Disclaimer: The Matrix trilogy and its universe be not mine.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Chapter One

There were times when Robert wondered about his father: who he was, what he was like. He had never known him; the story went that his father had mysteriously disappeared one day, leaving behind his pregnant wife. The rumours went that he had left her for another woman, and Robert's mother generally did not like to talk about it. When he was younger, Robert had learnt the hard way that the majority of children had a father whose whereabouts were more or less known to the family. There were those whose parents had divorced, or whose parents were dead, but Robert was the only one whose father had 'mysteriously disappeared'.

Robert had also come to learn that his mother was at her most talkative on the matter when she was drunk.

"He was an idiot," he recalled her saying once, remembering how she struggled to stand straight as she rambled on, not particularly aware of Robert's presence. "Always messing about with those computers. I told him. I told him it wasn't good for him. But he wouldn't listen. Oh no. He wouldn't. Then one day they came for him. Serves him right. Computer still running and everything, weird stuff on it, something about the Matrix, whatever that is. Idiot. I told him. Wouldn't listen."

Many a night had Robert spent lying awake in his bed wondering who They were. He fantasised about the possibilities: aliens, perhaps? He imagined his father struggling valiantly against the little green forces from outer space, bravely refusing to divulge the secrets of… of something or other, something important anyway, maybe related to the Matrix or whatever it was his mother had seen on that computer, and so the aliens had stunned him with their alien stun guns and dragged him off to their spaceship, never to be seen again. Not by this world, anyway. Maybe his father had become a hero on some far flung planet out there in the cosmos, and would one day return to Earth on his own spaceship and take Robert and his mother away on wild intergalactic adventures.

But now Robert was already an adult – technically; he'd turned twenty-one that week – and saw such fantastic ideas as nothing more than childish dreams. Besides, at his age, no one really cared whether or not you had both parents accounted for.

Robert brought his motorbike to a sputtering halt in front of a regular suburban house with a nice garden. The windows in the house were lit, and raucous noise could be heard coming through the open door. A party was in full swing.

Robert got off the motorbike and went over to the back of it to withdraw several boxes of piping hot pizza from the insulated container. He stacked them neatly on one arm, then closed the container and walked smartly up to the front door of the house to make his delivery.

xxxx

Ivan Reid sat hunched up by his computer in the darkness, the only light being that of the computer screen. He knew it was bad for his eyes – after all, this particular habit of his was probably one of the factors that had contributed towards the need for him to wear spectacles – but there was something fascinatingly antisocial about it. Light meant people, and noise. Light meant being bright and happy and full of goodwill towards the stupid, ignorant masses, until you became one of them.

Ivan wasn't one of them. He knew better.

He knew, for instance, that there was something wrong with the world. He wasn't quite sure what it was; he just knew that there was something wrong with it. Sometimes he might be looking at a tree and then suddenly get the feeling that the tree wasn't really there physically, but was rather just a construct in his mind; if he stared harder he sometimes saw – or thought he saw – the tree break down temporarily into little green symbols and numbers, like… Like code. Computer code.

But the moment always passed. Ivan didn't know if other people ever experienced what he did. Probably not, he thought, for Other People cared only for the superficialities of this world: friends, money, relationships, the latest trends, sex, drugs, rock n' roll…

Although there were also others like him, all of them people whom Ivan had met online. Many of them had mentioned something called the Matrix. No one really knew what it was, but Ivan suspected that it was something big, and probably something to do with the weirdness he saw in the world.

It was strange, actually. At one point there had supposedly been a deluge of information regarding the Matrix available on the Internet. A lot of people – if you believed the stories – had vanished during that time, but then suddenly all that had stopped. Information was withdrawn. Ivan had managed to dredge up some of that, but never enough to tell him much. Which meant that the people behind it were probably fairly powerful and good with computers. Not many people come hide information on the Internet from Ivan when he was determined to uncover it.

He liked to think of himself as the greatest hacker in the history of the world. He knew it probably wasn't true, but it was still nice to think of it like that. Besides, there was always the age factor. He was still only seventeen. There was plenty more time for him to grow and hone his skills.

Online, they knew him as Xenos: the stranger. Someone different, apart from this world. Perhaps one day its ruler. World domination aspiration might be clichéd, but they were always fun.

Meanwhile, anyone who dared to refer to him as 'Xena' would be saying hello to the utter corruption of their computers' hard drives.

xxxx

"YAAAAAAAHHHH!" Kevlar exclaimed in joyous glee as he ran – arms raised triumphantly over his head – straight into a wall. He slammed into it, bounced off, and fell back onto the floor with a dazed but exuberant grin on his four-year-old face. Kevlar MacMillan had an extremely high threshold of pain, and he took great delight in showing it off.

Janie Watson tried to ignore him and concentrate on her book.

Kevlar stumbled to his feet and looked for something else he could run into. He decided that his eldest brother Keith looked like a possible target.

Seconds later, the eleven-year-old was chasing the human projectile around the house, threatening murder and limb dislocation.

Janie tried to concentrate on the amount of money she would be paid for this, if only she could survive the night. It was probably also a condition of payment that none of the kids she was babysitting ended up dead. No breakages would be a bonus as well, although with five young boys – one of whom had ADHD – running around, that much seemed unlikely.

There was a loud crash as Kevlar knocked over something breakable in his attempts to get away from Keith.

Janie checked her watch and took some comfort in the fact that there were only two hours left before she could leave this place.

The MacMillan kids were legendary in the neighbourhood, due largely to Kevlar, who seemed intent in living up to his unusual namesake. Five boys: Keith, Kenneth, Kevin, Keanu and Kevlar. Their parents had a thing for names starting with 'Ke'. They had also expected several girls, because then they could have names like Kelly, Keisha, Kendra, Keira and so on. The first three sons were fine. For the fourth, they had to resort to obscure Hawaiian names. And for the fifth – well, Kevlar.

Angry loud yells erupted from the next room as Kevlar ran straight into a LEGO tower that Kevin and Keanu had been painstakingly constructing. Pieces of LEGO scattered over the carpet, and a fight broke out.

Janie decided not to watch. It might make her feel guilty. After all, there was also the agreement that she had made with the kids: if she let them stay up past their bedtime and do whatever they wanted, they wouldn't tell their parents that all she had done was coop up in the living room reading storybooks and eating popcorn.

The sound of more yells and crashes reached her ears.

Janie shook her head slowly.

Her handphone rang, and she reached over to answer it.

"Hello? …Hey, Bob… Yeah. I'm at the MacMillan house. …Yeah. …Well, it depends on how you define 'okay'." She threw a popcorn into her mouth. "Yeah, you can come over if you like. They won't be back for a couple of hours. …Yeah. Sure, you can bring a pizza. I could do with some food. …See you, then. …Love you too."

Janie hung up and scooped up more popcorn in her hand. The last two hours didn't look so bad any more.

tbc.