My idols are standing around me! All their duster coats and sunglasses should make me feel out of place in my school uniform, but I know I belong with them. I've known it ever since I first saw The Matrix: I'm a rebel. No, I've known it as long as I can remember; I just didn't have a name or justification for it.
For the past few years I've lived in a limbo between knowing and walking the path, but it was both satisfying and hollow. I could brush everything off because it wasn't real because the world wasn't real, and I felt some how special because I knew something everyone else either didn't know or refused to believe. The more I searched for Morpheus and his crew, the more I understood that I was living a lie but also helping to perpetuate that lie through my silence. By living in the Matrix I was helping the machines instead of bringing about the destruction of the Matrix. I could very well have been dooming humanity through my complacency. Is that how all those people feel who shout about the end of the world? I'm ready for the end of the world. Bring it on.
Morpheus sat before her, his presence inspiring her with his strength, dignity, and warmth. He wasn't exactly how she had expected him to be, but definitely not warm. He seemed to be holding back a smile behind his emotionless exterior. Of course, Jane knew that she would be happy if she were about to free someone. She would try to hide it so as not to sway that person's choice, but inside, behind the sunglasses, she would be beaming just like Morpheus.
His warmth showed most strongly when he called her by name, Veritas. He pronounced every letter perfectly; they slipped effortlessly from his mouth. Only then did she feel like Veritas was her real self and not just some screen name. Veritas was her name and not a word that seemed to embody that certain, intangible coolness that she wished she had. Veritas, it sounded so poised and dignified, but also enlightened and even unyielding, but dignified most of all.
She tried to mirror his calm dignity, but her excitement showed clearly. Jane sweated and shook while she stood in absolute awe as she wastched Trinity and Neo set up equipment. She tried to study their work, to take mental note of every detail of the process, but they were working too quickly while her brain wasn't operating fast enough. Everything just blurred together until that long awaited moment when Morpheus stretched out his hands before her. Each offered a pill that seemed to glow. She reached for the red one without hesitation, her hands pawing greedily as if it were candy and she a small child.
Morpheus closed his hand around the pill. "You need to think this over. You will never make a more important decision, and once it is done, you can never go back."
Red pill, blue pill, no decision there. This is my one chance to escape, and I'm taking it. I'll die if I linger any longer. My spirit is rotting here, atrophying from being held captive so long. I've out-grown mommy's womb; its time to be born.
"Happy birthday to me," she whispered before popping the red pill into her mouth. It left a bitter taste, but she never noticed.
Her reflection slithered off the mirror and devoured her. She was swallowed up by a metallic chill. It ate her finger first, starting where her own image had leapt through the looking glass and landed on her skin. It slid over her body and through it in a perverse sort of osmosis until she was no longer herself, and her reflection no longer showed an image. Instead she wore a new skin of melted silver and chrome until she melted into oblivion.
Holy shit!