Title: Unblinking Gaze
Character: Smith
Rating: G
Synopsis: Smith gets into a staring contest with a cat, and starts down a slippery slope. Set Pre-Matrix.
Unblinking Gaze
Smith walks along the street, when he is caught short by an odd, nameless sensation, compelling him to look to his right. Immediately, he is caught by the intense stare of a cat, sitting in a window.
They're rather primitive programs, and he's never bothered to pay any attention to them before but for some reason he can't pull his eyes away from the gaze of this feline.
It stares at him, as if challenging him to look away and he finds himself rising to meet the challenge.
He can't explain what it is about the cat's amber orbs that compelled him to continue staring, nor can he explain the desire to run a colour corrective diagnostic, out of the bizarre idea that the cat should begrey, not brown.
Ironically enough, Brown is what brings him out of it, finally, laying a hand on his shoulder.
"What were you doing?" Brown's soft voice asks, and Smith feels a brief flash of... something, he has no idea what. He looks into the other Agent's impassive face, giving him a gaze as steady as the cat's, but as cool and distant as the feline's was intense.
He looks back to the window, but the cat has gone.
"Nothing," He finally says.
"Do you require a diagnostic?" Jones asks, and for the first time, Smith thinks he recognizes the tone of Jones' voice. He's heard it in humans, but to a greater degree. Irritation, and with a shock of recognition realizes it's what he experienced when Brown interrupted him.
He wants to nod, and have whatever this is stamped out, but something deep inside flares up and he makes a choice.
"Of course not," he says mildly, but inside he knows something is very very wrong.