After living alone for a very long time, one of my favorite hobbies was downloading movies. Hey. I had NO problem "sticking it to the man" in this particular fashion. In the light of what I knew about the Matrix, pirated movies kinda paled in importance. I had quite the collection; my own lame attempt at biting my thumb at "the establishment".

Now I felt like I was in a bad, cliché movie. "So Smith has to find the purpose of his life," I thought. "Here's this program trying to adjust to a bit of newfound 'humanity', and I'm making him watch movies?" I consoled myself by saying it was just distraction, and besides, what would make me think I could teach him anything better than movies could?

If I was going for distraction though, I figured I'd pull out all the stops and go for the multi-part epics. I started with the Lord of the Rings trilogy and found that Smith was rather engaged by it. Again I found myself studying him.

He seemed incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin, at first. He sat perched on my red futon sofa, scowling at the television set as though I were forcing him to do this. Over the course of an hour or so, however, he began to relax. He settled back into the couch and shifted around, making himself comfortable. He seemed as though he might be...enjoying himself? I thought I'd push my luck. I disappeared for a moment & came back from the kitchen with 2 sodas & a bowl of popcorn. I put the popcorn in his lap & handed him a soda, then plopped down on the couch right beside him, a little startled at my own audacity. Apparently he already knew how to use a remote control, because he paused the movie. He had been interested enough to actually pause it; that didn't escape my notice. I wondered if plugged-in Agents went to the movies. I had a sudden urge to laugh hysterically, thinking of Smith, Jones, & Brown sitting in a movie theater, sunglasses & all. I refrained.

"What is that for?" he said, eyeing the popcorn, then looking at me.

"Popcorn," I said, and took a particularly buttery piece. I popped it into my mouth, and then explained "It's a thing you eat when you watch movies."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know, it's just a tradition or--"

"No. Why should you eat at all?"

"Ah," I said, comprehension dawning. "I suppose that doesn't make a lot of sense." I curled both legs under me in the yoga-like pose I usually adopted for the couch. "I was human once. As a human, I had to eat. I'm sure you get that." He nodded & grimaced. "Well, we've also got these senses. Taste, touch, smell, all that. I know you've got them, too, but in us, they're strong and insistent. And they're our interface for processing information about our surroundings. All information, including some that's extraneous. Some things aren't necessarily needed for survival, but they're pleasant to the senses." I ate another handful of popcorn. "So even though I know I don't need it, I still do some things because they're pleasing. Like popcorn." I took a drink. "Also soda. And perfume and Chinese food and brushing my teeth and going barefoot in grass and...you get the picture." He didn't seem to. I sighed. "Because I like those things, and I choose to do them for their own sake."

"Hmm." Smith made a noncommittal sound & took a piece of popcorn. He turned it all around, staring at it. "I had senses before, but they weren't like this. They were merely information to be processed & reacted to; no inherent value or subjective content." Ah, so he had gotten that first part. "This 'pleasing' part is foreign to me." He was obviously weighing a decision. I had never seen someone so actively absorbed in the decision to eat popcorn. Finally he put the kernel gingerly in his mouth. Evidently he liked it, because he ate two more in rapid succession. Then he took a drink of soda & looked curious. "The popcorn made me want to drink the soda."

"Yeah, I think I've figured out that's a 'rule'," I told him. He looked askance at me. "The Matrix is made to follow rules closely modeled on that of the human world it's patterned after. You can bend the rules because you were created to, and I can bend them because I understand the concept and I've had a lot of time to learn how. Maybe some of it's because I'm code, too. But we can't break them, and I'm convinced some of the most mundane things in life are really just arbitrary rules. Like the fact that popcorn always makes you thirsty and your toast will always land butter-side down if you drop it. Less important versions of things like aerodynamics & gravity, but rules just the same." Rules, he seemed okay with. He nodded & I took the remote to play the film.

Weeks passed. We watched movies a lot. He asked questions about everything, including a lot I didn't have answers for. We spent a lot of time sitting on the couch completely ignoring whatever film was on, while I explained things like why I preferred to eat my unnecessary noodles with chopsticks instead of a fork. In between, I took him places. We went to the grocery store, the park, out on walks in the street. He seemed to enjoy the park; he said he liked the way the air moved. He didn't like squirrels, but he did like to watch birds. I took him shopping, which he professed to despise, but that failed to explain why he always wanted to go with me when I went. "I get bored when you're out and I'm here by myself," he claimed. That might've been true; he did seem to want to go anywhere I went. It was like having a dangerous, possibly sociopathic shadow. He did start showing preference for colors, though. He liked to wear blue and red, and wanted me to wear blue and green. I thought it was peculiar when he began to show a color preference for me at all. Not many people care what color the cover is on their encyclopedia. But I bought a bright green blazer anyway.

I even took him to the theater a few times, and had to sit stifling a laugh the entire time. He didn't wear the sunglasses, of course, but that didn't make my mental image of "Agent Movie Night" go away. He liked movies better at the apartment, though; he said the couch was more comfortable than movie chairs. Good thing he liked the couch, as he'd been sleeping on it now for quite some time.

The movies had worked wonders for bringing up subjects he wanted to ask about. His curiosity was completely endless, and he wanted to know everything about everything. Emotion was the most complex thing. He hadn't been designed as an intuitive program like the Oracle, so becoming one (if that indeed is what had happened) had added an entire new facet of existence. Disappointment, attachment, grief, frustration, contentment, anger. He knew the textbook definition of all of these, but it always seemed to catch him off balance when he felt one. The anger showed through often. It had been his first and most powerful emotion, and it surfaced at odd times. It was often his first reaction at failing to understand something. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with me. I was to "guide him," the Oracle said, but I was pretty ill-adjusted myself, and it was frustrating to him when I couldn't explain things in terms he understood.

There were days when I found myself staring him in the face, both of us yelling at the tops of our lungs, wondering if it was about to degenerate into the physical battle I was always expecting. I thought after so many years of learning to bend the Matrix rules, I might be able to go toe-to-toe with an agent. On several occasions, I thought I might have to. On the days he was particularly difficult, I really wanted to. It never managed to come to that, and the longer we lived together, the less it happened.

We came home from the grocery store one afternoon, and I decided I was going to show him the pinnacle of his favorite movie genre. "Okay, Star Wars now!" I said, clicking the remote. We'd gotten a lot more familiar by this point, and often our movie-watching position involved one of us lounging on the couch, their feet in the other's lap. This afternoon it was my turn to take up all the space. He alternated between confusion about & fascination with my flawlessly groomed, immaculately painted toenails. "Aesthetics, Smith," I explained patiently. I didn't worry a lot about my hair or my clothes, but I really couldn't stand going without a pedicure.

"I see nothing wrong with the aesthetics of your toes that should require painting them." He was becoming quite opinionated on what he did and didn't find "pleasing to the senses," but some things were still very strange to hear in that Agent Smith voice. His hands on my bare feet, where he'd laid them, were intensely distracting.

"Thanks, Smith. I think."

I think it's possible he enjoyed Star Wars more than the previous movies. I pointedly avoided looking at him any time there was a blue lightsaber on screen, trying to forget what I'd thought about his eyes. I hoped he couldn't read minds. We made it all the way to the end of "Return of the Jedi". When Leia revealed to Han that Luke was her brother, prompting Han to kiss her, Smith turned suddenly to look at me.

"Why do people do that so often?" he asked, as though he'd been pondering this for quite some time.

I had no idea where this conversation was going to go, but what else could I do? "What, kiss? It's a show of affection,"I stated simply, hoping that would settle it, and that I wasn't going to have to explain other displays of affection to a program of questionable mental stability.

"I see that, but why is putting your mouth on someone a sign of affection? Who decides that?" He seemed genuinely confused, but maybe a little amused at more evidence of humanity's weirdness.

I thought for a moment, and came to the conclusion that it was, well, kinda weird. Who did decide that, anyway? "Good question, Smith." I shrugged. "I don't know who declared that's the way it would be, but it's accepted by most people. Like I said, mostly to express an attachment to someone." As an afterthought, I added, "Also, it is very physically pleasant, so that's probably another reason." He nodded, seemed mollified, and went back to watching the film, still looking thoughtful.

Seconds later, entirely without warning, his hand was on the side of my neck, cupping the back of my head in his hand, and his face was no more than an inch from mine. Curse his programming; he still had all the speed & strength of an agent. He'd shifted and pulled me, and I was practically in his lap. Those inhumanly blue eyes were staring right into mine and I could not look away, though I was desperately trying. All the old instincts screamed to life: "Too close! Too close!", but I couldn't move a muscle. I couldn't even protest verbally; I did manage to squeak. Then without releasing my eyes, he laid his lips very softly on mine.

Not at all what I expected, though looking back, I don't know what I was expecting. How could I, if I hadn't been expecting the kiss at all? His lips were damnably soft and slightly cold and he smelled like the soda he was drinking and he was still looking straight into my eyes, even this close. The blue was only more gorgeous at this distance. In complete shock, I gasped, opening my lips slightly. Apparently he liked that, because he opened his mouth slightly, too, and leaned harder into the kiss. For someone who had no idea what he was doing, he caught on abominably quick. He was good, and I groaned quietly as I gave up. Closing my eyes, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed back using every nice trick I knew, beginning with running my tongue along his lower lip. I was smugly satisfied when he gasped slightly and his other hand tightened on my back.

By the time we paid attention to anything else, the credits were finishing and we were both gasping for air we didn't really need. Face still inches from mine, he asked "Why does it do that? Make one breathe harder?"

"Don't know," I said, reaching up for another kiss, which he returned enthusiastically. "Excitement, I guess."

He made that maddening noncommittal sound I had grown so used to over the last month or so, and he was back again, soft lips all over mine & hands caressing my back. I ran my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. After a few more moments, I gasped again and pushed him back slightly. "Wait, wait, wait." He stopped & looked at me quizzically. "Why are you doing this?"

He got the smirk again. "You said it was to show affection."

My eyebrows shot up as my heart jumped into my throat. "Yes," I said slowly. "It is. You meant to show me affection?"

"Yes," he said simply. "It seemed only a matter of time that I'd become attached to you. It turned out you were correct, and the kiss was very physically pleasant. So I didn't stop." He seemed to think this was a perfectly adequate explanation. "Do you find it enjoyable?"

Oh, the tables were turned! Now he was questioning me. "Yes..." I spoke slowly again.

He leaned closer. "Do you have affection for me?"

"I...well, yes." I was so startled at this realization that I didn't even have the grace to blush.

His lips were close enough now that they were brushing mine again. "Then why stop?"

Well. The speed and strength and logic of an agent. I really had nothing to say to this. So I answered with a disbelieving half-laugh and captured his mouth with my own again. He made a very enthusiastic sound and proceeded to keep me on the couch for a very long time.