The skilled computer hacker Thomas Anderson (or, as he called himself in case the government asked, Neo) sat in front of his computer, half asleep, as images of a web search scrolled across the screen. Neo had rigged the computer to search every page on the internet concerning information about a man named Morpheus. So far, he had only found pages about the police's pointless tries to capture him. He was half asleep as he listened to the sound of low music playing to try to calm his nerves.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
WE COME FROM THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW!
FROM THE MIDNIGHT SUN WHERE THE HOT SPRINGS BLOW!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
So relaxing, he thought to himself. Just then, he noticed the whole screen of his computer went black. Words began appearing on the screen. It said this:
Trinity420 says:
sup?
Neo began typing back.
Neo105 says:
n2m. u?
Trinity420 says:
n2m.
Tinity420 says:
The Matrix still has you...
Neo105 says: The Mattress?Trinity420 says:
No, The Matrix.
Neo105 says:
Oh.
Trinity420 says:
Follow the white rabbit...
Neo105 says:
Huh?
Trinity420 says:
Knock, knock, Neo...
Suddenly, there was a loud knocking on his door.
"AAAAAAH!" he screamed. He looked back at the computer screen.
Trinity420 has left the conversation.
"Crap!" muttered Neo. "I wanted to see if she would be my friend...I'll be alone forever."
He opened the door. Choi, another computer hacker he knew, was standing there. His girlfriend Dujour was standing next to him. She had a strange coil wrapped around her neck.
"Hey," said Choi.
"Hi," murmured Neo, still looking at Dujour's neck.
"I need that program," said Choi.
"Do you have the—that's it, I have to ask, can you breathe in that thing?"
Dujour stared at him.
"No," she said. "Some homeless guy put it on my neck when he was trying to kill me."
"Oh."
"Anyway, I need that disk."
"Do you have the money?"
"All fifty
grand."
Choi handed Neo $50, 000.
"One second," said Neo. He walked into the apartment and took out a hollowed-out copy of the book Simulation and Simulacra, where he hid all of his illegal hacking program disks. Well, he should have kept them in a copy of Simulation and Simulacra. Instead, he just kept then in a rolled up copy of a newspaper from a few weeks ago. He took out one of the disks, put Choi's money on the desk, and walked over back to the door. He handed Choi the disk. Choi looked at it. It was very small.
"What the...? What is this thing? This isn't a disk! It's a puny cookie thing! This thing's, like, an Oreo!"
"Oh, yeah, about
that...it shrunk it the wash."
"Aww, crap."
"Yeah."
"Well,
anyway, we're gonna go to a part tonight. Wanna come?"
"Oh, I dunno...I mean,
I do have work tomorrow..."
Just then, something caught Neo's
eye. It was on Dujour. Neo slapped her.
"Ow!" she cried. "What did you do that for?"
"Mosquito."
"Oh."
"Hey,
cool tattoo!"
"I know! I got it at Ricky's, down the street!
He makes awesome tattoos! Strange, though. He only does rabbits. I
said I wanted a flaming skull, but he said..."
Neo was no longer listening. He had now noticed that her tattoo was of a white rabbit.
"Follow the white rabbit...""On second though," said Neo, "I think I will come."
"Oh," said Choi. "You're actually coming? I wasn't expecting that...um, okay, you can come, but don't expect me to be there..."
Neo glared at him.
Later, in a nightclub, a huge party raged on. The dim lighting made Neo more nervous then he already been, due to the loud music and drunk stoners yelling at him about the end of the world and stuff.
From across the room, a woman walked over to him.
"Great part, huh?" she asked.
"No, not really."
"Way to kill the mood.
Anyway, my name's Trinity."
"The Trinity? The one who
hacked the IRS D-Base?"
"No, that was
Quadrinity, not Trinity."
"Oh."
"But I did hack into my friend's MSN account last week!"
"Wow! That was you? That's even harder to do than the IRS thing!"
"That was a long time
ago."
"No, it wasn't, it was a week ago."
"Oh, yeah.
I probably shouldn't have publicized that I did that. A bunch of
policemen came to my apartment. Pizza delivery, my ass."
"Jesus..."
"What?"
"I just...thought you
were a man..."
"Most guys do. Hey, wait a second? What do you
mean, you thought I was a man?"
"I just meant—"
"You think I'm so
ugly that I look like a man?"
"No, I was talking about—"
"Shut up and
listen."
She leaned forward until her mouth has right beside
Neo's ear.
"I know why you're here," she whispered. "I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question, Neo. It's the question that drives us. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did."
"Which came first, the
chicken or the egg?"
"What? No, retard! 'What is The
Matrix?'"
"I dunno."
"No,
that's the question you know!"
"Oh,
yeah."
"Moron...now, as I was saying. The answer is out there,
Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it
to."
"What will? The
bogeyman?"
"The bogeym...? No, stupid! The
answer!"
"The answer to
what?"
"'What it the Matrix?'!"
"I don't know!"
"I
know you don't! I'm saying that you will find the answer!"
"I will? Oh, I don't
want to wait until then! Can't you tell me now?"
"How stupid
are you?"
"Very."
"I'm out of here!"
She stormed off
angrily.
Neo paused after she left.
"My mom says I'm cool," he said quietly.
He paused, and then went and to get drunk.
Author's Notes: Okay! Chapter 2 done! A bit shorter than the last one, but this scene was shorter than the last one. I will try to make the agents in the office chapter longer. I will also try to maintain a daily update. Please review!