I really do apologize for the wait. I've been swamped with homework lately, and I'm moving in a week, so.... I've been pressed for time.
***
Death and Rebirth
Chapter Eight
Truth
***
"A major update today, regarding the elusive hacker Trinity..."
Switch's attention was suddenly focused fully on the news anchor's voice, although it seemed like she had not even heard over the clatter of plates being set out for Saturday breakfast.
"Not that again," her father muttered, bringing the paper in from the hallway. "Can't they just leave it alone? He didn't delete or tamper with anything, why can't they just let it go?" He asked these questions mostly to himself, walking into the kitchen. He barely missed his daughter's head snapping up when the announcer spoke again.
"Authorities have reason to believe that Trinity has been kidnapped by a terrorist organization led by a man named Morpheus...."
"I just can't believe that they thought it was Amelia," her mother sighed, finishing up the eggs in the kitchen. Switch didn't even register it. She had abandoned setting up the table and moved closer to the TV. "I mean, it's just ridiculous for anyone to think that she would be capable of something like that, it just isn't like her."
"No comment is being made as to how this information was obtained, but it is being said that the kidnap occurred last night in Washington D.C., possibly near the hacker club, Infinity...."
She slowly sank down to the floor, leaning against the arm of the couch. She shut her eyes tightly against the wave of worry and anger that came over her. She knew it. She had known it all along, but had ignored the simple truth that was staring her in the face. Ever since the day that Trinity had revealed the possibility that her precious answers might be found in the IRS D-Base, Switch had been telling herself that she would get hurt. Something was bound to happen with a hack as risky as this, and now it had.
"It was so rude of them to just come in here and accuse her like that. And she's not stupid enough to do something like that, anyway."
Switch leaned forward, elbows on the coffee table and head in her hands. "That's what I thought."
***
Little bits and pieces... fragments of memories from.... She didn't know how long ago. A red pill... machines and computers and wires... all hooked up in some sort of chaotic order.... They had made her sit down, she remembered that. Put little wires on her neck and temple... something about a program... disrupting carrier signals, finding out where she was.
Everything had blinking lights... looked like something out of an early - very early - twentieth-century sci-fi movie. At first glance, none of it seemed like it would work... she vaguely recalled thinking it was all some cruel joke for a moment...
"Do we have a signal yet?"
...but then it started to get cold... and her head hurt.... And then all she remembered was darkness, leaving her body and returning to it at the same time.
She was floating... suspended in some kind of thick, red liquid. It had been difficult to sit up... a lining at the surface. Towers... high towers.... Black... glowing red pods, spaced regularly. That was the first thing she could remember. There had been people inside them.... There were people in the pods beside her... cables, there had been lots of them... attached to everything. Arms, legs, chest, stomach.
Flying... something flying in front of her.... Some kind of machine... all metal... and a light, nearly blinding, making her squint. Something had grabbed her around the neck... that machine? Then pain... unbelievable pain, in the back of her neck... something was pulled out... it sent a wave of ice through her, whatever it was.
Her neck was released... she fell.... More pain, cables flying away from her... arms, chest... all down her spine, pricks of pain as each was pulled away....
It drained... the liquid in the pod... it drained out the back, and she was pulled along with it. She fell down a long tube... turning, twisting, never the same way twice.... The water or whatever it was became colder, the longer she fell. Then it ended.... The tunnel, not the fall... she landed in ice cold water.... She had thought she would drown, that fear stood out in her memory. But there had been... lights, from above her... some sort of cable, crane... something had pulled her up.
She had been able to look around, just barely. They had all been there, Niobe, Apoc... a few others she didn't recognize.
"Welcome..." Morpheus, he was there, "... to the real world."
She had blacked out then, at least she thought she had.
***
"No one's ever made the first jump before, why should she?" Sliver.
"Morpheus thinks she's the One." Someone she didn't recognize, but he sounded like he was about her age. "And she's managed to do some pretty impressive stuff, without training...."
"She's not gonna make it, Tank. No one ever has." She would have opened her eyes, but opening them even a sliver let in a blinding white light above her. It didn't really matter, she had slipped back into unconsciousness only seconds later.
***
".... she might beat him...." Tiny little pricks, like a thousand needles in her skin. It didn't hurt, not really, but it felt... strange.
"First fight?"
"She already knows how to fight, she's got the technique down." It felt almost as if the needles were pulsing with electricity. More soothing than painful, really, strange as it felt.
"She's good, I'll admit that. But Morpheus is a tough one to beat."
"Guess we'll just have to wait and see how good she is."
Were they talking about her? Fighting... why would they want her to fight Morpheus? With the way she felt, she wasn't even sure if she could. She couldn't move anything. Her body wouldn't respond to her commands, try as she might to make them.
.... atrophied muscles.... One of them had said something about that, but she couldn't remember when. But how was that possible? It seemed like only yesterday she was up, walking, riding her motorcycle....
God, what had happened?
***
Trinity woke, again. Her senses took a minute to fully surface. She was lying in what she assumed to be a bed. It wasn't the softest she had ever been in, but it was better than the cold, hard metal slab she had been on earlier. And she wasn't cold anymore - she had remembered there being a draft before, and it was cold. Her skin had been bare, for some reason.
Her mind took much longer to become functional than the rest of her senses.
She sat bolt upright in the bed when it did, head whipping around to take in her surroundings. Tiny room, rusty, metal walls, like a military ship. It had been dark - there was only a single fluorescent light in the corner. She reached around for a light switch, and finally found one on the wall beside her.
It seemed even smaller in the light.
Fear. There was some residual fear from somewhere in her recent memory, but her mind was to jumbled to determine where it came from. It had been awful not long ago - at least, she didn't think it was that long ago.... But it had been slowly ebbing away over what little time of consciousness she had had recently. She took several deep breaths to calm down, telling herself that she was in no danger here. Wherever "here" was, anyway.
The sheets, she noticed in looking around, were thin, white with faded blue stripes. The white was dark, quite obviously being relatively old. She herself was covered in dark, thin sweaters that had enough holes in them to suggest they had been around longer than the bed sheets. She noticed that her left sleeve was pushed up around her elbow.
She froze.
The IV in her arm wasn't what surprised her. Feeling as she did, that was the least of what she had expected to find. Although it had taken her a moment to realize, it wasn't your average needle in the arm. Trinity sat there, staring down at the metal... plug, you might say, that had been put into her arm, and now held a needle locked in place. She moved her arm closer to her already sore eyes, taking a closer look as she carefully pulled it out. It was cold, pulling it out. The metal scraping on metal made her whole arm feel a chill.
Wait.... Cold... plugs.... A rush of memorized came flooding at her - the pill, the towers, the machine.... She remembered that there had been a cable attached to her arm here, and it had hurt when they were pulled out. Hurt like hell, just like all the others.
Without a thought, her hand moved to her stomach, where she could almost feel her ribs through the thin sweaters. That, and two more round, metallic plugs. Another two lower down, one on each side of her chest. Each arm, a few inches down from her shoulders. One on each side of her lower back, and the backs of her shoulders. She followed the long line up her back, slowly, tracing around each individual circle. She didn't know how long she spent at the plug in her neck. How long she spent tracing over every line and groove.
Eventually she forced herself to take her hand away from it, wringing them both together in her lap.
After a moment, she managed to pull herself together. Checking the tiny room, she found more clothes in the two drawers underneath the bed. Oddly, she noted how clean and polished the brass knobs seemed in comparison with everything else. She pulled on a few more of the ridiculously thin sweaters, and tied an extra, luckily thicker, scrap of fabric around her bare head. There were boots on the floor, which she quickly slipped on and tied.
Time to get some answers.
***
Quiet. Eerily so.
Trinity could only assume that it was the middle of the night, and everyone was asleep. But there weren't any windows or clocks anywhere, so she really had no way of knowing. The hallway was lined on both sides with a few doors, all identical, all looking like something from a submarine.
She made as little noise as possible when she walked down the short corridor, not wanting to wake anyone that may be sleeping behind those doors. It was harder than she would have imagined, being noiseless in combat boots, on metal. But it didn't take her long to figure out.
Around the corner and up a ladder she found a room filled every piece of technical equipment you could imagine. Countless bundles of red and blue wires on the ceiling, easily over a hundred computer screens. The whole thing seemed to be coming apart at the seams, but at the same time felt like it would last a thousand years. Someone was out there, sitting in a chair before about a dozen monitors, and a circle of what looked like old dentist chairs.
A plaque on a wall near her caught her eye before she could go any further.
Nebuchadnezzar
It clicked in her mind, and she took in every detail for several seconds, excited to finally see what it was. Ship: Nebuchadnezzar, that's what the file had said. So this was what they had meant by ship.
Year 2069
She stared at this for a while before moving off. If nothing else, it confirmed one thing: it wasn't 1988.
Trinity continued her silent creep, moving up behind the person in the chair. She managed to move only feet behind him without being noticed, and it remained unnaturally quiet. The three screens in the center of the monitor bank were the only ones on. They were displaying some sort of intricate, flowing code. The symbols looked like green kanji, placed against a black background. But the way they moved reminded her of rain. The way it rolled down a window in streaks, the beginning of the drop the clearest, but the streak it leaves is still perfectly visible.
It was hypnotic, really. So easy to stare at it and be mesmerized....
But, out of the corner of her eye, she still saw the young man in the chair turn to the left, just a bit, but it was enough to put her in his line of sight. He jumped at seeing her, and took a few stabilizing breaths when he got over the initial shock.
"You really can't do that to people around here, okay?" She recognized his voice. What had he been called? Tank? "That's rule number one."
Trinity paid little attention to him. She only stared at him blankly, then turned back to the screens.
***
He held back for a moment, waiting at the edge of the core. He watched the pair for a moment, waiting to see the new recruit's reaction. When she merely turned back to the screens silently, he walked out slowly towards the operator's station.
***
Trinity was silent for several long moments, but she finally spoke up.
"What is that?" she whispered, still watching the code.
"That -" Both she and Tank turned to see Morpheus joining them "- is the Matrix."
"That?" she asked incredulously. That was the Matrix? She had spent the better part of a year searching for the ever-illusive answer to that common hacker question, and this was what she had to show for it? So much work, and this was what she got? "That's the Matrix?"
Morpheus nodded.
"Just a bunch of... green symbols?"
"It's a lot more than that." Trinity turned to examine his face. It was solemn, a slight tinge of worry in his eyes. Worry for what? "Tank," he said authoritatively, "load the programs."
"Now?" He looked confused. She might have laughed if it weren't for the situation. "It's the middle of the night."
"I know, load them," he repeated. "Come with me. I'll explain everything." That was directed at her. He put his hand on Trinity's shoulder reassuringly, guiding her over to the circle of dentists chairs. She looked them over more carefully, and noticed that each one was connected to it's own set of monitors and machinery. The screens of the two closest to them blinked to life, and Morpheus punched in a number of commands on the touch-screens.
She jumped a bit when the chair moved on it's own, moving down from where it was to be more easily accessible to sit in. "Sit down." She did so reluctantly, wondering why he would possibly need her to sit here to explain it. He shut clamps over both boots, keeping her feet firmly in place.
"What are you doing?" she asked as he pushed her head back down to the seat.
"You'll see in a minute." He rustled the machinery behind the chair a bit, but she couldn't tell what he was doing. "This'll feel a bit strange...."
Strange. That was the word he used. Painful as hell frozen over would have fit much better.
***
It ceased as quickly as it had begun, and Trinity's eyes snapped open to a vast white expanse. She spun around several times, looking for something, anything. But it was nothing but endless white.
Load the programs. That was exactly what he had said. And he had put something into the back of her head.... Her mouth hung open slightly as everything slid into place.
"I'm inside a computer program," she muttered, in complete shock and disbelief.
"Yes." Morpheus was there when she whipped her head around. Him, and two chairs and an old television set. She brought her hand up to brush away a lock of hair that had fallen into her face, not registering that, a moment ago, it hadn't been there. She didn't notice her clothes either. "Incredible, isn't it?"
For a few moments she was frozen in place, but she finally managed to force herself to move. She slowly made her way over to him, eyes taking everything in. She was hugging herself as if she was cold. "So.... None of this exists?" She didn't speak in any more than a hoarse whisper.
"That depends on how you want to look at it." Trinity could swear that there was an underlying tone of amusement in his voice, despite the fact that it was obviously a serious matter.
She shook the thought from her head, trying to clear it. "How is that possible?" she stammered. "We... we can't be inside a program.... How could a computer do something like this?"
"The same way it has for the past sixteen years of your life."
Morpheus gave her what would have been a meaningful look if he hadn't been wearing mirrored glasses. Trinity stared into her own reflections until he moved away and sat in one of the two red leather chairs.
"What do you mean?"
"The world that you know isn't real." She took a few steps closer to where he was. There was a remote control on the table between the chairs, and he turned on the TV. "Everything in your life that you have seen or touched or heard -" the screen flipped through images of various cities, New York, Tokyo, London, "- everything about the world as you knew it was part of an illusion. This is the world as it truly is."
With another click of the remote, the television disappeared, and the endless white was replaced, the new landscape seeming to literally spring from the ground beneath her feet. It was a ruined, barren land of jagged rock, above an ocean that looked to be polluted beyond restitution. Her gaze moved beyond the water to the other side of the bay. To the burned and barely-standing buildings there, a statue on a tiny island in the water... oh, God.... This was New York.
"Although you believe it is the year 1988, it is somewhere closer to 2188. But we aren't sure of the exact date. We do know that at some point early in the 21st century, all of humanity was united in celebration, commemorating the creation of the first successful AI program."
It took a moment for the words to break through to her consciousness, and a few more to decipher their meaning. The last part caught her attention. Artificial intelligence.
"Based on that singular program, an entire race of AI machines was created. We aren't completely sure as to what happened, but a war broke out between humans and the machines. Because they were powered by solar energy, we thought that by scorching the sky, we could finally stop them."
"Scorching?"
"Creating a never-ending storm to block out the sun." The calmness in his voice was unnerving. "We thought that they wouldn't be able to survive without an energy source as plentiful as the sun. Unfortunately, we did not foresee what they had planned as an alternate energy source."
The destroyed New York skyline disappeared, and there was a momentary void. Then they were on a high ledge above a field. It was as dark as if it were night, but from what Morpheus had said, she couldn't be sure that that was true. There were more machines, huge machines, floating in the air, with huge tentacle-like tubes extending to the ground. They were pulling the glowing red pods from the fields below. Pods, miniature versions of the ones she had seen before. There were people inside these ones, too. Babies.
"The machines had a vast store of knowledge of the human body, and were able to cause us pure misery during the war. They used the humans that survived as a power source. We are no longer born, but instead we are grown, in fields that stretch as far as the eye can see." He gestured around them. "On it's own, a single human body can generate more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery."
It changed again, and a rush of fear filled Trinity at the familiar setting. It was a memory still fresh in her mind - the towers she had woken up in, still with a pattern of glowing red pods. She couldn't even see the tops. Her attention snapped away when Morpheus spoke again.
"With billions of humans, you can imagine the amount of power that could be produced. The machines had found a never-ending, infinitely renewable energy source." This illusion, too, disappeared. Everything faded away, and they were in the endless expanse of white again. She turned just as he stood up and stepped towards her. "Human beings no longer have any control over their lives, Trinity, not from the very moment that those lives begin. You wanted to know what the Matrix is. It is what enslaves the human race, and so long as it exists we can never truly be free. It is a prison that most people don't even know exists."
Trinity hadn't moved during his entire explanation. She still stood in exactly the same place, her arms still wrapped around her body. Strangely, ridiculously, almost, she found his sunglasses unnerving. Unnerving because the eyes were the easiest way to read someone, and she couldn't see his. She didn't know what there was to read, really, but it still disturbed her. Or maybe it was the fact that he could most likely see her every thought process on her face right now.
She turned away.
"Let me out of here." She didn't speak in anything more than a whisper, her face turned down and eyes shut tight to make some attempt at keeping her demeanor cool and calm. But the longer her request went unanswered, the less it worked. "Let me out of here," she said more forcefully. "Now!"
***
She didn't wait for the chill of the needle being pulled out of her neck to pass before leaping from her chair.
"Trinity -" Tank called after her, "Trinity, wait -"
She didn't listen. She was already halfway to the ladder by then, and didn't look back to see if he was still following her. Three steps down, then jumped the rest of the way to the floor. Instead of going back to her room, though, she found herself leaning her forehead against the railing.
This was a first, she thought as she sat against the wall. The first time she had ever been truly overwhelmed. The first time she felt as if her thoughts and emotions would completely overcome her. Of course, she had come close before. When her mother had run off, when she had first started trying to find out what the Matrix was. Back at the club - which seemed like mere hours before. The difference was, all of those times, she had had someone to turn to when if it got really bad. She was alone now. And, to be perfectly honest with herself, what could a person possibly tell you that would force you to wrap your head around more than this?
She held her head between her hands, trying to keep her mind from spinning with confusion and shock. It didn't fade, preferring instead to stay as overwhelming as it was. She automatically moved to run her hand through her hair, the way she always did when she was stressed, but stopped when she felt that she had no hair to speak of. She opened her eyes just the smallest bit. A few feet in front of her, a door was halfway open. Seeing that it lead to a kitchen suddenly made her feel thirsty.
Trinity tried not to think about anything as she looked through the few cabinets for a cup. While she was waiting for it to fill up in the sink, she massaged her temples, trying to rid her mind of a thousand chaotic thoughts.
It was strange that it was only the times when Trinity most needed her mind to obey her orders that it didn't.
***
She didn't look up when she heard the heavy metal door open wider. She made no move to acknowledge anyone's presence at all. Her eyes did not move from the little water still remaining in her cup when Morpheus sat down across from her.
It tasted strange, the water. Very strange, but not necessarily bad. She had tried to get her mind off of things by figuring out why that would be. But it hadn't worked. She had come up with two explanations: it could be that, being on a ship, the water was recycled. A ship, in the real world, as opposed to the program she had been in her entire life. Or, it could be that this was, she reasoned, the first time in her entire life that she had actually had anything to drink. Because, until recently, everything she knew had been an illusion.
Yeah. That got her mind off it.
Morpheus didn't say anything. He seemed to know that Trinity's head was still buzzing, and was waiting for her to speak first.
"So all the things I remember from my life never really happened?" she asked, voice nearly inaudible.
"Like I said -" she glanced up at him, "- that depends on how you want to look at it."
She looked down again, and finished off the water. "Everything you said is really true?"
"Yes, unfortunately." There was obvious regret, and also sadness, in his voice. "Every word."
She didn't say anything more. She only stood from the bench at the table, and filled her cup half-way again. She then left without a goodbye.
***
It was a lot to take in, she would admit that much. And the implications of it all were terrifying, to say the least. But it all made sense. Everything fit. There were no gaps in his story to suggest that it was made-up or untrue.
Trinity sat on the edge of the tiny bed and pulled off her boots, suddenly exhausted. As she crawled under the thin blanket on the bed, she found herself wondering what she was going to do now. She couldn't go back to her old life, Morpheus had told her so. She didn't really know if she wanted to go back. Come to think of it, she didn't have the faintest clue as to what she was going to do after this.
You have always known that there is something wrong with the world, Trinity, and you have always wanted to make it better. I can give you the chance to do just that.
That was what he had told her. That she could help. Trouble was, right now her mind was spinning too much to even begin to think of how she would do it. Hell, she didn't even know what Morpheus and the others did to help.
Her eyelids felt heavy, and she was quickly falling asleep.
But, she thought as she gave in to the exhaustion, however she was supposed to help, she was grateful to do it. Grateful to do what she had always know she was meant to do.
***
Niobe barely made a sound as she entered the mess hall and sat down, taking the space Trinity had just vacated. Her face remained blank and empty when Morpheus looked up at her and smiled slightly.
"You tell her?"
He nodded.
"So how'd she take it?" There was a long silence, while Morpheus seemed to be thinking of just how well Trinity had taken it.
"Better than I expected."
***
Like I said, pressed for time, but this upcoming week is fall break from school, so I'll have a lot more time to type, even with all the packing. So, I might actually whip out a new chapter fairly soon.
R+R! : )