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

Author's Note: Just wanted to say thanks for the reviews, they're greatly appreciated. I'm glad you guys like the story cause I'm really enjoying writing it. Anyway, suggestions are always appreciated, though not as much as blatant adoration; I jest. Seriously though, more reviews, more reviews!

Chapter 11

"See that?"

"What?"

"There. Right there. That's your dad."

Nysa stared at the screen long and hard, trying to recognize the odd amalgam of symbols as her father. Link turned towards another monitor and pointed, the girl in his lap leaning forward intently trying to see what he saw.

"Let me zoom in," he said swiftly typing away on the keyboard.

"There he is! I see him!" Nysa's face broke into a smile as she stared at the screen.

"What's going on?" Trinity asked walking up from behind the pair.

"Look, it's daddy!" Nysa answered excitedly.

"I see that. Why aren't you in bed?" Trinity had strictly enforced the bed rest for the first week on the Neb, and for the most part Nysa had complied. But it was getting to be too much now. She felt fine, a little tired, sometimes dizzy, seldom hungry, but over all fine. She needed to be out, she told her mother; needed to do something other than lie in bed and wait to sleep. Trinity finally gave in allowing her to follow the Kid around for an hour or so in the morning while he did his mechanical systems check and then to spend some time with Link at the monitors. But some time was supposed to be an hour, maybe two, not four like they were headed towards.

"I'm practically in bed here. I'm not moving or anything."

"Yeah, Trin," Link commented, "she's not moving or anything." Trinity gave him a snide smile before reaching down and pulling the child out of his lap.

"Hey!" Nysa tried to wriggle free of her grasp. "I wanna watch daddy!"

"Not now. Now it's time for your nap."

"Only babies take naps! I'm not a baby!" she said, continuing to struggle.

"Fine." Trinity set her down on the ground and crossed her arms over her chest, a defiant move that Nysa quickly mirrored. "You want to be treated like an adult? I'll let you stay up, but you have to pull your weight. Go weld the crack in the grate over the engine block."

"Fine," she responded unfazed.

"And then you can repair some of the pipes in the galley. Don't forget to turn off the water supply when you do."

"Fine."

"And then you can go through all those wires and plugs over there to figure out where the disconnect is and splice together the appropriate circuits." Trinity looked down at her daughter who stared right back up at her with a look of fiery indignation. "Think you can manage all that?"

Nysa didn't respond, didn't even move; nor did her mother. The two stood in silence, arms folded in front of them, staring each other down. Watching the scene, Link couldn't help but laugh. "Nysa, trust me, a nap's the way to go."

"I. Don't. Want. To."

"Come here," he said, managing to break her ferocious gaze as she turned and walked towards him. "Look," he pointed at the screen, "he's not even there anymore. He's out of the construct, so you couldn't watch him anyway."

"Where did he go?"

"He went to see the Oracle," Trinity answered from behind. "The Oracle knows all and sees all. Maybe she'll even tell daddy about what a brat you're being right now."

"Nuh uh," she said shaking her head.

"I don't know," Link commented. "She might. I think she's the kind of lady who would recognize the value of a good nap."

Nysa considered this for a moment. It frightened her a bit that a woman she didn't even know would somehow be able to tell if she was doing something wrong. But it frightened her even more to think about what her father might say if was forced to stop in the middle of work just to make sure she went down for a nap.

"Stupid optical," she murmured as she turned and headed for the small room she shared with her parents.

"It's oracle," Trinity called after her.

Link turned back to the computer screens, still laughing under his breath. "How can she not know oracle, but does know optical," he said mostly to himself.

"Why'd he go see her?" Trinity asked, leaning over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the Matrix. He hadn't mentioned anything earlier about the Oracle. In fact, if Link hadn't pointed out that he left the construct, she never would have known.

"Don't know," he said. "I guess she called."

She hadn't actually, had no intention of doing so in fact, despite knowing there was some sort of trouble inside the Matrix, and probably therefor in Zion as well. But Neo wanted to see her and refused to simply wait for her call. He had gone in several hours ago and spent most of that time searching for her current hiding spot. He had finally found one of the portals leading out of the construct and now was wandering down various corridors hoping he might recognize something. Or someone.

Sati's head popped out of an opening a few doors down. "Neo," she called. He walked over to her, internally relieved. He knew he had found her; Sati had barely left the Oracle's side in the past five years. This must be it. "Looking for something?" the girl asked innocently.

"Is she in?" he inquired.

Sati opened the door and waved him in, pointed a finger towards the kitchen. "She's been expecting you."

"Of course she has," he said under his breath as he passed her.

"Well, well, well." The Oracle sat at her table reading what looked to be the Metro section of the paper. She put it down and pushed out a chair for Neo. He looked at it for a moment, stared long and hard as though deciding whether or not to take a seat could mean the difference between life and death. He finally sat.

"You were expecting me?"

"You have been looking for me all day, haven't you? I assumed sooner or later you'd find your way here."

"Do you know why I came?"

"Why don't you just tell me."

"I need to know if the machines are planning on breaking the truce."

"What a question," she said leaning back in the chair and removing her reading glasses. "Do you think they are?"

"I don't know, that's why I'm here." He paused, waiting for her to fill the silence with an all-knowing answer, but she did not speak, only looked at him from across the table with an unreadable expression. "There's been a rise in agent activity. Some soldiers were killed a couple of weeks ago."

"Yes, I heard."

"I need to know if this a sign of things to come."

"Everything is a sign of things to come, Neo. I thought you'd know that by now."

"But is it a sign that the peace is going to end?"

"What do you think?"

"I – "

"And don't say you don't know."

He stopped and began to consider what little he did know. "We've increased our rescues," he said finally. "That's depleted their energy source."

"It's done more than that." Neo looked at her encouraging her to go on. "It's awfully suspicious, so many disappearances; people begin to suspect something might be… off. When that happens new programs have to be written, codes changed, reality altered."

"The Matrix's reality."

"It's the only reality the people of this world know, and changing it is not easy. Humans are funny, you know. They don't just remember things as events that happened, they remember how it made them feel when it happened. Now, the system can remove an event from a person's past completely, wipe their memories clean away. But the sense memories tend to remain."

"You're saying when we pull a person out, the computer can delete all knowledge of that person, make it seem as though they never existed, but people can still, what, feel them?"

"Some bonds can not be so easily broken."

"So even though the Matrix tries to adapt and change the world to fit into its idea of how things should now be, some people are somehow able to hold onto the past."

"They're reality is altered, just as everyone's is, the difference is, they know it. That odd, nagging feeling you get when something just isn't right, something's missing. You know it. You had it. That's what led you to Morpheus in the first place."

"So the more people we pull out, the more will end up seeking us out."

She nodded her head while reaching for a cookie and pushed the plate over to him to offer one knowing full well that he would not accept. "When the peace was granted the architect agreed to free all those who desired their freedom. The problem is that number is changing. Used to be only a handful of people had any real desire to leave the Matrix. Most were perfectly content where they were, never even thought about the possibility that there could be something more, something entirely different. That was what he was counting on, mankind's tendency to hold onto what they know and not venture outside the box. Oh, sure humans have a history of being explorers, sometimes risk takers, but that's the minority. Christopher Columbus, Zebulon Pike, Lewis and Clark. The vast majority of people stay in a comfortable holding pattern, stick to their routine."

"So he agreed that we could free them because he knew there wouldn't be many to free."

"Only problem with explorers is that once they prove to people that there is a New World, others tend to follow and join them. That's what's happening, you see."

"Then the machines have reason to fear us increasing our objectives. We really will deplete their power source."

"Their worried you'll end up doing away with it all together."

Neo rose and walked to the window. Looking out he watched as a slight breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, birds chirped while sitting on their branches. Somewhere a dog barked. He remembered a time, a lifetime ago, when all these things seemed real to him, were real to him. But the whole time they were nothing but figments of an artificial imagination.

"How's your daughter, Neo?" the Oracle asked, breaking the silence.

He hadn't been to see her since Nysa had been born, not since just before the final battle in fact. It hadn't occurred to him that she would even have known she existed. He turned to face her. "She's fine," he said simply.

"You love her very much, don't you?"

"Yes."

"I'll admit, you're connection to her is probably stronger than any parent and child in here since she truly is yours, but those trapped inside the Matrix still form very strong attachments to the ones they love. If she was taken away, and so was every memory you had of her, do you think you would still feel that connection?"

He didn't even have to think about it. "I know I would."

"And what would you do to find her, to fill that void you may not even be consciously aware of?"

"Anything."

"Would you look without even knowing what you were looking for? Would you choose another life in another world if it meant maybe finding her again?"

"I would."

"Of course you would. And so would many others who normally might refuse the red pill without hesitation."

"So if we want to keep the peace we have to stop freeing so many, be more careful about who we choose?"

"Of course if you do that, then all those looking for their missing pieces may never find them. Should you deny them that?"

"So we keep going?"

"Tough questions."

"You're not helping you know," he said sitting at the table once again. "I need your help. I don't know what to do."

"Is it always up to you, Neo? What an awful burden to carry."

"As I understand it, it's part of being the One."

"Is it? You fulfilled the prophecy."

"To bring peace to Zion? What if it doesn't last, then I haven't accomplished anything."

The Oracle stood and went to one of her cabinets where she rustled around for a moment in a bag only to come out with a piece of hard candy. Popping it her mouth she turned back to Neo. "Let me ask you something. What did you name your daughter?"

He faced her with a confused look. Perhaps he had assumed she already knew her name. Or maybe he just couldn't understand why she kept coming back to the subject of his child. "Nysa," he said after some deliberation.

"Nysa… beautiful. Greek. You know what it means?"

"New beginning," he said still somewhat confused.

"Yes, yes, but like anything that old it has more than one meaning. That's another issue with humanity, never could come to a consensus about much, not for long at least. Nysa can also be interpreted as 'goal'."

"Goal?"

"It makes sense, of course. You can't have a beginning without an end. You can't move towards the end if you never move. And most people don't move unless they have a goal in mind. The only way a new beginning should be celebrated is if a new goal is also present, otherwise it's the same old thing just happening all over again. You understand?"

He thought about it for a moment. "You're saying that we may not have peace forever, probably won't, and instead of being angry about that or fighting to change it, we should create a new goal to work towards. Peace was the goal of the last age, so if this truly is a new beginning, we need to have a new goal, compromise maybe."

The Oracle smiled softly and closed the cabinet behind her. "I'm saying that Nysa is a beautiful name."