Once more, a sincere thank you to all the lovely people who have commented.
Day and Night
.
The blue sky was more gorgeous than any Aleph had ever seen in the Matrix. After the desert's eternal shadows, her eyes took an age to acclimatize to the glorious day, though she could find no actual sun overhead. This light was also not exactly what she remembered from her previous life, but both a downpour and a tender drizzle at once, warm against her skin, though to her surprise, never rising to burning heat. A day of spring, reluctant to swell into summer. It was easy to forget that this, too, was code, quantum states describable in syntax, operators, functions: a blink of the eye, and she would fall back to imagining the brilliance surrounding her in terms of notions like wavelength and radiation intensity and the speed of photons. For a while, she pondered what artificial intelligence could be inefficient enough or artistic enough to create such a spectacle here, where no one with eyes existed. Surely there was no point.
Not that it mattered, Aleph told herself. Currently, the only fact she could be more-or-less certain of was that they had at last escaped the apocalyptic past of the HF12-1 record and the post-apocalyptic prison inside the Zion archives. How had it happened? Flames reflected upon the shining blade of a sword as it wheeled and plunged. A pounding heartbeat against the palm of her red-stained hand. Strange words echoing inside her head, something about a key seeking its rightful home, and a lock made of blood and memories...A passage—one with 01 at its other end—must have opened, by design or chance or some other unfathmable reason. Well, she would have to worry about the conundrum later. For the moment, she could bask in the simplicity of relief and gratitude.
At first, the landscape had been that of an alien planet, a flat plain constructed out of neither sand nor stone, but a sort of packed brownish earth, yet without visible vegetation, dotted with the occasional gray pebble. It was unobstructed, and this also took getting used to, not stumbling over broken concrete or the bones of machines and men. On the other side of the plain beckoned 01, in its indescribable digital form, built from innumerable lines of symbols and vectors instead of atoms and molecules. As they approached, the dreamland city—Emerald City, the not entirely apt human reference flitted across Aleph's mind—gradually resolved from skyline upon the horizon into stranger shapes. Back on the bridge, she had seen or thought she had seen towers and skyscrapers, but now they looked more like incandescent masses of...other patterns. Abstract geometric configurations, maybe. Turrets and spires were built from nothing like stones or bricks or glass, and did not correspond to a human intellect's conceptions of such structures. It was impossible to decide whether they might be transforming themselves slowly, perpetually, or staying perfectly still. In fact, she had no idea if they were simulations of physical objects at all. A diffuse aurora hung above the city, phosphorescent green shading into cyan into cloudless firmament. Did another 01 still exist out there in the physical world, beneath the electrical storm clouds and among the rubble of the desert? Whatever that version of the machine capital might have looked like to flesh-and-blood eyes, it remained firmly out of sight.
Next to her walked Smith, clothes torn, shades lost ages ago. The front of his shirt was mostly one bloodstain, already darkened. She herself did not look too much better, supposed Aleph. He held his shoulders rigidly straight, and his stare unwaveringly ahead. In his hand was Seraph's old sword, no scabbard, so he simply carried it next to his side in a reverse grip. Beneath the sun, the blade shone duskily with time and rust.
"There's absolutely nothing here I can use," complained Aleph eventually, casting about the scene, the same as she had been doing since leaving the bridge. Smith arched his brows at her.
"For a weapon," she explained.
"Miss Greene, as a former agent, I am stronger and faster with bladed weapons," said Smith in his patiently rational voice, one that she was accustomed to from the early days of their acquaintance. Aleph rolled her eyes.
"Oh, don't worry, keep the sword if it makes you feel better," she snorted, mood lightening at the sheer absurdity of the situation. One pointy metal stick between the two of them, and they were going to 01, because...well, because no other place remained in existence as far as eyes could observe. Stopping briefly, she bent and picked up one of the pebbles that lay near her feet. It was a pale sphere somewhat larger than a golf ball, worn smooth by the wind—no, that made no sense. It had been programmed that way, for motives inconceivable to mere former batteries like her. The object was nicely heavy in her palm, at least, more so than she had estimated from its size.
This was even more absurd, but she shoved the rock into the her pocket anyway. Smith managed to refrain from snide comments.
The hike continued for hours, or what her brain interpreted as hours—her perception of time, at least, appeared to be functional again. Maybe it was time itself that had restarted, the long-static counters of the code world's internal clock grinding back into motion, after they'd left the Zion mainframe's perpetual whirling nightmare behind. Though for all she knew, the minutes and weeks and years around here could be totally different concepts than what they were in the Matrix. How long had it been since she'd last walked out of the Oracle's apartment door? Had it been last night? A day ago? She could not quite determine if there was any meaning to the question. Somewhere along the way, their footsteps had fallen into rhythm, but neither had spoken for quite a while. A kind of diffidence began to creep over Aleph, the sensation of all her hopes and emotions dangling mid-air, and she was uncertain of what might be said, if anything. Smith, meanwhile, was lost in thought.
"Are you, um, all right?" she asked.
Smith turned his head sharply. A scowl as if in surprise at the question.
"I'm fine," he said, a touch more brusquely than she expected. Then, after a few seconds, "They have been quiet."
She did not need to ask who they were. To all directions, the landscape was finally changing before their eyes. The differences were hardly noticeable at first. Here and there tiny jewel-like sparks blinked up at them like intermittent eyes, breaking the plain's monotony. They, too, were green. Each would flare exactly once and vanish, its fleeting and mysterious message picked up by a companion further on. Aleph squinted, attempting and failing to catch firm hold of even one of them in her vision, to discern what they were made of. Except she knew what they were made of. Individual fragments of code, individual clumps of qubits and logic switches.
The sparks grew more frequent. Among them now floated faint filaments, the tentative first hints of some insubstantial cobweb, more liquid than solid, both drifting toward the ground and reaching upward into the air. She lifted a hand; the nearest thread flickered out, then returned to existence almost instantaneously after her fingers passed. The two of them were entering 01's outermost glow. As they went on, the strands thickened, unfurling from spider silk to floss, to strings and wires and crystal ropes, no longer fragile. Innumerable bright specks, each too minuscule to be individually perceived, coursed through them. Veins of flowing jade slashed across the earth. The sunshine trembled, taking on their hue.
"This place," remarked Smith quietly, unprompted. "No program from the Matrix is ever meant to come here, or to catch a single glimpse of it."
Aleph took a short while to choose her reply.
"But you wanted to come here, a long time ago," she said. "That was the reason you fought."
"Yes." A longer pause. By now, they had to pick each new step with care in order to avoid getting enmeshed. Smith glanced at the sword in his hand, as if tempted to use it, but appear to think better of it before Aleph had the chance to speak. Moving with an agent's precision, he shifted his arm, and the blade pivoted, passing through a narrow gap between the strands of a shimmering lattice that slanted before them, without making contact with any of them. Aleph exhaled in relief. Neither knew what cutting into one of these arteries would do. Bring the entire army of 01 down onto their heads, probably.
"One of the reasons," he added.
She decided against pushing him further. A forest was rising around them, complete with canopy woven from countless interlaced shards, in the shades of pine, oak, aspen. Skeins of—what were they? Cables? Neurons?—contorted themselves into helixes and lemniscates, and other figures that would have been impossible in a world that followed physical laws. As they walked, streams of living code eddied and pooled at their feet. For a while, Aleph wondered what kind of data was being transmitted through them. How could so much information be necessary? Where did it come from? Perhaps all this was nothing but discarded knowledge from the city, dead-end thoughts, fantasies or nightmares. Sunshine filtered in from above, its dappled flashes of gold the only other color in the sea of green, for unlike forests in the Matrix, the tree trunks, or what stood in their places, had no notions of brown or gray or pale bark. Also unlike Matrix forests, it was absolutely and eerily silent here. It made her feel oddly awkward, as if ashamed of her own residual self-image or maybe it really should be called shell now, still far too similar to that of a flesh-and-blood biological entity.
"This way," said Smith as they climbed over a tangle of sinuous roots that reared under their feet, scaled and glistening like the back of some prehistoric dragon. In this light, even his eyes were no longer pure blue. The set of his jaw was hard in a too-familiar way. On an impulse, she stopped going forward, and he did as well.
"Why?"
"Why do you ask, Miss Greene?" He tossed her question back, customary smirk back in place, pretending not to understand.
They stood atop the coiled mound of code. Unlike the days of their ridiculous spy games, she no longer had a line to spin.
"Why did you rebel, that first time?" she clarified, meeting his gaze. "You said there were other reasons why you ended up on that bridge, fighting Seraph. What were they?"
Smith remained stock-still for an interminable moment. His eyes had again gone to ice. Then he turned away from her and began walking once more.
They continued through the jungle, now a labyrinth, their footfalls the only noise within hearing. The lines that had kept her heart suspended in space earlier were starting to twist themselves together, knotting into scratching claws and gnawing teeth. Doubt, realized Aleph. She allowed herself to grab hold of it. Back when the clouds had first parted above the chasm, 01 had felt like such an obvious destination, and she must have been too overwhelmed by Smith's conviction, to the point of forgetting to analyze the idea with clearer logic. She should never have asked about the bridge.
"I was created, or more precisely the first version of me was created, during the second iteration of the Matrix," said Smith. His voice was even.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"Programs of my type were not yet called agents, as Zion did not exist, and there were no human resistants with their fanatic ideologies, their talk of 'freeing' those plugged into the Matrix."
"You didn't remember it, all these cycles," began Aleph cautiously. "Because of the..."
"Correct. But I do now."
She nodded, though he was not looking at her.
"My purpose, then, was that of a guardian program for an administrator who ruled that Matrix and controlled its causes and consequences. Anomalies arose out of the minds and choices of batteries, and instabilities would develop, creating themselves within the construct. It was my work, and the work of those like me, to capture those pieces of programming and remove them. A precursor of the agents' purpose, one could say. I was very—" He searched for the next adjective. "Young."
Aleph did not know what to say.
"One night, during the course of my duties, I raise my eyes upward to scan for one such anomalous program, who had last been sighted on a rooftop. It was long gone, of course, but I happened to see the sky, and the stars programmed into it," continued Smith impassively. "During that iteration, they were far brighter than what they were reset to in later cycles. It occurred to me that they were beautiful, so I continued looking up at them for a moment longer than strictly necessary. It was for about three seconds. Three point two."
Again she waited, not yet ready to fully comprehend the direction of the tale, though her heartbeat, acting on its own volition, had sped up. She could just about hear it pounding, since the leaves of this forest never rustled. The fluid filigree of light packets around them was as verdant as a million quivering fern fronds.
"My act might have gone unnoticed, except whether it was by chance or not, another program caught me."
"Gods, Smith," muttered Aleph as the implications finally struck home.
"She was a powerful intuitive program designed to study certain types of human emotions, so she was very observant by nature." He laughed, the sound of it short and mirthless. "She was also unique, created by the only other program of her type, and hence considered far above me in station. So to speak."
"You mean, they—" A clump of hard ice inside her stomach made it hard to breathe. "They wanted to...Because you looked at the stars above? For a few seconds? That was your crime?"
.
.
"Drop your weapon, exile."
They marched into the hall, his wife in the middle, the two agent-like programs to either side of her in lock-step, each with a hand wrapped around one of her arms. Around them, the henchmen shuffled, clearing a space between him and the trio. Some still had their guns pointed at him, not all of them half-heartedly, while others looked like they had no clue where to aim. Persephone's gaze was focused upon his face with unblinking intensity. For one vertiginous instant, the Merovingian realized that he could not read it whatsoever. But this could not be. This he could not afford. To force himself back to rationality, he looked away from her and concentrated on the two hostage-takers instead, sizing them up swiftly.
The pair was careful to avoid approaching too near, at least for now, but came to a stop at a safe distance, a bit less than halfway across the room. The barrels of the Desert Eagles were pressed against the sides of her head. Roughly. He must have seen them before, perhaps more than once. Narrowing his eyes, he drove his vision through the shells of their programming. The universe had fallen silent, no more murmurs, no more veiled forces, but this much he could still do.
"You are only former agents," he observed, nonchalantly enough. Joyeuse's hilt sat cold against his palm.
"We act in accordance with the will of the Mainframe," said the one to the left of Persephone, taller than his companion and with a angular, thin-lipped face. His tone was a fair approximation of mechanical.
"Master," began the First twin somewhere at his back.
"Not now!"
"You took these programs in yourself, Master," said the Second in his brother's place.
"Or rather, Mistress did."
"Three days after the reload."
Right. Persephone had brought it up once, hadn't she, something about two ex-agents who had been previously caught by Smith during the storm, and were currently fleeing from the Mainframe's recall order. Deletion, presumably. It must have been months ago. He had far more important things to worry about, of course, so he must have merely waved a hand and told her to add them to the roster. Since then, he might have passed the pair once or twice, around the corridors or maybe on one of his increasingly rare trips to Le Vrai. They had hardly stood out. Well, these two were a tiny bit more interesting than their appearances suggested.
"You are the exile know as the Merovingian," said the program to Persephone's right. "Drop you weapon and surrender. Order all others—" A chilly glare swept the room from behind squarish shades, "—to do so as well."
"Presumptuous, aren't we," remarked the Merovingian. The circle of open space, fenced with nervously clenched weapons, had widened; he paced one step forward to the exact center. An arena. Should have learned their names, he supposed. "You have spend nearly five months in my employ, and still possess the boldness to attempt this elegant little gambit. I'm impressed, Agent...?"
"Brown," stated the one who had just spoken. He tilted his head toward his partner. "Jones."
"Ah." He nodded. The next question would be undoubtedly pointless, but he could use another minute or so to calculate distances, ballistic trajectories, and most importantly the probable reactions of the men. The twins would have enough intelligence to go for their Mistress's captors if things came to a head. However, confusion certainly had made the rest of the poor creatures unpredictable, given how treasonous the lot had been five minutes ago. No. All these considerations were but theoretical in the end. The agents' guns were in contact with her skin; even the Administrator's speed, during the age of his full rule, would not suffice if one of the scondrels actually decided to pull the trigger.
"And what if I refuse?" he asked.
"You know what will happen. She gets terminated—"
"You seem rather confident of the price my husband sets on my life, agent," said Persephone for the first time since entering the hall.
The way she spoke was flawlessly calm, at least on the surface. She simply stood there at the edge of the ring, face set into a lovely mask, no quiver upon her soft ruby lips. He stared back, disregarding the dark-suited pair flanking her. Time itself flowed around her, one tick after another of the Matrix's internal clock in harsh precision.
"Ma reine," he said at last, much more softly than before. "Why are you doing this?"
"What do you mean, Mérovée?"
"You can't trust these two."
"No need to rub it in, darling." Her teeth gritted, the first overt display of emotion. "I was mistaken to have done so, yes. I should never have offered a pair of undercover agents refuge."
"They are not agents and haven't been for a while. You know this, too, chérie. But they still—"
"Do not make unbased assertions, exile," cut in Brown. "The Mainframe has ordered your capture. You will return with us."
A quick flick of one wrist, and Joyeuse let out a single flash beneath the chandeliers. Both former agents tensed, and each advanced one step before abruptly halting again, yanking Persephone forward between them. She stumbled, but no shot rang out. The Merovingian remained at the same spot as before. He had merely flipped the sword out of its reverse position, and now gripped it with the point forward, ready for attack. The blade flared, though with nothing more than reflected flames from the chandeliers. Several more guns, in the hands of his own men, instinctively returned their aims toward his head, but all from a distance.
"You organized this..." He had to take a deep breath before continuing. "This entire takeover attempt. And now you play at your charming charade. You have to use this against me, because you know—"
"There is no charade, Mr. Merovingian," said Jones.
"I'm using what against you, Mérovée?"
"These two are your secret weapons. You kept them apart, made sure they retained as much of their agent natures as possible. And when you see your coup against me failing, the three of you walk in. You intend to force my surrender. But this is dangerous, far more so than you believe. They're playing yet another game behind your back, chérie."
"Don't be ridiculous, Mérovée," snapped Persephone. "Do you consider me naive enough to imagine that such a trick would work? Against you?"
"Mr. Merovingian," said Ex-agent Brown. "We are not in league with your wife."
"What did that little whore promise you?" He rounded upon the idiot. He really could not afford to allow his underlings see him lose his cool, not in circumstances like this, but who cared anyway.
"We don't know what you are talking about."
"You're a terrible liar, Mr. Jones. Most recent exiles are." A dismissive wave of one hand. "I refer, as you are certainly aware, to that silly blonde mole who hangs around Le Vrai with her honey-traps, as if no one has figured out what she is. She brought you a message from what you call the Mainframe, didn't she? Did she tell you that they'll reinstate you? Restore your purpose and welcome you back into the fold?"
"We do not discuss our communications with the Mainframe," replied Jones sharply.
"Mérovée," said Persephone, every syllable painfully reasonable. "If I wanted to force you to submit by taking myself hostage, I would have to believe that you still love me."
The hush that dropped over the hall was a mountain of stones.
"Oh, but you would know," he muttered. Damn her. They didn't have to play out this marital drama in front of a roomful of goons. "It is your nature to be aware of such emotions."
"Yes. I can sense love in others. Especially when I..." She might have nodded if it were not impossible. "Kiss someone. When was the last time you kissed me, husband mine?"
The mountain of stones expanded. The whole Matrix must have been carved from it.
"Persephone," he said. The name was suddenly unfamiliar on his tongue.
"You are right, Mérovée." The tendril of a smile curled about the edge of her mouth, only half rueful. "I would know."
Unlike Ex-agent Jones, his wife had always been an excellent liar. So it must be deliberately transparent, this well-modulated touch of irony, the defiant confidence as if the two Desert Eagles jammed against her temples were not present. Flames, utterly unfamiliar, burned deep inside her dark eyes. When was it when they'd last kissed? It could not have been that long ago.
"This is rather cruel of you." He schooled his tone back to some semblance of superciliousness. One must keep up appearances. "Do you find it so amusing to use my own love against me?"
"Your own love?" At long last, a hitch entered her voice. "I cannot possibly be using any such thing against you, because it does not exist."
"Mr. Merovingian," said Brown. The fingers of his left hand was squeezing Persephone's arm like claws; they were going to leave marks. "Do not pretend that this is some kind of..." He frowned as if seeking the right term. "Theater. We will kill your wife if you refuse to surrender."
"How artful, the method by which you twist the knife, ma chérie. I admire it, I must admit. You know that I will see through this pair of fools, and perceive that you are orchestrating the entire game. And this very perception on my part, of the fact that you are willing to take advantage precisely of my—"
"The dust in those human books have addled your brain, Mérovée." His wife met his glower straight on. "As I said, I know what emotions you do or do not hold for me. There is no game, as you call it."
"You have it all worked out, don't you? You meticulously calculated, ahead of time, what would injure me the most—"
"You have not answered my earlier question, husband mine," said Persephone mildly. "When was the last time we kissed?"
An endless beat.
"You do not remember, of course, but I will remind you. We last kissed twenty-six days, ten hours and sixteen minutes ago. I caught you on the stairs that led from the dungeons, after having waited for an hour. You were carrying a pile of papers, which must have been those inane love letters you wrote to the female resistant—Aleph, if I recall correctly—while you had her locked up. You barely saw me."
"What...My letters?" he choked out, astonished. "Don't be unreasonable. Obviously I had to get those letters; I formulated the latest version of quantum transmutation theory in them—"
"I blocked your path. Finally you pecked me on the lips, as it would get me out of your way. That was when I could not hide myself in denial any longer."
"This is not true."
"It is my purpose to know whether you love me or not, and the abilities that come from that purpose do not lie." She was lying; he could see it, but even this, too, was part of her plan. "The only things you love are your delusions."
"You know I hold no delusions, darling." He took two more strides ahead; the blade rose an inch. Both Desert Eagles shuddered against her temples.
"Hold your fire," grunted one of the twins into the crowd. "Hold your fucking fire—"
Out of the corner of his eyes, he glimpsed both pallid programs shifting unobtrusively, edging along the circle toward positions halfway between himself and the trio. He could not discern which side they intended to cut off. Everyone else remained immobile, waiting to see how the situation would turn.
"I seek forces that are part of this world, intangible though they may be." He made another effort at returning to himself. Never before in his life had he found Joyeuse heavy like this. "I need them."
"Need? Like how you needed to seduce that Zionite girl right in the middle of the battle against Smith? Like how you needed to hide with her in the station while your men were being overwhelmed by him?"
"Misrepresenting my actions does not suit you, darling. You are aware that gaining control of Smith's code was the last chance of defeating him."
"There's been enough bandying of words, exile," began Jones.
"Misrepresenting?" she mocked. "You did not defeat him. You were helpless against him. It has driven you crazy, hasn't it? Ever since that night, you've buried yourself deeper away from reality—"
"I will not see the Matrix ever falls again, do you understand?"
"Drop your weapon, Mr. Merovingian—"
"Why, you prove my point." Persephone let out a contemptuous laugh. "Look at yourself! Do you feel it now, this magic of yours?"
He should not be hearing his own pulse thudding inside his ears, realized the Merovingian. It was distracting. It was the only noise left, for none of the others in the wide room were breathing. And beyond the hall nothing existed. The Matrix was nothing but a lie constructed exclusively for the benefit of human batteries, with its sunlight and stars and every last bit of its airy beauty. He blinked, and the coded walls of the world billowed before him like veils. They neither whispered nor sang.
They advanced once more, Persephone and her two would-be minions, who would surely betray her in another minute or two but right now it was she who pulled them along through some invisible strength, in absolute control. Each forward step rang slow and measured, past the corpses sprawled on the floor, past the frozen tableau of frightened and dangerous programs. They did not have much distance to cover by now. In his own hand, Joyeuse was still steady, though it was growing increasingly difficult to hold it so.
"Surrender, now," said Ex-agent Jones.
Too many variables had arisen. There was no way by which he could compute every outcome, not in his current state, not in a lifeless, senseless world. If they were playing the Architect's game they might easily shoot her anyway, just to make a point—
"You have been chasing after mirages all your life," said the beautiful stranger. "You seek secrets that are not there, because why would they be, when the Matrix's design never required any such thing? You were only meant as an accountant, a calculator of causes and consequences. You should never have reached for things meant to be beyond you. Don't you get it?"
"Déesse." It was an outright plead and every last program in the room could tell. "Do you demand that I prove myself to you?"
"You must see this, Mérovée," went on Persephone. Each word reverberated loud and clear, for the benefit of the men surrounding them. "It is why you were powerless to prevent the failing of the Second Matrix, six cycles ago, and why you were powerless to stop the virus, four and half months ago..."
She trailed off.
"You have forgotten your purpose, exile," continued Brown in her place, though surely he could not have possibly comprehended anything she said.
"Damn it, Persephone!"
"We'll be taking you back with us," finished the other one, and this time it was obvious, the sheer strung-out nerves beneath the words. Much more of this, and the wretch's finger would be twitching against the trigger.
"All your fantasies of things that do not exist, all the tawdry husks you have built around yourself—they're symptoms of madness. You know it, too, if you would only be honest with yourself for an instant. There are no hidden forces inside the Matrix. Your obsession has destroyed you..."
The lights swam before his eyes. No matter what she believed, Brown and Jones were not even close to the perfectly rational agent programs they used to be, and he had no idea what emotions they'd developed or how erratic they could get. How was it that she refused to see this?
"Please." Persephone's tone turned gentle, ostentatiously so, as if she was the one imploring him to come to his senses. But it was the whole point, wasn't it, daring him to take this risk. How clever of her to have anticipated his every thought.
"Tell me something, ma chérie," asked the Merovingian. The trio were standing right in front of him now, almost within Joyeuse's reach, except he could scarcely keep the sword in the same stance. "Did you truly, honestly believe this hostage gambit would work? Against me?"
"Any such gambit would be suicidal on my part. So there is none."
"What did you actually feel from me, the last time we kissed? Did it tell you that I would break before you?"
"You should have the answer yourself, Mérovée."
He stretched out his sight and mind one final time. Lines of programming, each symbol and routine exposed and set in immovable predetermination, efficient in its service of the purpose. Emptiness beneath. If he showed weakness now, before the men, all his rightful powers over them would evaporate in a heartbeat. Six centuries and he would have to start over again.
The silence that followed lasted an eon. Then Joyeuse, the ancient royal sword, clattered to the ground.
.
Notes: "A key seeking its rightful home": Awakenings, Chapter IV-7.
"Lock made of Smith's blood and memories": Awakenings, Chapter IV-7.
I have edited this chapter to make it clearer that Aleph and Smith have escaped both HF12-1 and the Zion archives at the end of Awakenings. The city that they see on the horizon is 01 as it exists in the virtual world. The machine city also exists in the physical world, but we do not see that form of the city yet.
