I still have no idea why he took his freeman-name of "The Kid". Though it must be noted that through out his days in the public school system within the Matrix, he had several aliases to spare so he probably never had a solidified identity to use as his anchor. Though perhaps it's the fact that with such a simple and generic name, he could both easily elude the authorities and probably be iconic someday down the road.
He was the first recruit to which I found, a few weeks after my date of destiny in the hallway. He had heard the varying whispers of a major attack on a local state federal complex, and the murmurs and sightings of an urban myth, one which was reported to have flown to the sky straight from downtown during the day, freeze gunfire with a simple hand gesture, and actually seem invincible in comparison to the authorities of the system.
"The Kid" must have been only 15 at the time that I came into contact with him. He knew that something was wrong about the world, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He saw the stage with the fancy curtain hiding what is really there. He would later find out it was the marionettes of the human race. I took my time in having small meetings between him and the crew, but our timetable unfortunately had to be extremely accelerated.
People still plugged into the Matrix face the imminent danger of the Agents monitoring their every move, and if we of the resistance fail to break them out in time, they may be "bugged" and possibly eliminated by lethal force, if necessary. However, such good battery juice would be a terrible thing to waste. As I've understood from the other ship crews of the fleet when I came to Zion for the first time, if such slaves for the system haven't been able to break out of the illusion, and are unwilling to revert back to their sheepish state, then the final cut will be made.
Since then, I have seen within the Matrix such people that struggled in their rage against the state of reality, but either because we failed, or they were unwilling to take the last nervous step towards truth. They are then rendered into brain-dead vegetables, for they are lobotomized, in perfect mechanical execution by the machines, to the point that is in quite contradictory to what Morpheus taught me. The body does live beyond the mind. Their bioelectrical output is now marginalized, but better than absolutely nothing if the non-conforming person is exterminated.
The Kid had the urge to lift the curtain up, but Morpheus will not be able to let him choose. After my first visit to Zion, the living remnants of the Nebuchadnezzer's crew, save for the badly injured Tank, went to serve temporarily on the Striker, helmed by Captain Atraimi. During this short tour of duty, as the Nebuchadnezzer was being repaired, I was courting The Kid. However, during my shift on the Striker's operator terminal station, I caught a distant and low-toned order being sent out by the mainframe of the machines to the agent drones. Concluding that The Kid was about to be taken into the resistance, they decided to give him the final cut.
I immediately alerted my comrades to this situation. Normally, the rebels can do nothing about it but watch in both horror and pain. However, I am here now. There would be no time for us to properly have his private meeting with Morpheus, for as I witnessed far away on the monitors, I saw quite perfectly to my discomfort that the Agents are hunting for the Kid, and he is on the run throughout the city for his life. I will have to rescue him, and then have him make the choice that will decide his fate.
The Striker's operator loads me up, and as quickly as my materialization is completed, I launch into the heavens of the Matrix. Faster than a speeding bullet, I fly over the city, desperately looking for him or the predators on his trail. Then I see it, on the dangerous back alleys of this city, the peculiar codes for the Agent programming. All of the known Agent drone labels are simultaneously chasing him. I saw the two Agents who were with Smith when I destroyed him, along with the rest, including a few female-designed Agents (which until now, I only heard about them from back in Zion). However, I can't find The Kid's code signature anywhere.
Then I unintentionally did something strange. As I looked more intensely especially for The Kid, lights spluttered and overloaded my sight. When I came back to my regular vision about 5 seconds later, I found The Kid's code, but it was illuminated by a bizarre orange outline of a glow around that code. This color isn't of The Kid's own, but…something else. I quickly glanced for those two Agent drones I so vividly remember back in the hallway, and after a similar visual splash again, I locked onto their location. That is what is going on, I can lock onto coded programs and find it, no matter how dense the overlapping code there is. However, my attention is now more on The Kid, and I dive towards him like a missile.
He was hiding on the fire escape stairwell on the outside of some abandoned warehouse. The Matrix changed its own structural design in a déjà vu effect to make its codes so packed to where I could not see The Kid's signature previously through it, but now this…this…. whatever the hell that I can do now is… I can plow through any such coding with this almost X-ray power to it.
As The Kid, foolishly, climbed down the steps to see my entrance, I could see those two same Agents appear at the opposite directions of this street alley. They run with a full spring and pull their weapons. Gunfire will have to replace the Final Cut for today. As the bullets zoom towards The Kid, I reach for and grab him, and immediately fly away to the roof of a nearby skyscraper.
The Kid was traumatized by what happened today, but he'll quickly get over it. He does recognize my face, but its one thing to see a person you are secretly idolizing in pictures published by the machine state-run media, its another to be up close to him in real life. He calms down and asks me rapid-fire questions, though the last brings it all to the point:
"What the hell is going on?"
