A/N

Hello, everyone. Thanks for the wonderful reviews for Ch.7. I'm so glad to see a few new people - hopefully you will continue reading. I only keep going as long as you guys are enjoying it, so keep reviewing, plz!

Seeing as the puns seem to be popular, I will try to give you a bit more of that. This prologue is for Rorie (my Original Character) lovers... those of you who dont remember her, just skim the Teaser and the beginning of Ch1.

Ch 8 will be up soon (it's almost done, and, I must say, kinda adorable)

Cheers - Kristen.

Prologue to Chapter 8
Zion, circa 2219

Of course, Reader, you know what happened the next day. The next day, my father learned Kung-Foo, won his first Sparring match against Morpheus, and then failed the Jump Program. Everyone in Zion has heard the story a million times, in one form or another (I believe that the scene was recently spoofed in the motion picture comedy 'Agents Have Feelings, Too'). Nevertheless, as I consider myself a serious journalist, before writing about it, I felt obliged to confirm the common legend by returning to the Source.

"I just barely missed the other side," is how my father described that famous first leap from a skyscraper. He indicated a minuscule amount of space between his thumb and index finger.

Then, rolling her eyes, my mother interjected. "He didn't even come close, Rorie. Make sure you write that down. I want it to be 'on record'. He didn't even make it half way. It was quite pathetic, actually."

"What? You weren't even there!" Dad dismissed her comment with an emphatic wave of a hand, and then playfully shoved her away from me. "Ignore her, Rorie. Trinity, go make us dinner like a good wife."

Mother wrapped an arm around his neck, trapping him in a head-lock. Doubled over and laughing, my father tried only half-heartedly to fight her off. Head pressed firmly into her breasts, I have a feeling he wasn't in a hurry to escape.

"Just because I wasn't there when we pulled you out, bleeding and bruised from your fall..." she said, gripping him harder and leaning forward to speak into his ear, "doesn't mean I wasn't watching. You assume too much." Finally releasing his head, she smiled knowingly at me, as if enjoying her own inside joke. "I saw it all."

Dad stared at her for a few seconds, as if trying to decide if he should believe her or not (something told me that he already did, and that they'd been through this before). With the exaggerated intonation of a hypothetical question (asked only for my benefit), Dad finally said, "Well, if that's true, why wouldn't you stick around, Trin? Why weren't you there, giving me fake looks of sympathy, like the rest of them?"

Smile fading from her face, Mother reached over and grabbed my voice-recorder from the table and switched it off. "That is not important."

"She was embarrassed," Dad whispered to me loudly, making sure Mother could hear.

"No, that isn't true."

"And so she was avoiding me."

"Who wouldn't? I still avoid you."

"She baked me a cake, made my bed, picked a pair of my pants off the floor, and then, when I called her on it, she banished me from the mess hall with a nasty Trinity glare… just like the one she's giving me right now. Not that it bothered me… but what did upset me was that she avoided me for the next twenty-four hours." He shook his head, and concluded ruefully, "And I still married her…."

"Firstly, it was a sweater, you slob."

Dad grinned and placed his arm enthusiastically around her shoulders. "Hey, if I hadn't been such a slob, we never would have fallen in love."

Mom shrugged, as if to agree that this was in fact, true. "Any more of a slob and I would have caught the Plague in your apartment, and we'd all be dead."

"Yes, okay, whatever you say." He winked at me. "So, what's for supper… more mushrooms?"

"Hmmm… McZion Trios. Supersize mine."

"I always do, dear."

At this point, I was sufficiently annoyed with both of them, as my interview was ruined with their immature roughhousing and not-so-subtle sexual innuendos (I think they'd both be surprised to realize at what age I began to catch on… needless to say, I'm irreparably scarred).

Now, although I had no idea why the phrase 'McZion Trio' was so funny (I'm told that it's a Matrix-born joke), the point was that they were not taking this so nearly as seriously as I would have liked. I turned the recorder back on, and forced them into seats at opposite sides of the room.

"Alright… if we can possibly speak one at a time, please…" They exchanged a quick glance that told me that I'd be the butt of their jokes later, but I didn't care. "And tell me what happened next."

"She bent my spoon."

"Excuse me?" I was about to turn the recorder back off and storm out of the room. If this was another nasty metaphor of a joke that I didn't want to hear, I was ready to move out.

"I bent his spoon. Literally, sweetheart. A spoon." Mother was very close to laughing but she managed to hold it in. She knew I was at my wits end with them.

"I've never heard this story…"

"Well, if you'd give us a chance!" Dad feigned exasperation. "And she calls us difficult!"

"Daddy, please… this is important to me."

Seeing that I was genuinely upset, Dad's expression sobered, and he nodded. "Alright, Trin, I think we should tell her. She's earned it."

Mother smiled. "Let me sit next to him again, and I'll tell you everything. I promise, I'll be good." She held up her hands to me as if I were a Peacekeeper and she, surrendering rogue Militia.

I didn't trust her at all (the first thing you're taught in the Academy is that rogue Militia never surrender) but, as always in my family, I had very little choice. As she sat on my father's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, Mother began the next chapters of our story.

She reluctantly began by telling me that, in fact, Dad was quite right… she was avoiding him. In fact, with some effort, Dad was able to get her to admit that she never went to bed that night after he left her in the mess-hall, nor did she make good on her promise to head back up to the Core (the kitchen, on the other hand, was spotless the next morning).

Not that she hung around to enjoy it. She skipped breakfast, and remained passed out on her mattress until lunch, which was interrupted by the aforementioned Sparring match.

"Oh," Mother added, as a side-note to amend my father's earlier testimony, "And Neo did not 'knock him out with his first punch'… Morpheus kicked him into a support beam, and threw him to the ground several times…"

"Damn, you really were there…"

"Honestly. Does that surprise you?"

Dad smiled, and said that, in fact, it did not. He told me that, like any good ghost, my mother was neither here nor there, everywhere and nowhere, haunting his every move, but always invisible. "She'd only ever appear to me at night… after everyone else was asleep."

"The graveyard shift." Mom's fingers were idly playing with his hair.

"Yes… that's where you find a ghost, isn't it? That's where I found you. In the Core, in the middle of the night… you'd left me dinner and I came to find you…"

I lifted my portable computer into my lap and opened a fresh document. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

"Trinity was like…" Dad turned and examined her face, as if within her present-day profile lay a map to the past, which he could follow back to the precise moment he wished to recall. "A musican at the computer."

"What were you writing, Mom?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter - it was doomed to failure. Your father made sure of that."