What is love? I must ask. I wonder what love is, because I don't know if I have ever felt it. Of course, I do not feel emotion. I am Agent Johnson, perhaps filled with emotion but not knowing since I have been brought up to have none.
It is very confusing to me. I have mixed up thoughts and feelings which I know are not my own.
I once thought I loved a woman. She had auburn hair and eyes like crystal. I thought she was very beautiful, although beauty should not matter to Agents, supposedly. I had seen her before she had been freed from the Matrix. She didn't know who I was. I admired her, though. I do believe her name was Anne.
Years later, I saw Anne again, but I knew situations were different because she was a Rebel. I was sent to kill her, but I met her gaze and I knew I just couldn't. She was trapped, and I had averted my weapon silently and intentionally. She ran away, she escaped. I got hell for letting her go. Even though I said it was an accident, none of the others believed me.
I met Anne again another time, and it was just the two of us, one on one. Again, I was supposed to murder her. We exchanged a few words. She asked me why I had let her go before, and I told her that I just did not know. She thanked me, though. She was very grateful I had spared her life, though I bet she was suspicious somehow. Before she ran off, she gave me a kiss on the cheek. I had never felt something like a kiss before.
There were a few times that I encountered Anne in the Matrix, and it was always the same story: I had to kill her, but some power within me just would not let me. We never could talk that long. She once asked me to take off my sunglasses so she could see my eyes. I did it just to please her. I always tried my best to please her.
The last time we met, she asked me, "Do you love me?" And I did not know how to answer that because love is a foreign thing. I didn't answer. She told me that she loved me, and that if I wasn't an Agent, she would want to be with me forever. I didn't know how to feel about that. Anne had put me in an awkward place.
I never saw Anne again. She probably perished, or she just never came around anymore. It made me feel a little – oh how do you say? – Sad that she was gone.
I know how to answer her question, though.
I think I loved her.
Maybe that what was keeping me from killing her mercilessly all the times I could I have.
No, I know I loved her.