an: hello, hello, all - we are back and I have produced the Rorie chapter, as promised (reread last 2 sentences from ch. 16 to undersatnd the flow). Now I know we haven't seen alot of her, but that is changing starting here- the rest of the U.C. really becomes HER journey, in life and love. I hope you like it, and that this chpater is not TOO science/biology/biochemistry intensive. But it was important to me to be authentic. Next chapter is Neo and Trin fluff. Anyhow, enjoy, and please do leave me a review - Syd

Chapter 17

The daughter of the One carefully held the butterfly on her index finger, watching with delight as the insect crawled from knuckle to nail, scanning the skin ahead of it with dark violet laser beams. The wings were opal blue, delicate membranes which slowly fluttered at her touch. Rorie raised the creature up to her face, and two silver eyes stared back with something like enquiry, long fibre-optic antennae extending as if to touch her. She raised an eyebrow and smiled. Fascinating. Eyes shut, the young woman leaned forward, wrinkling her nose as the whisker-like appendages made first contact.

"Should I leave you two alone?"

Knight leaned on the door to the SRP entomology laboratory as he had many times before, watching her with amusement as she tinkered about at her cluttered bench. Microscope, Petri dishes, test tube racks and micropipettes were everywhere, reference books open on nearly every surface. Her messy little secret life, that's what it was. Hidden away in an obscure corner of the university's R&D wing, away from the prying eyes of her father's fame, away from the demanding rigour of her mother's expectations.

"Knight! Uhm… no. We're just friends," she said, putting the insect back in a large Plexiglas container, reuniting it with similar specimens of orange, pink, mauve and yellow. Eyes shining a welcome, Rorie invited him into the room, encouraging him to take his usual seat on the edge of her bench (indeed, it was the only inch of desk space that was consistently kept clear of junk).

"You ran so quickly from the Council General Assembly that I didn't get a chance to give you something," Knight said, though he didn't move from his spot at the door. Looking around the room uncertainly, "But now that I'm here, I'm not so sure now is the right time…"

Rorie noticed his hand was behind his back. "Why not now?"

"Because you're still too excited about everything. If I give it to you now, you're likely to do some crazy experiment on it. Like stick it in a blender and then run the juice through a machine, looking for protein or DNA or a cure for cancer or whatever. That would not be cool, Rorie."

She laughed, becoming more excited by the second. She hadn't been able to think straight for hours; the entire city was abuzz with the news. And she still couldn't believe the SRP was letting her help with the analysis. There were enough samples integrated into the Neb to keep her busy for a lifetime. "I swear I won't run any crazy experiments," Rorie said, not entirely convinced she could keep the promise. "Honour bright."

"You'd say anything to see what's behind my back."

"You're right. Give it to me." She reached for his arm and pulled, but it was no use. He wasn't budging, holding her back with his free hand. Eventually, she gave up and resorted to whining. "Knight! You've seen it all already! It isn't fair. Feel sorry for me."

"Close your eyes."

She eagerly complied, holding out her hands, grabbling with her fingers like a greedy child. But she touched nothing but air as the tip of her nose was tickled by soft, fragrant blades of silk. "Une fleur de Genesis pour La Fleur de Zion?"

Dark eyelashes blinked open to take in the exotic offering, the first flower she'd ever seen. It was pure white, spade-shaped petals laced in a reflective, pearl frost. "What…" Rorie gasped with wonder, "What is it?"

"A poor substitute for the bullfrog I wanted to get you. Damn things are shifty," he chuckled. "So I stole this gem from his lily pad instead."

"A lily." Rorie pronounced the foreign vocabulary pensively, rotating the new discovery in her hand. "If you had brought me a lake sample I could have tried to recreate its native habitat," she said, only half-teasing. "As it is, I could infuse some distilled water with sugars and electrolytes..."

"I should have expected as much from a geek like you." He shook his head at her. "No. No putting it in infused water, no dissection microscope, no autopsy on the poor thing. Its fate is sealed; this one goes in your hair, Rorie."

"What? My hair? Why?" Her voice chirped with the raised intonation of sincere bemusement. "I won't be able to see it in my hair…"

"Don't be silly. It's for my viewing pleasure, not yours." Knight took the flower from her and despite her objections, slid the stem into the untidy bun at the nape of her neck. A few rebellious black locks defiantly tumbled onto her crisp lab coat. "Perfection."

"Knight, really. This is very cruel of you. If I could just take a quick look under the microscope..."

"I knew this would happen!" he said with mock exasperation, lips betraying a secret, self-congratulatory smirk. He reached behind him, producing another perfect lily from his back pocket, trying unsuccessfully to make it look like a magic trick. "So I brought extra. Geek up this one 'till your heart's content!"

Rorie accepted the second gift with even greater joy than she had the first, with a dazzling smile to him, then a more subdued one to herself, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. Springing up on her toes, the overjoyed young scientist wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering a 'thank you' in his ear. "I'm so glad you're back," she added, voice shaking, unexpectedly overcome with emotion. This time yesterday Rorie had thought she'd never see him again, and now that Knight was back, bringing with him fairy tale like stories of trees, lakes, sunlight and stars, she wasn't sure what she felt. Relief, joy, disbelief, perhaps even fear? But none of it had seemed real, not until this moment, her head on his shoulder, his hand on her back, pressing her gently to his chest, to his heart. He had returned to her, with flowers and butterflies and a future she'd only imagined, with possibilities beyond her ability to appreciate.

When he noticed she was crying, Knight broke the embrace, not asking the obvious question but rather plucking some tissue for her from the box she kept beside her microscope slides.

"I'm sorry," she said, still not looking at him. With an embarrassed chuckle, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I guess I haven't had much sleep the past two days."

"Want me to walk you home?"

"No. I have way too much to do. I don't think I could sleep if I tried." Looking at the containers of insects she'd collected from the ship, "I'd take some of them home with me, but I think Mom's had her fill."

Knight joined her in a laugh at the Captain's expense. "Oh, yes. Poor Trin."

"I wish I could have been there, right when she saw them. Did she freak out? Did she scream like a rookie in a sentinel hive?"

"Well…" He hesitated, extending the single syllable as he considered his answer. Diplomatically, "No… she was pretty cool about it, actually."

"Hmm." Rorie slipped on protective glasses and a pair of latex gloves. Selecting a bottle of one-molar sodium hydroxide and a container of solid paraformaldehyde from her shelf, she said curtly, "I don't believe you. I know my Mom. She screamed."

"Sorry. I can neither confirm nor deny it," Knight said. "It's an army thing. That kind of stuff goes in the vault."

"Captain Trinity and her exclusive, macho club of soldiers. I just don't get it."

She placed a glass beaker on her digital mass and measured out 10g of the corrosive white powder, then poured in 50ml of distilled water to produce a 4 percent solution. Tossing in a magnetic stirring bar and putting the beaker on a hot plate under the fume hood, "So, is there anything that she didn't classify about Genesis?"

"I think you two should settle your differences like ladies. Mud wrestling. And don't take it the wrong way if I bet against you."

She grinned as she set the hot plate to medium heat and high stir. "You know, I have beaten her in the kick boxing ring a few times. Hand me the thermometer and a plastic dropper."

"What are you doing?"

"Formalin is used to dehydrate and preserve organic matter. I'm mixing some up for the dead insects we found in the engine core."

"Preserve?" Knight asked. "I don't know if you've noticed this… but they're made of metal, Rorie."

"To the untrained eye of a computer engineer, yes," she replied, clamping the thermometer onto a pewter stand and lowering it gently into the solution so that only the tip was immersed in the whirlpool. "But after what you would call 'geeking them up,' I made a rather surprising discovery about our little friends."

"Which is?"

"They're not entirely metallic. On the contrary, the internal physiology is actually not so different from the insects I've been studying for years. Except for one striking difference. They don't have a digestive system, no conventional means of metabolizing food. Which made me wonder where they get their energy."

Noting the temperature of her solution was just below boiling, Rorie added four drops of sodium hydroxide with the dropper, raising the pH just enough to allow the paraformaldehyde to dissolve fully. The chemicals stung her eyes, and she blinked back tears as she turned the heat off and activated the fume hood fan. Removing her gloves and glasses, she pointed to her bench. "Knight, grab that lamp on the PCR machine and shine it on the glass box. I want to show you something."

Knight followed her instructions, shining the bright white light onto the insects. They fluttered around and jumped about excitedly, stumbling over one another, apparently competing for an ideal position against the box's surface.

"Whoa. I thought they didn't like direct light."

"I noticed that too, but that's a special lamp we use for visualizing bands on electrophoretic gels. You see, our only way of seeing DNA or protein is to link it to a compound called ethiduim bromide, which will glow upon exposure to photons of a very particular wavelength. That is, about 340 nanometres."

"What's your point?"

"340 is a principle wavelength of solar radiation, specifically UV-A."

"You're saying the bugs are powered by the sun?"

"That was my hypothesis. After all, that's how the original AI's were designed to operate." Rorie turned off the main laboratory lights, leaving them in near darkness. She grabbed her botany textbook and joined him next to the Plexiglas box, "Chemistry came back on the exoskeleton. It's mostly carbon and silicone polymers wrapped around metallic conductors like copper and silver, which had all the engineers really excited, seeing as that's how solar panels used to be constructed."

"Makes sense to me."

"Well, I wasn't entirely convinced. Look how they extend their wings, as if to absorb the light? But the wings are only about ten percent metal. The rest is actually made up of multicoloured pigments. Now, that gave me an idea." Rorie opened her textbook to a flagged chapter titled Photosynthesis. "Long ago, plants absorbed solar energy through colourful organic pigments like chlorophylls and carotenoids. Electrochemically, this was much more efficient than any man-made, or machine-made solar converter."

"So these are photosynthetic bugs?"

"No, they're definitely electrical. I think these insects have the best of all worlds. They capture light with organic pigments, then convert the chemical energy into electricity, hence your polysilicone shell, which extends into the wings like wires. In essence, they're machine-insect-plant hybrids, with all the different components working in synergy."

"Synergy?" Knight repeated the word she'd used, thinking of the mystery woman Neo had encountered in the Matrix.

"Yeah. The interaction of two or more components so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of the parts."

As Rorie delivered her vocabulary lesson, Knight realized with some surprise that her parents hadn't told her the specifics of their mission. They were probably still tied up in Council meetings, he thought, noting that it had been nearly five hours since the Neb's crew had delivered their original report in a private briefing. Naturally, they'd been sworn to secrecy regarding some of the details, including Smith and his connection with Synergy.

"These insects are potentially the most effective energy converters ever built," Rorie continued. "If we could extend these principles onto a larger scale, it could revolutionize the field of electrical engineering. Ironically, this might be right up Mom's ally, if she could screw up enough nerve to come take a look."

Suddenly, the laboratory lights flickered on, and Rorie scrambled to her feet. "Dr. Baines," she greeted the tall, grey-haired man with nervous formality. He had serious, unpleasant features, and was well-dressed in the latest business-man's fashion.

"Rorie. How's your research going?" he asked, looking at Knight with a frown. "Engineering tells me you have… quite a theory."

She faltered, turning off the UV lamp and straightening her lab coat before replying, "It remains to be proved, but I think we may be looking at a biochemical means of collecting photonic energy."

"Yes, that's uhm… what they told me," the older man said. "Many of them were highly sceptical, to say the least. But I was quick to remind those stuffy old PhD's that young investigators like you give a… well, a hip, creative flavour to the project. How refreshing that not all of us are jaded by years of experience or the proper schooling. I mean, who knows? Perhaps one day, some of your ideas will even inspire a serious area of research."

Rorie's mouth opened, but no sound came out at first. Then, remembering herself, "Thank you, sir. I appreciate your support."

"Well, don't work too hard. Leave some discoveries for the rest of us, right?" he said with a condescending smile. "I'm sure your father is eager to see you. Tell him Malcolm says hello. Oh, and rest assured, as long as I'm administrator of the SRP, your kind of input will not fall on deaf ears."

Rorie nodded, heart sinking as the city's most respected terraforming expert dismissed her with a thumbs-up and a goodnight, heading down the hall to confer with the real scientists.

"Who was that?" Knight asked as Rorie sank down onto a stool, cheeks red with a crimson mixture of embarrassment, disappointment and anger.

"Dr. Malcolm G Baines. He's chief consult to the Council on the terraforming projects," she answered absently, becoming more devastated by the second as her mind frenetically analyzed the brief conversation. The engineers were sceptical to say the least? She contributed a hip flavour? Yes, thank God she didn't have any real scientific training to weigh her creativity down. How else could she dream up such riveting science-fiction? Tell your father 'Malcolm' says hello…

"He doesn't take me seriously."

"I'm sorry, Rorie. But who cares what he thinks?"

"Knight, everybody in the academic world cares what he thinks." She shook her head at her own stupidity. When he'd come through the door, she'd actually thought he was coming to hear a detailed explanation of her findings. Perhaps even complement her insight. How naïve! That the head of the SRP would choose today to take an interest in her research.

"He's afraid for his job," Rorie concluded. "After today's news, I'll bet all the project leaders are scrambling over themselves for his position. It'll be a political bloodbath. Suddenly, Neo's daughter is important."

"Rorie…" Knight put a hand on her shoulder but she moved away.

"No. I don't need to be comforted. I'm used to this." She snapped her latex gloves back on and opened the four-degree Celsius fridge, finding the bottle of super concentrated phosphate-buffered saline she'd mixed the day before. Using a graduated cylinder to measure 63ml of the buffered salt solution, she said, "Don't think I don't know that the only reason I even got this far without formal training is because of Dad. He probably saw to it that I got to process these samples from the Neb as well."

She bent to examine the meniscus at eye-level. Satisfied her measurement was accurate, Rorie emptied the PBS into the cooled paraformaldehyde solution to complete synthesis of her fixative. "I may not have earned my way in, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to earn my way up. Nobody knows more about insect biology than I do."

"I know."

"I'm not wrong about this," she continued, using a magnetic wand to remove the stir-bar and rinsing the chemicals off in the sink. Rorie then snatched a funnel from the cupboard and transferred the formalin from the beaker into a glass bottle. "Wherever this… Genesis came from… these insects are the key. They aren't cybernetic life forms that evolved to live in a carbon-based ecosystem. Somebody built them, and put a great deal of effort into doing it. With a purpose."

She labelled the bottle 'paraform. in 4XPBS,' with the date and her initials, all the while speaking more to herself than she was to Knight. "Nobody is going to patronize me into self-pity. If he'd taken the time to talk to me a few times at all those posh cocktail receptions, he'd know better." Rorie cleared some space on her bench and lined up a handful of small plastic bottles. Using a suction pipette, she began to measure a small amount of formalin into each container. "Go home and tell Daddy I say hi." She scoffed. "I'm nobody's messenger in this city."

Knight watched her silently, observing her uncompromising technique as she tweezered a dead insect into each of her sample solutions, recording every action in her notebook. Finally, he asked, "You want me to go?"

"What?" She spun about, alarmed. "No. Why? I mean, you can. If you want. It's late, isn't it?" She checked her watch for the first time in hours. "You must be tired after everything. I'm sorry. I was so busy railing against the world, I didn't think of you."

He chuckled. "And can I get you some more caffeine pills?"

"Don't judge me," she said, not even trying to deny how wired she was. "And don't feel you have to stay. It'll be boring for you. Just me… being me."

Knight hopped up onto his usual spot on her bench and made himself comfortable. "I'm not that tired," he lied. "Maybe I'll stay for half an hour or so."

Rorie smiled. Somehow, she knew he wouldn't leave. She picked up her lily, turned on the microscope and said, "So. Tell me about the… uhm, 'frogs,' was it? I want to hear everything."

To tell her everything would have taken a lifetime, though Knight managed to cram a great deal into the rest of the evening. Bullfrogs, silver birches, sunshine and starlight, not a single detail was omitted as he vividly described the most noteworthy mental images, all of which he'd committed to memory with Rorie in mind. That is, Knight remembered everything in the context of how he'd describe it to her later, just like this, sitting between the centrifuge and a large box of cryo-freeze tubes, shelves of God-knows what chemicals stacked above his head. And although he delighted in telling the story, in every nod, chuckle, and comically animated facial expression he inspired in his one-person audience, Knight wanted more than anything to show her what he'd seen, to give her the experience of being there. Rorie would never know it, but not a minute had passed on the surface when he hadn't wished for her company, and none of the adventure meant a thing until he shared it with the one person who mattered above all others.

It had always been Rorie. The daughter of humanity's most esteemed couple, free-born Zionist royalty. Her beauty had inspired poetry, sculptures, paintings; entire symphonies had been composed in her honour. But these things were nothing to her, to this student of life who preferred lab coats to ball gowns and goggles to tiaras, and in truth, she appeared equally regal in either fashion. It was in her manner, her posture, the way she spoke her mind with neither artifice nor evasion; Rorie had the attributes of a true leader, weather she accepted this responsibility or not. Wherever she went, people looked at her, whispered and pointed. In her social group, the handsome sons of politicians, judges, and Councillors competed for her favour. Her life was a novelist's fantastic invention, the noble, unattainable princess of mankind's last civilization.

What fairy godmother had brought a common grease monkey like him to her castle's doorstep? Knight smirked as he considered Trinity in such a role. The woman who frightened away Rorie's suitors, who never allowed her daughter out past ten without an acceptable chaperone (and the only escorts she trusted were David and Knight, in that order). How many times had Trinity made him promise to keep a watchful eye on her dance partners? Indeed, the mother's confidence was not misplaced; when it came to Rorie, Knight and Trinity had always been on the same page. Slide that hand one inch lower, buddy, and die.

Nobody else knew Rorie the way he did; over the years she'd never let anyone else in this deep. Her research was her soul, her workbooks more precious than diaries; when they spoke here, laboratory door closed, fume hood fan on to drown out their whispers, she held nothing back. And although Knight had never understood why she'd chosen him as her most trusted confidante, he wouldn't have it any other way. Rorie was his best friend and his best kept secret; he valued their intimacy as a daily gift, he always had.

But never more so than tonight. Something had changed. Tonight, everything felt different. She was glowing, beaming, effervescing with a contagious elation that pulled him in and swept him up. As exhausted as Knight was, he could listen to her snap, crackle and pop scientific jargon all night, it was music. And every time their eyes met, her deep, pure brown swallowing his gold-flecked hazel, Knight felt part of his mind evaporate. She was beautiful. And there was nothing more beautiful, more enchanting, than her happiness.

It was past midnight before he noticed the time, realizing that half an hour had become almost five and a half, and he still wasn't tired of watching her. The way she walked, the way she moved, feminine curves below fresh white fabric, the sway of her hips, the curve of her breast. But Knight quickly admonished the fantasy. What would Rorie think if she caught him gawking at her so? And yet he couldn't help himself. In a hidden corner of his soul, it seemed almost sinful not to look, not to adore her for everything she had become.

"If I were you, I'd hope Mom doesn't find out."

"What?" Knight's heart froze, all colour draining from his face. Mind gone blank, he stuttered, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to!"

She quirked an eyebrow in puzzlement. "Knight, I said, weren't you supposed to do the ship damage report for her tonight? She'd kill you if she found out you'd spent the night here."

Knight lifted a hand to his forehead. His brow was covered in sweat. "Yeah. Oh, I forgot."

"What would you do without me?" she asked, casually resting a hand on his knee and squeezing. "I'm going up to do another collection in about ten minutes. We'll go together."

Their contact nearly sent him falling off the bench as an involuntary pulse of electricity raced through his body, depolarizing every neuron from knee, to thigh, to groin. Oh, God. He had to get out. He needed to sleep this off. "No, it's late. I'll do it in the morning," Knight stammered, looking everywhere but at her. "I'm really tired. At least, I think that's what it is. Exhaustion."

She must have thought he'd gone crazy, spewing apologies and bidding her a hasty goodnight, forgoing their customary kiss on the cheek for an awkward handshake. A handshake? But he'd panicked, stupidly faking a yawn as she tried to lean in for the embrace. How horrible that he couldn't even look at her, that he was left to imagine her reaction as the elevator carried him home, as he repeatedly knocked his head against the aluminium-plated doors. Of course, Zion was exploding with celebration, parties seizing almost every level of the city, but he hardly noticed it. On this, the night of mankind's biggest party, he could think of nothing but Rorie. And by the time the lift chimed his arrival at level 514, he was smiling again. In spite of everything, all he could be was a hazy, brain-dead happy.

"Hey, Pretty Boy! Curly Sue! Isn't this your stop?" The question was asked by a man his age, holding two bottles of Moonshine, already drunk out of his mind.

Knight hesitated, rationalizing that with all the noise and music, he wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. "No, sorry," he said, letting the elevator doors close on him. He took a deep breath to clear his mind and slow his racing pulse, and without fully understanding his own behaviour (or caring to analyze it), Knight pushed the button marked 'Level 3-Loading Dock.'