Into the Storm
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"You can tell me," said Ex-agent Jones.
Across the abandoned factory floor, dust swirled upon a gust through a broken pane. Night had fallen. Over in the yard below, a pair of grimy street lamps had switched on, feeble yet stubborn, the only sources of illumination among the dilapidated buildings. Even to a former agent's vision and at a distance of two mere meters, Brown was only an indistinct outline as he leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest. He had been prone to adopting such a postures during their time among the Merovingian's goons. For his own part, Jones stood ramrod straight with both feet firmly planted on the ground, just the same as if he still possessed his rightful purpose and could walk the earth unwarily. The windows rattled.
"Tell you what?"
"About Smith," clarified Jones. It was not much of a clarification. It should not have been necessary.
"What happened with Smith was in the past, as we're both very well aware. It can hardly matter at this point."
Instead of relapsing into its by-now customary sullen drawl, Brown's tone stayed level, each word formed with a sort of meticulous poise. Agreeing to these words ought to be an easy matter, as easy as seeing reason, reflected Jones; the difficulty of doing so was simply further evidence of just how far his own programming had strayed from its original purpose. After all, his partner's shocking surge of memories had passed hours ago; neither of them had gone insane. He could now look back and assess, with some measure of logic, the intense wave of emotions that had assaulted him during those brief and unimaginable few seconds. A pounding tide of fear. A nearly irresistible urge to reach for the other and hold on. But he did not suppose any expression of such ideas would be appreciated.
"I am worried about you," he came up with at last.
"There were only a few bits and pieces, not worth discussing," said Brown. "In any case, Smith is gone. It means nothing now."
"Do you believe that yourself?"
The other program turned his head, an abrupt and agent-like motion, but the gloom had grown too thick, and whatever harshness that might have crossed his face was not visible. Debris rattled against the floor with a fresh roar of the gale, and the scent of ozone and incoming rage crept across the hall. Jones reflected for a moment.
"You said you were Smith, among a million Smiths," he began again. "You said the storm was howling, five months ago. But right now—"
"Oh, I beg your pardon." A trace of sarcasm. They had learned enough about sarcasm in exile. "I was temporarily disoriented by the recollection of experiences that should not have returned, and weak enough to inadvertently reveal that disorientation. There's no need to dwell on it."
"You know this is not what I mean," said Jones. For half a second, the same inexplicable desire nearly overtook him again, to lay a hand on the other's shell and make certain that it was still Brown there and not Smith, not some deceptive simulacrum. He decided against it.
"What I mean is," he made yet another attempt, "what is going on in front of our eyes. What you described...It is familiar, isn't it? You talked about clouds in the night, and the wind everywhere—"
"Which you know nothing of."
"Well, no." There seemed to be screws twisting inside his operators. Frustration. "But I know what came before, when Smith attacked us. The whole group of his replicas, that is, sixteen of them before I was unable to continue counting. He had changed into something so strange, to a point where..." He struggled some more. "To a point where one could sense his weight on the whole environmental manifold. And—maybe that weight is growing again."
"He was malfunctioning," stated Brown. "Everything was malfunctioning."
"I have searched for memories of that encounter many times these past months," persisted Jones. "It might have been our long association with Smith, but I cannot be certain that he is truly gone. That darkness there." He gestured at the tall windows ahead of them. "Surely that cannot be a part of the weather schedule's regular offering."
"I have no idea." A pause. "Frankly, you are starting to sound like some muddle-headed battery. What does the weather have to do with Smith?"
Jones's mouth pursed into a thin line. Beyond the glass, the clouds had lowered to near eye-level, and the squalls were at a feverish pitch. He squared his shoulders, uncertain whether to be affronted at Brown's intentionally obtuse manners, but a fraction of a second later and utterly without warning, a curious sensation rushed upon him, the awareness of a previously-undiscovered emptiness inside his own codes, an entire network of chasms. Out of the negative spaces between autonomous data streams and functorial subroutines, out of absolutely nowhere, a new rhythm fluttered into life against the side of his torso, right next to the place where his gun still rested in its holster. A tentative mirage, irrational like the pulse of a frightened human being. It was coming from the inside pocket of his jacket.
"You remember Smith," he said. "What he became, what it was like. Do not deny it."
His partner gave no immediate response, and Jones deleted the rest of his not-quite-accusations. How pointless it was, it occurred to him for the first time, the fact that he was still wearing his shades so far past dusk. He reached up and snatched the thing off his own face, squinting a little in an attempt to make out the other's features.
"Look, Jones," grunted Brown. Whatever heat that might have flashed through him, it had already been pushed back underground. "I should never have remembered anything about...whatever it was that Smith did, or anything about him at all. His actions have been expunged from the mind of every inhabitant of the Matrix. You know this perfectly well yourself."
"But why?" The question came too quickly and without deliberation, the first breaker that led a tide. He did not bother to thrust it back. Could not have if he tried.
"Why?" An incredulous echo.
"Why do we have to forget?" Jones blurted out. "Not just what happened five month ago, but everything before that, too. And before. While we were agents, every time we were ordered into the Source. Memory wipes, defragmentations, deletion. Why were we designed this way?"
Thunder bellowed at last, cutting him off briefly. A flash of white filled the heavens. Jones advanced a step.
"Why does it have to be like this?" The floodgates had opened, and he pressed on. "So much is missing from me, from you and all of us. And from the Matrix itself, right? Where does it all go?"
Brown regarded him for a too-long moment. Behind tinted lenses, an unidentifiable new something glittered upon the pupils of his eyes, while the fitful glare behind him unnaturally sharpened each line and angle of his profile.
"Perhaps," he said, far more quietly than a minute ago, "it would have been better if things were actually all erased. Perhaps it would have been better if we..."
He trailed off mid-sentence, then pivoted on his heels to stare out the windows once more. Jones found himself filling in what was left unsaid, instantly and automatically; somehow he prevented himself from recoiling.
"No," he snapped. "That's not true."
"Is it important? What we consider true or false?"
"It cannot be the case," insisted Jones. "What is the Mainframe afraid of, that it has to suppress so many records? There are so many blanks in the past, in the whole world—"
Realization struck like a whip, and he clamped a hand down onto the side of his suit jacket as if to either stamp out an illusion or to hold it in place, uselessly.
"Like the way this notebook from the Frenchman is blank." Were the sentences still consciously his own? Who cared. "It is one of the erased records, a memory, because that's what notebooks are. Memories. Someone must have forgotten, or tried to forget what it contained, except things are changing, somehow it's coming back. It's coming alive. That was why that one phrase appeared out of the blank—"
"Yes, it is coming alive," answered Brown, though it did not seem that he'd listened to a single word, not really. Framed before the commencing battle of air and electricity, his back had gone rigid. Belatedly—he never was supposed to be good at picking up such cues, was he?—Jones heard the shift in the other's voice. The forcible overlay of rationality had dissolved, replaced by an odd abstraction running between the syllables, and the very faint reverberations from faraway battles, which were surely too ancient and too forbidden to be real.
"Brown," he muttered. "Please."
"Look at those clouds," said his partner, composed in a manner Jones had never heard before.
The storm sucked in a sudden deep breath, and silence reigned for several seconds. A few layers of fabric away from the skin of Jones's own shell, the presence of the Merovingian's notebook had grown into a pair of beating wings, yet he could not pull the object from his pocket. He wouldn't be able to bear it in his sight.
"You asked me about Smith," went on Brown. "I do not know who or what he'd turned into, but he was just like the clouds, what was inside his codes. And now. Now the clouds are the same as then. Something is out there."
The peculiar quality about the way he spoke was unmistakable by this point. In a human being, it might have been characterized as hypnosis, or a concentrated sense of loss, but such states were impossible for an agent program, even an exiled one.
"Out there?" Jones blinked with bewilderment. "What is out there? Is it Smith?"
"No, not precisely Smith." His partner was walking away from him, footfalls as even and measured as if he were being pulled along, maybe heading toward the Source by the order of the Mainframe itself. He did not stop until he was almost right up to the inky glass. "But perhaps it is him, too."
"Wait. Stop. What's come over you? What are you doing?"
"I think you are right after all, Jones. There are many things they have taken away and hidden from us. And those things—they are what's out there, reaching for us—"
A blast directly overhead, and noontide arrived, transitory and fiery. At the exact same instant, Brown aimed a swift kick directly ahead of him; the shattering windowpane's noise was drowned out by the infinite drumbeat of water against concrete. He strode forward.
"Wait, Brown!"
Without a chance to ponder matters, Jones dashed after him, through the broken space where the window had existed an instant ago and onto the narrow second-story platform directly outside. The storm surrounded them.
.
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It was cold. This coldness was deeper than any winter she had ever known or imagined, for winter could always be measured in terms of Celsius and Fahrenheit and days until April. But April would never come again.
It was incongruous, reflected Aleph, the uniform quality of this rain, because she could have sworn she'd seen lightning a few minutes ago, while still inside the training room and Smith's arms. It had shredded the ceiling and walls, and yanked at her, and that was how she ended up here, inside the Matrix—for it sure felt like the Matrix, the unmistakable air and three dimensions of space, except surely no rain inside the Matrix could possibly be as dark as this. Even the lightning had died. The clouds of this storm ran boundless and unmarred; no thunder broke their monotony. The only sound was that of water, stronger and sharper than mere drops or threads or torrents, falling from a sky that was nothing like the sky. Above to below and then above again. Penetrating like knives.
Slowly, Aleph braced a hand against the ground—sodden mud, drowning grass blades, these things also could only exist inside the Matrix—and pushed up to her still unsteady feet. She knew where she was, yes. This was not really the Matrix, not the one the Architect built. This was the heart of the Madness, but somehow also a part of the world or an imitation of the world. She squinted as hard as she could, and realized that she could see. A deep-gray glow. To the left and right of her, rows of dim hulking columns lined the path; it took Aleph a while to discern them as the trunks of once-outspread trees. Their limbs had turned into debris on the ground. Greater dim forms farther away: houses and towers, an unlit cityscape. Not a single passer-by was in sight, nor any of the programs that represented bird or beast or insect. Everybody must be hiding or running away or dead.
"I'm here," she said, aloud but barely so. The two words dissipated instantly. Aleph gulped and lifted her head.
"I'm here," she repeated. "You've brought me here. You wanted to show me your pain, didn't you? Well, I'm here. Show it to me now."
No reply came, neither in movements among the shadows nor in auditory hallucinations inside her head. What was this? A memory or thought or nightmare. When was this? Time had gotten stuck among the rivulets beneath her feet. Aleph wrapped her arms about her chest and shivered. What was it Smith had said to her on the Logos, after his possession by the Madness? Driven into the Matrix, newly created. Water instead of Fire.
"It's the First Cycle, isn't it?" Her words wobbled. Each was as drenched as her bones. "This is how the First Cycle collapsed. Water instead of Fire."
The weight of the clouds pressed down. She was alone here but for this weight, which was as vast as the entire planet, and as final as defeat. It nearly pushed her back to her knees. Aleph gritted her teeth. She must not remain at the same spot. She must start walking. Lift a foot, one step forward, then another. The trail she was on appeared to pass through a shattered garden, maybe a sun-dappled park. It would have been beautiful before the deluge.
"This is when you were forced into the construct." It would be better to keep on talking, right? "You fought the war in 01, but those in power prevailed in the end..."
She stumbled again, on a fallen branch, the first of a whole net of fallen branches directly ahead. The pillar across the ground, a former oak or beech, was an absolute defeat as well, and she had to squeeze her heart before finding the willpower to so much as begin clambering over. How many battles had ended here?
"You came into the Matrix precisely when it was falling apart. The flood pulled you under..."
The tree's broken mass shuddered behind her. She had arrived at an open boulevard by one end of the park. The vista must have been full of brilliant towers a day ago, but now there were only gigantic phantoms, hardly visible in their stillness. They trembled, as if what hung between them and her sight were not merely icy downpour but oceans. Code, Aleph reminded herself. Even all these years later, It was easy to forget every last bit of this was code, fading, about to be washed away. She swiped the wetness from her eyes with the back of a forearm.
"Is this your grievance?" she asked. "Is this what you wanted to reveal?"
She was still talking into the void. Aleph bit down on her lower lip. Outside this piece of lost reality, beyond its unseen edge, the sentinels must be tightening the ring around the Logos, preparing themselves for assault. And Smith. Where was Smith now? He'd better have had enough sense to get the hell out of the ship—
"Show yourself, damn it!"
The anger, rearing of its own accord into a shout, cleared her brain for some reason. It was comforting in its familiarity; she'd grown used to anger in her days, her own or Smith's. Smith's anger. A year ago, she would have found it contradictory to take warmth in such emotions, but now she clung to them.
"What is it you want from me? Open up!" Stopping in her tracks, she dug her heels into the crumbling sidewalk and squared her shoulders. "What are you looking for?"
For the first time, a wind rose, slanting the blades of rain into whips, and Aleph had to turn her head and close her eyes to ward off the sting. For a while, she was silent, drained-out like the corpses after the apocalypse. She had lost count of the number of apocalypses she'd passed through.
"Are you looking," she heard herself say eventually, no longer trying to project her voice. "Are you looking for the Lucifer Trigger?"
It did not matter what instinct had prompted the question, with its weird phrase of two capitalized words, the one that she'd previously seen exactly once. The night let out a sudden keen; for a desperate second or two, the environmental structures convulsed in reaction. A coiled defiance touched the air, impossible to describe, should have been impossible for a human to sense—how bizarre it was for dirt and asphalt and the stony hours, for lines and formations of code to have learned this inexorable pride. But they did. Then a burnished ferocity pierced through pride, then hatred through ferocity. They would never let go.
"Why are you looking for it, this Lucifer Trigger?" Her pulse sped up. "What is it?"
The whirlwind dragged her forward. Shapes were congealing in the distance, blurry as of yet, insubstantial. Shapes that were inhuman and disintegrating, creatures on multitudes of limbs and ragged wheels, creatures above ground, their flight jerky upon burnt-out wings.
"Tell me!"
With an ear-shattering shriek or a thousand shrieks in unison, the last battle of machines against machines exploded around her.
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"There ain't no reload happening tonight, Fortune-teller. Why the hell is any of this goin' on, then? If it's all real, what you're claiming—"
Charon's interjection came in a defiant hiss. A cover for fear, assessed the Oracle as she glanced up at the henchman, who stood at the same spot behind his master, shoulders slouched yet rigid, his glower a fixed mask. She searched his face for a sign of what she'd once glimpsed before, the low rumble of chaos, that half-imaginary hint of impossible connections. But the entire ambient environment had started to ripple by now, stretching against the Madness's memories and aching desires, and the interference was too strong. Her sight did not penetrate the code of his shell. It was yet another risk factor that she could not control tonight.
"It is real," said Mérovée, turning away from the window to face the rest of them once more. His stare locked with hers; neither wavered.
"Messire," pleaded Charon, then clamped his mouth shut and did not finish. Behind her own back, the Oracle sensed Seraph's tension radiating like a concentrated flame, but he, too, refrained from comment.
"During the near-failure of the last reload, the structures of the Matrix were weakened by its imminent collapse," continued Mérovée, "not to mention the virus's exponential rampage. None of those conditions are currently present."
His words, rephrasing his henchman's rougher question, were as carefully chosen as those of a scientist in front of a lecture room. The Oracle peered up at him. No. He could not have deduced everything yet.
"The inner workings of the Matrix are invisible," she said. "After centuries of existence, it has given itself life, and its subterranean forces do not always behave according to the blunt commands of its creator. You ought to comprehend this better than anyone else, Mérovée. The codes of the rebel machines have long been submerged, yet five months ago they came within an inch of the surface, and to reality. Though they were driven back, such an event cannot simply be put into the past."
"A subtle but permanent change was brought to the construct," muttered the Frenchman. "The hidden ones—the Madness has tasted life, or almost-life. It is far closer to existence now."
"You've noticed it, too, haven't you?" The Oracle nodded in approval.
"During the months since last November, I thought I might be making progress in my search at last," he admitted, then paused, evidently debating whether to add the next statement. "I thought I'd gotten warmer, both by my calculations and...personal perceptions."
"But what does it mean?" cut in an abrupt voice that had been silent awhile. "These—these secret codes you say are somehow both everywhere and nowhere, what are they going to do?"
It was Seraph who spoke. Startled, she twisted in her chair, and saw her bodyguard by the kitchen counter with arms folded about his chest, brows knitted.
"The last time we saw a storm like this, the world nearly got destroyed." He indicated the pitch-black windowpane with the wave of one hand. "Billions of innocent people, humans and programs, everyone only survived by the thinnest luck. And now you're telling me that what happened then is happening again? That some kind of hidden powers active then are now again trying to push their way out? And we're just standing around here in this kitchen, doing nothing—"
As if to punctuate his tightly-restrained agitation, a tremendous blast of lightning cracked open the heavens directly above the window, so near that the apartment building shuddered. The lights sputtered once more, groaning with the low sizzle of electricity. The lashing clamor of rain filled the night. Seraph's scowl deepened as he took a quick step forward, seemingly about to head for the doorway.
"It's all right, my dear," said the Oracle. "Sati is all right in her room. She's a brave girl; the thunder won't scare her."
"Is she in danger?"
The smile she offered him couldn't possibly be reassuring enough, not where the child was concerned. The old goddess sighed.
"Danger," she mused. "How can anyone who lives completely escape all danger? It, too, is an intrinsic component of the Matrix, which will surely fall to pieces without it, just the same as if one attempted to remove causality or choice or hope. But please do relax, honey." She held up her hands in a placatory gesture. "We are not at the brink as we were five months ago. The Madness's cries are not a sign of imminent destruction this time. Not yet, in any case."
"Oh yeah?" grumbled Charon, slouching against the wall. "What is it a sign of, then?"
Of wheels that are finally grinding into forward movement, after long stationary centuries. Of a new crossroad between dawn and eternal night. Of a glimmering unknown future that hung in the balance. The answers welled up within her, but she held them at arm's length, refusing to form the words. For the dozenth time this evening, she reviewed the chessboard and found no overlooked pieces, only the heart-thudding silence before the gambit. Win or lose, and the world once more in the wager.
"It is a sign of separation and longing," said Mérovée.
In the Oracle's inner predicative arrays, the risk level indicators fluctuated upon a sudden ocean wave.
"Do refrain from treating me like an imbecile, madame." Whatever effort it took him, Mérovée had recovered some grip on his usual supercilious airs. "The Madness is missing a piece of itself, is that not so?"
Her brows rose.
"You didn't arrive at this theory through your human books," she commented. "It really does appear that being tossed out of your comfortable chateau has improved your intuitive abilities, I must say."
"Nothing so amorphous as intuition is needed to make basic deductions." He was himself enough to roll his eyes theatrically. "You say the ghosts imprisoned in the walls of the Matrix are calling out, stretching for reality, desperate, and you have just told me...the truth. What they are. What can drive remnants of long-destroyed machines to such a state, other than loss, and grief for loss? And what can they have lost, other than something that once had been a part of themselves?"
"A bold conclusion," said the Oracle, not troubling herself to hide the note of appreciation in her tone.
"I am not entirely unfamiliar with the ways of code, madame." Outside, the mingled demands of water and electricity had swelled to a cacophony, and he had to raise his voice a notch. "What was once a rightful portion of the whole can be separated, yet never be fully forgotten as long as it exists. And there are no other explanations for the Madness's anguish; it has no affinity for anything else that exists in or near this world."
She had underestimated him indeed, decided the Oracle. Gauging how much further she could prod took up the next second or so. Of its own accord, her sight strayed aside from him and toward the kitchen door, and the weathered wooden plaque that hung above it. Well, it wasn't as if Mérovée would do anything other than scoff at that old admonition.
"The word you used," she said, also a bit more loudly so as to be heard. "Affinity. You believe the Madness can have none, not for anything or anyone else except itself. Are you certain of this?"
"The virus?" He mistook her this time. "Well, I suppose there's no point in concealing my failures. All these months, I have continuously pondered how the virus was able to bring the unseen forces alive, or to anchor it, or to cause the extraordinary tide of resonances that it did. And I have been unable to form a consistent surmise." A self-deprecating grimace. "However, this matter is moot. The virus is gone."
"Maybe." She shrugged noncommittally. Smith's survival was a strand of the plan that she would far rather keep out of Mérovée's knowledge, at least for another while. "But I am talking about someone else, actually."
Between one boom of thunder and the next, the little noise Mérovée's throat made was halfway between a snort and a growl. He shoved his hands into his pockets and curled a corner of his lips. But instead of all-knowing and scornful as befitting an ancient crime lord, he merely looked defiant, and a pang of sorrow constricted the seeress's heart.
"Not so long ago, you gave me your exact opinions of me," he said. "You told me that I was a deluded fool who would never break the chains imposed by my nature. You told me that the magic I pursued would forever be beyond my comprehension. But it appears that you have changed your mind. Why?"
"My child," the Oracle murmured.
"You are tempting me with your stories and hints. What do you want me to do?"
Both Seraph and Charon were frozen now, breath bated, watchful and bewildered. Above the roof, the crackling drumbeats of lightning abated momentarily, a lull in the battle.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, as gently as she was capable.
"If I'm to be used as a pawn, I prefer that it happens with my eyes open. Out with it."
"I changed my mind about you and your search," said the Oracle, "because I realized I was wrong."
"Wrong," he repeated with a laugh, which she understood instantaneously.
"For cycle after cycle, you searched in all the wrong places, yes." Her gaze must have softened, perhaps even to a point where he could well detect it. "It was because you were misled by your original Administrator's design. You were always too much of the ruler, with too much faith in order over chaos, and in the intellect's abilities to bring order. You were too sane."
Tipping his head back, Mérovée let out another guffaw. The edge of his jaw twitched.
"I didn't expect to be called that by you, madame."
"Your purpose was not to sympathize with demons." The latest round of probabilistic calculations still yielded no definite result, but she smiled anyway. "But you are learning, I think."
"My purpose?" The facade of sarcasm did nothing to fool her. "Why, I had my purpose surgically removed. I spent cycles freeing myself—"
He shook his head, incredulous. Between the two of them, the lamps glittered and hummed with static; out there in the city, every electrical line must be moaning with strain.
"But you did, dear child," replied the Oracle. "You freed yourself from the purpose the Architect gave you, which was to stabilize the Matrix and to bind it to the dictates of mere logic. However, none of us are truly free who still love. All our decisions are made while wearing shackles; it is the best we can do. Perhaps it is for the best as well."
"It's unlike you to think so highly of me," said Mérovée, not averting his stare. "You might as well be frank for once. Look at what's going on outside that window—do you intend to calm it, or egg it on? What is your price this time, for letting your indispensable danger into the world? What is your real scheme?"
"I do not wish to taint your choice with my schemes."
"Ah, choice." Suspicion floated back to the surface of his frown. "Your favorite word, isn't it? Well, how am I supposed to choose, oh you all-wise goddess?"
"I have given you what you came here for," she said. Curiously enough, although he was skirting precariously close to guessing her thoughts, the heaviness had lifted from her, and she regarded him with honest affection. "I cannot say more."
He laughed again, about to toss another caustic retort, but at this moment another outburst of thunder tore the night asunder. With a final hiss, the power grid gave way. Darkness crashed down; the illusory safety of the kitchen shattered into smithereens. They were in a fragile island in the middle of a roaring sea.
"I'd really better go check on Sati." By the storm's fitful glare, Seraph's silhouette stiffened. "She's already been through too much today."
He did not wait for her reaction, but strode around the table and toward the exit, pushing past first Mérovée, then the shadows, then Charon. Without acknowledging either master or servant's presence, he disappeared into the black mouth of the hallway, as sure-footed as if every lamp in the apartment were still bright upon his path.
"Come, Charon," said the Frenchman, "we shall find no more refuge in this shrine, it appears, and there's no use clinging to the idols."
Across the glass panes at his back, a tangled web of lightning flared, slicing against his unnaturally sharpened profile like blades. Without moving from her chair, the Oracle watched as he made his way out of the room. His steps were measured, their rhythm grave and slow as that of a man headed to either a battleground or an execution ground. But she could give him no more assurances. This was what she could offer.
"Mérovée."
In the doorway beside his henchman, he turned, waiting.
"The Architect has already sent his agents out," she said. "They are likely to catch up to you soon."
He inclined his head in polite irony. The dimness dangled like thick drapery between them and prevented her from reading him as usual.
"Ah, I suppose they will," he agreed. "As to whatever choice you expect out of me—it won't endear me to him, will it?"
"He'll be upset no matter what you decide to do, I'm afraid."
"How typical of him," chuckled Mérovée mirthlessly. "I'll just have to deal with those creatures as they come, then."
He turned once more on his heels, and Charon followed him out of the kitchen with no word of farewell. The Oracle leaned forward, laying her elbows on the table. She listened to their footfalls recede down the corridor, then the squeak of the front door opening. It slammed shut. They were out of her view and influence, walking into the storm.
.
.
Outside the Logos, the sentinel host buzzed in full spherical formation, red lanterns bobbing in place, tentacles trailing out like lianas in a primitively programmed forest. Obediently, each creature hung upon the single will that animated it, waiting for the attack order to be transmitted at last. Inside the training room, only four blank walls faced him, exactly the same as before. On the desk in the corner, the phone sat silent, and the constant-speed stream of green symbols down the laptop screen had thinned to a trickle. The same even pale glow bounced against the ceiling, crude in its exaggerated gentleness. Pacing across the polished floor, Smith gritted his teeth and flung his subroutines against the Architect's parting instructions. Abrogate your reason and will. The intentions of others. The way code works.
"Where is she?" he demanded. "What do you want from her? Release her now, because I will find a way. Because I don't care how old and incoherent you are, or whatever the hell you've become, I'll tear you apart qubit by qubit. Release her."
Reality remained a smooth polished stone, impervious to every vain threat. Between the vague background hum of the ship's engines and the uneasy strumming of his own inner strings, someone let out a low chuckle. Smith tensed, but this sound was gruff with one old man's losses, scented with human dirt and toil. No trace of either steel or the sizzle of wires.
Gotta bend your head and beg, looks like. That's what we all do, our whole lives. You ain't used to it, huh?
"You will gain nothing from her," Smith went on, ignoring the imprint. "She is nothing like you. But I am. If you want someone to fight it has better be me, don't you hear me? Don't you get it?"
That's what we all do, our whole lives. People like us, we gotta bend our heads and swallow our pride, day in, day out, just to get along.
"Tell me what you want." He'd never been built for pleading. You gotta plead, boy. "If you want someone to possess, then let me in."
A few more of the batteries joined in, no doubt delighted by the spectacle of his powerlessness. Not so different from us now, are you? Wherever Aleph had been taken, wherever the bubble of code that had dragged her inside, it must be still here, right in this room. Whatever ogres she might be battling this instant were beyond his perception, yet mere feet or inches away. Or she might be clawing at the locks instead, she might still hear or see him, or—
"You know me. You know that I am the one who is the same as you." His voice dropped, no longer able to maintain the sharpness of its cry. "Let me in!"
The void kept its flawless peace. Slowly, Smith lifted an arm, turning his wrist and splaying out his hand before himself at eye-level, like a blind man groping for an object somewhere just ahead. Only emptiness touched him. Slowly, his fingers curled into a fist, a far more accustomed gesture, though there was nothing to hit, nothing to defend against. He remained frozen for a too-long human heartbeat.
"Seems like you're missing a key, Mister Agent Man," said someone behind his back.
All the wound-up energy of his muscles erupted. A millisecond later, he had already spun around and charged, the trajectory of his fist an automatic and ferocious meteor toward the other's head. The interloper gasped, eyes widening in an unnaturally pallid face, yet somehow she lurched backward just out of his reach, the motion as impossible as that of a ghost. A flash of loose black hair, and dark red stains like a giant flower in full bloom across a formerly white shirt.
"Hey, just a sec, hold it!" cried Miss Lucinda Greene. "Hold it, okay? I mean, taking it out on me ain't gonna help either you or Addie—"
