+J.M.J.+

Under the Gun

by "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Sorry for the delay! I got caught up when I was trying to finalize things with a job offer I had. This chapter has existed in draft for a while, I just needed to type it up and get it ready to post. But... here it is, and here's a few thank yous to all of you who left a review:

To dragonus: I think Ash actually sacrifices himself to save Trinity. Granted, she shot him, but I think it was just enough to short out the connection to Agent was trying to make through his awareness, but not enough to kill him outright. But you're right: he should have made it to the other side. He has the stuff to make a good rebel.

To Misty 7: I chose the title just before I came up with the story, and yes, I was listening to the "Animatrix" soundtrack when I was thinking about it! Great music: "Detective Story" has a kinda techno/1940s bebop jazz sound to it which really fits the context very well.

To PadawanMage: Yep, there is definately something going on between Ref and Ash, although I think Ash is a little more interested in Trinity for the moment. But his journey to Zion is gonna take some very wild detours and he almost might not even make it, but we'll see. And re: the modified version of the "history program": I remember stumbling across online the 1992 or 1993 draft of the script for the original "Matrix"; one of the most unusual differences between it and the finished movie is that the history program was a lot longer, including a recreation of the battle between the machines and mankind, which is now a central part of "Second Renaissence, Part 2". It was a lot more like the "Terminator" movies at that point, but the Brothers Wachowski fleshed it out, or maybe I should say "meched" it out, making it more logical.

WARNING: Content may be eerie for some readers: Ash is about to get a close-up look at the desert of the real...

Disclaimer:

See chapter 1

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chapter Three

The Garden of the Matrix

*

I awoke lying on my bunk, Sand sitting beside me, pressing an icepack to the side of my head.

"What the hell was all that?" I asked.

"The truth, I'm afraid," she said.

"I deal in facts," I said. "I'm a detective, or at least I was... Hearsay isn't enough: I need the hard evidence."

She nodded sagely. "I can tell that: Jack was the same way when he was unplugged: a real skeptic, but the longer he stuck at it, the more he believed."

"Seeing is believing," I said.

"Actually, believing is seeing," said a quiet voice. I glanced up to see Ref at the open door, but she scooted away before I could read the look on her face.

* * * * *

Morpheus came in after Sand left, and sat down on a metal box at the foot of my bunk.

"You're having trouble accepting the truth?" he asked.

"I'm old-fashioned. I need proof," I said.

He nodded like an old sage (Come to think of it, that's what he is, except for the old part). "Yes, there are always the skeptics, but we need people like you. They're generally the most realistic and therefore the better fighters. They can see the Matrix for what it is."

I sat up. "Listen, enough of this way of the warrior crap. I need some tangible proof I can see with my own eyes."

He was silent, as if he was turning this over in his head, or maybe he just didn't have a good answer. Then he went on: "That can be arranged. It will be difficult and very dangerous, but if it will help you, we will take the risk." He got up.

"What now?" I asked.

"We're redirecting our course. Instead of taking you to Zion, we're taking you to the surface first."

* * * * * *

Some minutes later, Trinity stuck her head in to check on me. "How's the head?" she asked, with a quiet kind of concern.

"Aching," I said. "Ain't the first time I took a knot on it, though. No wait. Those weren't real knots. It was only what the machines told me I was feeling." Even I could hear the sneering drawl in my voice.

"You sound a little as if you were starting to believe," she pointed out.

I shrugged. "Just kidding. At least until I see proof otherwise."

"You'll get it soon enough. We should be at the surface in a few hours. I'll be there with you." She glanced out into the corridor. "Hey, evening mess is in a few minutes. You're welcome to join us, or I could send something to you in case you're still shaky."

"No, I'm in one piece," I said, getting up to prove it. "Hey, what's with that runt Ref snooping around here?"

She stepped aside to let me out. "I think she's got her eye on you, which may be a good thing since she's had her eye on Jack even though he's with Sand," she said.

"Okay, so you with anybody?" I had to ask it sooner or later.

"Yes," she said, with a shadow of a smile. "His name's Neo; I helped him unplug just before we found you. He's back in Zion training at the academy, but he barely needs the training. We believe he's the One."

I rubbed my ear. "The what?"

She drew a long breath, clearly in preparation for a long story. "Long ago, when all this started, there was a man born in the Matrix who found a way to break free. He led several hundred people into the real world. They built Zion but he went back to free more people. The Matrix consumed him, but the Oracle prophesied that he would return to free mankind and defeat the machines."

"But do *you* believe he's this... 'One'?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yes. I've seen him do things within the Matrix that no one else has, to my knowledge. He defeated an Agent alone."

"Impressive," I said. I figured she meant one of those weird Feds or whatever they were that had come after us. Anyone who could nail one of those guys must have something going for him.

It all sounded like a rehash of the Christian messianic legend. Mind you, I used to be Catholic, but I gave that up for Lent.

Come to think of it, I wasn't anything at all, if all this machine revolt stuff was real....

Trinity led me to the mess deck, where the rest of the crew had gathered. Sand stood in the galley, working some kind of pump into a tin bowl with a metal spoon sticking out of it. As I sat down at the table, next to Trinity and across from Ref, Sand came over and put the bowl down in front of me.

I looked down at a runny mass of glop that looked like very undercooked and lumpy egg whites.

"I know 'What *IS* that?!'" Jack said.

I poked at it with the spoon. "I was about to ask that."

"It's single-cell derived protein, mixed with vitamin supplements," Sand said. "We grow it in a vat."

Ref changed the subject. "Hey, Ash, I heard from Trinity you had a tense moment with Agents, coming out."

"Yeah, if you mean those wierd guys that look like Feds with sunglasses," I said, choking down a mouthful of goop. I expected it to taste bad, but it didn't taste like anything, which was worse. "They set me up, trying to use me to get at Trinity. I didn't know what to expect, but at least I'm out of that mess."

"We'll find a place for you on the crew, once we figure out what you're good at," Tank said.

"I used to be a detective, and I'm good with computers," I said. "I'm a pretty good shot, too."

"Maybe you could be a bodyguard or an assassin," Ref suggested.

"Maybe," I said. "But I don't think I got what you do here?"

"I'm an archivist," Ref said, with the kind of voice you hear from someone who really enjoys their work. "I collect stuff for the Zion archive, which means I basically go into the Matrix and hunt up historical documents and literary texts and art treasures, then come back and upload the stuff into the Construct so we can move it to the Archives. That history program Morpheus showed you: that's my work."

"Pretty good work, maybe a little too good," I said. "So now, you just go to museums and stuff inside the Matrix and take a look-see at stuff there?"

She wagged her head. "Kinda. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to get the real stuff, which is even better."

"If there's anything close to a cushy job in this world, Ref has it," Jack said with a trace of respectful envy.

"Don't let him fool you: it's getting to be a hard job," Ref said. "So many museums are closing and breaking up their collections. And there's this French guy who keeps beating me to the really good stuff, so I have to stay one step ahead of him. Thing is, when the Matrix goes, so will all that art, and a lot of it is really copies of art and things from waaaay back. Can't have that happen."

"Wonder if the machines are getting wise to you," I said.

"You could be right, but I'm not letting that stop my work," she said.

Zara snorted. "Shameless waste of time and data storage if you ask me."

"Hey, she's preserving the stuff that makes us really human," I said. "You think those machines know how to create nice stuff?" Mind you, I'm no art expert, but I at least know an oil painting from an operetta. I happen to be a fan of F. Scott Fitgerald and I have to be honest and say I got a lot of my inspiration from Dashiell Hamnett and Raymond Chandler.

Zara took this in silence, but she turned up her nose at me and turned her attention back to her bowl. Ref smiled at me, but I pretended not to notice.

After the meal, I lay on my bunk preparatory to falling asleep, when someone tapped on the door to my cabin, tentatively, almost as if they were afraid the door might bite them.

"It's open," I called.

It opened and Ref came in. She closed the door behind her.

After a nervous moment of silence, she said, "I just wanted to thank you for sticking up for me at mess when Zara got on my case.

I shrugged. "Someone had to do it," I said.

She reached up and put a hand on my shoulder. I found my hand reaching up to clasp it gently. Her eyes found mine, but then she turned them away with that Catholic schoolgirl modesty. She withdrew her hand.

"I better get going, I have a late shift to run," she said. She went away more quickly than she had come.

* * * * * *

By next morning, if you could call it that since it was perpetually dark, we'd reached a duct running toward the surface. Morpheus piloted the ship through the tunnel, while down below, in the bowels of the ship, Trinity helped me get ready to take that step onto the surface.

"We'll have to make this quick: it's very dangeous up there," Jack said. "If the machines spot you, we'll have major trouble on our hands."

At length, we stopped moving. Zara and Jack opened an access hatch, then lowered a metal ladder down to the ground. Trinity, armed with a plasma rifle, this big, wierd-looking gun that looked like a bad cross between an Uzi and a rivet gun, went down first, then signalled up to me to follow.

I climbed down quickly but quietly and joined her on the ground. She led me out of the shadow of the ship, our footsteps silent on the grey lichens and moss that covered the earth, which rose slightly, as if we were inside a crater or something.

The cold air hit me, as cold as a day in January, burning my lungs. When I caught my breath, Trinity guided me up the slope.

About halfway up, she changed direction, avoiding the top of the hill, leading me around to the side, keeping the plasma rifle levelled.

As we rounded the hill, we came in sight of a vast field undera boiling black sky. Or at least, it looked like a field, with the millions of grey-black stalk-like things planted in it. A lightning bolt flashed across the horizon, lighting it up. From each of the stalks hung several red pods, some not much bigger than grapes, others the size of cantaloupes.

Trinity led me closer, within ten feet of the nearest stalks, which seemed made of the same black stuff, like a cross between iron and whatever your fingernails are made of, that those power plants were made of. Close enough that I got an eyeful of those pod-things.

There was a baby inside the largest one. Just like there was a human inside each one of those pods on the power plants. A fetus, with a cable almost as big around as its head socketed into the back of its skull.

I turned to her, hoping she could read the question in my eyes. What are the machines doing to us?!

Her eyes flicked up to scan the area around us, then to mine, then to the pods, apparently telling me to keep looking. As we stood watching, I noticed small metal spiders, pint-sized versions of the thing that had unlocked the cable in my head, scuttling up and down the stalks, examining the fetus, then scurrying back down.

She glanced back, the way we had come, then looked up, watching the field. She nudged my arm and beckoned me to follow. We hurried back toward the ship, then she put her hand on my arm, stopping me. She pointed back.

The roar of a motor arose from the far end of the field. I looked the way Trinity pointed.

A machine like a kind of combine harvester hovering in mid-air moved up the rows of stalks. Long clear tubes hung from it, moving among the stalks like nightmare vaccuum cleaner hoses. It got close enough that we could see the tubes reach for the stalks close to where we had stood. A claw-hand gripper on the end of the tube took hold of a ripe fetal pod and detatched it from the stalk with a clack. Then with a sucking sound, the pod moved up into the tube, joining others in the maw of the machine.

Trinity touched my arm, but I barely felt it. She made me turn around and helped me back to the ship.

"What in hell is going on? What are they doing?" I asked, once we'd gotten safely inside and the hatch had been closed behind us.

"They take the stronger, healthier fetuses and they plug them into the power plants," she said. "The weaker ones they destroy and use to feed the survivors."

"You believe it now?" Tank asked.

"I have to talk to Morpheus," I said.

Sand patted my arm. "Wait till we get back to a safe depth."

I know I went back to my cabin, I know I sat down on the bunk, and I know I sat there a long time

So it was true. I was only a human battery. I hadn't been born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1923 (or whatever year it was), I didn't have an older brother Charles, a sister Violet and a younger brother Michael. I didn't have a father who worked as a plumber and an interior painter, or a mother who taught grade school till she got married. I didn't grow up listening to "The Shadow" and "The Green Hornet" on the radio and I hadn't been president of the high school computer club four years in a row. It was all a looking glass image.

Even the wall behind my back didn't feell like a real wall. It was all a figment, a cypher, a jabberwocky... and what was I? Who was I?

Maybe the crazy one wasn't so crazy after all.

At length I heard the door open. I looked up. Morpheus stepped into the room and sat down on the box at the foot of my bunk. "So you have seen the fields with your own eyes."

I nodded. The words just wouldn't come out.

"You are not so different from me, when my mind was first freed," he said. "I couldn't believe it to be real either, until I had seen those fields for myself."

I found my voice. "Did you want to go back?"

"I did. I nearly made that choice. But I realized that if I made that choice, I would be choosing to live a lie, and that is a far worse thing than living a lie out of ignorance."

I shook my head. "I dunno. Part of me is thinking I was better off where I came from."

He looked at me in silence, his deep brown eyes seeming to look through me, reading me like an open book. "If you want to go back, let me warn you: the Matrix does not forgive those who return after they made the choice to leave. Give yourself time to prove yourself to yourself. Hold on, and see where this leads you."

I realized he was right, dammit. I'd never been one to give up on a case... well, in those dreams I'd had for the past twenty-eight years.

"All right," I said, rising from the bunk. "Let's see where this lead takes us."

To be continued....