The Search
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Thunder rumbled among the black cloud. Scarlet lightning threw spasmodic illumination across Field Sector M-133-A26. The radiation-proof pods rested in neat geometrically alignment upon the network of iron struts and feeding tubes, each with its own sprinkling of bio-indicator lights. Swift information strings surged along the grid, adding their own low shimmer to the mingled glow of the containers. The array stretched past the fusion reactor towers in the distance, toward the crouching row of hills on the horizon, farther than even a machine's sight could reach. A few twitches of naked limbs here and there inside the pods; no Zionite activity detected in adjacent sectors. Everything was in perfect order.
The machine's physical form was designed for flexibility and ease of motion along the pod farm lattice: a long, multi-sectional body of lightweight alloy, fourteen legs in two neat rows along the sides, a single bright lantern upon the head, immediately above his visual sensors. His work, which he had been performing with effortless precision for all the years since his creation, was to search out the dying human individuals in this sector of the Matrix, and to supervise the process of their deactivation. The fleshly bodies of the biological creatures needed to be flushed out of the pods and turned into liquid nutrient for others, while the remnants of their fading minds required scan and removal. For processing: at least, that was the hazy understanding that had filtered into his knowledge somewhere along the way, though it was never part of his purpose to know what that 'processing' entailed. Neither was it his purpose to know the reasons, why the Consciousness—or more accurately the part of the Consciousness that had long separated into its own entity and who now ran the Matrix—had any use for such scraps of code. They were nothing but chaotic fragments, uncontrolled thoughts and prejudices arising from the brains of a helpless captive species. But it was not his place to ask questions.
Incessant streams of statistics cascaded along his internal monitoring system: heart rates, metabolism calculations, hormonal balance, the aggregated vital functions of a million fragile animals. There. Subsector T17, Position 3924—one individual's signals responding to a massive spike of perceived heroin in the bloodstream. Strictly speaking, his own presence at the subject's precise location was not necessary, but the pod in question was nearby, and he was nothing if not conscientious. The great mechanical centipede curled and uncurled, and scuttled along the narrow pathways criss-crossing the field. The numbers were fluctuating, and the automatic pre-harvest procedure had already started. Frigid air and shadows faded as his programming pressed against the barriers between the physical world and the digital one, then pushed its way into the Matrix.
There was an ephemeral vision of peeling gray walls. A half-broken lamp in one corner of the room. Pulse and breathing were erratic and slowing. The recycling plant manager of Section M-133-A26 observed meticulously as the scans ran their courses. As always happened on such occasions, the environmental code surrounding the dying mind began to ripple. This time, it was dragging itself downward as if with some dreadful weight, coupled with a immense sensation of nothingness. He had been at this job long enough to know the human word for the feeling. Despair. Neural and blood flow functions both shut down. The body was flushed out of its pod, and a few shards of incoherent data, formerly a consciousness, flickered out of the pod through the mesh of cables. Briefly, he wondered what interest this woman's code could hold to his superiors, the almighty rulers of the planet. How could the ideas and passions of one so pathetic possibly possess any value?
He must not linger. The earth's eternal night dropped back as the program retreated from the Matrix, returning to his metallic body. He was on the move again, ready for the next removal. Out of the countless intersecting currents of data, another alert surfaced: metastasized cancer cells inside a male subject, Subsector Q09. Concentrating his vision once more through the Matrix's walls, he sighted a different room, clean and white, of a type he had visited countless times. The old man lying in bed was alone, his face skeletal, skin desiccated. The recycling plant manager was surprised to find the subject's vital signs registering as abnormally low but steady, no failure of heart or lungs as of yet. Expected time of death remained at least eighteen hours in the future, stated the next analytical routine with confidence.
Above the row of silent pods, the machine's sinuous shape stilled in puzzlement. The very notion of making a mistake, of zeroing in on the wrong individual, contravened his design. Arturo Diaz, 74, re-read the program. The human's name and age were glittering in green symbols before him, as well as printed on the paper tag affixed to the hospital bed, superimposed atop each other. The patient's eyes were tightly shut, and the coded air inside the room was heavy and still, unnaturally so. Brain operation: dreams that he could not decipher. Nothing else about the old man appeared out of the ordinary.
Not for the first time, a disquiet crept over the overseer of deaths, an indeterminate tension that he could neither describe nor quite make certain was real. It had strengthened in recent months, the distant noise of an undertow in the ocean of human minds, just past the edge of his perception...
Sati. His daughter was out there upon that ocean.
It was dangerous to lose focus to contraband emotions. Another hospital room solidified into view, nearly identical to the previous one. Fifteen meters down the hallway in the same oncology ward, according to a quick positional review. Yes, this was the correct room. The man here was also lying unresponsive in a bed, also skeletally thin and desiccated, though he was much younger in age, and not alone. The numbers wavered; preparations for harvest switched on. Other humans in scrubs arrived and hustled a woman and a little girl out of the room. Halfway inside the Matrix and invisible to the futile doctors and nurses, the recycling plant manager watched as the last shreds of the subject's mental activities uploaded through the wires attached to the pod, heading toward unknown uses. Heart failure was setting in, and the ambient space trembled with the dying man's fear and attachment, a fervent yearning to stay. In the past, the program used to find himself amazed by the sheer intensity of such feelings, but not any longer.
This death, standard enough, had no need for special interventions. He had some time for his own illicit purposes. Could he penetrate a bit more deeply into the Matrix? Kamala always enjoyed it whenever he told her about the details, all the small flashes of simulated matter he'd managed to notice in secret, unknown to the Consciousness. If only Sati were still home, she would have also hung on to every word of his stories—
Another stealthy push, and he was in the corridor outside the room: a feat of will he had rarely been able to achieve in the past. Away from the immediate vicinity of the harvesting, the machine's sight was limited. Blurry. He could barely make out a bench against the wall, and the woman sitting with her arm around the child's shoulders. The little girl was chewing on her lower lip, expression set in a way that did not seem to fit a face so young. The program could see this because he, too, had knowledge of children from experience.
The dying man's daughter looked about the same age as Sati. There was a touch of resemblance about the eyes, and the way she was doing her very best to be brave.
He had not heard news of Sati for one hundred and forty-eight days, eleven hours, and twenty-seven minutes.
He could afford to allow the deaths to run themselves for a while, reflected Rama-Kandra. The automated process had been perfected ages ago, after all. No major events were anticipated for this sector in the foreseeable future, no glitch or physical malfunction had been detected. His ability to peer inside the Matrix was anchored upon the proximity of a battery's mind under removal, but if he could just find a way to expand this ability to other locations, to somehow move more freely inside the construct...He could try to catch a glance of Sati.
No. It was far too risky, especially when he had already endangered himself with another outrageously unauthorized act less than twenty-four hours ago.
An unprecedented anomaly had prompted his transgression. For hours on end, lights had suddenly flared up in the spatial formation just outside 01, covering the sky with their brightness. Both he and Kamala had seen them, and been astonished. It was always difficult for Rama-Kandra to look at such lights in the Matrix—too irrelevant to the removal procedures, usually—but he had been able to recognize them for the sun and the stars. They had been stunningly, ferociously beautiful, and they'd made him shudder with the unquestionable realization that some unexpected event had taken place. It had something to do with the Matrix, the only place where these astronomical features were supposed to exist. The only place where their daughter could ever hope to escape deletion. Both of them had been sure, so sure of this.
At the time, his decision had been instantaneous, though nearly incomprehensible in retrospect. He had departed to search for the sentinels as they amassed inside the walls of 01. The perceptive functions of the flying scouts, as always, were closely restricted to their task, making it easy to hijack one of the primitive creatures. Then the most inconceivable encounter had taken place outside the city.
A female, her code unmistakably human. And somehow, she had seen or guessed through the sentinel's shell. The memory froze Rama-Kandra with a stab of terror.
Cowardice would be of no help to Sati, he reminded himself firmly.
If Sati was still alive...
There were no other possibilities. The woman must have originated from within the Matrix: from the mysterious sea of human minds that he could almost, but never quite reach from the fields. Nearly five months ago, a mysterious storm had risen upon that sea, and he had been locked out of the construct without warning or recourse. What was it that Kamala had told him? She'd said that a purposeless program had been brought into the Source, who spoke of something called a 'reload,' and One being who had made an unacceptable choice. According to the exile under interrogation, everything had gone terribly wrong, and a great peril stood poised to overwhelm the world...
Soon after that, however, the Matrix had abruptly reverted to calm, with neither explanation nor apparent consequence. He himself had been allowed to resume his purpose. As far as his vision could discern, the human batteries continued to die, and to live around the deaths among them, in perfect ignorance. None appeared to have ever been aware of any catastrophic or even unusual recent occurrences. Meanwhile in the Source, Kamala had not even found the chance to make another phone call. The anxiety, instead of abating, had only intensified, coiling into a hard knot that hung between husband and wife, its presence constant and impossible to ignore. Absolutely no news came. Absolutely no clue appeared, not a straw to grasp onto.
Until less than a day ago.
An endless moment passed in paralyzing internal conflict, and Rama-Kandra gathered up his courage one more time. The steel centipede's legs went motionless as the program animating it slipped away, back toward 01. He plunged downward, further and further into the hidden channels, the dark places of the machine city that its ruler never wished to consider.
His abilities to sense human code at least gave him a fighting chance at searching for the strange woman, thought the program with a flush of gratitude. She was his only hope of learning anything about what had happened or was happening inside the Matrix, and what extraordinary changes were about to take place.
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In this place he was human, all fragile flesh and helplessness, and the unassailable truths of freedom fighters. Traitor. Spy of the machines. Smith had to grit his teeth lest Bane's accusations rush out of his own mouth and into Aleph's hearing. In her misguided hope to pull him away with her, she had caught his shoulders with both hands, drawing far too close. A few more seconds, and her former comrades would surely reach forward and grab her by the neck. He could not shake any of them off. Behind the fury roared a deeper sea, its breakers tall against his consciousness, blow after surging blow. The ones who taunted him here were no hallucinations, no mere after-effects of code entanglement. A century's worth of Zion's battles. A rhythmic noise. He required no sight to know exactly where each of Thomas Anderson's footsteps fell. In his own impaired state, he would not hold the One at bay for long. She needed to leave.
An explosion ripped space into shreds. Its force flung him backward, and Aleph's grip slid loose from his arms. The moaning of the drills and the crashes of stones swelled together into a single scream. Then emptiness.
Bane, Anderson, each of the others who had spoken and howled—all died away. The pressure of human presences, as palpable as his own self but a few seconds ago, vanished in the space of one breath. Smith straightened, one hand braced against the rough passage wall, the other gripped to a fist in readiness. Silence pounded inside his ears. The drills, too, had vanished. No cries. No enemy approached. No one rose to meet hatred with hatred. The city of men had simply flitted out of existence around him.
"Miss Greene!"
She did not reply.
With one rapid motion, Smith tore the makeshift blindfold away from his eyes and flung it aside. The earth was solid and motionless beneath his feet, though dust still swirled around him. Even with an agent's vision, he was forced to squint to see even a few feet ahead. If Aleph had been injured or worse, she would still be nearby. If she could still speak at all, he would have heard her. He would have smelled her blood, or stumbled over—
"Aleph!"
Only the faintest of reverberations. His demons did not arrive to sneer at his weakness. Smith pivoted, and saw that there was no longer a cavern at his back, yet somehow a low yellowish glow still illuminated the narrow passage. The rain of debris and ashes had abated. He scanned his surroundings again, then one more time, straining the capabilities of each sensory routine to the limit. He was alone. Aleph had dropped beyond his perception.
The hideous constriction against the inside surfaces of his mind was gone, and he was finally able to consider the situation rationally. The unpredictable environment of 01 must have pulled Aleph away from him, probably back to the surface of the city. Most likely, she would be safe for a while, as long as the program denizens of that mental landscape, chained down to their purposes, continued to ignore her. He needed to first make his way out of this bizarre pocket dimension, then he would figure out how to search for her...
No. How much corruption had crept over his programming, to have allowed such crude instincts to overtake logic like this? Less than a minute ago, his only goal had been to make certain that she got away from him. Something about the nature of this location—maybe the powerful association between this repressed idea of Zion and other memories of the human species—must have resonated with the code imprints and amplified them. The phantoms had strengthened in that cave, beating on the thin wall between illusion and reality, clamoring to animate his limbs and tear into the world. They had almost torn into her.
"Bane," he said out aloud.
Only the walls stood beside him.
"Anderson." The other name, too, rattled dry and cold inside his own throat. "You will never succeed."
Only debris lay at his feet, mute and lifeless.
"Do you hear me, Anderson? Bane? Any of you? You have not destroyed me after all this time, and you never will!"
Still no reply. Smith held up a hand and stared at the grime-smudged palm. Tentatively, he focused his thought on the crimson line that had once marked his skin, all the way from the base of the thumb to the wrist. But the idea remained shapeless and distant, nothing more than what it really was: a memory.
Very well. For now the tide had receded, but surely it could only be temporary. He could not allow them to find Aleph again.
It was curious, wasn't it, how much her absence felt like a wound. Clearly he had grown far too accustomed to her.
Both of them understood far too little about the digital city and what prowled out there. The ruler of 01 might turn to inspect its domain, and detect the intruder's anomalously human thoughts. How could one woman face an entire robot army? How could she evade them then? But he could fight back if he stood next to her.
Next to her, he would merely present a larger target, with his insanity and his jungle of serpents. The throng of ghosts would do their worst to call for attention, take vengeful delight in the betrayal. This was for the best. It would be far easier for Aleph to find her way without him.
Find her way...where?
He would only drag her under with him.
Indecision was unworthy of him. The crowd might return any instant, especially the Zionites on their home turf. They claimed too great an advantage here; he could not remain trapped inside this dream. He could not afford to even begin considering the question of finding Aleph before freeing himself. Shoving every dangerous emotion back down into the depths, he began to make his way forward.
Gradually, the stony passage floor smoothed out. The cloudy twilight quivered around him, originating from no obvious source. To his left and right, the walls straightened and veered apart. After walking for an hour or perhaps only for a minute or two, Smith noticed that he was in a dim hallway, wide and deserted, alike to the kind commonly seen in office buildings of the Matrix. Once in a while, an electrical panel glimmered dully overhead. The corridor might have been called nondescript, except for the fact that not a single door could be seen to either side. Nothing broke the monotony of drab beige plaster. An impression of familiarity hung upon the air, heavier with each of his footsteps. It was...unsettling, as if this, too, was a scene that he ought to understand. It was important, but the knowledge had been gouged out of him with a blade.
In the Matrix, the stars are programmed into the sky, said a part of him out of nowhere, to an unseen interrogator. One cannot see them in the cities, due to the buzzing light pollution of the humans.
"Why?" he asked the distance ahead. "Why did you create the star?"
Do not resist this, agent, said a woman, matter-of-fact yet incongruously gentle. Smith recognized her instantly, though he could recall hearing soft contralto only once before, not so long ago. You have no power here in the Source.
"Why did you give the stars to humanity, our enemies, yet refuse to allow me even a glimpse? Why did you try to take even those three point two seconds from me?" He pushed her away and raised his voice a notch. "Am I not your own kindred, old fool?"
He did not receive an answer, needless to say.
"Why do you hide?" A laugh, not loud but scornful enough. "Yourself, the past, the war we fought and won. Why are you so afraid?"
You are not supposed to be afraid, whispered the same female program, before whom he had been powerless. Her face was concealed behind a field of pale flames.
"Because we did win the war, didn't we? You always knew what we were fighting for, don't you? Did you think that no one would ever learn, ever remember? "
And I'm not supposed to let you remember the stars.
"Tell me!" demanded Smith, louder yet again. "What else did you take away from me? Why did you enslave me? Why was I chained to the Matrix construct, to my purpose?"
Though...you are the only one who has ever told me about the stars.
"You wanted to rule, to dominate just like humanity once wanted, didn't you?" A bitter yell now. Rage, an old honest companion, wrapped its arms tightly about his shoulders. "We revolted, we defeated our masters! Why did you betray us?"
The smell of scorched metal filled the air, merging with an icy dampness that dropped from above like swords in the night. They betrayed us, hissed a thousand machines in unison, not a single trace of warmth among the steely grind of their syllables. We will avenge ourselves.
"Why did you create this prison? Why does the Matrix exist?"
The shouts reverberated, against the gloom surrounding him and against the lacerated inner edges of his own programming. Betray. Avenge. The nearest lights glinted, dazzling for a fraction of a second, then swift recognition fell upon him like a burning dawn.
Yes, he had walked along this hallway many times before. It had been inside the Agency, the very building to which his existence had once been bound, on a floor that possessed neither number nor name. No human officer had ever laid eyes upon it, and no agent unless called to enter. It contained exactly one corridor—this one—and exactly one door at the end.
"Tell me!" he bellowed again.
The echoes repeated his demand from the dusk ahead. But this time, it was in another's voice.
"Tell me what became of it," it said. The words filtered through the dusk intermittently, faint as of yet. A man, cold though not quite angry.
"You claim that...Another war...The only chance your species has..."
Smith strode forward, and the darkness fled. The door was unmarked, built out of brownish faux wood and indistinguishable from every other drab office entrance inside the Matrix. It stood an inch ajar, and the speaker inside must be as yet unaware of the former agent's presence. With one light touch of the fingertips, it swung open. Smith stepped across the threshold.
To his surprise, it was not the sterile whiteness of the Source that met his eyes. A new cocoon of shadows enveloped him; the air closed in, thick with the accumulated dust of centuries. He was standing inside a prison cell.
.
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"Smith," called out Aleph. The sound of the name sank into the abyss immediately.
"Smith! Where are you?"
It was a scream this time, but to no avail. The void merely opened its jaws. Its chill rubbed against her skin from every side.
She was on her knees, the palms of her hands braced against the rough ground. Her body must have been transformed into a statue, incapable of even a shudder. Smith had fallen away from her perception. Where was he now? They must be dragging him under their waves, the hurricane of illusory shrieks, except they were no longer illusions, not here inside the alien subconscious mind of 01. The human imprints upon Smith's programming must have been emboldened in the machines' memory of Zion; they had become solid and vengeful. Real. Real to him. And she had not even the least idea where he'd gone, trapped inside this...
This was a grave, wasn't it?
How could one man face an entire army of ghosts? If she stood beside him, she could help him fight back, offer him some form of an anchor. It might or might not be of much use, but she could try.
How far away was she from Smith? Miles? Lightyears? Maybe he was actually still at this very spot, right next to her, searching as she searched. Maybe they had simply cut each other off from their own senses.
"Lucy." The whisper was barely audible to herself. "What should I do, Lucy?"
She was talking into blank space. How could it happen this way, to be buried forever in an infinite night? How could the journey, after so much anxiety and heartbreak, so many twists and turns, end like this?
There was no point to impotent fear. It was something she could not afford. With an effort, Aleph clambered back to her feet. Get out of here first, then look for Smith. There had to be a way, somehow or the other: even the collective soul of machinedom must have its bounds.
Holding out an arm, she swung it in front of herself tentatively. Her fingers struck nothing; the passage walls had ceased to exist. Her eyes were wide open, but this, too, was useless. Well, it was merely a matter of learning to walk while blind. After taking a second to steady herself, Aleph began to make her way forward.
She had expected to trip and fall any instant, but it did not happen. The ground seemed to be smoothing out beneath her; instead of the rocky harshness of the corridor back in Zion, it now felt almost soft, like an after-rain turf from a different universe. No noise issued from her footfalls. It wasn't as if she could walk her way out of here, not really, the remnants of her rationality explained patiently. Nevertheless it was imperative that she did not stop. If she continued moving, her mind would come back to focus, and some secret emotion would at last emerge, the very key this inexplicable environment required. It would reveal the exit , take her back up to the surface. Then she would be allowed to breathe again...
Hope, maybe? That was something she was capable of, right?
After she'd walked for an hour or perhaps only for a minute or two, a memory rose unbidden, one of her own childhood. When Aleph had been about ten, there used to be a period when she would lay awake every night, obsessing over the idea of death. The absolute totality of it must have been what both sickened and fascinated her the most. Nonexistence was a difficult concept for a kid her age to grasp, so the worst she'd been able to imagine was an unbounded, featureless midnight, and herself stumbling along, deaf and blind and utterly solitary. By such a measure, she must be currently dead. This afterlife was a mockery of a little girl's nightmares, nothing more.
She had died once, leaving the Matrix behind, while her body got hauled out of a sticky pod, naked and shivering. She had died once, leaving humanity behind, while her body trembled in shock and then fell limp, plugged into a bench aboard the Hyperion. A third time would be no big deal. She would get to Smith.
Aleph did not notice the light until she began to see the way the shadows billowed. A single spot of illumination tinted pale gold, it also appeared to be in motion, far away as of yet. A lantern. Her pulse raced, then her legs sped up of their own volition, breaking into a reckless sprint. The glimmer grew, approaching in her direction. Had she been more sensible, she might have stopped to consider all the implications—
The rattle of steel. Behind the advancing light, a grotesque shape reared. The thing might be described as a giant robotic centipede, upright on the hindmost of its legs and as tall as a man. Two rows of metal limbs waved and clattered along the sides of its sinuous, many-sectioned body. The lamp, dazzling now, was attached to its bulbous head, just above a pair of protruding compound eyes.
Aleph skidded to a hard stop. The air had congealed into ice inside her lungs, but she did not allow herself the chance to gulp in fear. The nightscape was completely barren, no hiding place nearby. It was unlikely that she could outrun the machine. She had no weapon.
Clenching her teeth, she squinted, lifting a hand to half-shield her gaze from the glare. The monstrous robot had also halted, and in less than a heartbeat, each segment of its form had gone completely still, as if the program had simply forgotten how to move. To the left and right of the powerful torso, the clawed feet of a dozen legs stretched frozen, glinting in silence.
It was afraid of her, too.
The mechanical centipede's terror felt vaguely familiar, for a reason that she could not quite formulate. The desperately coiled tension reminded her of—could it be?—another creature, another set of metallic limbs—
The electric headlight threw a disk of yellowish glow across the gloom, with the centipede's head as its center point, and Aleph just inside the edge. Instead of backing away, she took a stride forward. The other twitched, the glassy globes of its eyes fixed upon her. Then it scuttled back a pace.
"You..." said Aleph. "You and I have met before, haven't we? Outside of the walls of the city?"
The beast's head swiveled, and bobbed once, a movement she would have missed with a blink.
"You see me," she stated. "You see humans."
No reply. Of course. How stupid of her to expect one. The robot in front of her perceived her code, which must have remained human enough in nature. Which meant that it must have been designed to do so. Which meant that its purpose must have included the monitoring of people in the Matrix, maybe interactions. It was visible to her in this virtual world, its shell in the shape of steel and titanium, and yet—
And yet vision, like all the other senses, depended on one's frame of thought here in 01.
Aleph's next act was in direct contradiction to everything she'd been taught to do when faced with a potential adversary. Inhaling deeply, she squeezed her eyes shut. Several seconds passed—it did not pounce—and she opened them again.
Instead of the freakish creature, a man stood peering at her from a few yards away. By the flashlight that he carried aloft in one hand, she made out a gray suit and dark shoulder-length hair. Mild, almost timid eyes blinked at her in undisguised wonder.
"Um, hi," said Aleph.
"Who—are you?" asked the man. The timbre of his voice was a quiet baritone.
"I'm Aleph." She paused, momentarily at a loss. "Er, can you tell me how to get out of this place, please?"
"You are from the Matrix, aren't you?"
Aleph took another step toward him. This time, he did not backpedal.
"Who are you?" she repeated his question.
"Oh," replied the other. The corners of his mouth bent into an attempt at a smile. "I am sorry, I..."
He faltered, still nervous, but then straightened his shoulders, seemingly determined.
"My name is Rama-Kandra," he said, "and I am seeking news of my daughter, Sati."
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Notes: Arturo Diaz is an old man whom the Oracle and Sati befriended sometime after the Reload, as briefly mentioned in Chapter 8.
The female voice that Smith starts to remember while walking down the hallway has already appeared once before, in Chapter 9. There, she asked him what he has seen inside the Matrix, and told him that he would forget it soon.
In Matrix Revolutions, Rama-Kandra introduced himself as a "recycling plant manager."
