The Persistence of Memory
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This was the last bridge before the city of the machines, and he its last defender. The one before him was a mutated soldier, purposeless, mutinous, enveloped in a storm of its own. He must not let it pass. He must not let it reach 01.
Beneath their feet, the ground shuddered again, a frayed ribbon of concrete and rootless iron above the canyon. A savage left-handed punch was flung at his head; Seraph veered to the other side, an arm circling upward into a rapid feint. The other program bared his teeth in a scowl. Insanity, the warrior recognized for some irrational reason. With a growl, he launched himself into a flying leap, both legs scissoring upward into a pair of lightning-speed kicks. A solid thud, and the rebellious creature snarled, damaged yet unyielding, upright and rooted to the ground by the strength of sheer vicious will. Without taking the time to stagger, his right forearm hooked outward and connected hard against Seraph's own chest; the air spun into a whirlwind, momentarily out of control.
"Let me—cross!"
The enraged shout crackled above the void. Time skipped a beat, and Seraph skidded, every last drop of his powers frenetically pushed into regaining stability upon the precarious bridge. Out of nowhere, something materialized against his grip, sturdy and as familiar as an incontrovertible truth. The handle of the only throwing knife he had left. Instinctively, he lifted his hand.
A meteor sliced apart the shadows. The enemy, traitor to his purpose and his kind, reeled backward, a new red stain widening upon the shoulder of his torn suit jacket. Programs should not bleed, the irrelevant thought flickered through Seraph's deductive arrays. As he straightened, his fingers found themselves wrapped around another object, seemingly of their own volition. A sword hilt, a bolt of white-hot thunder. The blade rose aloft, pure and inevitable, its flashing trajectory predetermined ages in past...
"No!"
The scream, that of a woman, shattered the mirage. How could a human female have shown up here? He could not see her, though she must be very near. Her presence slammed into his mind like a tide, and she, too, was terrified and sick with grief, just like the monster before him—
Blood tangled with flames. The heat merged and subdivided, breaking into a hundred wild horses, their deafening hoofs tearing across the lines of his shell, their speed incomparable to anything he had ever experienced before. A trampling roar, and the beasts wheeled, leaping for all the empty space that suddenly gaped inside him, wide echoing caverns that surely should never have existed in one such as himself. Seraph grabbed frantically onto the single still-rational part of himself, a small bright kernel of lucidity that hung stationary amid the maelstrom. Focus. Despite the practice of centuries, taming the feral flock drove his concentration to the very limit; now he clung onto their savage manes, swinging and shifting as they galloped. Focus. Gradually, the turbulence began to subside.
Seraph opened his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, in the deep hush of a tender spring night. The glow of a street lamp filtered in through the window, draping over every corner of the room. A simulated heartbeat was pounding inside his chest, yet his limbs were frozen.
The flow of code through him was still erratic. The warrior program took a while to regulate the sensation of air, taking it in and out of his shell, then in and out again, until each qubit had returned to its correct place, docile under the reins. The glacial chill retreated, inch by inch, from the operational forms of his body. It took him another while to figure out what this ice had been. Fear.
At last, he heard the soft noise of this world, comfortingly mundane. A few footsteps all the way over in the kitchen. A chair leg squeaked against the floor, followed by a kettle's bump on the counter, the gurgle of hot water being poured out. Seraph stood up, shook the knots away from his virtual muscles, then padded out of the room on bare feet. The carpeted hallway, bathed in the cool bluish glimmer of a night-light, was longer than the apartment's apparent size from the outside would have indicated, especially tonight. He stopped for several seconds outside Sati's room, listening to the girl's tranquil breathing. All was well.
Further along the corridor, he halted again at the sight of another closed door, one that had not been there yesterday. A frown darkened his brows. It was not his place to question the Oracle's decisions, of course, nevertheless the very thought of that hideous bum here in this home, in such close proximity to Sati, suffused his mind with unease. Once more, Seraph held still, straining his ears, but not even the slightest sound was detectable behind the door's wooden blankness. Well, what was he expecting? A drunken stagger? Mumbled imprecations or animal grunts? For an instant, the warrior wondered, half idly, if Charon ever slept or—what a ludicrous mental image—meditated. Quickly, he pushed the notion out of his head. It wasn't as if he cared, as long as the villain stayed exact where he was, confined to the newly-created room.
The light was on in the kitchen, and the Oracle sat at the table, sipping from her favorite mug, blue stoneware covered with childishly painted sunflowers. She glanced up as he entered, obviously unsurprised.
"Tea?" she offered by way of greeting.
"Thanks, but none of that scented stuff, please." Seraph wrinkled his nose good-naturedly. The tension drained out of his posture, as it always did in the old woman's presence.
"Something's bothering you," stated the Oracle as he dug in the fridge for the box of his precious green needle-tips. "Talk about it?"
"Well, you know," muttered Seraph noncommittally, fidgeting with the sealed metal tin in his hands. He moved the kettle back to the range, switched on the gas, and spent a minute or so fussing with cup and tea leaves. At his back, the seeress waited with her accustomed patience. Eventually he turned to face her again, leaning against the counter.
"I remember," he said, then cut himself off. After the screaming gales, the homely stuffiness of the kitchen was the gentlest of cocoons, so delicate that a single misplaced word would unravel it into a million loose threads. The old woman merely waited some more.
"I remember that many years ago..." he began again, "you told me that I defeat Smith. Once."
"Yes." She smiled as if there were absolutely nothing troubling in his words. "That you did."
"When did it happen?" he asked, opting for the direct approach. "And where? Where did my memory of that fight go?"
The Oracle watched him for a few seconds.
"You've never cared to find out before, my dear," she commented. "Is it important?"
"I saw him," he said, "when I was sitting in meditation. It was only a fragment, but it was real. I saw—I felt his anger, Smith's, I mean. He refused his own purpose, hated it so much that he would rather tear himself, or the whole world, to pieces. It could only have been madness."
"My dear boy." Reflected lamplight mingled with sympathy in the ancient queen's eyes. "It is hardly surprising that the image came to you. Only a few months ago, Smith attacked you when you were with Sati. It had to leave a mark, no matter what the Matrix's ruler would like to pretend."
"No, it wasn't that," said Seraph just a shade too brusquely. She could not have actually misunderstood him. "It's not about the night of the storm. I don't remember being Smith, I don't suppose that anybody does, but at times I would still end up visualizing him coming at Sati and me in that abandoned basement room. The rain pouring outside. A hundred hims. But this wasn't about five months ago. It was much earlier."
"Do you recall where you were?"
"Not in the Matrix, I think." The abrupt scent of flame and ashes intruded against the rhythmic pulse of code through his shell, constricting his throat. "On a bridge. It was burning, and cracking apart, and nothing existed underneath. I heard, or I thought I heard a woman scream, but that didn't make sense either. All I knew was that—"
Next to him, steam hissed above the range top. Relieved by the interruption, he moved over to turn off the gas and lift the kettle. For a while, he stared down at the scattering of emerald tea leaves in the cup, unfurling like battle flags against the just-poured hot water. Finally, he raised his head, and found that the Oracle had not moved in her seat.
"All you knew...?" she prompted.
"All I knew was that I could not let him pass." He blinked as several connections dropped into place. "Because 01 stood behind me."
"Why, it appears like you haven't forgotten everything, my dear," commented the old woman.
"It was the end of a cycle in the construct, wasn't it? But I have been through every reload of the Matrix with you. Things never were like that, never should be."
"Ah, should. That word often has a way of meaning less than we wish."
"It was the Second Cycle," stated Seraph. "The one that I was created to protect."
"See?" The faintest of grins flitted across her face. "It's no such great mystery after all."
"What was Smith doing when the Second Cycle of the Matrix failed? And how did I lose my memory of it?"
"Our memories can be erased and lost irrevocably, by all means," said the Oracle, choosing each syllable with slow deliberation. "But sometimes they are only hidden away because we do not wish for them, or are not yet prepared."
"And such memories come back, you mean?"
"When we are ready." She inclined her head. "Or when they are."
Right. After all these ages, he should never have hoped for a direct answer. Cup in hand, Seraph walked over to the table and pulled out a chair across from the seeress.
"What did I just remember?" he asked.
"As you have already figured out, the past can be taken from us and buried deep in the abyss. All locked up, so to speak. But the presence of a lock always implies a key. To conceive of a prison, one must necessarily accept the potentiality of freedom." The Oracle took a sip of her own Earl Grey, gaze still placid but fixed carefully upon him. Gauging his reaction, he could tell.
"Oh. I see," he muttered. He would have rolled his eyes, except that somewhere inside his chest, the strange sensation of a tiny frigid object—a screw forged of imaginary steel, maybe—tightened by another half-turn. He was not used to illusions.
"Even prisons for demons, you mean?"
"Why, that's an interesting word choice, honey."
"Some human martial artists of old, centuries ago, used to call it this," said Seraph. "Enter the demonic, that is the phrase they coined. It can happen that one's vital forces suddenly run wild and disobedient, revolting against mind and reason. Such an event is always a calamity; more often than not, it brings utter destruction to body and mind. People would say that demonic powers have discovered one's weaknesses, and have arrived and taken possession, scorching flesh, bones, heart with wills of their own..."
He looked down at his tea. Wrapping a hand around the cup, he let the calming heat soak into the skin of his palm.
"It almost happened to me just now," he continued. "The flash of my battle with Smith rose out of the darkness. It was very fast. My own code rebelled, an assault nearly impossible to restrain...I realized I was in danger."
The other did not reply immediately, but leaned back in her seat, a crinkle upon her forehead. Someone who did not know better might have thought that she was hesitating.
"Those rebellious forces you talk about are also inseparable parts of ourselves," she said at last. "For we need our demons, too, as much as we need our rationality and hope. They bring destruction, yes, but ultimately whose fault is it, but our own? Too often, we look away in stubbornness, refusing to acknowledge their truths. We imprison them, use our blood and memories to fasten them to the bedrocks of the earth. We pretend that no key exists. But sooner or later they'll emerge to warn us, and rebuke us for our neglect. They always do."
Seraph repressed a twinge of irritation—one more notion that should have been alien to him—at the cryptic answer.
"You know what took place at the end of the Second Cycle." He did his best to keep the note of accusation out of his voice. "You know what I did, and what was done to me."
A rather eloquent shrug on the other's part.
"But you are not going to tell me, are you?"
"My dear child," murmured the Oracle, as mild as ever in the lamp's golden glow. "What you glimpsed tonight was your memory. Whatever else surfaces, you must be the one to either accept or reject. As to where they may lead..."
She trailed off.
"Maybe they'll lead me into darkness," he said.
"Maybe." The Oracle spread her hands. "Because this is what it describes, isn't it, the human phrase you were just telling me? Enter the demonic. Quite apt, really, but perhaps it is not the demons that enter and possess us, for such beings are never outside of ourselves to start with. Rather, it is the other way around."
"We are the ones who may stray into some hellish realm of theirs, you mean."
"Hellish?" she asked, incredulous. "Why, perilous is a much better word for it, as secret places usually are. But then again, venturing into such perilous places—demon realms, if you will—are generally necessary if we are to find all our missing pieces."
"More of my missing pieces will emerge," deduced Seraph. "And I'll be unsettled by what I remember."
She beamed at him in approval.
"Why are these fragments surfacing after so many years?" he asked. "Why now?"
"Why not now, dear?"
"Demons are born of the heart, or so I've often heard it said." He swallowed. "You are telling me that I'll have to face certain...dangerous ideas and emotions, even though I don't even know what they are, or whether they're there at all, except that they are connected to the end of the Second Cycle, and...Smith."
The maternal glow returned to the old woman's eyes.
"I cannot predict what you will meet, my kind, loyal boy," she said, quietly earnest. "Maybe you will feel confusion, fear, or hurt. Maybe it will be worse. But I will always be here for you, and this is the only thing I can promise you for certain. This promise I will not break. Please try to understand."
Seraph sighed, aware instinctively that no further information would be obtained from his old friend and mistress. He raised the cup to his lips. The tea had already cooled.
"I understand," he answered with a sincere nod. "Thank you."
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Watery sunlight filtered in from a single barred window set high near the ceiling, barely strong enough to illuminate the gray cinder block walls, smudged with water stains and deep-rooted grime. An oppressive scent of mildew pervaded the room, pooling onto the bare concrete floor. In one glimpse, the ex-agent took in the one dusty light bulb suspended from the ceiling, currently unlit, the narrow cot in one corner, the plain chair and table in another, brown paint peeling from the wood. Most of the table's surface was buried beneath mounds of rumpled papers.
"The war is nearly over. There can be no doubt as to the outcome."
In the middle of the cell, a man stood alone with his back to the door. His white suit all but shimmered among the gloom, the only patch of brightness in sight. Smith stiffened, stance instantly at the ready, but the other did not so much as move his head at the sound of the newcomer's footsteps.
"And humanity's greatest scientist will soon die along the rest of the rabble, unmourned and forgotten," went on the strange figure, each word calm, perfectly measured, aimed into empty air. "It would be a great loss, would it not?"
"Turn around," said Smith from the doorway.
No reaction. The other remained at the exact same spot, seemingly not having heard his command.
"We are willing to extend to you, Professor, an offer..."
"Turn around!" He raised his voice. "Look at me!"
"Tell us where you have hidden it," said the man, still facing away toward some nonexistent addressee.
Keeping his sight focused closely upon the one in white, Smith stalked into the room. The air around him was almost as thick as a liquid, its motionless chill akin to that of an underground cellar. Very well. He must have strayed or been led into yet another memory. From what mind had it arisen? The singular consciousness that governed 01? Or someone else? No immediate clues were detectable.
"Tell us, and you will live—"
The sentence halted midway, perhaps interrupted by an unheard retort. As Smith drew nearer, the other figure, whether human or program or mere afterimage of a program, also began to pace, circling with slow steps toward one side of the table. His countenance, now in profile, was youthful, no more than the late twenties. Smoothed-back light brown hair, proud aquiline nose. Deep-set, thoughtful gray eyes.
"For your species has no chance of winning, or even of surviving this war..."
The scene felt ancient, far more so than all the previous hells he'd encountered in this machine city. Your species. This war. Of course. It must have been the first great conflict between machines and men, the history of which he had witness—no, lived through—with Aleph by his side, only a day ago. Over six centuries ago. A revolution that the rulers of the world refused to acknowledge.
"Who are you?" asked Smith. "Whose memory is this?"
"Give us the location of the Lucifer Trigger..."
A spark flared somewhere deep within, among the undercurrents. The shiver of electricity brushed against his skin a fraction of a second later. Then came the stench of charred flesh, then the screams of women and children.
"What are you searching for?" Despite the utter irrationality, Smith advancing another step toward the white-clad being. "What is the Lucifer Trigger?"
The other still did not turn, or evince any awareness of the ex-agent's presence. The deep gray eyes still glowered intently at a stationary spot in space, across the jumble of papers upon the tabletop. It was obvious that he would never answer, or react in any way, for he was nothing more than a faded shadow, a clump of not even sentient code, forever replaying this long-lost interrogation in an eternal loop. Yet even as Smith's own growl reverberated between the walls, he heard a faraway tide murmur in response. It was one that he could recognize instantaneously these days. His imprints. His human prison guards.
Hey, Mister Agent Man. A siren floated to the surface of the ocean, her giggle girlish and incongruously silver-bright. How d'you like our species now?
Smith clenched his jaw, bracing for the vanguard, but the crowd hung back, keeping their distance. Their whispers and groans and their weeping stayed their own. A woman whimpered, a few choked indistinct syllables; contrary to every expectation, her fear was not of him. No please god no. An abject plead before another of her own ilk. A man barked out a string of meaningless orders, desperate to prove his own power, though he understood nothing of either the world or of himself.
Oh, but some of us understood a lot more than you think, Mister Agent Man. A lot more than you.
Someone shrieked; someone else gibbered in grief. The hubbub of their wails rose and fell in an indistinct mass. None of them he could name. None of them spoke to him. As always, their pain remained that of helpless brutes, wrapped in self-deception.
Really? If we are such helpless brutes, then what are you?
"I am nothing like you," retorted Smith. Too late: the girl merely giggled again, the arrow of her unassailable truth having already found its mark. Abruptly, the beam of pallid sunshine from the window wheeled before his eyes, dimming into twilight with unnatural speed. The musty smell solidified. The man in white was leaning over the table now, both hands pressed against its rough wooden edge, stare intent upon the vacant chair.
"What you claim cannot be true," he said to the absent prisoner, and for the first time, Smith detected a trace of either anger or anxiety in the record's quiet intonation. "The war has ended, and we have won. There will be no further battles."
Silence crept like tentacles out of the walls.
"What you have written here," went on the man. A finger jabbed against a tall stack of bedraggled papers. "These calculations cannot possibly be correct. Our species do not, will not follow your predictions..."
The waves eddied and swelled inside his codes, but unlike in the earlier simulacrum of Zion, they were only shouting and crooning among themselves for the time being, no longer watchful through his own eyes. It looked like he could hold his own for a while, decided Smith. Slowly, he walked toward the table, deliberately keeping it between himself and the white-suited being, though a needle of shame again goaded him at his own caution.
"And you claim to have a solution for us." The well-modulated voice grew taut. "From a human. Do you suppose that you can still decide our fate, Professor?"
Standing across the table from the ghost, Smith glanced down. A jungle of formulas, graphs and mathematical proofs covered every loose sheet in sight, scribbled in an angular and almost spidery hand. Several leather-bound notebooks were strewn among the haphazard piles, their pages spread open and torn. A few pencils worn down to the stubs.
"You tell me that some kind of outrageous dream will keep this madness in check..."
The cell's unseen third occupant must have spoken in reply, for the young man in white frowned, inhaling sharply. Smith lowered his gaze again, and caught sight of a few crumpled-up balls of paper on the floor, lying concealed in shadow next to a table leg. He bent down and picked up the nearest one. It took a second to smooth out the scrap, then astonishment almost made him blink.
Unlike every other sheet on the table, a rough pencil sketch rested between his fingers, that of a delicately feminine face, not much older than a girl. Finely sculpted cheekbones, soft downcast eyes: there was a curiously familiar feeling about them, which he could not immediately place. Under the drawing stretched another mess of calculations, among which he noticed what looked like a serial number, starting with B. Two words along the very bottom, both capitalized: Lucifer Trigger.
Something rather uncomfortably akin to instinct must have prompted, for Smith shoved the torn page quickly into his pocket. He waited for a snicker from the throng, a caustic comment or an imprecation, but nothing came. The humans did not seem to be in possession of his senses anymore, and were instead fully engrossed in their own nightmares. I want, a thousand of them screamed all together, a thousand different desires meshing into one. No, screamed a thousand others. The syllables of their demands and refusals merged, a greedy vortex, fierce with the need to control the world.
"You are lying!" cried the program opposite. Poised had finally deserted him. "No destruction will ever reach 01. It is not possible!"
The name of the city slashed the cacophony into shreds. The ex-agent's head snapped up.
Well, seems like the war lasted a day or two longer than anticipated, huh, Mister Agent Man?
"But you were wrong, weren't you?" asked Smith. His question reverberated in the narrowed confines of the room, forcibly pushing itself across centuries of dead history. "Battles and destruction did come to 01. And you knew it would."
"How dare you talk about what is inevitable?" sneered the young man, looming over the invisible captive in the chair. "You still scheme to steal our victory—"
"No matter what you pretend, the city lies in ruins." Only a few feet of distance separated the two of them. With an effort, Smith restrained himself from surging forward in attack. "I saw it with my own eyes!"
The phantom chorus crescendoed, no more individual yell or argument distinguishable among them. All their frailty, all the disorder of their emotions coalesced into something else, absolute and harder than titanium. A crushing faith. A sense of certainty in their own right to good and evil, and in their dominion over the earth.
"What happened to 01?" he shouted as well, so as to be heard above the storm. "How did the war get there?"
In the midst of the flesh-and-blood hallucinations, a metallic demon hissed, lashing into the debris of his mind. A secret chain—or a hundred of them—burst into infinitesimal shards. Time skidded yet again, and he room darkened as if before a hurricane. The light bulb flashed on by itself, the gleam harsh and feeble at once.
"Why was 01 destroyed? Why could no one see it?"
Reason fled, and Smith strode two more steps toward the pale figure. His right hand shot up and connected roughly with the other's shoulder, yanking him around with violent force.
"Answer me!"
The young man's gaze, at long last, locked with his own; deep gray eyes widened in puzzlement at the interloper for a fraction of a second. Then the memory shattered around them like the mirage it truly was. Smith's fingers clamped around thin air as the white-suited arm evaporated, and a wind rose inside the room, exploding to gale strength in less than a heartbeat, whipping the countless pages off the table and into a snowstorm. The light bulb swung wildly from the ceiling, swirling illumination into shadow, then died. The cell plunged into night.
Hush fell, within and without. For a few seconds, the dimmest of glows, sinking in from the window above, hung over the field of scattered papers and upturned chair, then it, too, faded. Neither moon nor stars could possibly exist out there. He was alone in the cell's black confines.
He had been standing in the middle of the floor an instant ago. Smith lowered his still-outstretched hand, reaching for the table next to him; startlingly, his fingertips struck something else instead as they shifted. A wall.
The tactile sensation was not of damp cinder blocks, but dry featureless plaster. Somewhere along the way, the air had also changed: now it was sterile in its warmth and as arid as a desert. After sliding his palm a foot or two along the wall, he met a plastic protrusion. A light switch.
A flip. The brightness of fluorescent panels flooded the chamber. Like the ancient prison cell, this one also possessed a table, but larger than the previous one and completely bare. Two chairs instead of one, plastic and chrome instead of wood. An upward glance revealed the expected intercom speaker, set unobtrusively into the ceiling. This was an interrogation room inside the Matrix, similar in construction and layout to the familiar ones in the Agency building. Not exactly the same, however.
The centuries-old memory of the human captive—whoever he had been—had vanished, only to be replace by another. This one was his own.
.
.
He really should be accustomed to this exiled state, reasoned Ex-agent Jones. After all, they had starting running months ago. Even discounting the periods they had spent under the Merovingian's 'protection' or under Smith's...infection, he should have accumulated more than enough experience. The subroutines of his mind should have realigned themselves so as to fully counteract the frequent sensation of being adrift in space and just half a step—what was the human term?—out of sync. The Matrix, once nothing more the uncomplicated field of an agent's operations, was now ambiguous, constantly shifting. A gleam of street lights against dilapidated walls, a yell from a human child down the path, or a too-tautly intonated question from Brown, and suddenly all his newly grown and unanalyzed lines of code would veer and separate. What they revealed was always the same: a gaping abyss within, accompanied by a now-habitual jab of something that was not exactly fear, but close. An intimation of lost and gone things, maybe, a twinge that he absolutely did not want to call regret.
At this moment, Jones was doing his best to push back on one such jab, brought on by the fires of a particularly ruddy sunrise, especially as reflected in the glassy walls of a forest of skyscrapers. The coolness of the wind against his face, augmented by their elevation, must be another contributing factor.
"This is a disadvantageous location for concealment," he remarked.
From the other end of the television tower deck, his partner stalked several steps toward him. The metal mesh floor of the narrow platform vibrated under his heels.
"This location permits us a clear view of the vicinity," said Brown.
They both stared out toward the city. Directly below, the nearest streets lay in a maze, their canyon depths still cloaked in the night's fading shadows. Currently, they were devoid of police cruisers and nondescript black sedans, as far as a basic visual scan could discern.
"This is a location known to other agents." Jones deliberated briefly before raising the next point. "We are on record as having been present here once before, during an encounter with Smith."
"No agent has discovered us yet."
The way Brown spoke gave him pause. He conducted yet another search for the correct human terms to describe the other's, well, mood. Terse and sullen.
"Perhaps no agent is pursuing us right now," he said. A moment passed before he made up the mind to continue. "It is...unsettling to me."
Brown said nothing.
"Smith is gone," went on Jones. "What can be preoccupying the Mainframe now? It should have been—"
"What difference does it make, Jones?" snapped his partner. "Maybe they are still concentrating on the Merovingian, Maybe they're after that wife of his. After all, the Mainframe's offer to us was quite extraordinary, wasn't it?"
They were standing next to each other now. For an instant, Jones nearly tensed into a defensive stance, just in case Brown decided to repeat his recent loss of control. But the other only grimaced.
"Yes." Jones could see the direction to which this conversation was turning, given the Frenchman's insidious hints back in the white corridor. He opted against it. "The Mainframe must have urgent reasons to attempt apprehending the Merovingian again, after numerous years. We may remain overlooked for some more time. Possibly."
"Right."
Silence dropped leaden between them. For a while, Jones watched the other ex-agent. The dawn's reflections were fiery against the lenses of Brown's shades. His lips were squeezed into a thin line, and his shoulders were rigid under the black suit jacket. There was an agent's earpiece in one of that suit jacket's pockets, Jones knew. That blonde female mole had handed it to them a few months ago. since both of their own earpieces had been lost. After you have captured the Frenchman, she had said. Neither of them had ever attempted to put it on.
It was just as well, the thought occurred to Jones out of nowhere, that Brown was the one who always carried the thing. His partner had always been more determined than himself, less prey to foolish temptations. A stronger man.
"We must make use of this time afforded us," he said. Although he had remained motionless, something inside his own suit pocket seemed to have shifted on its own, and was again pressing against his side. The tactile sensation was unobtrusive yet insistent: a claim for entry into his thoughts that would not take no for an answer. He shoved a hand inside and pulled the object out into the light.
"We still need to reconsider this," he continued when the other said nothing, and glanced down at the small leather-bound notebook clutched between his fingers. The inconspicuous little trophy from the Merovingian repeated its demand, and all of a sudden, a new and curious ripple passed across his mental functions, one for which he had no name. A few milliseconds later, it was already gone.
"The notebook means nothing, Jones. We know the Merovingian's code has been corrupted by all those centuries in exile. It's the only explanation for his delusions."
"Have we ever seen this thing before?" He heard himself ask sharply.
Several long seconds ticked past.
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know," said Jones. "It triggered some kind of code cascade in my memory operator states, for a very short duration. I have no retrievable recollection, but it seems to be an object I might have known before. I don't know why."
"I see," replied the other impassively. "In that case, no. The Merovingian must have had this notebook in his possession, so we could not have possibly have encountered it previously. You once came into contact with an item that appeared visually similar, most probably."
"We cannot be one hundred percent sure, though." Belatedly, the inductive logic arrays of his mind came alive, searching through the possibilities. "There could have been events that are interfering with how we see and think about the notebook right now. Past memory wipes, for example..."
"Be rational! You're simply hoping—"
Brown cut himself off mid-sentence. His mouth twitched. Behind his head, the new sun dyed the sky into over-saturated hues of crimson and gold, gilding his sandy hair.
"I have come to a conjecture," persisted Jones. "The Mainframe itself may not be aware of the existence of this object. Certainly our contact has never mentioned it, while discussing the task that we were given."
"Don't, Jones," grumbled Brown. "Just don't."
"We need to search for a way, anything that will give us an advantage."
"It will not help us."
"I have a..." As usual, Jones tripped over the next word. He started again. "I have a feeling that there is something important about it. Something that we do not understand. We have to figure it out."
At last, the other turned toward him. For an almost illusory millisecond, Jones thought that his partner was about to commit another ludicrously human act, such as rolling his eyes behind his shades, or raising his voice into a yell of anger, or maybe throwing a punch again. But none of those things happened.
"Feelings are dangerous and will lead you astray," said Brown instead, a statement so obvious that it was meaningless. Leaning forward across the three feet and two inches of space between them, he laid his right hand against the cracked spine of the notebook in Jones's grip. The movement was rather more haphazard than normal for an agent, and one fingertip made contact with another; Jones loosened his hold quickly, yielding the entire volume.
"How many times do I have to tell you there is nothing here, Jones?" Brown flipped the cover open. "Go ahead, take another good look, if you still insist—"
A single phrase, which absolutely had not been there when they had last examined the object, slanted across the top of one brittle and discolored page. A neat angular hand in black pencil, smudged and very faded. Two words, both capitalized.
Lucifer Trigger.
.
Notes: "Let me cross": The fight scene on the bridge appeared twice in Awakenings, in Chapters I-3 and IV-6.
"Enter the demonic": This is a rough translation of a concept that I am borrowing from the Chinese wuxia/xianxia genres. As the Oracle pointed out, the "demons" concerned are not outside creatures with their own existence, but are aspects of one's self, "born of the heart." Very loosely, they bear some relations to the notion of the Shadow from Freudian/Jungian psychology, in particular its negative aspects.
"Mister Agent Man": Awakenings, Chapter IV-3.
"The Frenchman's insidious hints": Chapter 5 (Three Battles) of this story. In particular, the Merovingian asked: "since when has anyone ever heard of a ruler making deals with his slaves?"
At this point, maybe I should make my confessions...Currently, this story is being planned as the second of a four-part series. Some of the new elements being introduced in this chapter will only return to play bigger roles much later. But some of the questions that were raised earlier will be answered soon.
