Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine.

Chapter 4

It had been three weeks since Nysa's last foray into the vast world of Zion, and she was beginning to get bored with being good. That night, after the lecture of course, as her mother tucked her in the two made a deal. If she could behave and not run off, then she would be allowed to accompany the Councilor on a tour of Zion's main control room. She swore on her favorite doll and crossed her tiny heart that she would be good no matter what. But three weeks is a long time, and the deal called for four.

In one more week Nysa would be 5-years-old, old enough, her father had said, to take on more responsibility. He promised that she could help maintain the ships, so long as she listened and abided by everything the Kid said. Of course she would, as Neo well knew. Nysa would do anything the Kid requested of her; she loved him. He was older, but not old like her father and uncles. And he worked with machines all day long, understood how they worked, maintained and repaired them. Simply put, he was wonderful. So between the prospect of working with him and getting to view Zion's computers, which was promised as a birthday treat provided she managed to stay out of trouble, Nysa had no choice but to be a good little girl.

"Mommy, I'm bored," she said, interrupting Trinity's conversation with Link. The two were discussing a new hacker they had discovered inside the Matrix but could not yet readily identify. It was business, important business.

"Not now, honey. Go play with Olivia."

"I don't want to. She's boring."

"Hey!" shouted the little girl sitting at the other end of the room. "I am not!"

"Yeah huh. All you want to do is play with your stupid dolls!"

"They're not stupid! Daddy!" she cried looking to Link for support.

"They are too, so are you!"

"Nysa!" Trinity got up from the table and grabbed her daughter by the arm, dragging her over to where Olivia sat in tears. "You apologize right now."

She looked up at her mother for a moment, stubbornly but was, as always, defeated by her mother's more advanced form of obstinacy. "Sorry," she spit out, not at all sincerely. The other girl, realizing this cried even harder.

"You have five seconds to apologize to her, and mean it, or else."

"Or else what?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Nysa knew she had no way out. Truthfully she hadn't wanted to hurt Livi in the first place, hadn't meant to make her cry, but she hated being told what to do and wanted to withhold the apology on principle alone. "Sorry," she said again, this time a bit more sincere.

Olivia looked up at her, eyes still glistening with unshed tears. "Really?"

"You're not stupid." With that Livi jumped up and hugged her and Trinity moved back to the table to continue her conversation with Link.

"That's not like her," he said quietly, trying to keep the kids from hearing.

"Being sorry?"

"Being mean. She never says stuff like that."

By now the girls were playing together, Livi dressing one of her dolls while chatterboxing away, Nysa quietly brushing one's hair with a sour expression on her face.

"She misses Neo. I think she's worried he won't be back in time for her birthday." Neo had been gone for nearly three weeks on the newly rebuilt Nebuchadnezzar. He and Trinity took turns working so that someone would always be there with Nysa. Only twice had they entered the Matrix together since her birth, both times leaving their daughter with Zee. Usually they were gone no more than a week, but this was a training run, breaking in the new recruits, and as a result they would be out longer. He had promised to be home in time for Nysa's birthday, and Morpheus swore he would do everything he could to ensure that, but the Nebuchadnezzar would not dock until the training was complete.

"He'll be back. It's the final leg of training, shouldn't take too long. We know the operator's good, or at least he damn well better be after all the time I put into him." Link had just finished training a new operator for the Logos, Chet, and this was his first solo mission before heading off to work under Niobe.

"At least you got a vacation out of it."

"Thank God, too. Couldn't handle much more of the whining from Zee. You're never home. How come you can't make more time for us. Your children don't even recognize you. Blah, blah, blah."

"I'm telling her you said that."

"Better not, I'll tell Neo all about you manhandling his little girl."

"He'd understand, Zee never would."

He nodded knowingly. "You're pure evil," he said with a snort and the two began to laugh.

"Mommy?" Trinity stopped and looked down at her daughter who was tugging on her sleeve. "Mommy, I want to go home now."

"Soon, sweetheart. We're still working."

"But I'm sleepy."

"Sleepy?" This was strange, Nysa barely slept at all. Trinity sometimes had to tuck her into bed so tight that she could barely move just to be sure she stayed put during naptime. A look of concern crossed over her face as she placed her hand on the girl's forehead, feeling for fever. "What's wrong?" Her skin was cool. "You don't have a fever."

"Just wanna go home."

"Go ahead," said Link, "We're good. Besides, the last thing I need is to have my vacation ruined by a bunch of sick kids. Not that she's sick…I'm sure everything's fine."

"Uh huh," she said lifting the child and gathering her things from the table. "We'll see you later."

"Yup." Link walked them to the door and then closed it behind them.

As they entered their apartment Trinity nearly tripped over a package lying in front of the door. Many people, the true believers as they called themselves, still left offerings for the One, but they were usually breads or blankets, baskets or tapestries, this was a small round box covered with paper. She set Nysa down and picked it up.

"What's that," the little girl asked.

"I don't know," she responded giving it a cursory look. "Why don't you go change into your night shirt and I'll be in to tuck you in in a minute."

She turned and bounded off towards her room leaving her mother to solve the mystery of this odd offering. Trinity pulled the paper off and slowly pried the metallic top open. Inside were pieces of torn parchment, many pieces, each with its own symbol. The symbols she recognized as those that made up the code of the Matrix. She dumped them all out onto the table, turning them over so that they all faced up. She had never seen the marks outside of the Matrix or a computer screen. Why would anyone feel the need to copy them down? And then rip the code up? It must be some sort of puzzle, a message. But these symbols could fit together in any of a thousand ways, there was no way to decipher what the true meaning may be.

She sat in silence, moving the pieces around, trying to make sense of it. Words? None that flowed together. Of course not all messages come in complete and sensical phrases. It could be some sort of word puzzle or code. Pictures maybe? She stared long and hard but could not figure it out.

"Mommy?" Her concentration broke. "I thought you were coming to tuck me in."

"Sorry, honey, I got distracted."

Nysa crawled up into her lap and looked at all the pieces lying on the table. "Is it a game?" she asked innocently.

"I don't know."

"Looks like one. Like a puzzle." She began to move the symbols around from where her mother had placed them, little clusters side by side. She giggled. "Look it's an elephant."

Trinity looked at one of the clusters and it did indeed resemble the code that comprised an elephant. "How do you know what an elephant looks like?"

"Link showed me. He showed me what a bunch of stuff looks like, like trees and people and stuff." Link enjoyed teaching Nysa about computers and explaining the various codes to her. She had an affinity for it, was able to see and understand easily, unlike many people including some of those he had to train for operations work. His Olivia cared only about the animals, probably because those were the only codes she could recognize, large clusters of symbols that in just the right arrangement made up a creature she could only really imagine. Nysa was interested in it all though, the animals, people, trees, buildings, park benches. She liked to watch things move, observe as clusters migrated in out, swirling around each other. When people ate, the codes that made up the food would melt away and be absorbed into those that represented their bodies. It was all so… magical.

Her parents had told her that the Matrix wasn't real, that it was a world of make believe, but she could see the different objects and people that made up this world, could see every detail that made them what they were, down to the very building blocks. It would be akin to being able to see every cell a person is made up of, and upon seeing such a thing, how could someone say that it was not real? To her the Matrix seemed more real than anything she could view in her own world because she knew what it was made up of, could see every individual symbol and code. Who could tell if a person was truly made up of anything at all in this world, when all anyone could see was the whole? She liked the bits and pieces that created the whole, liked to see how they fit together, moved together. She liked that there were only so many symbols, but the combinations were endless. It comforted her somehow to know that everything in that world was made of the same stuff, that it was all somehow connected and all led back to the same source.

She moved the same symbols around to form a different pattern. "Now it's a rock," she said smiling.

"You're good at this."

"I can do more, watch." She swirled some of the pieces around on the tabletop and Trinity could see what she was doing. It was a hand waving. Observing this she couldn't help but think of how Neo was able to manipulate the code of the Matrix, change it around, make it into his own reality that moved as he wished, not as the construct intended.

Nysa continued to play with the puzzle, quickly fitting pieces next to each other only to replace them with other ones. She moved so fast that Trinity could barely make out most of the pictures she was creating. Then she stopped suddenly and leaned back into her mother, admiring her work.

"Look, mommy, it's me."

Trinity looked down and saw what seemed to be a small child curled up in bed.

"See, there's my bed, and me. And see, there's Mona." She didn't even notice the doll, not having the same ability to so readily see such small details.

"I see," she said with a yawn. "There's a little girl in bed, just like you should be."

"No, mommy, it is me. Look."

Trinity looked again, studied it hard, tried to see it as she might if she were inside the Matrix. She scrutinized it for some time before it finally all came together. It was Nysa. It was her daughter's room, her daughter's bed, her daughter's doll. Every piece had been used, placed together in just the right way to reveal a computer representation of her daughter sleeping.