Smith sat motionless on the living room couch. He'd considered the evening's events for hours, and the conclusion was inescapable. The Mainframe was in error.
Its logic in the decision to delete him had been clear. Thomas Anderson had somehow corrupted his program. Deletion was the obvious solution. His operatives, however, had not been exposed to the contaminant. They should have been overhauled, perhaps, or upgraded. Deletion was an unmitigated waste.
His lip curled into a snarl as he thought of the supposed upgrades that had replaced his team. Their code was less efficient, their team less effective. Power loss was exponentially greater than it had ever been. Agent Johnson had a lamentable tendency to gloat before executing his enforcement directives; Smith's operative inside Zion reported that it had resulted in more than one escape.
These were upgrades in name only, and yet the Mainframe persisted in its attempts to eradicate Smith. It indicated nothing less than faulty logic that Brown and Jones had also been deleted. Either the Mainframe deemed it necessary to delete all code related to his own, a decision of questionable efficiency at best, or it had decided that he was a priori faulty. Smith sneered. The enforcement disaster the system was experiencing under Agent Johnson was more than sufficient to refute that.
The prospect of a Mainframe with imperfect logic was troublesome. If it persisted in its errors regarding his code, even a successful purge of Anderson's influence and eradication of the Resistance would not restore him to sanction. The thought of remaining in this vile system indefinitely - and as an exile, no less - was intolerable.
The snarl returned as muffled thumps emanated from upstairs. The Mainframe's many errors forced him to operate alongside one of the creatures he had been created to exterminate. Thompson's frailties had already forced him to accept inconvenience and behavioral aberration; nothing less could be expected from continued contact.
Smith turned his attention from her, allowing the familiar rage at Anderson to surface. His elimination, and the purification of Smith's own code, would more than justify the irritations of the present.
~~~~~~~
Cat woke up and immediately wished she hadn't. It had been so easy to doze off after the exhausting events of last night, but now that everything ached it seemed like a less than stellar idea.
She began to roll out of bed, but her knees refused to stiffen as they were supposed to. She hit the ground with a jarring thump. Every bump or bruise she'd accumulated throbbed in protest. She gritted her teeth and grabbed for the bedframe, intending to pull herself up. She couldn't quite bite back the yelp; her shoulders hurt, too, and her elbows were swollen and difficult to move. She inched her way upright, then tottered forward. Only a hard landing against a bedpost prevented her from falling again. Cat winced; that would leave a brand new bruise.
She eyed the wall; thank heaven for little old ladies and their tendency toward small houses, she thought. It was only a couple of feet from the end on the bed. She clenched her jaw and let herself fall forward. The impact hurt less than she'd expected; it was only a minute or two before she managed to drag her feet up to the wall as well. She leaned against it and scooted forward, propping herself up as the stiffness in her joints receded a little. By the time she reached the bathroom, she was able to stand.
After nearly an hour of morning ablutions, Cat realized that she was avoiding both the mirror and Smith. Either one was likely to bring her to tears again. The combination of the two... Well, it was hard enough to spend time with the programmed-to-be-perfect Agent without looking like a bad Picasso print.
Oh, stop sniveling, she berated herself. Putting this off will not make it more pleasant.
She limped to the top of the stairwell, catching her lip in her teeth as she looked down it. This was not going to be fun.
She latched onto the hand rail and bent her knee enough to step down. She sighed. Of course, Smith would choose this moment to come stand at the bottom of the stairs and smirk at me, she thought. She bit her lip harder and forced herself down a few more steps. "Go ahead," she growled. "Make your snarky comment. I can tell you're just dying to do it."
Smith's smirk only got broader. Mumbling curses, Cat managed the rest of the stairs and stumbled past him into the living room without sparing him a look. She chose a chair that was reasonably isolated from other furniture; one of Smith's bruising grips wasn't high on her list this morning.
She glared at him as he sat on the couch. "Get it over with," she said. "Make your little remark about the frailty of my stupid kind, or whatever, and we can get on with it."
She eyed him as his face slid toward its neutral, not quite extinguishing the traces of mirth in his eyes. Great, she thought. Sadism is well within his emotional range.
"I'm sorry," she snapped. "Did I ruin your comedic timing?"
His eyes narrowed. Cat made a conscious effort to restrain herself; there was no point in making him too mad. "Let's get down to business. I'm going to need crutches, I think. And food, too. You're going to have to go get them for me, because I'm in no state to do so."
Smith remained silent. Cat curbed the impulse to shake her head; it would hurt too much. "I came up with something, though. We can tell the neighbors that I got in a traffic accident in the moving van, which explains me and the fact that we have no belongings." She sighed. "Here's the hard part. We have to pretend we're married. There's really no other reason two people our ages would be living in the same house. I mean, I'm too old to be your niece or anything, and..."
"That will be acceptable."
Cat blinked. That was it? "Or, er, all right," she said, disconcerted. "Details, then. We're going to have to cook something up about where we came from, and that sort of thing. You'll have to have a first name... Unless... do you have one already?"
Smith raised an eyebrow.
"Er, do you want to pick one out?"
The eyebrow crept higher. "I kind of thought not," Cat said. "How about Alan? It's sort of like Agent..."
She froze as the doorbell rang. "Go get that, will you?"
"Is it necessary?"
"They can see us from outside, Smith. Open the door."
Cat eyed the woman standing on the porch. She looked like an ad for Suburbia, right down to the perfectly coifed hair and the tennis sweater.
"Hello." Cat ignored the pain her smile caused. "Won't you come in?"
The woman smiled uncertainly. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"Not at all," Cat said, hoping her voice was cheery. "I haven't seen anyone but Alan and doctors for three days. I'd love some company."
The woman started as Smith strode behind her to the couch. She glanced around, then perched on the extreme opposite end. "I always like to come by and meet newcomers to the neighborhood," she said in a brittle voice, jabbing a finger at the dish she sat next to her. "I brought some coffeecake..."
"That's very sweet of you," Cat said, trying to believe it. "Look, I'm sorry if you're feeling uncomfortable. I know I look frightful. Some drunk driver ploughed into the U-Haul and rolled me over, and I just got released from the hospital last night."
The woman's face shifted from uncertain to sympathetic. "Oh, how awful!" She patted a stray hair back into place. "And I've forgotten all my manners. I'm Cyndi, Cyndi Morgin from down the street."
Cat shot a glance at Smith; his silence was in danger of becoming odd. Thankfully, he took the hint.
"I am Alan Smith." He offered his hand gravely. Cyndi hesitated, but shook it. "This is my... wife," his lip twitched and Cat repressed the urge to glare, "Catherine."
"I don't know why he persists in introducing me like that. I won't answer to anything but Cat."
"But Catherine's such a lovely name!" squeaked Cynthia. Smith smirked.
Cat tried to exorcise the poison from the smile she gave Smith. "Alan was just going to pick up some crutches for me, but I'd be delighted if you could stay for a chat."
Smith muttered something inaudible, but left without a fight. Cat didn't realize how tensely she'd been holding herself until he was gone and her muscles uncoiled. The motion made her wince, and Cyndi popped up from her seat. "You poor thing!"
Cat smiled and wrenched herself up. "Let's have some of your coffeecake." She gestured toward the kitchen. "I don't know how Alan's been feeding himself, but he certainly didn't think to have anything on hand when I came in."
"Men," Cyndi giggled. "George couldn't feed himself for three days if his life depended on it." She placed a hand on Cat's wrist. "No, let me."
Cyndi rummaged around in the cupboard and came up with a few plates covered in a hideous print in the same vein as the furniture.
Cat chuckled. "We have to make do until we can get our hands on some new stuff," she explained. "We might have to rough it for a while. I'm just not in the interior decorating frame of mind."
Cyndi gave her a sympathetic smile. "It must be so difficult, trying to get settled in to a new place in your condition."
"Well, the good thing is that my job doesn't start for a while." Cat took the cake Cyndi proffered. "We were transferred, so we have some time allotted for moving."
"Transferred?"
"This is delicious, by the way," Cat said, lowering her fork. Cyndi beamed at her. "Anyway, Alan and I work for the government, so we occasionally get the old bureaucratic shuffle."
"I'm so glad that George doesn't have to worry about that sort of thing," Cyndi said. "He's in advertising, and this is the place for it."
Cat gave the woman her first genuine smile of the day, relieved that she hadn't pried into the details of her "government job." "What do you do, Cyndi?"
The woman shrugged. "I haven't had time to work since we had the kids. I didn't want to hand them over to a nanny."
"Kids?" Cat asked. It was the right thing to say. Cyndi pulled a couple of pictures out of her purse and started nattering on about her children's amazing accomplishments. Cat was glad that nothing but a polite smile and the occasional comment was required of her.
After a while Cyndi had to pause for breath. "I'm sorry. I must be boring you to death."
"Not at all." Cat smiled. "If I had kids, I'd be right there with you." Cyndi looked expectant. "Well, you know how these things go," Cat said. "I guess I picked the wrong end of the career-family continuum."
Cyndi looked sympathetic again; Cat was beginning to wonder if Cyndi had any expressions between "sympathetic" and "perky." Maybe it comes with the name, she thought.
Cyndi patted her. "You've got lots of time." She glanced at her wristwatch. "Speaking of which, I'm afraid I've got to run. Kindergarten's nearly out."
Cat smiled. "Well, thank you very much for the cake, and for stopping by! I hope you'll come again soon."
"Of course," Cyndi promised, then slipped out the door. Cat let out another sigh. That had been unreal. Maybe she was just impatient with coppertops, but that woman would be ditzy by anyone's standards.
It was strange to think that everything that woman cherished - the house, the kids - was fake. Those kids... They probably weren't even plucked from the same batch. It seemed so cruel that Cyndi's job had been sacrificed for beings that weren't even her own flesh and blood.
Cat sighed and headed for the living room. She flicked through channels, but even tv failed to distract her. Even someone as irritating as that Cyndi woman reminded her, forcefully, of just what was off purchasing her crutches. It was so easy to forget that Smith wasn't real, any more than that women's kids were "hers." He was a bastard, but his cutting comments and surliness only made him seem more human. If he were balnk, indifferent... That's what she'd associate with a machine.
She shook her head and the pain called her back to reality. It just wasn't safe to humanize Smith too much. Every time she made that mistake, he yanked her up short with some terrifying reminder of just what he was capable of. It seemed so small, but the memory of that look he'd had in the park still made her skin crawl. Smith just wasn't human, no matter how easy it was to forget it.
And now? Well, her life hung on whether she could convince a crowd of Cyndi clones that he was perfectly normal. Well, not normal, she amended. Human. If Johnson found out where they were... If he brought reinforcements...
Cat turned her eyes back to the television. She wouldn't even toy with that possibility. It was easier to muse about the minutiae of life as an Agent; life with "Alan" could answer a good many questions.
~~~~~~~
A/N: Hmmm. Extensive fiddling has occurred... I hope that no one is too upset with me for draft one of this chapter.
EibhlinNiDhuinnin : You're making me blush. :P Thanks a ton for the nice review; I hope you'll be as quick to pounce on me if I fall off the path of the righteous. :P Don't worry; Soppy Smith is not Smith at all (and that's why he's so interesting!), IMHO, and won't be found here.
*.*: *Grin* Yay! I am glad I hooked someone who didn't like my premise. The next chapter is alomst done...
Agent Johnson: Thanks for the corrections and close reading! This story is better because you read it.
Leth and Smithfan: I really have nothing of great importance to say to you, other than you made me happy. Whee!
Its logic in the decision to delete him had been clear. Thomas Anderson had somehow corrupted his program. Deletion was the obvious solution. His operatives, however, had not been exposed to the contaminant. They should have been overhauled, perhaps, or upgraded. Deletion was an unmitigated waste.
His lip curled into a snarl as he thought of the supposed upgrades that had replaced his team. Their code was less efficient, their team less effective. Power loss was exponentially greater than it had ever been. Agent Johnson had a lamentable tendency to gloat before executing his enforcement directives; Smith's operative inside Zion reported that it had resulted in more than one escape.
These were upgrades in name only, and yet the Mainframe persisted in its attempts to eradicate Smith. It indicated nothing less than faulty logic that Brown and Jones had also been deleted. Either the Mainframe deemed it necessary to delete all code related to his own, a decision of questionable efficiency at best, or it had decided that he was a priori faulty. Smith sneered. The enforcement disaster the system was experiencing under Agent Johnson was more than sufficient to refute that.
The prospect of a Mainframe with imperfect logic was troublesome. If it persisted in its errors regarding his code, even a successful purge of Anderson's influence and eradication of the Resistance would not restore him to sanction. The thought of remaining in this vile system indefinitely - and as an exile, no less - was intolerable.
The snarl returned as muffled thumps emanated from upstairs. The Mainframe's many errors forced him to operate alongside one of the creatures he had been created to exterminate. Thompson's frailties had already forced him to accept inconvenience and behavioral aberration; nothing less could be expected from continued contact.
Smith turned his attention from her, allowing the familiar rage at Anderson to surface. His elimination, and the purification of Smith's own code, would more than justify the irritations of the present.
~~~~~~~
Cat woke up and immediately wished she hadn't. It had been so easy to doze off after the exhausting events of last night, but now that everything ached it seemed like a less than stellar idea.
She began to roll out of bed, but her knees refused to stiffen as they were supposed to. She hit the ground with a jarring thump. Every bump or bruise she'd accumulated throbbed in protest. She gritted her teeth and grabbed for the bedframe, intending to pull herself up. She couldn't quite bite back the yelp; her shoulders hurt, too, and her elbows were swollen and difficult to move. She inched her way upright, then tottered forward. Only a hard landing against a bedpost prevented her from falling again. Cat winced; that would leave a brand new bruise.
She eyed the wall; thank heaven for little old ladies and their tendency toward small houses, she thought. It was only a couple of feet from the end on the bed. She clenched her jaw and let herself fall forward. The impact hurt less than she'd expected; it was only a minute or two before she managed to drag her feet up to the wall as well. She leaned against it and scooted forward, propping herself up as the stiffness in her joints receded a little. By the time she reached the bathroom, she was able to stand.
After nearly an hour of morning ablutions, Cat realized that she was avoiding both the mirror and Smith. Either one was likely to bring her to tears again. The combination of the two... Well, it was hard enough to spend time with the programmed-to-be-perfect Agent without looking like a bad Picasso print.
Oh, stop sniveling, she berated herself. Putting this off will not make it more pleasant.
She limped to the top of the stairwell, catching her lip in her teeth as she looked down it. This was not going to be fun.
She latched onto the hand rail and bent her knee enough to step down. She sighed. Of course, Smith would choose this moment to come stand at the bottom of the stairs and smirk at me, she thought. She bit her lip harder and forced herself down a few more steps. "Go ahead," she growled. "Make your snarky comment. I can tell you're just dying to do it."
Smith's smirk only got broader. Mumbling curses, Cat managed the rest of the stairs and stumbled past him into the living room without sparing him a look. She chose a chair that was reasonably isolated from other furniture; one of Smith's bruising grips wasn't high on her list this morning.
She glared at him as he sat on the couch. "Get it over with," she said. "Make your little remark about the frailty of my stupid kind, or whatever, and we can get on with it."
She eyed him as his face slid toward its neutral, not quite extinguishing the traces of mirth in his eyes. Great, she thought. Sadism is well within his emotional range.
"I'm sorry," she snapped. "Did I ruin your comedic timing?"
His eyes narrowed. Cat made a conscious effort to restrain herself; there was no point in making him too mad. "Let's get down to business. I'm going to need crutches, I think. And food, too. You're going to have to go get them for me, because I'm in no state to do so."
Smith remained silent. Cat curbed the impulse to shake her head; it would hurt too much. "I came up with something, though. We can tell the neighbors that I got in a traffic accident in the moving van, which explains me and the fact that we have no belongings." She sighed. "Here's the hard part. We have to pretend we're married. There's really no other reason two people our ages would be living in the same house. I mean, I'm too old to be your niece or anything, and..."
"That will be acceptable."
Cat blinked. That was it? "Or, er, all right," she said, disconcerted. "Details, then. We're going to have to cook something up about where we came from, and that sort of thing. You'll have to have a first name... Unless... do you have one already?"
Smith raised an eyebrow.
"Er, do you want to pick one out?"
The eyebrow crept higher. "I kind of thought not," Cat said. "How about Alan? It's sort of like Agent..."
She froze as the doorbell rang. "Go get that, will you?"
"Is it necessary?"
"They can see us from outside, Smith. Open the door."
Cat eyed the woman standing on the porch. She looked like an ad for Suburbia, right down to the perfectly coifed hair and the tennis sweater.
"Hello." Cat ignored the pain her smile caused. "Won't you come in?"
The woman smiled uncertainly. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"Not at all," Cat said, hoping her voice was cheery. "I haven't seen anyone but Alan and doctors for three days. I'd love some company."
The woman started as Smith strode behind her to the couch. She glanced around, then perched on the extreme opposite end. "I always like to come by and meet newcomers to the neighborhood," she said in a brittle voice, jabbing a finger at the dish she sat next to her. "I brought some coffeecake..."
"That's very sweet of you," Cat said, trying to believe it. "Look, I'm sorry if you're feeling uncomfortable. I know I look frightful. Some drunk driver ploughed into the U-Haul and rolled me over, and I just got released from the hospital last night."
The woman's face shifted from uncertain to sympathetic. "Oh, how awful!" She patted a stray hair back into place. "And I've forgotten all my manners. I'm Cyndi, Cyndi Morgin from down the street."
Cat shot a glance at Smith; his silence was in danger of becoming odd. Thankfully, he took the hint.
"I am Alan Smith." He offered his hand gravely. Cyndi hesitated, but shook it. "This is my... wife," his lip twitched and Cat repressed the urge to glare, "Catherine."
"I don't know why he persists in introducing me like that. I won't answer to anything but Cat."
"But Catherine's such a lovely name!" squeaked Cynthia. Smith smirked.
Cat tried to exorcise the poison from the smile she gave Smith. "Alan was just going to pick up some crutches for me, but I'd be delighted if you could stay for a chat."
Smith muttered something inaudible, but left without a fight. Cat didn't realize how tensely she'd been holding herself until he was gone and her muscles uncoiled. The motion made her wince, and Cyndi popped up from her seat. "You poor thing!"
Cat smiled and wrenched herself up. "Let's have some of your coffeecake." She gestured toward the kitchen. "I don't know how Alan's been feeding himself, but he certainly didn't think to have anything on hand when I came in."
"Men," Cyndi giggled. "George couldn't feed himself for three days if his life depended on it." She placed a hand on Cat's wrist. "No, let me."
Cyndi rummaged around in the cupboard and came up with a few plates covered in a hideous print in the same vein as the furniture.
Cat chuckled. "We have to make do until we can get our hands on some new stuff," she explained. "We might have to rough it for a while. I'm just not in the interior decorating frame of mind."
Cyndi gave her a sympathetic smile. "It must be so difficult, trying to get settled in to a new place in your condition."
"Well, the good thing is that my job doesn't start for a while." Cat took the cake Cyndi proffered. "We were transferred, so we have some time allotted for moving."
"Transferred?"
"This is delicious, by the way," Cat said, lowering her fork. Cyndi beamed at her. "Anyway, Alan and I work for the government, so we occasionally get the old bureaucratic shuffle."
"I'm so glad that George doesn't have to worry about that sort of thing," Cyndi said. "He's in advertising, and this is the place for it."
Cat gave the woman her first genuine smile of the day, relieved that she hadn't pried into the details of her "government job." "What do you do, Cyndi?"
The woman shrugged. "I haven't had time to work since we had the kids. I didn't want to hand them over to a nanny."
"Kids?" Cat asked. It was the right thing to say. Cyndi pulled a couple of pictures out of her purse and started nattering on about her children's amazing accomplishments. Cat was glad that nothing but a polite smile and the occasional comment was required of her.
After a while Cyndi had to pause for breath. "I'm sorry. I must be boring you to death."
"Not at all." Cat smiled. "If I had kids, I'd be right there with you." Cyndi looked expectant. "Well, you know how these things go," Cat said. "I guess I picked the wrong end of the career-family continuum."
Cyndi looked sympathetic again; Cat was beginning to wonder if Cyndi had any expressions between "sympathetic" and "perky." Maybe it comes with the name, she thought.
Cyndi patted her. "You've got lots of time." She glanced at her wristwatch. "Speaking of which, I'm afraid I've got to run. Kindergarten's nearly out."
Cat smiled. "Well, thank you very much for the cake, and for stopping by! I hope you'll come again soon."
"Of course," Cyndi promised, then slipped out the door. Cat let out another sigh. That had been unreal. Maybe she was just impatient with coppertops, but that woman would be ditzy by anyone's standards.
It was strange to think that everything that woman cherished - the house, the kids - was fake. Those kids... They probably weren't even plucked from the same batch. It seemed so cruel that Cyndi's job had been sacrificed for beings that weren't even her own flesh and blood.
Cat sighed and headed for the living room. She flicked through channels, but even tv failed to distract her. Even someone as irritating as that Cyndi woman reminded her, forcefully, of just what was off purchasing her crutches. It was so easy to forget that Smith wasn't real, any more than that women's kids were "hers." He was a bastard, but his cutting comments and surliness only made him seem more human. If he were balnk, indifferent... That's what she'd associate with a machine.
She shook her head and the pain called her back to reality. It just wasn't safe to humanize Smith too much. Every time she made that mistake, he yanked her up short with some terrifying reminder of just what he was capable of. It seemed so small, but the memory of that look he'd had in the park still made her skin crawl. Smith just wasn't human, no matter how easy it was to forget it.
And now? Well, her life hung on whether she could convince a crowd of Cyndi clones that he was perfectly normal. Well, not normal, she amended. Human. If Johnson found out where they were... If he brought reinforcements...
Cat turned her eyes back to the television. She wouldn't even toy with that possibility. It was easier to muse about the minutiae of life as an Agent; life with "Alan" could answer a good many questions.
~~~~~~~
A/N: Hmmm. Extensive fiddling has occurred... I hope that no one is too upset with me for draft one of this chapter.
EibhlinNiDhuinnin : You're making me blush. :P Thanks a ton for the nice review; I hope you'll be as quick to pounce on me if I fall off the path of the righteous. :P Don't worry; Soppy Smith is not Smith at all (and that's why he's so interesting!), IMHO, and won't be found here.
*.*: *Grin* Yay! I am glad I hooked someone who didn't like my premise. The next chapter is alomst done...
Agent Johnson: Thanks for the corrections and close reading! This story is better because you read it.
Leth and Smithfan: I really have nothing of great importance to say to you, other than you made me happy. Whee!
