Disclaimer: I don't own the Matrix. I own a few spoons, but that's it.
This is the fourth in my series of fics-written-from-the-POV-of-an-inanimate-object. (The first three were from the POVs of a pizza, load of manure and cinnamon bun respectively.)
Hi! My name is Kyn, and I'm a spoon. A dinner spoon, and a shiny one too.
I belong to this bald boy whom they call the Spoon Boy, because he always has me with him. When we first met, I thought we would probably just have a normal spoon-human relationship - you know, he uses me to scoop up food to eat and all that kind of stuff - but we didn't. You see, he kept trying to bend me.
I've never been the athletic type. I'm not very flexible, for one, so when my owner grabbed me and tried to make me bend, well, it hurt very badly to say the least. More than once I thought I was going to break for sure, but luckily my metal could take the pressure.
Then all of a sudden one day, my owner decided to try a new approach.
"There is no spoon," he murmured under his breath, staring at me in a scary sort of way. It's one thing to feel human fingers clamping forcefully down on you and trying to make you bend, but it's another thing altogether to be repeatedly told you don't exist. That one statement, 'there is no spoon', stuck in my head and nearly drove me to tears. I had thought we were going to be friends, but here he was, denying me so firmly. What did he mean, 'there is no spoon'? I was here, wasn't I? Didn't he care for me any more?
"There IS a spoon!" I felt like yelling... but then, in the middle of my existential dilemma, I felt myself start to bend. Really bend, as in enough to put the best human gymnast to shame.
And it wasn't just one direction, but all over until I felt dizzy. I was bending and twisting and turning like crazy and I nearly threw up metal ions, but somehow I held on, my handle securely in the grasp of my owner's hand.
My owner watched me intently as he manipulated my movements with his mind... and then he smiled at me.
He had never done that before. Until that day, his face had always held the same expression of concentration, frustration, and sometimes anger or violence as he tried to bodily separate my scoop from my handle in his unsuccessful bending attempts.
But today, he smiled.
I smiled back as he returned me to my normal position. We were good friends now.
I relayed my experience over the SIMS (Spoon Instant Messaging System) that night. Sure, there were the usual sceptics who were of the opinion that spoons can only bend when heated up to really high temperature, but there were others that believed.
Days passed. Now and then my owner would pick me up and make me bend without touching me, like he did that day. Now and then he would smile, and I would smile back. Never again for a long while did he utter that hateful phrase, 'there is no spoon'. I thought that perhaps he once again acknowledged my presence, but as it turned out later, I was wrong. He'd just been repeating it in his mind.
I learnt this one morning when my owner was sitting in the Oracle's apartment and making me bend all over again. This new guy walked in. I had never seen him before, so I asked who he was over the SIMS. One of the spoons who lived in his house said his name was Thomas A. Anderson. I asked what the 'A' stood for. The other spoon told me to mind my own business and besides, his owner rarely used his real name. He preferred to go by the name Neo.
Tommy walked over to my owner and watched him bending me.
"Hi Tommy!" I greeted. He didn't reply. Git.
"Hi Neo!" I tried instead. No reply either, so I sulked. Tommy picked me up and stared at me. I bet he was trying to make me bend, but he couldn't. Hah. Served him right for being rude.
My owner was watching him and finally decided to intervene. "Do not try and bend the spoon. That is impossible."
He'd learnt, you see, after the hundreds of fruitless attempts trying to do just that.
"Instead only try to realise the truth," he continued.
"Do or do not, there is no try," I silently quoted. Yoda from Star Wars said that. I heard about the movie over the SIMS.
"What truth?" Tommy asked.
My owner looked at him... and then he said it. "There is no spoon."
My heart shattered into a million pieces at the words. How could he? After all we'd been through together, how could he just deny me like that?
It was as much as I could do to hold back the metallic tears that threatened to flow out any moment. I thought my owner liked me... all this while he didn't even think I existed?
"There is no spoon?" Tommy repeated.
"There IS!" I wanted to shout. "There IS a spoon! ME! I'm the spoon! Stop denying it!"
I couldn't take it any more. I existed, I did! There WAS a spoon... there was... there was... I broke down and cried, barely noticing as somehow, Tommy managed to bend me.
"Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself," my owner added, before Tommy was called up to see the Oracle.
I didn't care. It all didn't matter any more.
It was the worst day of my life.
The End..? Review!
I don't know if I should continue this. Maybe Kyn should find a way out of the Matrix and enter the real world...