-
"Calm, Trinity. Try to relax."
The sparring program's oriental-looking dojo was exactly as Trinity remembered it- every wooden beam standing up perfectly straight, the floor without a hint of wear. It did not look at all like the kind of place someone would live in.
The clothing she wore, like Morpheus', was also keeping to a minimalist approach. Nonetheless, she felt the gentle caress of the dark green kimono tied tightly at her waist. Morpheus, on the other hand, was sporting the same near-black tunic he had worn the last time he had requested this program a month ago, for the purpose of training Neo in person.
Copying Morpheus' cross-legged position ten feet from him in the center of the 'room' with her arms firmly placed over top, she was keenly aware that, despite prior requests for absolute privacy in one of Zion's several 'port stations', someone, or more than one someone, was watching them on the screens.
Morpheus seemed to be aware of it too. "Scrap, Hook… Link", he murmured softly, eyes closed shut and deceivingly tranquil in comparison to his reproach, "I am quite certain the last thing you want is to be the reason for this exercise to fail. Trinity is not a formidable fighter solely in the Matrix, and neither am I. Leave us in peace."
There was no way to tell if they had obeyed or not. But Morpheus, at least, seemed to relax a bit further now, deeper into a nearly trance-like state of transcendence, fully expecting her to follow.
This didn't used to be so damn difficult. She could still remember twelve years ago, back to the time when she had first been freed by Morpheus, and informed of the truth. Like Neo, she had panicked. She had become unstable, had gagged and retched out of pure shock. Thirteen years in the Matrix, and she still had the occasional nightmare of it, locked up inside herself like everything else.
But, after the first year out of it… her mind had been freed of its chains. She could catch glimpses of the various programs for what they truly were and, in those instances, surpass what Morpheus had termed 'residual self-image' and move purely as consciousness, something she saw Neo do all the time now.
When both parties involved understood that what they saw and felt and smelled in these programs was not real, when both of them possessed strong minds and the strange genetic potential that had recently hit its climax in The One, anything was possible. No wonder she felt light-headed.
But trying to shut her mind down, trying deliberately not to focus on any single memory or thought… paradoxically, it was harder than anything else Morpheus could have asked her to do.
"Close your eyes. They overload the mind with needless detail."
"Yes." Yes. This was almost exactly how it was ten years ago. Herself, Ghost, Morpheus, and his senior crewers Kasat and Abel aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. No one else, nothing but her initial training with 'sensei'Morpheus. Both the same age, both released from the Matrix on the same day, she and Ghost had nearly confirmed Morpheus' expectations of The One. She had been assured then that it was just a matter of time until one, or the other, pulled ahead in their physical and mental training, here in an earlier version of this very program.
Still young and nervous, she had vowed to be the one to pull ahead, more out of sheer competitiveness than any desire to help Zion. But what they were being groomed to try and face, neither had known until it was too late…
It was not until much later that she would learn that the first Agent they had ever encountered had taken on the name 'Smith'. Both of Morpheus' best fledgling pupils, Trinity and Ghost, had tried their best, and neither had succeeded even when they fought as one. A terrible scene, one burned into her memory- seeing Smith using both arms to knock young Ghost and seemingly younger Trinity onto hard, rain-soaked concrete as if all their training had meant nothing against him. It had.
Ghost had broken ribs, but that, and his later departure, was not the first loss. Suddenly, the muscular Abel was between them and Smith, screaming at them both at the top of his impressive lungs to run for the closest exit line.
He'd stood and fought. But physical muscle had absolutely nothing to do with strength in the Matrix. Ghost had gone out first, and by the time Trinity had pressed the phone to her left ear, she could see and hear just enough through the glass and rain, to know that Smith had just snapped Abel's big neck. It was the most sickening, awful cracking noise she could ever recall hearing in her entire life, and Smith just stood up in front of her like it was nothing, calmly straightened his tie as she disappeared...
Kasat, their tattooed Operator, was transferred a year later. A year after that, his new craft and crew had disappeared like so many others in those dark times. Ghost, disillusioned after their appalling defeat, had left the ship and his place in Trinity's heart. In time, they'd replaced Kasat with Dozer, Ghost with Switch… and Abel with Cypher.
But Morpheus had always been to her the steadiest footing no matter the situation. Now he was doing it again, calling to her mind the image of a father bursting in to comfort the crying daughter out of her nightmares. That really was what he had been like, to her and Ghost; a father. The one man who's belief never faltered.
Somewhere along the way, her mind had decided that it was unfair to Morpheus to keep needing his attention. So she had walled away all emotion and feeling as best she could, still trying to become the person he had expected and hoped for.
It had been easier than most of the 'homegrown' Zionites would believe. She had excellent role models. All she had to do was think of Ghost, of Morpheus and, when she had to, of that emotionless, pitiless killing machine she would later come to know as Smith. Every feeling was a weakness in the hull to be patched, each surge a potential breach. It was only recently, with Neo, that that sensation had awakened once again, and even now she was glad to see she had not forgotten it.
Finally, Morpheus opened his eyes and bored directly into hers. "I'm beginning to understand what Patch said."
That was not what she had wanted to hear. "Don't go by him, Morpheus. If you say I'm fine, I'm fine."
But she could already see in his eyes that her quickness to deny a second opinion bothered him. "I did not say-" training off, he raised his bald head and squinted at the ceiling in concern. "Trinity."
Following his lead, she looked up, and shock only made what had started to develop on the ceiling escalate even faster. It was like a giant puddle, the normally orderly ceiling of the program melting downwards, exactly as the buildings had during her last visit to the Matrix. Before either of them could react further, several pieces parted from the ceiling and fell to stain the floor as a liquid.
Sensing growing panic in Morpehus' manner, she was the second one to notice that the walls- the thick wooden beams, the mats, everything- were starting to warp and distort in the same way.
"Operator", Morpheus called out, very careful to keep any trace of fear out of his voice. "Take us out of here, now."
"I'm sorry", she couldn't help but whisper. "Every damn time I lose focus, this starts happening! I can't control it!"
"Trinity", he corrected her in a stern tone he rarely used. "You must regain control. Every time you become upset over this, it happens even faster. You have to stop it."
Whatever response she might have made was cut short when whoever the Operator was finally woke up. They were pulled out just in time to miss the roof and floor above and beneath them melting together into an unrecognizable mire of chaos.
-
They took him into a room without windows. Without any illumination at all except for a single lightbulb hanging overhead, and the faint green glow of several computer screens, hooked up to an upright table. The first thing the general couldn't help but think of was Frankenstein's birthplace.
Agent Brown walked past him unperturbed. "Please remove your upper clothing."
Peterson looked up at him as though he'd turned into a large spider. "You're kiddin' me."
Beside the table, Jones, the Agent that shared his muscular jaw, wheeled on him sternly. "You said you wanted to help us. If you're having second thoughts, speak them now."
Peterson shook his head. "Nope. Just a bit spooked that that's the first thing you would ask. Okay… let's do this then."
Moments later, Brown and Jones helped him to hook his paralyzed legs up to the table's straps along with his arms, then lowering an ugly mechanical arm studded by three metal circles onto his naked chest, almost like an electric razor. After that, Jones went ahead and removed a small capsule from his vest.
"Try not to be alarmed, Mr. Peterson", Brown commented dully. "This may be rather painful for you."
At the same moment, Jones released the small electronic bug inside onto Peterson's waist. Ignoring Peterson's irresistible alarm at the sight of the multi-legged freak, it slowly located his belly button as if using primitive sonar, then descended.
Several seconds after it had vanished from sight, Brown made the final connections, leaving the procedure just a single button-press from commencement. "Are you ready?"
Peterson responded with only a weak nod, but that was enough. Brown pressed the button, began what he knew would be the most painful part of the operation. Not perturbed in the slightest however, they both stood and watched the monitors, ignoring the involuntary screams blasting from the human's mouth. If that nurse was still there, she would likely assume they were torturing him and not want to become involved.
-
Everything seemed to be happening at once now. One second, he had merely been subject to an unhealthy amount of raw voltage, pulsing through his temples. The next, it was as though the entire world had opened up like the skin of an orange.
Trinity's father saw the obnoxiously green coding once again, this time all around him. The table he was still strapped to was made of it. The two men he thought he knew were made of it. He was made of it. He could that now better than the others- he was watching his own brain.
Contrary to what the general would have expected, it was not a static image. Like all humans, the inner mind was the one bit of him that could not be represented by any existing coding. It was only expressed as a simple gathering of green electricity instead of numbers, rapidly fluctuating even as he thought.
Looking outwards, he saw more. Everywhere he looked, beyond the coding of the building they were in, there were more sparkles of green electricity. Some walking, some sitting, eating, talking, laughing. Each was encased in a bipedal body of code, constrained by it- the arcs of neural voltage never escaped the cranium.
Immediately, his attention returned to his own sparking of energy- something was being done to it. As he watched his own brain from outside it, new lines of code descended directly into it. He saw his own neural energy reacting violently to the program, knocking a great deal of the coding out and away from him.
Rejecting the program? That was no good- this, he knew, had to be what the spooks had told him of. Well, no more of that. I keep to the deal, and I'll be a 'spook'. Focusing what concentration he could against the intensity of the voltage, he tried his best to reduce the randomness of the electric fluctuations. Beside him, he saw through the code that the quieter of the two he'd been speaking to- Jones, was it?- was leaning closer to him and doing something with the machinery around the table.
This time, far more of the code stuck. He saw it filtering through his cranium of coding, forming a sphere of the stuff around the electric green bolts. The moment the sphere contracted and came into contact with the core of the voltage however, the blackest of voids took him beyond all dimension of consciousness and being.
-
You know, I've been waiting a long time to say this, Trin…For the third time that day, Trinity surveyed the sparring program along with her clothes. She looked up and down the walls and beams carefully, maintaining a tight focus a lot like squinting, and dared to feel a small measure of relief.
Nothing. Not the slightest hint of the collapse the program had exhibited earlier. She finally breathed out, idly feeling the solid wooden beams for what they really were. Nothing out of the ordinary- the walls weren't melting, or bleeding, or otherwise malfunctioning the way they had whenever she had lost focus since Patch's diagnosis of her.
For the longest time, I thought I was in love with you.
-Of course, this was still just training. The program's code, by nature, was infinitely more malleable that the coding of the far vaster Matrix program. By learning to stay stable in here, she could effectively guarantee that her previous accident wouldn't occur on missions.
It scared her, though. It scared her like hell. The very idea of what she had seen had previously begun an infinite cycle Morpheus, Ghost, and even Patch had all warned her about, along with the possibility that, if her condition escalated, it would become irreversible, forever barring her from the use of normal programs as well as the Matrix…
She sighed to the emptiness in exasperation. What the hell is wrong with me? More importantly, how do I deal with it? She thought better of an urge to kick the closest beam in frustration, wanting to do anything to get her hands on the problem, beat it to a pulp.
He lied to us, Trinity. He tricked us!Ignore it. Ignore him. Ignore the memory. Enough of Morpheus' calming exercises for one day. With no disrespect for her surrogate father and mentor, she had always felt the most direct way to work off pain of any sort was to keep busy. Beating the crap out of something- anything- might well work better than just lying there in despair.
"Operator, you there?"
A short pause later, Link's voice came back, issuing from everywhere and nowhere. "Hey there Trinity. Listen, Morpheus is just setting our course now, he won't be able to plug back in for-"
"No, that's okay. I don't need Morpheus for this. Just load up variant F of this program."
All I ever do is what he tells me to do. If I had to choose between that and the Matrix… I choose the Matrix!
Another nervous pause, even longer than the last, followed. "Trin… you sure? I'm not Patch, but I thought the idea was to take it easy, right?"
Amazing how easily she spoke back to him coldly, snappishly. Almost comforting. "Nice to see you think so highly of my abilities, Link. For me, this is taking it easy. Now, hurry up and show me Agent Wimp."
Faster than the other responses, the program shifted in compliance. It didn't have to change much- merely become a room dedicated to the combat purposes of humanity's greatest fighting arts, rather than the meditative ones.
One more change- a program in the room with her. As far as she could tell, no one in Zion knew exactly who had coined the derogatory name of this scaled-back copy of an automated Agent program from a much earlier version of the Matrix. Fitting him (it?) perfectly, the program and its derogatory name had inspired propagation as a common practice tool for all Potentials such as herself. Neo had never fought it, and now he would never need to- he could defeat the real ones with comparative ease.
Which was not to say that Agent 'Wimp', looking generic even among the standards of Agents, was any kind of pushover for a human. Having practiced with it regularly for nearly ten years, both Trinity and Morpheus knew how to counter and compensate for the automated program's scaled-back strength, how to outmaneuver it with tricks a real, sentient Agent would easily recognize and counter with ruthless ease. But for potentials recently freed, such as that Allison girl… even this enemy would seem agile and deadly.
Welcome to the real world, eh baby?Without waiting for it to fully load, she shut out the voice and ran the distance between them and laid into the program with both legs, knocking it onto its spotless black shoes with the first hit, and sending it spinning to the floor with the second.
For once copying the reaction speed of the real thing, Agent Wimp returned to its feet, not showing any signs of wear. It came at her with an uppercut that seemed to glide across the floor, made possible by its speed, but she faded with the blow and drove her knee into its block. Two suspended punches to the head later, Agent Wimp fell to the floor once again.
She felt and pushed the nearby wooden beam again, satisfied. This was what she'd wanted to prove- to herself along with the others. She could do it, could fight and act in the Matrix without the adverse effects they'd all witnessed, so long as she kept her mind focused. Morpheus' exercises might have left her nerves rattled, but this was something she was comfortable with. It wasn't likely she would ever have to do the former on a mission anyway.
Another sortie with the program later, she looked up at the ceiling. "There you go, Link. Tell Morpheus and Neo I'm ready whenever the next mission starts."
The Operator's hesitation betrayed his uncertainty, but he eventually spoke up. "Nice work. We're still a few hours to broadcast depth, but I'll tell him to take a look before we start."
"You do that". Finally. Finally, the nightmare's end was in sight. She would sooner die than become a burden to those who relied upon her- especially not Neo or Morpheus. For a moment, she idly wondered which 'him' Link was going to fetch. Probably Morpheus- her oldest mentor would have the final say.
You never answered me before…It was then she noticed that Agent Wimp had returned to its feet, making ready for another round. Link had forgotten to shut it off, but no matter- Trinity felt energized enough to fend this one off all day long. To prove the theory, she blocked and dodged the resulting attacks for several seconds before kicking it squarely in the chest, breaking one of the beams into splinters before the program reset it.
-
For a second, Program 31B privately feared he might have overdone it- the massive power needed to properly integrate two radically different codes with one another 'in-system' could not be easily survived by even the sturdiest of human constitutions. He had known firsthand that ex-general Peterson was a fortuitous human by his species' abysmal standards… but the surges of voltage pounding his temples now might be enough to leave them with only a charred corpse.
Thankfully, he began to see signs shortly afterward that abated his inner fear of risk he had taken. While the human's body had previously thrashed against the restraints, the mad frenzy now became a far more rhythmic movement of the entire body as one.
Looking at Peterson closely in code, he saw the writing of a program's governing AI interspersed with the unreadable green bolts, one serving as a kind of bunker for the other. Occasional streams of green would still occasionally spew forth, but the wild sparks were considerably more focused, and the entire storm pulsed to the beat with the AI. Still partly human, but governed by the code Brown and Jones knew by heart.
To say nothing of the physical changes. If a stranger were to look at the human stretched out on the table before them, he would simply assume Peterson had borrowed the suit, pants, and other accoutrements of an Agent. The structure of his body remained exactly the same on the outside, but that notion, if ever it had existed, was shattered when Peterson's eyes opened behind the shades Brown had slipped him.
Everything had changed. He now knew what these men in front of him were, what it was they did, and why they did it. He knew the real world, of what and why it was. He knew why it was Morpheus had taken his daughter away from him. He felt a thousand times stronger than he had been.
This did not change Peterson's feelings on the issue very much. Even if it did, half his brain and body was no longer his own. His eyes descended, met those of the program responsible for his change. So quickly, he could already feel Brown's train of thought, the instinctive connection that allowed Agent programs to operate on identical wavelengths… most of the time.
"So this 'Neo' is the real enemy", he finally spoke stiffly, already having peeked at the records made and distributed throughout the Source. While still recognizable as his own, the voice was near devoid of the usual sarcasm, rage, or any other emotion.
Knowing there no need to unbuckle the straps, Jones simply continued the line of confirmation. "Correct. Beyond his abilities, he has ever been integral to the morale of the Zion infiltrators throughout every version. Defeat him, and the Reloading will be unnecessary. Our further existence will be secured."
Peterson spoke again, breaking the restraints apart one by one, and emerging from the flatbed table that had changed everything about him so much. "In that case, you've made the right decision in replacing the late program 66S. From this point on, everything we do will be one step further to destroying the anomaly."
Brown nodded politely, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief it had all gone so smoothly- both the transformation and adjustment were stated to require the subject to be completely willing and voluntary, and even then nothing was guaranteed. "Then you have formed a new plan already, I take it. Welcome aboard, Agent Peterson."
-
