DISCLAIMER: Matrix-orientated wonders belong to the Wachowski Brothers, I hope they notice this before they consider taking legal action.
FOUR
"The only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting it"
- Oscar Wilde.
The streets, as always on a market day, were crowded. Families bundled children into their prams or led straying toddlers back to the safety of an adult's arms. In the mêlée of stalls, a bewildering array of products and displays by enthusiastic shopkeepers, a man in a white shirt walks, a peaceful expression on his face.
Despite the hustle and bustle, indeed the discordant racket around him, Seraph was calm within himself, and this reflected on his appearance. He walked; hands clasped loosely, his serene expression partially concealed with his rounded dark glasses, a slight smile on his relaxed face. He stopped short when a skipping child of no more than four nearly collided with his knees. The little girl was laughing in the high-pitched, almost bubbling fashion of most human children, a large stuffed toy clasped to her tiny body. For a brief second Seraph was reminded of Sati, how her little face lit up whenever he accepted one of the many cookies that she and the Oracle had been making all morning. The human child danced around him before skipping delightedly back to her mother. A wry smile broadened on the guardian's face, but disappeared within seconds.
None of it was real.
Not the stuffed toy, not the doting parents, not the carefree laugh that erupted from the child's throat. She was one of many, thousands, millions. Slave, resource. A Duracell battery in human form. The reason for her joy was no more real than the marketplace that surrounded her. And she would never know.
Bemused at the unusual trail that his thoughts had taken, Seraph walked on, curiously disenchanted with the cheerful activity around him, seeing for a moment only unaware humans, blissfully ignorant of their true existence.
Perhaps it was for the best. Many regretted the transition from coppertop to freed mind. It would not help him either, or any of the machines for that matter, if all humans were freed from the Matrix. Seraph fingered the collection of keys on the chain within his shirtsleeve. He could go through the Back Doors, re-emerge anywhere in the simulated world, travel without purpose or fear of attack. Why then did he feel the slight discomfort at how humans were used by his kind? It was not news to him, he'd accepted that they'd needed humans to continue existing and the Matrix was perhaps one of the kindest methods of ensuring that the race need never know otherwise. He would meditate later to determine the point of this uncertainty regarding the world he too existed in. The Matrix.
Deep within his normally passive self, Seraph acknowledged the beginnings of disillusionment with life in the Matrix. And the notion made him uneasy.
It seemed the Oracle was uneasy too.
Everything was much the same as always, the apartment, the kitchen, the ever-present smell of baking cookies. But something was wrong. Seraph could tell, from the almost nervous flicking of her cigarette, the narrowing of her eyes behind her reading glasses. The way that the Oracle stared out of the window for a good few seconds before returning her gaze to him.
"Is something wrong, Oracle?"
She smiled benignly, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray and lighting another.
"Hmm", she mused, looking straight at him, "now that's a question that I should be asking you, too"
Seraph looked down briefly at his hands, which were resting on his knees.
"You feel it, don't you?" The Oracle continued, "That somehow, all this-" she gestured with an outstretched hand circling the kitchen, "isn't enough. That it isn't what you wanted"
"There is peace now, Oracle", Seraph began, "between Machines and Humans. We sought to prevent the destruction of one of these groups, and succeeded"
"But you're still wondering aren't you, "The Oracle took another ladylike drag on the cigarette, "why you don't feel like you did before the war"
Seraph nodded.
"You knew the moment I came here?" he asked.
The Oracle chuckled in her low voice.
"That is what I do, Seraph. Besides, the signs were all there. I'd seen them before, no need to spell them out for me once they showed up again"
Her protector's eyes narrowed behind his glasses, questioning.
"Who, Oracle?"
She raised an eyebrow at him, leaning back in the chair as if waiting for him to find the answer himself.
"The agent"
"See? You didn't really need to ask that question, did you?" she half-smiled.
Seraph thought about this carefully. He had no intention, and certainly no aspirations to break out of the Matrix, let alone try to control it. And yet-
"Yet you're still uncomfortable in it. That's because you can tell, Seraph, just like I can, that all is not right in this world we inhabit"
She was right. Then again, she was always right.
"Do you know what's going to happen, Oracle?"
The other program broke a cookie in half, one-handed before taking a bite, mulling over his words as she chewed.
"If I did, you wouldn't be the first person I'd be telling, Seraph. You'd find out about it soon enough. But no, I don't know, not yet. But I do know-" and here her countenance took on a more serious, even grim expression, "that it isn't going to be good"
He left her home soon after, and took to the streets outside. For no apparent reason Seraph walked back to his own domicile, though with his abilities he could get there within the minute. He chose to walk. The streets were gradually filling with people returning home, from work, from a day's shopping, from a million destinations they had never been to.
Where are you going, Seraph? The thought asked him. For a brief moment the program turned around to look over his shoulder, half-expecting the speaker to materialise from a side alley, before realising it was him.
Where.
The sky was overcast with full clouds, about to release their cargo. Seraph leapt to the nearest rooftop and darted, zigzagging across the city, trying to beat the rain.