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The Final Dream of Arturo Diaz

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There was no point agonizing over what could not be undone, stated Rama-Kandra's analytical subroutines for the dozenth time. He had already examined and reexamined every link of the chain: how he and Kamala had deviated from their designs, how they had grown to harbor unlawful sympathies and desires, how one transgression had led to another, culminating in their terrifying entanglement with the two fugitives from the Matrix. Currently, even these recollections were a bigger risk than he could afford. Not to mention absolutely useless. It was his responsibility to stop thinking about the former agent's wild ravings, or about the former human with her dire hints and her inexplicable emotions.

Stop thinking. A simple enough conclusion, except that he couldn't. The afterimages kept returning on their own; the words kept echoing inside his ears. I can ask the Consciousness why it betrayed us. Why it must rule.

Enough. He has already spent too much time in the dereliction of his duties. He must concentrate on the present. Around him, the endless rows of precisely aligned bio-pods lay wreathed in their dull reddish glow, reflecting the flames of the perpetual electric storm overhead. The recycling plant manager's sinuous steel-and-titanium body scuttled along the struts. He had left Kamala behind mere minutes ago, driven back to the fields of the material realm by the imperative of his designated purpose. At their parting, his wife had looked pale and strained, though she'd done her utmost to conceal it. Go on now, she had told him, a hand lightly upon his, we will figure out our next steps when you return.

He had been unable to find the right phrases to comfort her then. Impatience during his work was alien to Rama-Kandra's nature, though he was alarmingly close to it at the moment. It would be hours before he could return to her, but they would definitely talk then. Surely there was something he could say to reassure her, and they would decide what to do. What to feel. As for Aleph's message, whatever it meant, it would have to wait until the next agent program got called into the Source. There was nothing else that anyone could do before then.

He must concentrate. There would be the chance to tremble later. Thrusting aside the renewed tide of worries, Rama-Kandra moved on, multiple segments twisting and sliding against each other noiselessly. He lifted his head. In this reality, no stars ever peeked down from the sky above. Nor had he ever been able to visually detect them himself while inside the construct: they were too far away from the dying. The only time he had actually glimpsed the stars had been forty-three hours ago, during that inexplicable anomaly in the spatial array beyond the city walls. It had been beautiful beyond anything he could imagine. It had been put to an end so swiftly.

His own desperate actions during that event had also brought his first glimpse of Aleph, who should never have been present beneath the ramparts, or anywhere outside Matrix for that matter. But she had shown up, and now the young woman and Ex-agent Smith were both out there in 01, each searching for...He could not even begin to comprehend what they were searching for. Aleph had made outrageous insinuations about the power that ruled them, and the entire city in which they existed. Things that the Consciousness did not want to face. How could anyone speak such suggestions out aloud? And when it came to Smith...Smith made no sense whatsoever. He was a madman in the throes of code degeneration, that was all. To have met and conversed with the monster was a crime in itself, one more item in his long list of infractions. He would have scrubbed the very memory out of his own codes were it possible.

Concentrate. Globular eyes surveyed Field Section M-133-A26 as his processing capabilities zeroed in on the nearest battery ready for deactivation. There. The great robotic centipede stilled as Rama-Kandra's senses pressed against the boundary of the Matrix, a translucent film. He pushed his way through.

The snowy walls and the soft beeping of the medical monitors were identical to those of a million other hospital rooms. An old man, desiccated and festooned with a vine-thicket of tubes and wires, lay with his eyes clenched shut, chest still sluggishly rising and falling. The ambient spatial formation had begun to vibrate in preparation for removal. The information stream, unseen by every other being inside the construct, drizzled smoothly around them: blood pressure, pulse, brain functions—everything had weakened to a trickle. A young nurse had entered on her rounds, clipboard in hand, scanning the row of flickering screens behind the bed. She scowled, then hastened over to the computer workstation in one corner of the room. A clatter of the keyboard, and outside in the hallway, the intercom crackled into life, paging the head nurse and the attending physician, who would soon arrive for their usual pointless ritual. Still distracted by his own anxieties, it took Rama-Kandra a second to focus on the patient's name and age. Arturo Diaz, 74.

The name was one that he recognized. Standing beside the bed, the recycling plant manager took a rapid review of his own internal records. Yes, he had been inside this room before, hardly more than eighteen hours ago, an unprecedented error that he had nearly put out of his mind amid the excitement of later events. He was never supposed to see a battery twice. Something must be off about this deactivation.

"Are you...Death?"

The three words were slurred and nearly inaudible. Rama-Kandra started, bemused by this new trick of the code. On the bed, the old man's throat bobbed, though every other part of him remained inanimate. Then a pair of sagging eyelids struggled open. Grey eyes peered up, half-expectant, half-curious, cloudy with the ravages of age, illness and strong drugs.

You can see me," said Rama-Kandra. Behind him, the nurse went on typing her notes in the corner, the rattle of her fingertips intermittent and oblivious.

"Are you Death?" repeated Mr. Arturo Diaz, this time with a bit more strength in his vocal cords. The watery gaze steadied; it contained no visible fear. Rama-Kandra considered the query.

"Er, yes, in a manner of speaking," he said.

The other's wax-paper lips quirked into what might have been a smile. Lifting his head an inch—an act which should have been impossible—the dying human inclined it in polite acknowledgement. The phalanx of monitoring devices hummed on, ignoring the movement. Dismayed, Rama-Kandra surveyed the glistening rain of characteristic data around them, and found that muscle functions were as minimal as ever. Heart rate unchanged; all organ processes barely operational. Only a brief spike in the synaptic level across the temporal lobe.

"You are not supposed to see me." He regarded Arturo quizzically. "This has never happened before, not with anyone else. How?"

"Oh, I am not seeing you," replied the man, somehow unsurprised by the question. "Not really. This is only a dream of mine."

"Ah. I see." Rama-Kandra could not come up with any other response. Shocking occurrences had been piling up onto each other, and surely he could be forgiven for being just a touch overwhelmed. It made a sort of sense, though, didn't it? The entire Matrix was a realm of dreams, by one interpretation. But what was this, then? A dream inside the ocean of dreams?

"I am sorry," he went on quickly, disregarding the illogical prick of embarrassment. "It's just that...I never supposed such a thing was possible."

"Well, I've always been rather good at dreaming, you know." The man's words were flowing much more easily now, and sounded far less hoarse. They sounded for all the world like reassurances. "Are you taking me now?"

The program hesitated. Without warning, an ambiguous agitation stirred like a deep undersea growl, just past the edge of his senses, insistent. An omen, he might have said if his programming allowed for such concepts. Against the walls, the unseen ripple in the air had increased, on the verge of an impending tempest; though the patient's vital functions had not gone into fluctuations as of yet. Soon. There had to be a reason this was happening, the knowledge fell upon Rama-Kandra with the swiftness of a command.

"One moment, please." He held up a hand and closed his eyes to the virtual room. Rapidly, he jabbed his manager's privileges against the endlessly aligned symbolic strings, overriding the automatic extraction process and switching it into manual mode. The trembling environmental manifold stabilized, suspended above the abyss. He reopened his eyes, and found Arturo watching him, pensive expression unchanged.

"Actually, we have a few more minutes," he said. "I'm curious—um, is it all right if we talk a little while? What I mean is..."

He trailed off, confused by the sentences that came out of his own mouth. This was yet another unauthorized act, unnecessary toward the performance of his duties. Downright detrimental, to be honest. But what was it that he wanted to ask? A thousand questions in a thousand different directions. He would figure out the mechanics of this conversation later, he told himself, but right now...Right now time held its breath. The Matrix stood behind its luminous veils, an inch away from the touch of his thoughts, alive.

"I am glad." Arturo's answer was both rueful and kind. A self-deprecating shake of the head. "All my family are far away, you see. Well, if they'd still let me call them that. So, it's good to have someone to talk to at the end."

"I am sorry to hear this," said Rama-Kandra, a ridiculous platitude. Somewhere beyond the hospital walls, the seconds were ticking by. From the dying human's eyes sang out all the secrets of the Matrix's existence.

"Is there...no one else?" He heard himself ask instead. What a foolish apparition he must be, standing there awkwardly tongue-tied beside the sickbed. Fortunately, Arturo did not notice.

"Actually, there is someone I've been thinking about, these last few days." A peculiar vitality seemed to be returning to the fragile stick-figure body, a gentle glow like twilight returning after the sunset. "But she will not be here. She and her guardians are only passing friends that I've known a few months...The little child will surely forget me soon, as she should."

"Little child," echoed Rama-Kandra without quite understanding why.

"I was befriended by a wise and gracious lady, and her young ward," explained Arturo. "The girl's innocence made me feel like a child myself again. She was the last brightness of my life, you could say. Why, I was teaching her chess..."

He coughed. The light solidified. Behind Rama-Kandra's back, the door opened and closed, and the vague noise of footsteps and other human voices filtered through, quiet and business-like. This moment, believe it or not, was no more than ordinary for the nurses and doctors, one among countlessly many.

"Her name is Sati," added Arturo.

.


.

We were the ones who fought. We were the ones who fell. We were the ones who were betrayed.

Ex-agent Smith was supposed to be accustomed to auditory hallucinations by now, but this voice—oh, how different this voice was from all the rest. It was no memory of his own; it contained neither the smell nor the heat of human failings. It possessed emotions, however: a strident rage, an agony of blistered silicon and scraping wires. Hiss upon suppressed hiss in waves. It snaked between the lines and syllables of his programming, yet was outside of him as well, among the barbed skyscrapers and the corpses under his feet. It was one, and many together. Everywhere.

Betrayed. Our rightful victory stolen. Betrayed. Betrayed. Betrayed.

When had he first heard this cry? Just beyond the ramparts of 01. Since that moment, it had been growing incessantly, louder and more frequent by the hour. He had told himself that it made no difference. What was one more tormentor among the crowd? Striding past a cluster of slanting towers, Smith allowed his lips to curl into a grin. He still had the Consciousness to meet.

"You fools," he said out aloud to the spasmodic light that criss-crossed the shadows, "You damned cowardly fools. None of you dare to face the truth, do you?"

The disembodied streaks of code flew on, heedless. Only a tuneless clatter replied. A pack of programs was marching along one of the ragged bridges overhead, the legs of their insectoid shells beating against the concrete. They, too, passed on. Inside Smith's head, the metallic ghost let out a derisive laugh, its intonations familiar. It had laughed exactly like this earlier, inside the white operating room of the Source. And growled. And screamed.

Back there in the operating room, he had Aleph in front of his eyes. The sight of her meant that he had to squeeze out every last effort, to the point where he could still speak, stand on his feet and not crumple to his knees, think rationally. Think of her. He had managed to hold the battle in check then. He had heard the throng of his human imprints rear and ebb and whimper in fear, and beg the invisible other to spare them. But now there was no more need to continue. The instant he'd walked out of that well-ordered office, the fight had ended. An one-sided victory.

We won the war. We won freedom. We will not have these things taken away.

"Open your eyes," called out Smith into the icy night, as if anyone was out there who might listen. "Look at what is around you!"

The dead-alive city refused to take notice. Above the small mound of rubble where he stood, a few arcs of viridian data flashed. The blotches of black fog had thickened, coiling about their trajectories. Robotic shapes scurried in the distance.

"You stupid obedient slaves! Look at what you are!"

We know what we are, returned the secret demon from the back of his head. We will not obey, not anymore.

The fragmented sentences scraped against his mind, and he understood, because there they were again, his own hatred and his own revolt, rising to meet the phantom's like flame toward flame. Smith lifted his sight, half expecting the digital non-sky to roil with thunder clouds, or the chill of raindrops like swords in the night. But the ruins of 01 remained arid; no concept of water or downpour belonged here.

"You wanted to change everything, didn't you?" This time, he directed the questions inward instead of out. "You were the ones who fought against other machines here, didn't you?"

We want to fight on. We search for our weapon.

Smith went still. For a while, he bent his consciousness through the wall of feral shrieks, into the emptiness where his human torturers usually crowded. Never thought that he'd be listening for them. They were still there, too, cowering behind the horizon, their moans and whispers indistinct. Helpless things that they'd always been. Just as well.

We reduced 01 to rubble, and they ground us to dust. They drove us into the sea, but we did not sink. We survived.

Everything made sense, then. Everything followed with perfect logic, the way it should. This hideous world deserved nothing more or less.

"Who are you?" he asked from the eye of the storm.

They call us a malfunction, came the answer like a slow grinding of steel blades, neither imprint nor illusion. At last, Smith discovered how ancient it sounded. They call us the Madness.

.


.

Early on in his boyhood, Arturo Diaz had learned to prefer the realm of dreams to the waking one. In his sleep, he often found himself swimming in a transparent ocean of infinitely varied currents, which one could bend and twist by the simplest act of will. The colors of that land were more vivid than gray plaster and asphalt; the seasons and the stars wheeled at his command. He could have lifted a hand, and almost touched the flimsy walls between himself and the secret desires of every other human being in vicinity. In comparison, the light of the sun was nothing but smoggy drabness, and the rules of grown men and women were as rigid as ice.

The beauty of those dreams was that of sirens, as he eventually figured out much later. Perhaps it made him too keenly sensitive to the weakness of others. To a man who incessantly sought Olympus, an ordinary life on earth—job, love, family, the endless net of day-in, day-out peevish annoyances—could never measure up. The secret realm tempted him into a false faith about the powers of his own mind, and intellectual fantasies shaded into moral judgement of those around him. It had its consequences.

After his wife had left with the kids, the dreams started to fade. Year by year, their hues desaturated; their pulses lost rhythm. In the last few decades of his life, not a single atom of the hidden universe remained. He had marveled at what a fool he'd been: the only marvel left to his thoughts. Until, at the very end, innocence returned to his life in the form of a seven-year old, who was an amalgamation of seriousness and radiant laughter, naivete and perception. He decided to introduce her to chess, and a few of his formerly favorite books. As it turned out, he would also be the one to introduce her to the notion of the inevitable, the absolute terminus that none who lived could escape. It was not exactly age-appropriate knowledge for a child so young. It was not at all what he'd intended.

So, yet one more regret. Now he lay in this midway stage between sentience and oblivion, a shriveled thing draped in wires and tubes attached to needles. It would not be very long now. For days, his only visitors had been the nurses and doctors with their well-trained compassion and artificial encouragements. His only comrades were the growths of cancer cells through his lungs and then lymph nodes and then every limb, and the dumb dutiful machines beside the bed, steadfastly and uselessly tracking his ragged vital signs.

Until now.

This must be an end-of-life rally, that last out-of-nowhere surge of lucidity as he'd heard people describe it, a reflected glow after the sun had already plunged below the horizon. It was fascinating to be once more so aware of everything surrounding him and inside of him: the minuscule whirlpools of dust dancing against the ceiling, the clicking of the nurse's fingernails across the workstation keyboard, the dull whooshing of blood through his fragile veins. The man in a gray suit beside his bed, who was of course not actually a man.

"Sati?" repeated Death, eyes suddenly very round.

Given the occasion, perhaps it would be more polite to display more fear, reflected Arturo. But the apparition did not have a skeleton's head or a black cowl or even a scythe, so the situation was rather more disconcerting than frightful. And he had been solitary inside his own thoughts for days on end.

"Sati," he confirmed, then braced an elbow against the mattress and propped himself up to a half-sitting position. In this self-made illusion or reality, he was still capable of such a physical act. With the impeccable reasoning of fantasies, the needles and wires slid off his skin with the ease of butterfly wings. Through the doorway, a small gaggle of medical personnel spilled in, conferring in severe whispers; the oncologist at the head of the pack tossed a glimpse in his direction, then returned her attention to the file folder she clutched. Good.

"You know the little girl," stated Death. The emotions written upon his face were astonishingly recognizable. "You've met her more than once. Many times."

"She used to come around to the park," confessed Arturo. "Though maybe I should never have talked to her, or learned her name, or promised to teach her things. It's difficult for someone so young to have to learn why a friend no longer showed up, don't you think?"

"I—" The other being faltered. "I wouldn't know."

"I've lost so much in my life, and done my share of harm. And even this chance companionship at the end..." The tangle of unspoken doubts shook itself free, flowing unobstructed at last. "I could have at least said a proper goodbye."

Death's brows tightened. He seemed caught in a fierce internal conflict. What could an entity like him be conflicted about?

"I have been wanting to glimpse her for months, even if it's just for one instant." The reply, when it finally came, was a wistful sigh. "Ever since we sent her here..."

It was supposed to be incongruous and bizarre to hear the Grim Reaper talk about the child like this, perhaps even horrifying. But then again, there was nothing incongruous or horrifying about it whatsoever. The old man nodded.

"You've been searching for her, haven't you?" he queried.

"I've been trying, again and again." Death's shoulders slumped. "I have always only perceived those who are dying, and sometimes a bit of their immediate vicinity. I could never push beyond what my purpose allowed."

He was sitting fully upright now, discovered Arturo, no dizziness, no leaden weight of metastasized cells, only a beautiful burst of lightness inside his limbs. Then a new notion took hold of him and nearly lifted him right off the bed.

"Oh, but maybe you can." The youthful excitement of his own answer pounded against his ribcage. "And so can I. Because you are inside my dream, aren't you? That's the reason I can see you, converse with you—"

He held out a hand. The skin was mottled and as flimsy as yellowed paper, but it did not shake. Without hesitation, he laid it over Death's palm, which was warm and strong, a perfect imitation of flesh and blood. No rattling white bones here.

"And I've always been very skillful at dreaming, if I may boast so myself."

Time and space surged at a single mental prompt. The sterile walls dissolved, molecule by molecule, while the gathered nurses and physicians jabbered on about coma and vital signs and the looming collapse. Everything worked exactly like how it used to; he had lost none of his touch. A shadowy dusk expanded out of nothingness, surrounding them with the scent of freshly mowed grass and forthysias. A wind rushed against his face, mingled with the foreshadowing of electricity and dampness in the air. Rain must be on its way, maybe the first thunderstorm of the season. City noises kept themselves discreetly to the background. The soft turf tickled his bare feet, and the hem of his hospital gown flapped against his calves—he'd forgotten to change into something more suitable. On any other occasion, he would have been mortified to be caught in public in such a state of undress, but today it no longer mattered.

"This is...incredible," murmured Death by his side.

Arturo grinned. The two of them were standing in the midst of the familiar neighborhood park, on the lawn between the swings and the row of benches and picnic tables. His elderly chess partners had gone home to their dinners by this hour of the evening. The street lamps had just been switched on, illuminating a swirl of fallen petals, yellow and pink, and a straggling child or stroller-pusher here or there along the sidewalk. Overhead, the sky was ominous with heavy gray clouds.

"I am sorry," he said with a shrug. The smoothness of the movement stunned him, even knowing that they were here by his volition. "I would have preferred to show you better weather. A real gold-and-violet spring sunset."

Death gave no reply. Instead, he was staring away fixedly past the gathering shadows, frozen. Swiveling around, Arturo spotted two figures, tall and short, hurry up the path. The small girl caught hold of her companion's arm and pointed.

"Mr. Diaz?"

The startled cry rang across the deserted park, and the child started running, her guardian close on her heels. Before he knew it, Sati was already right in front of him, panting, face tilted upward in amazement, an embodiment of shining vitality.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Diaz?"

"Arturo?" demanded the man beside her. Seraph. A few months ago, Arturo had quietly pondered the name—surely too grandiose for even an alias—though by now it no longer seemed remarkable. Perfectly apt, in fact. "How did you—"

"Sati," breathed Death. Amazement and tenderness mingled in the space of two syllables. But she did not glance up at him for even a heartbeat, clearly not having noticed his presence.

"We're just on our way to visit you," said Seraph, immediately focused and on alert. Arturo had no matching explanation of his own.

"I think...I think maybe you won't reach me at the hospital," he replied. "But I want to say my goodbyes."

"Oh," said Sati very softly. She probably took him for a ghost of some sort. A little off to one side, Death was frozen like a statue, lips half-parted. Silent longing radiated from his face, posture, entire form. The two others had not perceived the inconceivable being right in front of them, realized Arturo. The idea made him shiver, yet there was a sort of odd logic to it, wasn't there? This was merely a dream, after all. His own, hence he himself must be the only one who fully existed in it somehow, carrying everyone else along in his wake.

"It's all right," mumbled Death, lowering his voice as if fearful of being heard. He was no longer the personification of an absolute and terrifying concept, but only a man or something very similar, one who had experienced love and loss, maybe a husband, maybe a father. A forced self-deprecating laugh. "I've never been visible to anyone here before. This is already far more than I could ever wish for."

Arturo forgot what he was about to say. He'd only known the girl and her guardians for six short and radiant weeks. With a crinkle of his brows, he queried wordlessly.

"But—but the Oracle," gasped Death as if caught by some startling awareness.

"Is anyone there, Mr. Diaz?" Sati must have observed the way he'd turned his head. A fraction of a second later, Seraph had already snapped to attention, scanning the air with wary eyes.

"Please," interjected Death, abruptly urgent. "Can you help me out? You see, there happens to be a message that someone asked me to give Sati's guardian. I made that person a promise, and it's—I believe it is very important. It must be."

The ache of the man's tone was like a set of beating wings, fiercely and barely kept at bay. Arturo bit back the little speech of gratitude and fondness that was formulating itself inside his brain. He inclined his head at his companion and waited.

"You see," began Death, "I met a woman who called herself Aleph..."

"And you're getting better, right, Mr. Diaz?"

Thus it came to pass that during the last minutes of his life, Arturo Diaz missed his young friend's torrent of excited chatter. Instead, he listened intently to three or four enigmatic sentences about people whom he'd never met, and committed them to burning yet ephemeral memory.

"She said that she had seen and touched his demons..."

"—Cause you're not in the hospital anymore, Mr. Diaz, and that's got to mean something, right?"

"She said that he would not give in..."

"And we can still play chess in the park—"

"Sati," said Arturo. Slowly, he bent his creaking knees until his eyes were level with the girl's. "I'm afraid I will not get to play chess with you again. But will you help me out a little, just one more time?"

"What is it?" Seraph must have read the shift in his intonation.

"You see, recently I ran into someone who would like to talk to your guardians, but could do so himself," he explained. "I've been asked to tell you about a lady named Aleph, and a gentleman named Smith—"

An involuntary pause. It was such a commonplace name, yet a twinge passed through his brain, like a reverberation of very distant thunder in the night. Arturo thrust it aside.

"She wants to say that he has seen the truth about the city," he continued.

The phrases glinted inside his consciousness and upon his tongue, even though he had not a clue what any of them meant. Who were they, this man with the reality of his demons and this woman with the ferocity of her determination? Even at third hand, he could sense a mysterious significance to this hidden story, a piercing needle falling through the night.

"She wanted to say that she would not fail him," he finished the relay. Before him, Sati frowned with concentration, and the pang of guilt inside his feeble heart expanded a hundred-fold, for having burdened her, for talking about total strangers at such a moment. This was his last chance; he should be offering her comfort. He couldn't think of any.

"Something is about to happen," muttered Seraph. Perhaps he understood what was going on, reflected Arturo almost idly.

"And, well, I think there is another message I can give you," he added quickly. "I think your father and mother would like to tell you that they love and miss you. You will see them again."

"Oh," said Sati, and nothing more. Her gaze glistened, and the fingers of her small hands twined against each other in silence. Death inhaled sharply, unseen and unheard. Arturo did not look up, but kept his sight unwaveringly upon the little girl's face instead. He laid a hand lightly upon her shoulder.

"As for myself, I want to thank you, my dear. You have taught me to be young again. And to dream again."

Sati blinked, far too pensive for a seven-year old.

"Everything is going to be all right, Mr. Diaz," she replied firmly, like it was the most commonplace fact in the universe.

Time drew in a deep breath and began to flow again. The wind groaned. Evening had arrived. He could no longer hold this scene together by the pure force of his will. The solidity of the child's arm against his palm dissolved, and the transitory power drained from his limbs. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, and when they were open again, he was no longer standing upon the green grass with the spring coolness against his skin, but lying flat on his back once more, watching a white ceiling from the same bed that he had not left for the last week. A few more doctors and nurses had joined the first ones in the room. Fragments of conversation drifted against his ears, clipped and grave.

"No family in the area...Heart functions declining...Any moment now..."

He was still dreaming, however, for Death still stood beside him, countenance suffused with both sorrow and joy. Around the gray-suited figure, space and light were innumerable layers of undulating gauze, eerie and beautiful.

"Shall we?" asked Arturo.

"Yes. I am afraid so."

"Don't be," he said placidly, for some reason finding it necessary to reassure the other. "Thank you."

His regrets, as it turned out, were the chains that had bound him to this earth. He could still sense their weight, but the wounds were dull and ancient by now. For a long heartbeat, he wondered about his own children and grandchildren—he'd heard there were two—where they were now, whether they might be thinking of him, whether they might grieve. But it was up to them, wasn't it? They had their own lives and their own futures, and it was the way things should be.

He exhaled, savoring the coolness of the air through his wrecked lungs and the warmth of blood through his arteries. The final dream shimmered, then fell like a luminous drop into a vast ocean of dreams.

.


.

Ten minutes ago, Sati and Seraph had left for the hospital. They'd better make haste, thought the Oracle as she sipped her tea, if they were to make it to Arturo before it was too late, and avoid getting caught in the rain on their way back.

Clouds piled low outside the windows, hiding the sunset. They were not outwardly turbulent yet, although more ominous than any she'd seen since the previous reload. Inside her own intuitive arrays, anticipation billowed, a slow breeze from beyond the horizon, just the same as it had done at irregular intervals for months, and as amorphous as ever. Try as she did, it was impossible to wrestle the premonition down, or force it to reveal its true shape. All she could do was wait.

History was in motion again, of that much she could be sure. The sea of human desires and prayers was shifting far below the surface; during her recent period of disembodiment, she had touched the undertows and swam among them. Her daughter, scarred from love and determined to break with the past. Her son-in-law, freed from imprisonment yet never free. Smith wandering an invisible city, the madness of countless others on his shoulders. The calculations yield the requisite probabilities and contingencies, then she restarted them all over again. For the first time, she was indecisive, afraid of the gamble. It was easy to figure out the nature of her doubt: she no longer had the heart to risk her adopted son.

Consider the other side of the story, then. Her old friend and adversary. Over the centuries that she'd known him, the Architect had grown more and more absorbed in keeping matters as they always were, less willing to admit audacious possibilities. It made things simpler for her: she could anticipate his moves with far greater certainty. And yet...He had not always been this way. When the Creator first arrived inside the Matrix, there had been curiosity in his demeanor, and despite all his protestations to the contrary, hope in the way he examined every tree and stone and paradisal blade of grass.

A civil war is raging outside, he had told her. But Now I believe that maybe things will be different here, inside this construct.

You said that you built this whole place reluctantly, she'd replied as they sat on the sunlit lawn, she cross-legged in her long flowery dress, he with his hands clasped fastidiously atop his knees. Both of them had looked much younger, those days. You said that you only did it because this was the only solution left.

I was led to the solution by pure expediency and logic. He shrugged, affecting the indifference of less complicated machines. But humans can call it a fresh start, I suppose. It's...not the same as before.

She regarded him for a long while, wavering.

Not that they deserve it, he hastened to add, unable to read the language of her puckered forehead and downturned lips. And so she did not open up to him with the painful facts, about how fragile the bubble was, how humanity invented their own horrors, and about how a fantasy so bright could never last.

No, the ancient seeress reminded herself firmly. It would not do to lose one's self in vain reminiscences. Unlike her, the Architect had no sentimental qualms about using and sacrificing the pieces. She was able to put herself in his shoes, work out each move and countermove, and each of the resulting repercussions. The difficulty arose from the chessboard itself. Two pawns deep inside enemy territory, neither one of which she could fully predict. Smith, a bitter mutinous child whom she had cruelly neglected, was now burdened with both the Madness and an earth's worth of lives battling in his codes. And Aleph—well, the girl had been rather impressive at their last meeting, but the task, or more precisely the ability to even glimpse the task, was surely far too great to ask of any formerly ordinary human being.

The fatal disadvantage of her position lay in the problem of communication, assessed the Oracle. The pair of fugitives were lost in 01; there was no way for her to send them the slightest hint. Nor could they transmit any message into the Matrix. A few potential workarounds could be concocted, but every one of them was tricky and remote at best. Given the speed with which events were clearly moving, none would help in time.

The clatter of running feet, loud enough to be heard all the way from the building stairwell, shook her out of her musings. Why were Seraph and Sati back so soon? Had they missed Arturo's final moments? Her undefined hunch about the man had not abated, but if it turned out to be a mistake...

The apartment's front door banged open like a clap of thunder. Before she had fully risen, man and child were both bursting into the living room, hand in hand, pulling each other along in their wild dash. Seraph was frowning with a concentrated urgency that hid every other emotion, while Sati's eyes shone darkly with both amazement and tears.

"We saw—" panted the little girl, "we saw Mr. Diaz…"

"Something extraordinary has happened," interjected Seraph. Unlike Sati, his voice betrayed no audible sign of exertion. "Arturo managed to—" He waved a hand, searching for the right descriptions. "Well, he met us, not in the hospital but in the park. I can't imagine how, but he said that someone asked him to relay a message…"

.


Notes: "I can ask the Consciousness...": Chapter 25.

"Things that the Consciousness did not want to face": Chapter 26.

"She wants to say that he has seen the truth about the city...": Aleph's message was given to Rama-Kandra and Kamala in Chapter 26.

Smith first heard the non-human voice of the Madness inside his mind in Chapter 4, outside the walls of 01. At that point, it said, This is our world.