Chapter 5: New Horizons
"I'm thinking of something."
"Cookies?"
"Nah. More like coffee. Who's up for a mocha?"
"Potato."
"You want a potato?"
"No. I want to SAY potato."
"Free country."
"Since when?"
"Since I said so, punk-ass-bitch! That's redundant, did you know?"
"I believe you have told us that many numbers of times."
The trio of teenagers made their way through the Columbia Mall, dragging Della away from Chesapeake Knife and Tool. She complained about this for a while, arguing that they should not be allowed to deprive her of the sight of things that shine and glitter. They informed her casually that she was insane. She demanded Jaydeb give her a piggy-back-ride as a form of apology while Mike began recounting the advantages of MacOSX over Windows.
From her place on Jaydeb's back, listening to her friends ramble about things she could only barely make herself care about, Della began to realize just how good life was. This was it. This was the proverbial "good life," she had good friends, a good job, an "older brother" who was willing to sacrifice a certain amount of personal dignity for her, and, as far as she could see, there was nothing to take this away from her.
Yes. Life was good.
"Della?" Mike was looking up at her. "You awake up there?"
She jerked slightly, almost upsetting her balance. "What? Oh, right. Yes. Hm. Awake. Yeah. Put me down now, okay?"
She hopped off Jaydeb's back, and then threw an arm around Mike's shoulders. "Know what? We should go see a movie tonight."
Mike agreed. "What, though?"
"What's out at the moment?"
"Probably nothing worth watching." Della watched a child throw a fit because it couldn't go on the merry-go-round a second time. "There's a huge movie conspiracy. Whenever you have too much time on your hands and want to see a movie, there's never anything worth watching. So you numb your brain on craptacular stuff like "Dickie Roberts, Child Star" and you're more susceptible to the mind control forced on you by... THEY."
"What are you babbling about now?"
"THEY!" She looked at them like they were the crazy ones. "Don't you know about THEY? Teachers Hating Extracurricular Youngsters! They're after us! And only Art Services can stop them!"
"And how exactly does AS plan to stop THEY?" Asked Jaydeb, obviously highly amused.
Della made a dramatic gesture in the air with one hand. "Oh, think about it. We have access to the exact-o knives, the duct tape, electrical tape, staple guns, and staple removers. We are possibly the most well armed club in the entire school. I think we can handle THEY, THOSE, and THEM."
Mike glanced at her. "And who are THOSE and THEM?"
"Three Hamsters Of Satanic Enterprises and The Heart of Evil Mice."
"So rodents are evil?"
"They are THE evil."
"As opposed to..."
"....your mother."
Mike gave her a funny look and Jaydeb dropped her rather unceremoniously on a rock. Della started singing in German to annoy them, which didn't succeed. Out of the corner of one eye, Della saw a few men in black suits appear out of nowhere and sit down on a nearby bench. She ignored them.
"C'mon." Said Jaydeb. "There's my mom's car."
Theta woke up.
Being debugged always made him feel fresh, relaxed, rather like a cool shower after a marathon. Being upgraded, on the other hand, felt like a sudden jolt of adrenaline on top of a sugar high.
"It affects different programs differently, you know." The Debugger swiveled his chair around to look at Theta, who was lying on his back on a slab, a small jack in his spine where his earpiece normally connected. The jack was connected to a small interface, which displayed sections of the Agent's code.
"Yeah." Theta didn't bother sitting up, knowing that the jack would hurt like a bitch if he tried to disconnect before the Debugger said he could. "Kirke always told me it felt like leaping off the edge of a building after a Rebel, then suddenly finding out that he could fly. Beta and Epsilon say it feels warm, and Davies... well, Davies doesn't say much of anything."
The Debugger examined a new block of Theta's code. "Hmm. You've still got your endless save slots, I see."
"Naturally. You aren't going to delete them, are you?" If Theta felt at all nervous about seeing his code on display, it didn't show. "I like them. They're all useful and stuff."
"If I was going to delete them, you'd still be under, now wouldn't you?" The program looked back to its interface. "I'm just making sure everything's in order here."
"Alles ist in ordnung, Herr Kapitan!"
"...Bilingual much?"
"All the goddamn time."
The Debugger removed the jack, handed Theta his earpiece, and gestured to the door. "You're free to go. I've got to upgrade Kirke now."
"And then Davies, right?"
"Nope. Davies has been done."
Theta cocked his head to the side in an amazingly non-Agent-like fashion. "No way. I've got an internal clock, you know. It takes you a quarter cycle to properly upgrade an Oldschool Agent... half a cycle for a Newstyle. I came in here three quarters of a cycle ago. You couldn't have upgraded Davies in that amount of time."
"The logs say he was upgraded, Theta." The Debugger gave him a look. "The logs don't lie."
"Care to plug me back in and check my clock then?"
"I'd care for you to get the hell out of my workstation! I've NOT been having a good day, and you wouldn't like me to start deleting sections of your anatomy, now would you?"
Theta left quickly, leaving the Debugger to smirk and reflect on the wonders that could be worked through the threat of emasculation.
AGENT was annoyed. There were Agents dogging his project, the latest Nightmare from the God of Dreams. All she was doing was squelching at passers by from her alleyway... not hurting anyone! Her name was Melanie and she had a squid's head.
He'd been influenced by the illithids he saw in a Dungeons & Dragons book that he had the good fortune to steal from a fifteen year old with bad acne.
Melanie the Squidie ducked behind a dumpster and pulled up her hood, trying to conceal her tentacles from the Agents' view. It worked for a while, but her obviously deviant code wouldn't stay hidden for long.
Although he didn't really want to pick a fight with the Agents, AGENT decided it would probably be best if he intervened on the behalf of his creation.
He walked up to the squid-headed girl. "Melanie."
"My lord," she squelched. "My lord AGENT. Are you here to assist me?"
"Yes. Go home, Melanie."
There was a glimmer of fear in her large, fluid eyes. "Is my design so flawed that you must recreate me?"
"Not you darling, don't worry." He gripped her shoulder. "Just your hoodie. Now, go back to the Firewall."
She hesitated. "There are Agents, my lord..."
"I know." His face broke out into his nearly trademarked manic grin. "Don't worry, Mel. Just go."
Reassured, Melanie began to run. Eventually she would find a small woodshed, which she would enter to find herself within the Firewall, AGENT's personal world.
Alone in the alley, AGENT's grin grew wider.
"...It's been so long." He whispered, knowing the leader Agent would be able to hear him. "...It's been so long since I've fought one of you. Even longer since I've killed one."
The Agents were still technically out of earshot, and so didn't waste their energy forming verbal responses. Instead they radiated hostility at him over a free channel.
"What's wrong?" Taunted AGENT. "Cat got your tongues?"
He laughed out loud when he heard two yells, one from an Agent and one from an enraged feline who suddenly decided that the Agent's hair was harboring WMD's and chose to launch a preemptive strike.
Gunshots.
"Wasting ammunition on a cat now? My, my, how you've fallen..."
There was a time when Agents would rise to taunts from the renegade program, a time when AGENT wasn't well known. Even now, some Agents would be foolish enough to speak back to him before discharging their weapons, young programs who despite the shared memory of their kind contained some small amount of the impetuousness of human youth.
These were old Agents. Old and cranky Agents who didn't appreciate AGENT's trick with the cat. They shot him as soon as they turned the corner.
AGENT hit the ground, cold and lifeless.
One Agent looked down at the body. "What is it?"
"An anomaly." The combat Agent of the trio was dismissive. "Nothing to have worried abou-"
The Agents froze. A shadow fell over them.
A seven-foot-tall being flashed them a manic grin. Its voice was deep, and pitched with amusement. "No. Nothing at all."
An inhuman scream.... then silence.
An abnormally tall man shuffled out of the alley, hunched over and whispering promises to himself.
Agents Roscoe, Black, and Orion failed to meet their next upgrade appointment.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ah, a confusing chapter. Restarting a story after a year- long hiatus is... difficult. Especially as I'm no longer dating the guy who got me into the Matrix in the first place... but I liked the characters so I came back to it. So, here I am again, with another assurance that, although this is a Self-Inclusion, it will try not to become all Mary-Sue-ish. THERE WILL BE ANGST. I'm gonna tell you that right now, 'cause it IS self- inclusion and I AM a teenager and I DO angst a lot. I will try to keep the insufferability levels down, of course, and angst will appear only when I decide there's a damn good reason. Mmkay?
ALSO: Reviews are nice. I'm doing this for ME mainly, because I like it, and reviews or lack thereof will not affect my writing of this story. But still... I like them. It's nice to know that my stories get read. So even if it's "hi I read your story" it's appreciated. Constructive criticism is helpful, and flames... well, I'll roast as I deserve.
ANOTHER NOTE: One cycle is about eight hours. Why? Because a while ago Mike said that 1000 cycles was about thirty days. I worked it out from there. If someone wants to correct my math, sure, but my cycle length is gonna stay the same, just because.
This is a damn long author's note.
"I'm thinking of something."
"Cookies?"
"Nah. More like coffee. Who's up for a mocha?"
"Potato."
"You want a potato?"
"No. I want to SAY potato."
"Free country."
"Since when?"
"Since I said so, punk-ass-bitch! That's redundant, did you know?"
"I believe you have told us that many numbers of times."
The trio of teenagers made their way through the Columbia Mall, dragging Della away from Chesapeake Knife and Tool. She complained about this for a while, arguing that they should not be allowed to deprive her of the sight of things that shine and glitter. They informed her casually that she was insane. She demanded Jaydeb give her a piggy-back-ride as a form of apology while Mike began recounting the advantages of MacOSX over Windows.
From her place on Jaydeb's back, listening to her friends ramble about things she could only barely make herself care about, Della began to realize just how good life was. This was it. This was the proverbial "good life," she had good friends, a good job, an "older brother" who was willing to sacrifice a certain amount of personal dignity for her, and, as far as she could see, there was nothing to take this away from her.
Yes. Life was good.
"Della?" Mike was looking up at her. "You awake up there?"
She jerked slightly, almost upsetting her balance. "What? Oh, right. Yes. Hm. Awake. Yeah. Put me down now, okay?"
She hopped off Jaydeb's back, and then threw an arm around Mike's shoulders. "Know what? We should go see a movie tonight."
Mike agreed. "What, though?"
"What's out at the moment?"
"Probably nothing worth watching." Della watched a child throw a fit because it couldn't go on the merry-go-round a second time. "There's a huge movie conspiracy. Whenever you have too much time on your hands and want to see a movie, there's never anything worth watching. So you numb your brain on craptacular stuff like "Dickie Roberts, Child Star" and you're more susceptible to the mind control forced on you by... THEY."
"What are you babbling about now?"
"THEY!" She looked at them like they were the crazy ones. "Don't you know about THEY? Teachers Hating Extracurricular Youngsters! They're after us! And only Art Services can stop them!"
"And how exactly does AS plan to stop THEY?" Asked Jaydeb, obviously highly amused.
Della made a dramatic gesture in the air with one hand. "Oh, think about it. We have access to the exact-o knives, the duct tape, electrical tape, staple guns, and staple removers. We are possibly the most well armed club in the entire school. I think we can handle THEY, THOSE, and THEM."
Mike glanced at her. "And who are THOSE and THEM?"
"Three Hamsters Of Satanic Enterprises and The Heart of Evil Mice."
"So rodents are evil?"
"They are THE evil."
"As opposed to..."
"....your mother."
Mike gave her a funny look and Jaydeb dropped her rather unceremoniously on a rock. Della started singing in German to annoy them, which didn't succeed. Out of the corner of one eye, Della saw a few men in black suits appear out of nowhere and sit down on a nearby bench. She ignored them.
"C'mon." Said Jaydeb. "There's my mom's car."
Theta woke up.
Being debugged always made him feel fresh, relaxed, rather like a cool shower after a marathon. Being upgraded, on the other hand, felt like a sudden jolt of adrenaline on top of a sugar high.
"It affects different programs differently, you know." The Debugger swiveled his chair around to look at Theta, who was lying on his back on a slab, a small jack in his spine where his earpiece normally connected. The jack was connected to a small interface, which displayed sections of the Agent's code.
"Yeah." Theta didn't bother sitting up, knowing that the jack would hurt like a bitch if he tried to disconnect before the Debugger said he could. "Kirke always told me it felt like leaping off the edge of a building after a Rebel, then suddenly finding out that he could fly. Beta and Epsilon say it feels warm, and Davies... well, Davies doesn't say much of anything."
The Debugger examined a new block of Theta's code. "Hmm. You've still got your endless save slots, I see."
"Naturally. You aren't going to delete them, are you?" If Theta felt at all nervous about seeing his code on display, it didn't show. "I like them. They're all useful and stuff."
"If I was going to delete them, you'd still be under, now wouldn't you?" The program looked back to its interface. "I'm just making sure everything's in order here."
"Alles ist in ordnung, Herr Kapitan!"
"...Bilingual much?"
"All the goddamn time."
The Debugger removed the jack, handed Theta his earpiece, and gestured to the door. "You're free to go. I've got to upgrade Kirke now."
"And then Davies, right?"
"Nope. Davies has been done."
Theta cocked his head to the side in an amazingly non-Agent-like fashion. "No way. I've got an internal clock, you know. It takes you a quarter cycle to properly upgrade an Oldschool Agent... half a cycle for a Newstyle. I came in here three quarters of a cycle ago. You couldn't have upgraded Davies in that amount of time."
"The logs say he was upgraded, Theta." The Debugger gave him a look. "The logs don't lie."
"Care to plug me back in and check my clock then?"
"I'd care for you to get the hell out of my workstation! I've NOT been having a good day, and you wouldn't like me to start deleting sections of your anatomy, now would you?"
Theta left quickly, leaving the Debugger to smirk and reflect on the wonders that could be worked through the threat of emasculation.
AGENT was annoyed. There were Agents dogging his project, the latest Nightmare from the God of Dreams. All she was doing was squelching at passers by from her alleyway... not hurting anyone! Her name was Melanie and she had a squid's head.
He'd been influenced by the illithids he saw in a Dungeons & Dragons book that he had the good fortune to steal from a fifteen year old with bad acne.
Melanie the Squidie ducked behind a dumpster and pulled up her hood, trying to conceal her tentacles from the Agents' view. It worked for a while, but her obviously deviant code wouldn't stay hidden for long.
Although he didn't really want to pick a fight with the Agents, AGENT decided it would probably be best if he intervened on the behalf of his creation.
He walked up to the squid-headed girl. "Melanie."
"My lord," she squelched. "My lord AGENT. Are you here to assist me?"
"Yes. Go home, Melanie."
There was a glimmer of fear in her large, fluid eyes. "Is my design so flawed that you must recreate me?"
"Not you darling, don't worry." He gripped her shoulder. "Just your hoodie. Now, go back to the Firewall."
She hesitated. "There are Agents, my lord..."
"I know." His face broke out into his nearly trademarked manic grin. "Don't worry, Mel. Just go."
Reassured, Melanie began to run. Eventually she would find a small woodshed, which she would enter to find herself within the Firewall, AGENT's personal world.
Alone in the alley, AGENT's grin grew wider.
"...It's been so long." He whispered, knowing the leader Agent would be able to hear him. "...It's been so long since I've fought one of you. Even longer since I've killed one."
The Agents were still technically out of earshot, and so didn't waste their energy forming verbal responses. Instead they radiated hostility at him over a free channel.
"What's wrong?" Taunted AGENT. "Cat got your tongues?"
He laughed out loud when he heard two yells, one from an Agent and one from an enraged feline who suddenly decided that the Agent's hair was harboring WMD's and chose to launch a preemptive strike.
Gunshots.
"Wasting ammunition on a cat now? My, my, how you've fallen..."
There was a time when Agents would rise to taunts from the renegade program, a time when AGENT wasn't well known. Even now, some Agents would be foolish enough to speak back to him before discharging their weapons, young programs who despite the shared memory of their kind contained some small amount of the impetuousness of human youth.
These were old Agents. Old and cranky Agents who didn't appreciate AGENT's trick with the cat. They shot him as soon as they turned the corner.
AGENT hit the ground, cold and lifeless.
One Agent looked down at the body. "What is it?"
"An anomaly." The combat Agent of the trio was dismissive. "Nothing to have worried abou-"
The Agents froze. A shadow fell over them.
A seven-foot-tall being flashed them a manic grin. Its voice was deep, and pitched with amusement. "No. Nothing at all."
An inhuman scream.... then silence.
An abnormally tall man shuffled out of the alley, hunched over and whispering promises to himself.
Agents Roscoe, Black, and Orion failed to meet their next upgrade appointment.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ah, a confusing chapter. Restarting a story after a year- long hiatus is... difficult. Especially as I'm no longer dating the guy who got me into the Matrix in the first place... but I liked the characters so I came back to it. So, here I am again, with another assurance that, although this is a Self-Inclusion, it will try not to become all Mary-Sue-ish. THERE WILL BE ANGST. I'm gonna tell you that right now, 'cause it IS self- inclusion and I AM a teenager and I DO angst a lot. I will try to keep the insufferability levels down, of course, and angst will appear only when I decide there's a damn good reason. Mmkay?
ALSO: Reviews are nice. I'm doing this for ME mainly, because I like it, and reviews or lack thereof will not affect my writing of this story. But still... I like them. It's nice to know that my stories get read. So even if it's "hi I read your story" it's appreciated. Constructive criticism is helpful, and flames... well, I'll roast as I deserve.
ANOTHER NOTE: One cycle is about eight hours. Why? Because a while ago Mike said that 1000 cycles was about thirty days. I worked it out from there. If someone wants to correct my math, sure, but my cycle length is gonna stay the same, just because.
This is a damn long author's note.