieved that with the new software, I won't have to worry about being captured again.
I stand up. Now what?
There are traces of possible rebel activity in the east Bay area. Searches are being run.
If anything is found, we will go, I say. I feel Harris' assent.
Nothing much happened the rest of the day. In the evening, we were called south to Santa Cruz. There was a disturbance on the university campus. A student was coming very, very close to realizing the truth of the matrix. We were being sent around to give him the choice of staying plugged in or going to Zion.
The rebels had not found this one. If they had, and managed to contact him first, he would be counted among their number. But right now we had a chance and he had a choice.
I transfer together with Harris and Williams south to Santa Cruz, on the north end of town. Williams arranges for a car to be there, through a minor manipulation of the matrix. We get in and drive towards the campus, spread out in the middle of the woods in the hills overlooking town.
I remembered coming here to look at the school, though it seemed like the memories of a different person. Maybe because they were. The school looked the same, though. Scattered buildings on a wide grassy hillside, and further up the redwood forest, blocking the view of most of the buildings. Below us is the sea, and the sun setting to the west.
Harris stops the car on the road below a place I, or maybe she, remembers quite well. On the upper edge of the grassy space the hill grows steeper, and there is a statue. More of a modern art installation, really. A big red squiggle like a few joined "w"s, more than ten feet high, mounted on a concrete base.
Our target had climbed up into one of the curves and was sitting there with his feet dangling a little bit above the concrete, watching the sun set down below the ocean. He either doesn't notice or doesn't care about our arrival. I think it is more probable that he doesn't care. From where he is sitting he could have watched our car drive up from almost the base of the long hill, for maybe the last five minutes.
We all get out and walk towards the target. Harris and I hang back and stop about ten meters down the path and Williams goes on to the base of the squiggle.
"Mr. Madison?" he says, "Could I have a word with you?"
Mr. Madison doesn't give any indication of having heard. The air is still and cool, as the last of the sun disappears behind the clouds at the horizon.
"You know," he says, "Sometimes I get a feeling that I could go to jump down from here and not hit the ground. Just float away." He looks down at the ground, and then jumps. His feet impact heavily, as they should. Mr. Madison looks towards Agent Williams. "So, who are you guys with? FBI, CIA? MIB?" He grins.
Williams shakes his head. "Mr. Madison, we know what you've been doing." He raises an eyebrow. "Seen any white rabbits lately?"
Mr. Madison's eyes widen, and his gaze wanders towards us and then back to Williams. He shuffles backwards a bit. "Oh. Not MIB. The other movie."
Agent Williams nods.
"Uh." Mr. Madison goes to pinch himself. "Is this really happening? Or am I asleep right now?"
"I assure you, this is real. Though in a sense, you are asleep." He pauses. "If you could, would you want to wake up?"
Mr. Madison is too startled to do anything but answer the question. "Uh. This is... I don't know. I never really thought..."
"But you did. Or else we wouldn't be here now."
Mr. Madison turns to look out at the darkening sea. "I did think. But I thought it would be the other guys showing up. Not... agents." He names us cautiously, as if he is afraid that by acknowledging what we are, he will loose his grip on the edge of reality.
"This may have been easier if we had waited another week to contact you, so that you had seen Revolutions and had the full story. But you are ready now." Williams takes a step closer to Mr. Madison. "You can stay here, dreaming this dream. Or you can choose to wake up and find the truth of what is."
"I need to think about it...?"
"No. You have thought about it. We would not be here if you had not. You must decide now."
"Float away..." Mr. Madison mumbles to himself.
He takes a deep breath, and turns to look Agent Williams full in the sunglasses. "I want to wake up. Assuming you guys are really agents and I'm in the matrix and this isn't some stupid gag my roommate put you up to 'cause I'm all obsessed with those movies. I want to wake up."
That was easy, I comment.
Ssh, says Harris. It isn't over.
Williams nods. I sense some very big and complicated interaction going on between Williams, the boy, and the agency. Final authorization for his sanctioned unplugging. No need for pills of any kind. Then the last commands are sent.
Mr. Madison's eyes widen as he is woken up in his pod. Then his avatar tumbles forwards and drops to the ground as he is unplugged. I request an alteration to it so that when he is found it will appear that Mr. Madison died of an untimely heart attack. Our job here is done.
James Madison didn't quite know what to expect when the agents said they were going to unplug him; but what little he did expect included waking up in a big pink gooey pod, and this is what he got. He reaches up through the gel, trying to blink his eyes clear and failing.
"Ghfkgrl—" He chokes around the breathing tube and scrabbles at it with pale, withered, wired-up arms, trying to comprehend what is happening to him.
He had been in a weird mood up on the hill. Watching the sunset he had all but fallen in to a trance, and in that altered state of consciousness it had seemed natural that the agents had shown up.
James had been a fan of the movies and had often had thoughts about what if the matrix was real. And not just in the sense of 'the matrix is really society telling you what to think and what to do'. He had often hoped green text would spontaneously appear on his computer.
The agents getting to him first had been a surprise. And it was even more of a surprise that they didn't send him home dead or brainwashed, but rather set him free. Or something...
The breathing tube comes up out of his throat and he gags. The air is bitingly cold and tastes like electricity and just a bit like a swamp. It is dark, except for a slight glow coming from the pods around him. The pods.
James slumps against the side of his pod and blinks his eyes, the scum of goop and disuse sliding away. As far as he can see, towers rise towards the clouded sky. The pink pods sprout like strange fruit all along the towers. He pants from exertion, though he has hardly moved since awakening.
Now what? A big hovering robot that looks vaguely like a giant black metal spider slides into his field of view. Oh, that. He doesn't even try to resist as the machine grabs him in its arms and starts drilling at the big plug in the back of his head. It hurts quite a bit, but he just doesn't have the energy to do anything by lie there and take it.
The wires spring off of the many plugs in his body, with twinges like static shocks, and the machine releases its hold on his neck. James whimpers, thinking about what happens next in the movie. He squeezes his eyes shut, preparing to be flushed. But nothing happens. He opens his eyes. The machine is still there. It seems as if it is staring at him.
"What?" he whispers, after a few abortive attempts to find his tongue.
The machine backs up suddenly, and zooms off to somewhere else in what James thinks of as the power plant. He hears something coming from above, with a sound he has never heard before. It sounded a little bit like the sound effects from the movies, but much more... real. Which made sense, because it was.
Or James was going crazy. There was always that possibility. But James had always had a very laid back approach to life, and so figured if he was indeed going crazy and hallucinating all this, he might as well deal with it. True or not, it was here, and so he'd react in the only way possible; by accepting it.
The thing making the weird noise drops into view. It's some big machine that looks a little like a barge. A postmodern, post-human barge designed by Escher on acid.
And there were some... things standing on the barge. The looked vaguely human to James' eyes, at least at first. On closer examination they looked more like the Borg's first cousins. A bit less pasty in the areas that looked like skin and more sleek black metal with fewer protruding wires on the places that weren't. They didn't have any fake, spinney hand attachments either, though one or two had the Doc Oc look going on. These had anywhere from two to six sentinel type arms protruding from their backs.
One of the sentinel-human hybrid looking things was standing at the edge of the barge closest to James, tentacles stretched in his direction. The barge hovers, and the arms reach out and grab James. He is too weak to try and resist, and he probably couldn't have resisted even if he was at full strength. The thing was just too strong.
It lifted up James' limp and naked body and placed it on the barge. He could tell these things were all robotic, now. No trace of human flesh or hair graced their purely artificial bodies. He can't even find the strength to whimper as one of the others kneels down by him and injects something into him with a long needle that extended out of its forefinger. The world goes darker than it is naturally, and James passes out.
He comes to somewhere else. It is much warmer here, though the air still has a metallic bite to it. His cheek is presses against something a little scratchy. Not his own pillow.
James opens his eyes. They feel scratchy, as if he stayed up for much too long and then slept too little. He is looking at a rough stone wall, lit softly by overhead bulbs. Where am I?, he thinks.
He tries to find his arms, and succeeds. They feel weaker than normal, but nothing like how he felt back in the pod, an indeterminate length of time ago.
James levers his hands underneath him and pushes against the rough blanket covering the cot he woke up on. After a moment or two he manages to get up into a sitting position. Everything feels just a bit rougher, just a bit more real than it ever did before. He finds he is wearing a roughly knit gown of the hospital variety. It scratches against his skin, but there is some heat to this place so he is not cold, despite the drafty garment.
He blinks his eyes into focus. The room he is in looks like some kind of infirmary or hospital, except the walls and ceiling look like they were carved out of stone. There is a door; he finds when it attracts his attention by opening.
A normal looking woman wearing long pale cream robes that leave her arms bare walks in. She has very short, light blond hair and looks like she is in her thirties. She is followed by one of the humanoid robot creatures like the ones back in that nightmarish scene back in the towers of the power plant. It has glowing red eyes, which does nothing good for James' nerves.
The woman smiles at him. "So you're awake, James. Don't worry, you're all right. My name is Samantha."
James nods uncertainly, eyeing the creature behind her nervously.
It notices his attention. "Hello, James. I am Larry," it, or possibly he, says in a friendly and modulated voice. "I supervised your rehabilitation with Samantha."
Larry? A strange name for such a creature. But thinking further, James couldn't think of any reason he shouldn't be called Larry if he wants to be.
Samantha smiles. "You probably have some questions," she says.
James nods, still unable to take his eyes off of Larry. "That's an understatement," he says, his voice rough from lack of use. Larry chuckles, a surprisingly human sound from such a non-human looking creature. James notices for the first time that Larry has 'hair' made of little metallic dreadlocks, like the tentacles of the sentinels. They move independently, with little metallic clanking noises.
"Uh." He looks around for a blanket or anything to better cover himself with. "Are there any pants around here? And uh, where is here?"
"'Here' is the unplugging recovery infirmary in Zion. And yes we have pants. Would you like some?"
"Yes please," says James. Zion, huh? Guess something pretty important did happen in Revolutions if agents unplug him of his own free will and send him via robot escort to Zion.
Samantha walks over to one of the metal cupboards lining the stone wall and opens one, pulling out a set of loose fitting pants and a long sleeved v-necked shirt, both made of an off-white knit fabric.
"Here you go," she says as she walks over to James' bench and hands the clothes to him. "Standard newbie issue."
James takes them. "Thanks," he says. They feel rough. "Can I uh, put them on now?"
Samantha nods, but doesn't make any motion to leave the room or even turn her back. Well, she did say she supervised his recovery. James had been unconscious through it, but figured rightly that she had plenty of chances to get a look at him, if she wanted to.
James shrugs mentally, and pulls the pants on under the short, open backed robe. The pants have a tie string at the top, kind of like sweatpants. He takes off the robe, and struggles into the knit shirt. It is a little tighter than James is used to. As the sleeves slide over his arms he tries to ignore how it catches against the metal plugs in his skin.
He takes a deep breath of the tinny tasting air and slides off the table to stand on his own two feet for the very first time.
"Okay," says James. "I'm going to try and keep an open mind and assume nothing. So tell me why. Why agents of all things freed me and sent me to Zion, why there's a machine," he nods towards Larry, "here, why all of this is happening to me. Is this real? Or am I going to wake up and find it has all been a dream."
"Oh, this is real," says Larry. "And by the way, you don't need to talk about me like I'm not standing here."
"Sorry," says James. "This is all just a bit of a shock, you know."
The corners of Larry's face pull back into a smile, and he nods. "That is understandable. Samantha, perhaps you would like to explain?"
"Okay," says Samantha. "I'll give it to you as plain and simple as I can. The movies, they're all real. This is really Zion. But the war is over, at least here. Here in Zion, there is peace and coexistence between the two races of man and machine, and there has been for a few hundred years. Those that really and truly desire and choose to be free are unplugged and brought here."
"How many people?" says James.
"Fewer than you'd think," says Samantha.
Larry cuts in. "The population of Zion stays pretty steady at about one hundred thousand humans and ten thousand machines."
"Oh," says James.
"I said the war was over here," says Samantha. "It isn't over everywhere. A handful of years after the Truce between man and machine, a few thousand of the survivors decided the war wasn't over for them and took off on their own. They rejected the Truce, and want nothing but to completely destroy the matrix along with all machine life."
"It is sad," says Larry. "That so many choose to seek out death and destruction rather than to perpetuate understanding and the betterment of our joined future."
James mumbles a line from Reloaded under his breath. The only way to get there is together.
"And that's true, is it?" says James. "You all are right and the others are wrong?"
Samantha grins lopsidedly. "It isn't anywhere near so black and white as that. If things had unfolded just a little differently, you might have been snatched up by one of the traitor's ships."
Larry cuts in. "But you are here and it is now. If you really want to you can go back. Some do. Most don't. And the traitors don't have that option."
"Only you can say if this was the right thing for you to do," says Samantha. "And only time will tell what you will do."
James nods. "All right, then," he says uncertainly. "How about a, uh, tour?"
Larry smiles broadly. "Right his way," he says.