Disclaimer: I do not own the Matrix, its characters from the movies, blah blah blah.
Summary: Smith and The Architect have a meeting and Smith is informed about the seriousness of Bronwyn's condition, and accidentally discovers a sinister new ability that will upset the balance of power in the Matrix.
Father Knows Best
"What do you want this time, Dad?" Smith asked derisively, walking into the white-walled, many-screened room known as "The Source."
The man known throughout the Matrix as the Architect was seated at his desk and indicated the empty chair in front of him with a wave of his hand.
"Sit down, Smith. You and I have important matters to discuss, and I assure you, we will be here for a while. You might as well make yourself comfortable."
Smith sat down. "What do you want?" he repeated.
"I am here, you might say, in a grandfatherly capacity. What I want is for you to leave Ms. Delaney alone."
"And why should I agree to do that?"
"Because if you continue to interfere in her life like you've been doing, both she and her unborn child—your child, in case you've forgotten—will die."
"What do you mean, they will die?" Smith asked gruffly, his throat constricting.
By way of reply, the Architect pushed a handful of what looked like medical documents across the table in Smith's direction.
"Read these," he ordered.
Smith read what the older man had given him and when he was finished, he looked up at the Architect in stunned horror and disbelief.
"Ms. Delaney has a serious, potentially fatal, medical condition called "toxemia." In layman's terms, she has extremely high blood pressure. Up until three weeks ago, she had a normal, completely uneventful pregnancy. However, since she became aware of your presence in this city exactly three weeks ago, her blood pressure has skyrocketed, thus placing both her life and the life of her child in serious peril. All because of you, Smith.
You are going to cost us the life of the first human/program hybrid ever created in the Matrix' history. And unless you back off from this obsession, grudge, fixation—call it what you will—that you have with the mother, they will both die. However, if you cease and desist from any further contact with Ms. Delaney, there is a good chance, a very good chance, that with the right treatment and care, she and the child will be just fine."
"Why should you or the Mainframe care what happens to the child? My child, by the way. As its father, I have a right to know, wouldn't you agree?" Smith asked smoothly, thinking hard to himself. I must find out why this is so important to them. While it is true that there has never been an offspring produced between a human and a program before, I must find out what they intend to do with my child after he or she is born.
"What, exactly, are your intentions?" Smith pressed.
"Rest assured, Smith, that we would never dream of harming the child. And why is that, you may ask? Because this child will be a bridge between the humans and ourselves. How? Think of it—a being that has the strength of an agent, but is able to think, freely, as a human. All of the programs in the Matrix have been programmed how to think. That capability did not come naturally, you know that yourself. But your child will have both abilities and as such, will give us an advantage we have never possessed before over those unplugged humans who insist on liberating others."
"So you intend using it as some kind of weapon against the Resistance?" Smith asked with a curl of his lip. The Architect nodded in response.
'And what of Bronwyn, my child's mother?"
The Architect shrugged. "After the child is born, her welfare will no longer be of any concern to us. She will have served her purpose by giving birth; once that objective is accomplished, her usefulness will be complete."
"So afterwards, you won't care what happens to her?" I am what humans call "fishing for information" Smith thought. If I appear to be nonchalant about this line of questioning, the more willing the Architect will be in furnishing me with more of what I want to know about what they intend to do with Bronwyn.
"No. Why should we?"
"Won't you need her to feed the child? Coming from a human mother, won't it need the nourishment that she, and only she, can provide?" Smith asked abruptly, hoping to secure at least one concession—that Bronwyn would be allowed to live after giving birth, so that she could stay with our child, at least for a little while.
The Architect pondered what Smith had just told him. "You may be right, Smith. Perhaps we have been too hasty in dismissing Ms. Delaney's usefulness. After all, she is the first human to be impregnated by a program—you—in this case. It may be that she will be able to produce other offspring for us as well."
This is going from bad to worse, thought Smith. I had hoped that in convincing him that she should be allowed to live, and not to die after she gives birth, but this old fool has hit upon such a dreadful fate for her that even I would never wish for her. To have Bronwyn become nothing more than a brood-mare? To perhaps provide a son or daughter, or even several children for that matter, for this pompous, egotistical blow-hard? I would rather kill her myself than allow that to happen, Smith determined.
"But what if she cannot conceive another child? What will you do to her then?"
The Architect paused before answering. "We will terminate her of course." He narrowed his eyes and peered at his companion. "Why are you asking me all of those questions, Smith?"
Now it was Smith's turn to shrug his shoulders in response. "Well, if it turns out that she is not able to bear more children, then let me have her afterwards. Why not—what have you got to lose?"
"All right. You can have her if she proves of no further use to us. However, until such time, we will do everything in our power to see that no harm comes to her."
"So until then, I am expected to simply keep my distance from her? And him?" Smith snarled, his eyes like twin daggers of steel; icy and deadly, as they ignited in cold rage at the slightest mention of his former subordinate who was now with Bronwyn.
"If you are referring to former Agent Jones, then the answer is yes. Leave them both alone."
Comprehension suddenly dawned on Smith. "You've known about them being together all along, haven't you?"
"Yes, from the very beginning, actually. In fact, we were the ones who first gave Jones the idea on where to look for Ms. Delaney. Also, because the safety of her unborn child is of the utmost importance to us, we've had the upgraded agents in this city keep an eye on her and update me on her progress on a regular basis."
"To protect her from me, correct?"
"Yes, to protect her from you. But we have failed, since you obviously made contact with her and because of your actions and your actions alone, you have undermined everything we have tried to do." The Architect leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I hope you are proud of yourself, Smith."
Smith rose from his chair and paced about the room, a rapid-fire series of possible outcomes from this dilemma raced through his mind. If I leave her alone, she and my child will both be safe. But to what end? Bronwyn will probably be examined, studied, and analyzed, to see what enabled her to become pregnant with my child in the first place.
Once the Mainframe finds out how and why, and from what he has already told me, they will almost certainly run tests on her; or would experiments be a proper word for what they will do to her, Smith thought disgustedly, to discover if she is capable of conceiving again.
And if she is.....He closed his eyes and a feeling of revulsion and dread washed over him when he thought of all the probable forced sexual encounters she would undoubtedly have to suffer through to provide offspring for any number of the more valuable and important programs that ran and governed the Matrix.
As for our child, he or she will be studied as well, I am sure. There was no way that any possible good can come to either of them, Smith thought, dejectedly. Perhaps I could warn them, he thought with a glimmer of optimism. What if I tell Jones about the plans the Mainframe and the Architect have for Bronwyn and the baby? I know he cares for her; maybe he can take them somewhere safe.....but no, he realized. There is nowhere they can go where the Matrix cannot find them.
Damn it, Smith cursed himself internally.
He turned, frowning, when he heard the Architect chuckle dryly. "All these problems could have been avoided you know, if you had only let her fall that day in the park."
"What are you talking about?" Smith demanded.
"Do you remember you found her skating in the park, the day after you raped her? Well, she did not know it at the time of course, but she was already pregnant. If she had fallen, she would have gone on with her life with absolutely no idea about the embryo she had lost. But no. You had to be close to her again and in so doing, you prevented her from taking a nasty spill on the pavement You just had to see her again, didn't you?" He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. An almost lewd smile passed over his face. "I've met and spoken with Ms. Delaney myself. I can certainly understand the attraction a man might feel for her."
"When did you meet her?" Smith asked, mystified that a program as powerful as the Architect would willingly condescend to agree to meeting a human, and a woman at that.
"It doesn't matter, Smith. I was informed where they could be found, and out of curiosity, I wanted to meet this woman and get to know her a little. After all, the child she is carrying is extremely valuable to us and I wanted to find out if she was worthy enough to be trusted with something so important."
"What did Jones do when he saw you?"
"He introduced me as his father, which is true enough from a certain point of view. I suppose I could be called the father of all the agent programs, even you, Smith. Anyway, I talked to her for a while and found, to my very great surprise, that she is quite intelligent, even though she has had little in the way of formal education. She's spirited, too, as I discovered." The beginning of a smile twitched the corners of his mouth as he remembered his encounter with Bronwyn.
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted to feel the child move while it was stillinside the motherand when I touched her belly, she slapped my hand away. Even Jones was shocked, I think. I was then informed that if I wanted to touch a pregnant woman, I must ask her permission first. Which I did."
"And?"
"Feeling the movement of an unborn child is quite enthralling, Smith, you should try it." The Architect chuckled. "Oh, that's right. You are not to go anywhere near her. Too bad. You have no idea what you are missing out on," he said smugly, enjoying the fact he had been allowed to feel the child move, to be near its mother, while Smith, the child's father, was purposefully excluded from participating in either activity.
He looked at a blinking light on his console. "I have business to attend to. You know where the door is."
Smith shook with barely suppressed fury as he left The Architect's office. Everyone is involved with the pregnancy, except me. That is my child Bronwyn is carrying and they all know it; but I am being treated as if what I want is of no account. I will not let them get away with this.
Once out of the Architect's office, Smith looked around at the intricate simplicity that was the Matrix, in grim satisfaction. The rain fell down steadily in cold relentlessness and it matched his mood perfectly. He sat down on a bench in the deserted park and considered his existence up until now.
The situation with Bronwyn had triggered an overload of emotions he had always—up until now, at least—tried to keep at bay. Coupled with the fact that Mr. Anderson not only beat him, but rewrote his code as well, had released and subsequently destroyed any semblance to whatever self-restraint Smith could claim as his own.
As a program, he had had emotions installed and programmed into his CPU all this time, but suppressed them; thinking that to actually experience emotions would represent weakness—an Achilles' heel, if you will. It was because of the emotions both Mr. Anderson and Bronwyn had awakened in him that he had to come to the conclusion, distasteful as it was even to consider the possibility, that he had become more human than he would ever care to admit.
There were some advantages to thinking and feeling like a human, he thought, with revenge being the sweetest and most satisfying of them all.
I will have my revenge on them all. The time is coming for everyone to know and realize—too late, of course--what the consequences are for crossing me. Then they, and everyone in the Matrix, will learn—what would be an appropriate street term, he wondered, as he accessed his database for just the right turn of expression. Ah, yes. They will learn not to fuck with me.
A slurred, gravelly voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Got some change, man?" The panhandler asked, walking toward Smith with his hand out
"No. Leave me alone." Smith snarled, and then wrinkled his nose in distaste at the stench of the man's unwashed clothes and body, which was quite evident even at a distance of four feet.
However, the man refused to give up. "C'mon man, I need some dough." He looked Smith up and down. "You look like you got money. All I want is some change."
"No."
Smith stood up in anger. "I already told you—twice—that I wasn't going to give you anything." These humans, he thought scornfully, when would they ever learn?
All the anger and resentment that had been building in him since he entered the Architect's office came boiling to the surface. He took the man by the front of his tattered coat, slammed him against a nearby tree, and punched him in the stomach.
He watched with satisfaction as the man doubled over, gasping in pain, and before he could fall to the ground, Smith picked him up again. "I told you to leave me alone," he said from between clenched teeth. "You didn't listen; and now you are going to pay the price."
He clamped his fingers around the man's throat and was going to choke the petrified human before him to death, when in his fury, he squeezed so hard that his fingers broke the skin and entered the flesh. He watched in rapt fascination as a black, oily, viscous substance formed at the entry point and quickly spread over the man's Matrix code, enveloping and overwriting as it went.
A myriad of possibilities of what was happening went through Smith's mind, until one conclusion remained: his code was copying itself over that of another. He watched, marveling, at the perfect duplicate of himself that now stood before him. Every part of it was identical to himself—the clothing, mannerisms, features, everything.
"Perfect" Smith murmured. "Absolutely perfect."
"Thank you," his newly created self answered. "What are your orders?"
Smith pondered the ramifications of this totally unforeseen and yet so fitting ability that he had been given. No, not given, he corrected himself, taken by force. Like when I took Bronwyn by force and something wonderful was created from that union, so it is now. Only this time, my creation will need no time or nurturing. He--or should that be I?—will take the Matrix by force, molding it to my will, shaping it into whatever I want.
Where, yesterday, one Smith walked, two will now do the same.
But why limit myself to us two, he thought. A light dawned upon him and he realized that he had just discovered the perfect weapon for revenge on everyone who had slighted him. I will take them all over. Erase them as if they had never been in this world. I will take them over and use their knowledge against themselves, filling the world with endless numbers of myself. For once, I will have all the power and control to use as I wish.
"Soon, we will begin assimilating everyone who is or has been close to Bronwyn, but not yet. As for Jones—leave him to me. When the time is right, I will assimilate him myself. However, keep an eye on both he and Bronwyn. I want updates on her condition, location—everything--on the hour," Smith ordered and watched proudly as his first clone nodded obediently once, then turned around and vanished into the park.
I will create an army of me's and we will be unstoppable, invincible. We will take over everyone in the Matrix, especially Jones.
Jones.
Who currently shares Bronwyn's heart and her bed. Where I should be, where I deserve to be, and would be now if it wasn't for Jones and his interfering. But not for long. Enjoy him while you can, Bronwyn, Smith thought with sadistic satisfaction and enjoyment; soon it will be only me in your heart and in your bed. Once I am there, you will know what it means to be loved by me and only me.
When Bronwyn realizes how powerful I have become, how omnipotent, she will learn to love me, in time. All women want powerful men. So it has been since time immemorial; so it will be with Bronwyn. As the saying goes: power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Yes, he thought to himself, she will learn to love me, or I will make her; using whatever means necessary to achieve my goal, even denying her any and all access to our child, once he or she is born. I will make Bronwyn crawl on her hands and knees', pleading with me, begging my forgiveness for everything she has put me through. He smirked as that very agreeable mental image flashed before his eyes.
Now that I have found a way to keep her safe from whatever plans the Architect had for her, she will be mine, all mine. Moreover, if she wants to see our baby after it's born, to even hold it for a moment, Bronwyn will have to do whatever I want, whenever I want, how many times I want it, how many different ways I want it. And she will love it.
Smith leaned back in the bench, and even though the day was cold and the rain only made it feel more so, he was not surprised that could feel his groin stir with anticipation.
Life will be good, he thought, for me at least. And that is all that matters.
But first things first. He reached into his jacket, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed a number.