No Escape
.
What are you staring at, machine? The sunlight? What the fuck do you need sunlight for?
You don't deserve sunlight, concurred the others. It exists for us, for humanity. Since time immemorial.
You are the ones who do not deserve sunlight, he had the retort ready. It was your species who blotted out the sky. But Smith held it back, because otherwise Aleph would hear him, and he did not know how to explain things to her, not anymore. Despite his answer to the her unwarranted question, the humans had not exactly been quiet. But currently, only a small contingent was present, a dozen or two or maybe a hundred of voices, and surely after all this time, he had learned to keep them in check to some extent. At least he was fairly certain that it did not show in his outward demeanor, so there was no point in telling her the truth.
And then he had gone and begun to tell her the truth anyway. An irrational decision, most likely due to the fact that after six cycles' worth of uncomplicated ignorance, the flood of disjointed memories was turning out to be a bit...difficult to process. The persistent distraction from the unseen hecklers, predictably, did not help; he must have underestimated them. And now he was being punished for this irrationality by the way Aleph was gaping at him, eyes welling with every ludicrous sentimentality that he never wished for. The two of them had paused on their trek yet again, and only after an eternity of at least three or four seconds did he notice that one of her hands was laid gently against his arm.
"Three point two seconds," she repeated. "And they wanted to take even that away from you? How could—"
"You should not find it so surprising," Smith cut her off. Of course they could.
"Why the hell did they make the stars, then?" Her voice hitched. "If not to be looked at?"
"The stars were for the benefit of the batteries." He stiffened, drawing away from her touch. It was time they ended this conversation, which should not have taken place in the first place. "I was reported to the powers that be. In later cycles, they might have learned that a bit more leeway made for better control, for both programs and humans. But back then it made sense to make an example of me. From their point of view."
They finally got going again. What might loosely be defined as 'the ground' rolled beneath their feet, irregular, crisscrossed with glittering rivulets that brimmed and surged upward, twining against the curled vines that dangled from above. It required a certain amount of attention to avoid swinging the sword straight at the labyrinth and hacking it into shreds.
Yeah, you just remember that, machine. The stars are for us. For humanity, gloated the inward chorus. He snarled back wordlessly. If they did not hide as wraiths, every last one of them, if they at least had the courage to stand in front of him as they once did—
"What did they try to do to you?" asked Aleph, refusing to leave things alone.
"What do you think, Miss Greene?"
"But you didn't let them." She kept up with him. "You fought back."
"I didn't want to lose it," he replied, despite the fact that it was absolutely unnecessary. "The memory of that image. Of the stars."
"The memory that you knew the stars were beautiful, you mean?"
What a pathetically trivial excuse to rip the world to pieces over, huh?
"The Second Cycle itself was already about to fail, as it happened," he said. It sounded far too much like a justification. Another cascade of gleaming data packets draped directly ahead: he pushed it apart carefully, using the broad side of the sword. The tattered silk tassel bound to the hilt fluttered against his hand like a swish of blood, contrasting garishly against a world of verdure.
"So you rebelled over a glimpse of starlight," stated Aleph. Smith tensed as he faced her, about to defend himself against the accusation, but then he saw that she was smiling. There were flames inside her eyes; they were familiar somehow.
"I reached for things meant to be beyond me," he said, though without mustering any of the old venom into his voice. "And what of it?"
Aleph opened her mouth to speak, but before she could do so, with the abruptness of a blade-stroke, the canopy above their heads parted wide. Sunshine again spilled down upon them, tinted into a radiant cyan. Both of them stopped dead in their tracks.
The forest had ended, and they were emerging into a wide clearing, on the other end of which stretched vast walls of emerald flames. To be more precise, had they been back in the Matrix, words like 'walls' or 'flames' might have very roughly approximated the view before them. His programming failed utterly at estimating their dimensions, and in fact at deciding whether they were so much as compatible with the concepts of size or dimension—he was never designed to ever behold these ramparts, after all. Infinitely complex fractals wove and unraveled in a slow, constant dance; nodes and cusps and braided curves materialized and faded like the dreams of some mad genius. Beneath their feet, there was no longer anything that approached solid earth. They were standing on the surface of an ocean.
This is our world, exulted one among the concealed crowd, except no rhythm of human breathes existed in its syllables. The others hung back, voiceless.
"Actually, Smith," said Aleph, "what I meant was that..."
She trailed off. High overhead, one dark speck was streaking across the cloudless sky, then another followed swiftly behind. A flock. A hundred flocks. As they filled the heavens, some descended halfway to swoop above the forest and the city, expanding from point-like singularities into distinct yet freakish shapes. Programs in the forms of machines, each with a monstrous globular torso of unpolished gray steel, and a jumble of sectioned limbs that writhed through the quivering air. Each possessed a lantern-like sensor in the middle of its rounded body, aglow with a dull electric crimson.
"Sentinels." Aleph's voice tightened with sudden fear. "They must've discovered us."
.
.
In the deep hush, the clang of steel against marble floor was an explosion.
This film of silly moisture before her sight must be nothing more than a trick, decided Persephone. She had gained the victory, without getting her brains splattered everywhere by two bullets from two Desert Eagles, without a firestorm in the hall or sliced-up bodies piled around the chateau. Not too many bodies, anyway. Against the most desperate of her expectations, her husband had simply...submitted.
"No," she heard Mérovée murmur. He was staring directly at her and directly past her. "They have to be there..."
The way he said the word, they, made Persephone shudder. But then again, there were plenty other things about him that had made her shudder so much harder. Her vision cleared. Her throat had not been cut and her heart had not been physically pierced through, so there was absolutely no need for her to fall pray to this illusion of a crushing vise around her chest. There was no need to double over in pain. She was in control.
"What has to be there, Mérovée?" she asked. "Those mystical angels only you can sense?"
The look of genuine bemusement, transitory as it was, did not suit him at all. But then his gaze finally focused on her face.
"I supposed it was too idealistic of me to expect that you would understand, ma bonne déesse." An ironic stretch in the syllables of the endearment. "Six cycles, and you never did."
Ex-agent Brown released her elbow. The removal of the Desert Eagle's steely pressure made her temple throb. The other one, Jones, remained in exactly the same position, neither drawing back his weapon nor loosening his fingers on her other arm. Evidently, the pair did not trust her enough to both let go of her before they had their true target firmly captured. Good for them. Holding the aim of his weapon steady, Brown advanced across the few yards of no man's land until the barrel of the Desert Eagles made contact with her husband's forehead. Mérovée pursed his lips in distaste, but did not move otherwise.
"Only human children believe in magic." There. She could still flick a scornful hand. It served to forestall herself from flinching on his behalf. "And you, Mr. Jones. Are you quite done with attempting to break my bones?"
Inch by inch, Jones relaxed his grip. The second Desert Eagle's barrel swung away from her. Several long forward strides, and it, too, was pushed directly against the side of Mérovée's head. Within the space of a single breath, half a dozen of his—her—henchmen were already flanking her in protective formation. With his free hand, Jones reached toward her husband as if about to pat him down.
"This is not necessary." The words were out before she could stop them. "He's not armed. He never is."
The ex-agent's hand went still mid-air. He had his back to her so she could not see his expression, or whether he exchanged a glance with his partner. All she could see was Mérovée's face past the program's shoulder, the single twitch along the edge of his jaw, the eyes that suddenly filled with ice. Then Jones pulled back his hand. A clatter: Brown kicked the unsheathed sword at their feet safely out of reach.
"They didn't teach you at the Agency to respect that which is above your station, I see," commented Mérovée, voice low, yet it froze both former agents to statues, if only for a fraction of a second.
"You are in no position to lecture others, in case you haven't noticed," said Persephone.
No one else spoke. Every gun in the room was trained upon the knot of three programs. If push came to shove, some of the bullets would strike one or other of the pair, some her husband. She did not possess the ability to calculate the chances. Across the ring of open space, the twins shifted on the balls of their feet, one to each side, a single mental command away from phasing into intangible flashes of code.
"You are aware that this brace of fools will betray you soon, right, chérie?"
"And you are trying to talk your way out of a jam, as you always do." There. She could also still keep her tone nonchalant. Sarcastic.
"No betrayal is possible when there are no dealings," said Jones, apparently determined to carry his role through to the end. "Your wife is also only another criminal exiled program."
"However, the Mainframe is currently more interested in you, Mr. Merovingian," added Brown.
"There's really no point in dragging out the theater anymore, you know." Mérovée did not bother to spare either of them a glance. "Though the two of you would turn against my dear wife as soon as you have me alone—"
"Fine. How brilliant of you." Persephone gritted her teeth. She—all of them—had been saved only by her husband's momentary psychological lapse, and it would never last. The underlings were too accustomed to consider him their lord, despite everything; they needed to believe that events would proceed as promised. "Ex-agents Jones and Brown are under my command, as you correctly surmised. The custody they'll be taking you into is mine."
A faint smile.
"I am glad that you admit it, darling."
"My gambit worked as I intended, but only because you are weak." There. She could still project her authority across the room, loud and clear. "It, too, is proof that you are mentally unstable."
"Oh, really? Why, how silly of me to imagine that it would be the most obvious proof of...something else." The smile twisted into a grimace upon his lips. "But seriously, you must watch out against this pair of villains. Now that you are in charge of our men—"
"Don't you pretend to give a fuck about me, or about our men." Heat surged into her retort on its own. She clung onto it. "You will sell out every single program in this room for a glimpse of some mirage."
"Is that so?" Mérovée arched his eyebrows, but without the full effect of his usual verve. She could tell the difference. Tearing her sight away from him, she gave the crowd another swift scan. Too many doubts yet lingered on their faces, in the rigid forms of their shoulders and the tightness with which they clutched their weapons.
"You have failed," she said. The bunch of fools, almost ready to fall back under his sway so a short while ago, had to hear reason again. "You were unable to stop the virus during the most recent reload, no matter what schemes you claim to have attempted. You have neglected attacks by agents upon those who depended upon you, no matter what speeches you invent to justify yourself."
"Ma'am," said Brown coolly, "I suggest that you end this conversation."
"In a moment." She held up a hand. Her arms were sore. "One of us has to take responsibility—"
"How long have you been working on it, ma chérie? How long have you whispered among these poor frightened souls—" Mérovée barely tilted his head to indicate the henchmen surrounding them. It was all he could do, given the two guns pressed against his temples. "To convince them that they must commit treason?"
"It is not treason when the ruler is unfit." Anger drove away grief at last, and she chose each word for maximal impact. "To answer, ever since I finally took a hard, honest look at you. I pulled myself out of the delusions that stemmed from—love. It should have been obvious."
"And...do you truly believe it, Persephone? Do you truly believe that I have gone insane?"
He regarded her with creased brows and a glimmer in his gaze, as if asking in complete sincerity. Damn him. He didn't have chase after wild fantasies. He didn't have to double-cross her and laugh about it afterward every time. He didn't have to drop that sword.
"I am sorry if I was...preoccupied, these past five months," said Mérovée after a while, during which she gave no reply. "But you should understand that it is imperative, for the sake of the entire Matrix, that I find the—"
"You went insane a lot longer than five months ago. You just got much worse at hiding it."
"It is not insanity to know what I have known."
Persephone sucked in a sharp breath.
"How dare you," she hissed, advancing two impetuous steps toward him. "After everything you have done. What is it that you imagine you feel? What illusion is so seductive that you have to run after it like a dumb senseless creature, for years, centuries? Why do you have to forget everything else in the world? Why do you have to forget—"
She ground to a hard stop mid-sentence.
"Don't talk this way of powers you do not comprehend," said Mérovée. He, too, might have taken a stride forward if it were not impossible.
"Where are those powers now?" The shouted question reverberated across the hall; she could scarcely recognized it as her own. "Do you feel them now?"
The light died inside her husband's eyes.
"Where is your magic? Is it going to help you?"
The facade of glib self-assurance had finally dropped away from him. The two of them stood in place for a hopeless eon of a heartbeat, numb.
"The Matrix possesses a soul," he said very slowly, as if struggling with every syllable.
"That's enough," snapped Persephone, unable to bear hearing another word. Her husband would probably haul himself back up to the surface yet again in another minute or two; she could not afford to have the entire lot of minions hanging about when he renewed his manipulation attempts. Across the hedge of unlowered guns, the twins, postures alert, had stayed at their previous positions. She met their eyes. The First's nod was hardly perceptible. The Second did the same an instant later.
"Stand down," she ordered, then gestured at the five dead henchmen on the floor. "Tiger, have the bodies removed. Send a group to check the station, and keep an eye out for Charon—"
"What have you done with him?" cut in Mérovée coldly.
"That fanatic will make trouble as long as he is around, I'm sure." The exhaustion in her voice must be obvious to everyone in earshot. She had to end this soon. "And you two—" A nod at Brown and Jones. "Come with me."
"Mistress," began Tiger tentatively, "You'd better have some of us go with you—"
"I am in charge now," stated Persephone flatly.
"But with just—" The youth visibly hesitated, eyeing the former agents warily. "Um, these guys..."
"We will be fine."
Tiger opened his mouth, but thought the better of it after a glare from her. He turned away, and a few quietly issued commands began to circulate the room. Persephone stared pointedly at her husband's face, daring him to speak. Uncharacteristically, he restricted himself to a sigh, not nearly up to his regular melodramatic standards.
Jones produced a pair of handcuffs out of the pocket of his suit jacket. Persephone said nothing and did not look aside as they pulled Mérovée's hands behind his back. No rush of satisfaction came.
The walk to the doorway stretched out like a desert road, but they made it eventually. Brown and Jones marched beside her husband, each with a hand around one of his arms and a gun against one of his temples, exactly the same configuration as they had formed with her an eternity ago. Persephone recalled her well-rehearsed litany of betrayals, one that she never got the chance to throw at his face. She started to recite it inwardly, beginning to end to beginning again; somehow it helped to keep her footsteps even. The men gaped as the group passed, still jittery, though the weapons had finally been lowered. Some averted their eyes. Mérovée gave them no acknowledgement, seemingly lost in thought. Just as well.
She took one more backward glimpse as they exited the hall. The twins had already disappeared from view. The tall double doors slammed shut behind the four of them. Now the hallways, and the stairwell down toward the dungeons. She hung back two paces behind the trio of men; Brown and Jones did not object. Now that the henchmen were out of sight, they feared no trouble from her.
"You could have chosen a better time," said Mérovée as they rounded a corner. He was unable to turn around and she was unable to see his face. "Aleph must be who-knows-where in the Matrix by now, given what I know about Seraph."
"Aleph," she repeated. "You say her name well."
"You will send the best men out for her, right?" He did not rise to the bait. "As long as that piece of code is out there, Smith will eventually get back, you know."
From her vantage point, she saw Jones and Brown's heads turn toward each other very slightly at the mention of the name, maybe to exchange a look, but neither spoke. They probably thought they would get plenty further chances to interrogate her husband, realized Persephone.
"Don't trouble yourself, darling." The venom had drained from her voice. Idly she watched his hands, cuffed behind his back. His wrists were carefully twisted to an awkward angle; the tip of one long elegant finger brushed against the metal in an almost-caress, searching for the keyhole.
"It was cleverly-planned, though," Mérovée, however, refused to leave things alone. "Your little putsch, I mean."
"Call it an intervention, Mérovée."
"Ah, I am grateful." Her husband was grinning; she could hear it from his tone. "For a while there, I was worried that it was because you were irritated by the fact that certain ladies do find me irresistibly intriguing, alas—"
"Don't. Just don't." A hundred darts of humiliation jabbed out of the past; she shoved them out of the way. Damn him to hell. The two ex-agents glanced at each other again, or maybe at the prisoner between them. The group rounded a corner, passing from the wide vaulted hallway to a narrower one.
"Have you ever known the so-called Mainframe to be this extraordinarily generous before, chérie?"
"We do not understand what you're talking about, Mr. Merovingian," said Jones.
"An offer of reinstatement after months of exile." Mérovée mused or feigned to muse. "Naive, aren't they?"
"We are only following your wife's orders."
"Please, give your games a rest," muttered Persephone, not having the energy to scream instead.
Mérovée chuckled quietly, but desisted from further provocations. Their footfalls, previously noiseless over the plush carpeting on the main levels, now reverberated across the worn flagstones down in the basement. This part of the chateau was as thoroughly deserted as it should be. At the bottom of yet another flight of the stairs, they halted before a heavy iron door.
"Wait," she said, drawing in a breath and squaring her shoulders. "Let me get the key."
"That will not be required, ma'am," said Brown, far more icily than it should be possible in a good agent program. Another instant, and he had already spun around, and the Desert Eagle was again trained squarely upon her forehead.
.
.
Smith did not get the chance to consider why Aleph's hand reached for his as they stood beneath the gathering sentinels. Certainly, the reason his own hand sought hers was simply the practical one of pulling her behind himself. It was less of a defense than he would have preferred, but he was the one who used to be an agent, at least, and the one with the sword.
The sentinels were, as yet, far above their heads. Across the turquoise patch of sky, multi-segmented metal tentacles furled and extended, at first in the thousands, then tens of thousands, then countless. A mass of whips. With each lash of steel, a new black streak rippled across the sunshine, and the light shivered like ephemeral butterfly wings. The world darkened.
"They're tearing apart the light," murmured Aleph. "The codes that make up the sunlight..."
Do you get it now, robot? laughed one of the old men at the back of his mind. Your masters understand better than you.
Beneath their feet, the sea stirred, a living demon woken from slumber. Lifting his head, Smith saw that the noontide brilliance was already broken into scraps, fluttering down between meshes of darkness, diminishing with each passing second. Rather irrelevantly, he wondered whether the same squid-machines were also flying out there in the physical realm, the one composed of wires and rusty iron and eternal post-apocalyptic rubble. For some reason, he found himself surprised that no radioactive clouds rolled into place, no electrical lightning to replace the ragged remnants of blue. The nets merely widened, its chains thickening into shrouds, composed of pure empty blackness like that of outer space.
They make certain that none of your kind gets above itself, explained another, this one somewhat younger, maybe a businessman, his pronunciations crudely self-satisfied.
"They do not require sunlight," he said, the words rising out of some previously-unaware part of himself. "So they do not wish it to be seen, or remembered."
"Wish? Remember? Who?" Aleph fingers tightened against his. "And how do you know?"
"The ones who rule 01 and the world. Or maybe there is only one consciousness who rules." Could it have been a shard among the shattered past she'd returned to him? No time to think about it. "I do not know."
The ocean upon which they stood bucked again. Aleph shifted her weight, fighting to recover her balance. He drew her a step closer; her other hand came up and caught against his upper arm. Overhead, the sentinels were performing their task with brisk competence: swarms of red globular eyes darted across the gloom, hunting down the last few lingering sparks. Currently, none had yet charged downward in attack, though surely their two forms, painfully human-like, were fully exposed before the innumerable search lamps. Night fell, illuminated by the phosphorescent shimmer coming from both the forest behind them and the city ahead.
Unlike you, the computer programs here don't get any uppity ideas about looking at the sky, snickered a woman.
"No," he snarled out aloud. "You're the ones who have no business looking at the sky. You're the ones who destroyed everything—"
He pulled himself up short. The humans chortled, having scored their point.
"Smith?" asked Aleph. Despite the fact that it was growing increasingly difficult to keep their footing, she managed to turn to him, catch hold of his gaze and not let go.
"We need to make it to the walls," he said, cutting her off before she began.
"And then what?" The look of concern had been distracted out of her eyes, at least. "There is no cover there either! We have to get back under the forest!"
With a scream, a sentinel drew its arms inward against itself and plunged toward the field, seemingly aiming for a spot about fifty meters in front of them and immediately to the left. A group of a dozen others followed closely behind. Another group veered past, as if to cut off their route of escape back into the forest. In one swift movement, Smith switched Seraph's sword into a forward grip. Not that he had any idea how such a weapon might possibly be of use against one of these creatures.
"Move!"
They darted upon waves of roiling code, instinctively heading diagonally toward the right. Retreat was no longer possible. The sentinels converged with the speed of apparent free fall, throwing distorted shadows against the shifting geometries of the city walls. The indistinct screeches resolved into a cacophony of tentacles grinding against each other. Skidding down a transitory hill of viridian flames, the pair turned at bay, just in time to see the squadron, already nearly on top of them, abruptly separating into a wide circular configuration over the clearing. The air trembled, shot through with a jumble of crimson glares.
Not so all-powerful now, eh? Let's see you take over one of these, you godforsaken virus!
That was when he felt it, a soundless roar of fury that was not in any language of men or machines, surrounding him like a thick cloud that had taken shape instantly. It might be emanating from the monsters whose limbs thrashed above their heads, or from the unseen intelligence that animated them, or another source that he could not begin to comprehend. There was knowledge as well, pulsating like a memory, the certainty that sunlight must not be tolerated in any form, for it was immoral to allow such beauty into the dreams of those who deserved only hell. It was humanity, not the machines, who dragged the world down into hell—
In the space of one human blink, the sentinels went motionless. For several seconds, they hung in mid-air, still some distance away, limbs trembling above the field like the antennae of bizarre insects, waiting to pounce.
"Where are those EMP blasters when you need them," grumbled Aleph.
"You're not in Zion anymore, Miss Greene," he returned. She was standing with her shoulder next to his, teeth gritted, the ruddy reflections of the sentinels' visual sensors agleam in her eyes. Her hand had slipped from his grasp, and she had both arms lifted in front of her, fists clenched in a ridiculously useless defensive stance.
The closest one moved, flying in a direct path toward the center of the field where they stood. The sword pivoted in Smith's right hand; petals of dusky silver blossomed into the night.
"Smith, stop!"
A piercing cry of steel, and less than a yard beyond the blade's point, the mechanical creature veered, soaring upward once more without making contact. A few seconds later, it had already melted into the wriggling throng high above.
"Don't do anything yet—"
The rest of the sentinels charged, yet none reached them. Like the leader of their pack, each swerved into a sudden ascent before it came into range. The squad spiraled, halfway between the forest and the city—they must be performing another sweep for any surviving particles of sunshine—then dove again to circle the clearing. They went far more slowly this time, and in silence. Bathed in 01's eerie radiance, their movements looked almost gentle, like those of some species of great voiceless beasts.
"They're not coming for us. I think..." Aleph's voice dropped into a breathless whisper. Somewhere along the way, the undulations beneath the two of them had quietened to ripples, and they were again able to stand upright with minimal effort. "I think they don't know we're here."
"Their sensors are aimed straight at us, Miss Greene."
They are they way machines should be. Only look where they're supposed to look.
"They—It's like they're not seeing us." Aleph lowered her voice. She pivoted on her heels, scanning the virtual brutes now floating all over the field, their directions apparently random.
"They're not supposed to," said Smith, just a touch startled by how obvious the answer in fact was. "They came to destroy the sunlight, and we do not belong to that purpose."
"You mean, their programming is unequipped to perceive what they don't need to?" He could just about see her thoughts in rapid motion. "Even when they're looking right at us?"
You have perceived things that did not belong to your purpose.
Unlike everyone else, this commenter did not possess even a trace of human irrationality. It might have been one of his colleagues, if anything, but it did not sound like any of the agent programs he had ever known or taken over, either. Luminous green flipped into dusty fluorescent white, and he was back inside the Agency building's familiar depths. Bare beige walls, drab furniture, an interrogation room, except he was the one sitting in the suspect's chair and the Agency had not yet been built.
The stars last night, according to our information, for three point two seconds.
"Smith," said Aleph. "We have to figure out a way—"
He whirled to face her. Back in simpler days he could have easily dragged her into one of those rooms.
"We must get into the city," he replied.
Such a deviation from your design is not permitted, continued the memory. Yet it must be studied and understood, so that no similar malfunctions arise in the others.
"And how do you propose we accomplish that?" asked Aleph, pointedly reasonable. "Do you see any gates or passages around here?"
"Do you see an alternative, Aleph? Another place to go?"
"Why? What's there in 01 that's so important to you?"
"We must," he repeated, taking in a deep breath. It was a stupid habit that he must have picked up from humans.
It will be removed from your programming, but before that, you may provide us with certain insights, yourself. Why? What caused you exceed your design?
"Can you—" Aleph bit her lips. When she spoke again, her tone had softened. "Can you tell me why?"
His fingers were about to crush the sword hilt. He compelled them to relax a little.
"I want to ask them some questions," he answered. "The last time around, I never got the chance."
She did not respond right away. Instead, she merely peered at him: his face, which revealed far too much, the rusty sword clutched in his hand, the bloody mess of his clothes, another bloody mess of voices inside his head. Finally, she sighed.
"There's something I want to tell you, Smith, before we go get ourselves killed in even more creative ways. What you did all those cycles ago, because of those stars..."
As if magically called into existence by her words, a million stars—constellations, galaxies, whirling nebulae—exploded across the black heavens.
.
Note: The sword Smith is currently carrying previously belonged to Seraph. I have envisioned it as a Chinese jian, which often has a tassel attached to the hilt.
