When I was fifteen and my parents suggested I try operating, I knew below the level of conscious thought they were just trying to make the most of things, so I felt I had to try too. We all tried.
I was their last operator. People said I was good but I think I was shit. Sometimes I seem like a genius to some podborns because at eighteen I'm still younger than most of them are when they're unplugged, but I have all my years of being out here on them. Or maybe I just looked impressive because I was the only operator who ever had the nerve to yell at my parents. Everyone else got so reverent around the great Neo and Trinity. I know I did okay with the next crew I joined, nothing amazing. But goddammit, the thing about operating was that I just hated it so much, because it was the thing I got instead of the thing we all knew I really wanted – getting to be in the Matrix with them.
After they died I applied for bereavement shore leave. I didn't even check to see if it was approved, or for how long. I just didn't get back onboard that ship. And I haven't been back since.
I don't remember how long I went without talking to anyone, but it was a long time. Finally I remember finding myself at the dam. I leaned against the railing and just let tears roll down my cheeks as I stared out at the water. Some time later, I looked and saw Ghost standing next to me.
"Ghost, what happens when we die?" I said, not even really wanting an answer. Just digging at the wound.
He sighed. "You ever ask your parents that?
I shook my head. "They didn't like to talk about it."
"Sure. Because it killed them, you know?"
"Yeah, I know," I snapped, but I wasn't really angry at him, and he knew it. "But really. Do you think there's an afterlife? Do you believe in heaven?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know. What would you say if I told you someone dead talked to me?"
"I'd say okay, that was your experience."
"Goddammit. What would you really say?"
"I'd say you were grieving and it can be comforting to imagine the dead are still with us. And that they're kind, and they want the best for us." I paused and decided to be extra honest. "Or I'd say that you were crazy."
Ghost nodded. "That's the kind of thing the dead are up against. Wherever they are, have a little extra compassion on them."
I sighed. And thought about my parents again. "I wish they'd told me more. And I know that if they'd tried I wouldn't have listened. What does that make me?"
Ungrateful, I imagined him saying. But he just said, "Human."
"I hate that," I said.
"I know."
"I miss them."
"Yeah. Me too."
"When you love someone, how do you keep on living without them?"
But Ghost didn't say anything else.
Have you ever had a dream you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake up from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?
I was twelve when I played the Matrix Trilogy all the way through myself for the first time. I'd pretend to be asleep, and then I'd get out of bed and play on the computer in my room. By the time I was starting Reloaded, I really wanted the TV for the massive fights where Neo was fighting all the Agent Smiths, so I'd quietly sneak out into the living room and play in the dark. That was what I was doing late one night when my parents' door suddenly opened and Dad stepped out.
He looked at me. I think I had a look of pure guilt on my face. Then he said, "Can't sleep either?"
I shook my head, because it was kind of true. How was I going to sleep when I hadn't beaten this fight yet?
He nodded at the TV and said, "Mind if I watch you for a while?"
He sat patiently. I got a little boost, wanting to impress him, and did pretty well for a while. Then I failed a couple more runs, and frustration started to make me careless.
Even now, whenever I'm down, it's Smith's voice I hear in my head. Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom or truth, perhaps peace – could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love.
Smith was what kept me from finishing the Matrix Trilogy sooner. I used to cry as soon as I saw him. I guess I just had a feeling. The same one I still get now, when I feel like love and life are only a dream, and misery is the only reality. And I feel like I carry it inside like this black hole that swallows everything that comes close to it – light, being, consciousness. And when I look at other people walking around looking all normal, I can't believe anyone else feels the same way.
How do you wake up from something like that?
Ghost once told me what we do with our longings and our restlessness, both in terms of handling the hope and the pain they bring, that is our spirituality. So mine is playing video games and feeling sorry for myself.
After my third time running straight into an Agent Smith I'd known was going to be there, Dad said, "Can I join you?"
I had mostly only watched Dad stumble around our living room with his VR helmet on, flailing his arms and falling over the furniture. At first I suspected he was hamming it up because it made Mom and me laugh so much, but one day I watched him when he thought he was alone and he was as bad as ever.
But when he picked up the second controller, he went into this fluid state of intense focus, effortless timing. It was like watching him listening to music only he could hear, and playing it at the same time. Watching him play, it felt like him winning that fight was inevitable.
And yeah, he'd designed this game, sure. But watching Neo fight the agents, and watching Dad play Neo, I knew this was what he was like in the Matrix. And I understood why Mom had known he was the One, and that he was just being modest when Mom and everyone said there had never been anyone like him.
I felt this sad tug in my stomach, knowing this was as close to it as I was going to get to seeing that myself. And maybe no one else got this close to him, sitting next to him in our living room, both of us in our pajamas and slippers. I knew this was special. But it was still a little sad.
I must have nodded off after a while, because I just vaguely remembered startling awake when an agent leapt on a car and crushed it during the freeway chase. I was getting ready to call it a night. Dad kind of started his day whenever he felt like it, but I had to be at the academy in a few hours.
But when he set the controller down, he said, "Want to go for a walk?" And just like that, I did.
That was how we started that particular ritual of going on long walks through IO in the middle of the night. Dad could go into these long companionable silences with Mom. But he'd talk a lot whenever it was just him and me, and I'd get quieter to let him. And if you know me, I don't ever get quiet. One time I asked him why. He paused for a second. Then he smiled. "I guess it's a habit. Back from when we were teaching you how to talk."
When we were about ten minutes away from our apartment that first time, Dad asked me, "Are you getting déjà vu?"
"Why?"
"I used to bring you on walks in the middle of the night so Mom could get some sleep. We went this way a lot because you liked the humming of the power plant." He nodded at a looming, gated building off in the distance. I realized I'd always known that was a power plant, without knowing how I knew.
"I don't know. Maybe it feels a little familiar." I wasn't totally sure about that, but it seemed to make him happy.
"So today you're remembering back when you were a baby..." Dad grinned. "And maybe when you were a baby, you were foreseeing doing this when you were older."
"If you say so, Dad," I said, rolling my eyes, and he let out one of his tee-hee giggles that people who don't know him are always so shocked by. I don't think most people understand what a huge dork he is. "Anyway, thanks for bringing me out all those years ago. Mom gets so cranky when she doesn't get enough sleep."
"I've always had trouble sleeping," he said with a shrug.
"Even before when you were in the Matrix, right?
"Yeah." He smiled with embarrassment. "I didn't keep great hours. Especially once I started searching for Morpheus. Even when I was sleeping, it never really felt like I was really asleep. Then after I became the One –" He grimaced a little. Talking about it like that always made him uncomfortable. "I started having these intense dreams that weren't just dreams. Dreams about what was going to happen."
"It happened when you were starting to sense the machines, right?" He nodded. "Does Mom get them too?
"Sometimes." He looked at me with a mixture of worry and puppy-eyed hopefulness. "Do you ever have crazy dreams?"
I thought about it. "Sometimes I get the ones where someone's chasing me and trying to kill me." I regretted saying this, but he just nodded like it was perfectly normal, which I guess it was. Dad was good about not getting worked up over normal things other parents would have gotten anxious about.
Then I said something I didn't exactly regret, but which I knew I'd never be able to take back. "I wish I had the ones about flying."
Dad looked at me. He looked crestfallen. So I gave him a hug and he hugged me back.
Into his shoulder, I asked, "Dad, is it crazy to want something you can never have?"
To my surprise, he chuckled.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"I asked myself that same question. The first time I saw Mom. Every time I dreamed about her. And you know what?"
"What?"
"That question got me through a lot of other crazy stuff. Every single time."
I thought of Thomas Anderson getting debugged in the car on his way to meeting Morpheus, Neo fending off hundreds of Agent Smiths, fighting Bane, watching Tiffany leave thinking he was just some lonely game developer who'd lost his mind.
Dad said, "The second time I was in the Matrix… I never stopped seeing Mom in my dreams. But when I tried to stop asking that question, I stopped searching for something real." He released me and looked into my eyes. "So I think you're doing okay, Accord."
That was what he'd always say at the end of those walks. I think you're doing okay, Accord. Those are some of the times I miss most with Dad. Just the two of us. I think when peeople say they wish their lives were normal, that's the kind of thing they really mean.
Dad and I would end the night by the 24/7 convenience store down the street from our home and eat sandwiches on a bench as we watched dawn slowly spread across the bio-sky. The kind of slow change you can't see while it's happening right in front of your eyes, but then you look around and realize everything around you looks different now.
I reach the dam. Up in the reservoir I'm looking over, the water's as flat and smooth as a mirror. Then it reaches the spillway gates and crashes down into the basin a long way down below. How it looks down there always reminds me of making cookies and creaming the butter and sugar to the stage the Oracle called "light and fluffy." Aspirationally, anyway – apparently this was easier to achieve with butter made from actual cow's milk. The phrase just always makes me think of the time I cried because I asked her if she could smell the cookies and she truthfully said she couldn't.
It's kind of loud – we have to breathe deep and raise our voices to be heard – and it feels good to release some energy that way. Like getting some of the benefits of having a fight without having a fight. Usually, I like this.
But today, when Ghost appears, he looks worried. "They're coming for you today."
"Who?"
"You know who."
I start to laugh. "The Anteionians?"
He just nods. Suddenly I'm angry. "Don't fuck around with me, Ghost."
"I'm not. It's gonna be today, IO's founding day, for the significance of it. And while everyone's busy at the gathering. They're gonna try to force you to join them as a figurehead. If you don't cooperate, they're gonna kill you. Your corpse will work just as well as the catalyst for their movement. Maybe even better, since they won't need to keep reminding it to play nice."
A shiver runs down my back. I still don't really believe what he's saying, but I can tell he's dead serious. "Okay, just supposing for a second this is real. What happens if they succeed?"
"Then IO will fall."
"How can that all depend on what happens to me? I'm not the One. I'm not anyone."
"You have the access codes to Zion's mainframe. They know your parents passed them on to you."
"Zion's mainframe doesn't exist anymore."
"They think they can find it. Besides, that's not all you know. Maybe with your access, they'll take out the dam or short the bio-sky. Maybe IO just won't have enough manpower to keep fighting the Anteionians and the machines at the same time."
"How do you know all this?"
"Nobody can keep me out. Especially not people who are already haunted." Ghost's shoulders hunch up. "You've gotta believe me, Accord. They're coming for you. If they knew you knew all this, you would probably already be dead."
I throw up my hands. "Then help me!"
He says, "I'm sorry, Accord. There's nothing else I can do."
I blink. He's gone. He wasn't anywhere.
Over the rushing water I hear someone yell, "She's over here!"
I look around one last time. I grew up hating guns. But right now, what I want is Ghost covering me with a semi-automatic, his perfect concentration, steadiness, stillness. I know he wouldn't hesitate, and I know he wouldn't miss.
But it's just me. And whoever's coming for me.
Blindly, I start running.
Nothing makes sense. Ghost's cryptic warning. People chasing me, trying to kill me. How I can't seem to move any faster. And why I'm running in the opposite direction of the gathering, where there'd be other people, maybe even Bugs, someone I know who could tell me if I'm just going crazy.
A flicker stepping out of a doorway. I didn't wait to see if it was the boy with the black wolf tattoo. I just pivoted left and kept going.
I'm not headed to my own apartment. I know where I'm going now. I've been playing Resurrections so much that it's become an instinct in me. Like Dad at the end of Resurrections, if I go, I want to go out looking at a person I love.
Here's one thing I never told Ghost. It was after my parents were gone. I went back to my parents' apartment to see the Oracle. She was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for me, just like she had all those years when I'd come home from the academy.
With my heart in my throat, I asked her, "I don't know why, but I'm gonna ask you one more time. Do you have a prophecy for me?" It was one thing I thought I could have. Something I used to think I deserved.
She let out a long sigh. "No. I'm sorry, Accord."
Anger spiked violently in my chest. "Why? Is it because I'm freeborn?"
"Definitely not." She shook her head slowly. "No, I just haven't been in the prophecy game for some time now."
"Why not?"
"Wouldn't be in this pickle if I could answer that question, would I? It's possible my time has simply passed. There's a limit to what any of us can see. I'm no exception. There was a lot I didn't see coming. It unnerved me. It made me doubt myself."
"Well, congratulations," I said. "You know how the rest of us feel. I'm sure you're real proud of yourself for that."
I could never make her angry when I tried, which only made me angrier. Gently, she said, "You have a whole future ahead of you, Accord. Even if I can't tell you what that is."
I went over to the projector unit. I looked straight at the Oracle, her hovering exoform. And I switched the projector off. All the magnets got sucked back in. Strictly speaking, this wasn't turning her off. She'd just go somewhere else. I knew she had connections all across IO. She could watch me on any CCTV. She has, and she would. All I was doing was sending a message that I didn't want to talk to her. I shoved the projector under my parents' bed and haven't been back in their apartment since.
So I'm not exactly expecting the Oracle to be happy to see me.
When I get to the front door, for a second, I panic because I don't remember ever paying a utilities bill for Mom and Dad's apartment. But the retina scan activates immediately, and I let myself in. First I start triggering all the security systems. I always thought it was stupid that we had them, but I feel a little better as steel bolts lock in place within the front door and electronic lattices appear over the windows. I can't find my phone. I must have dropped it. I start trying to turn on all of my parents' computers to call for help, but I can't get a signal. Too late, I wonder if their security also takes out the networks, to prevent anyone hacking into them while they were in the Construct or something. Or maybe it has something to do with those utilities bills I never paid. I feel like I've trapped myself in a box of mirrors. I catch glimpses of my own panicked face, the movement of curtains fluttering even though no one's here. Then I remember that triggering the security systems sends a direct signal through the hardline to IO's police headquarters. A team might be on their way already. They'll deal with any crazies they find trying to break in.
I take a few deep breaths and look around. It brings up a lot of painful memories, being here. I remember them tucking me in at night, closing the door. I'd look at the golden light underneath it, hearing the low murmurs of their voices in the next room, and even when I closed my eyes I knew they were still with me.
The door to my parents' room is closed. I stand there looking at it for a long time. I don't feel like I have the courage to open it and walk through. But when I think of whoever's chasing me, I do anyway, shutting it tight behind me.
Mom saved every single drawing I ever did as a kid, apparently. The synthetic paper has held up well. I can clearly see when I stopped drawing plugs on myself in drawings of the three of us. It was when I realized I was never going to have any. There's a book on her dresser. A diary, I'm guessing, from the first two words, the only ones I can read: temet nosce. What a nerd. But I know I'm telling that joke to fend off the deep shudder of déjà vu.
I get down on the floor and start crawling under the bed. Further in, behind the Oracle's projection unit, is a dark fabric case I hadn't noticed the last time I was here. I pull both out and sit on the floor to examine them.
I unzip the fabric case. Inside is another projection unit. Well, that was anticlimactic. I guess we kept a spare, the way you keep extra batteries around.
I switch on the Oracle's projector and in seconds, her exoform assembles. "The Anteionians are after me," I blurt out, knowing she didn't need much more catching up than that.
"Hello to you too," she says, looking offended. "The Anteionians already, huh? You certainly left me in here for a good long time."
"What happens if they get to me?"
Her expression turns serious. "They are going to kill you, and there is nothing I or anyone can do to stop it. You know what happens after that."
"IO falls." That's what Ghost thinks anyway, I was planning to say; isn't that crazy? But I can't seem to say those words. "Everything falls apart. The human bastions. The machine cities. All of it."
The Oracle closes her eyes in pain. "I had hoped I was mistaken." Her mouth tightens. "But you see it, too. Then the time has come for you to make a choice, Accord."
There's a ringing in my ears. Or maybe it's just in my head. "What choice?"
She looks me right in the eye. "You can stay here and let the Anteionians get to you. Or you can escape them by following the path I have."
I know that for hundreds of years, people thought the Oracle was just a program. It was a real shock for my parents when she told them she'd created the Matrix and uploaded her consciousness into it. I'd grown up always just knowing. But she'd never once brought up the possibility of having someone else undergo the same process.
I would be in the Matrix. Tears fill my eyes.
Then my stomach knots up. And I feel like I can't breathe, my awareness of my body heightening as I think about losing it. "Then… that's what this was intended for?" I asked, pointing at the second projector unit. "Did my parents know this was what you were planning the whole time?"
She shakes her head. "This won't come as a surprise to you, but most of the time your parents didn't know what they were doing, or what would happen."
"Because you didn't tell them!"
"I couldn't. If I attempted to circumvent the process all would be lost. There's a story about a man who saw a butterfly struggling to free itself from its chrysalis…"
God, not this. "Spare me. My mom used to tell me this one all the time."
"Then you know your parents had to be what they were. Just as you have to be what you are." She looks at me levelly. "The process I am offering – an updated version of what I did to myself – is our last resort. It's a terrible thing to separate the mind and the body."
"Why?"
"I know you know why. I know I've never been all that you wish I could have been to you." The magnets ripple.
For maybe the first time, I try to conceive of all that the Oracle is. Not just the target who bore the brunt of my misery and anger at being left with her while my parents were away, but the woman, the visionary, the sum of billions of calculations performed for centuries at the speed of light. "Will I be what you are?"
"Not exactly." She looks up at me. "You'd go quite a few steps further. Version 2.0. You'd be an evolution of what I am."
"Which is?"
"If you'd read your Ilia Delio like you keep promising me you would, you'd know the answer to that question."
Shit. She had me there. I switch tactics and go on the offense. "What, because you can't explain it?"
"Nice one, kid." She snorts. "Well, here it is. The noosphere according to your grandmother in a hot minute. You'll still be you. But part of you will also be me. Part of you will be quite a few others. And part of you will be Smith."
I can't believe what I'm hearing. "Smith?"
"When I was modifying the first humans who would be plugged into the Matrix, I wrote a piece of code to interface between their minds and the hardware. That code was the beginning of Smith. Smith was always to meant to be refashioning itself, creating new tools for new purposes. Along the way, it went terribly awry." She tilts her head. "More stories you know already."
"Then tell me something I don't already know."
"Think about what happened at the end of Reloaded. When your father controlled those sentinels, his mind separated from his body. He became trapped in a world between the machine world and his own. More specifically, his consciousness traveled out of his body, much like it did when he was jacked in to the Matrix, except he wasn't. Ever think about how he managed that?"
"You told Dad it was because the power of the One extends all the way back to where it came from, the Source. The Source being the machine mainframe."
"I may have said something that made him draw that conclusion. But you're ready to know the truth. The One does come from the machine mainframe. But the machine mainframe comes from the Source. I come from the Source, you come from the Source. Everything comes from the Source." She leans closer, giving me a pointed look over the tops of her glasses. "That's why it's called the Source."
"And when Dad felt those four sentinels and stopped them, he was... Touching the Source? Channeling the Source? What was he doing?"
"That's not an easy question to answer. I can tell you it wasn't the first time he did it, though."
"How do you know that?"
"Because what he did when his consciousness left his body was something he learned from Smith. Right after he discovered he was the One, and went inside Agent Smith, and took him apart."
I blink. "Smith is about creating new pathways for humans and machines to interface."
"You've got it, kid. You've seen it at work in minor ways with some of its lesser applications in synthiant cybernetics. Unfortunately, there was always too much hostility between every version of Smith that encountered your parents for there to be much progress on that front. Blind evolution has a poor sense of timing. But you're a different story."
I think of how my parents shuddered whenever they talked about Bane. "It could go awry with me, too, couldn't it?"
"There's always the possibility. But I sense a deep compatibility between the two of you. A deep sympathy. Both of you searching for your purpose, feeling trapped in the place you grew up. Unfulfilled. Lonely."
"Code can feel lonely the way I can?"
"Everything that exists yearns for what is deepest within itself to be united with another. From atoms to avatars." She sighs softly. "Even the dead and the living."
Tears sprang to my eyes as soon as she said that. I quickly look away, but I know she saw. "I don't believe that." I clear my throat before she can continue. "Let's back up a second. If I underwent this process you're describing, how exactly would I still be me?
"You know the saying we're the sum of the five people we spend the most time with? Who are those people, for you?"
"You. Ghost. My parents, when they were still alive." I pause. "Neo and Trinity in Resurrections. That counts as one person, right?"
She shakes her head.
"Some say the word person comes from the same root in resonate," I argue. "It means a sounding through. It doesn't mean a human being or a body."
"Keep going," she says.
I think harder. Bugs used to come over and we'd gossip about the other crews while eating popcorn and rewatching Night of the Lepus, but I'd pushed her away since my parents died. "Déjà Vu?" I say finally.
"Vi Voglio tutti in paradisio," the Oracle says, rolled her eyes heavenward. "All right. Déjà Vu can be your fifth person. Does spending time with them make you more yourself or less yourself?"
"I get it," I say. "And we'd have a lot more time than I would here, right? Experienced time, rather than real time?"
"That's part of it. Incidentally, that's how we're able to have this lengthy exchange now, while Anteionians are taking a chainsaw to your door."
"What?
"You were brought into the Matrix and the Construct while you were still in the womb. You think that didn't do anything to your consciousness?" She winks. "Don't worry about it. If we get through this, you'll have time to hear all the details." Her expression becomes grave again. "For now, you have to make your choice. Remember, if you chose what I'm suggesting, you would change into something else. I can see part of you is resisting that. But another part of you might feel it was…"
"Inevitable?"
She nods. "Just like the way you already knew I what I was going to say."
Something seems off to me, though. "No. You weren't really going to say that. You wanted to say something else. What was that?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know. But you will."
"Because I'd gain the ability to see the future?"
"Not exactly. You'd gain the ability to see the present so clearly that often, what you think is going to happen next does."
"But your prophecies were so specific. Dad said you told him Morpheus was going to sacrifice himself and one of them was going to die and he had to make a choice. How did you know that?"
She smiles. "I was good. You'll be even better."
"I have one more question."
"Shoot."
"Why are you doing this?"
She nods. "Because we need what you can be. More information only leads to more fragmentation unless there is an energy that binds us together. The transmission –"
A sudden rap on the door makes us both jump, the Oracle's magnets smoothly cresting and falling again. "Accord?" a man's voice yells. "We're from the police. We got your signal."
I start rising when the Oracle puts her hand on mine. My arm passes right through her, and she reforms right in my face. "Goddammit, I hate when you do that!"
"Don't open the door," she says. "It's a trick. The Anteionians cut the hardline last week. They've disabled all your communications."
I glanced at the heavy door, made of the same stuff ships are. "Okay, but at least they won't get in."
The Oracle says nothing. Which is always a bad sign.
A sharp metallic smell fills the air. "Do you smell that?" I ask. "No, wait, of course you don't."
"What is it?"
Where I've smelled this before dawns on me. "They have an EMP. They're charging it."
Panic fills me. The EMP would take out the Oracle.
"I'm ready now," I say. "To be what you see me becoming. But I think we've run out of time." I feel like I'm falling.
But to my surprise, the Oracle lets out a long sigh, and her shoulders relax. She smiles. "It's okay, Accord. You've made your choice. That's enough. Now there's just one more thing you have to do."
"What's that?"
She leans in closer. "Wake up, Accord. Wake up."
And everything fills with golden light.
I blink as white squares swim before my eyes. Tiles along a long wall and across the floor. The floor ends, with a drop about the height of a person, long metal tracks running across the ground. Train tracks. I turn and see lettering on the white tile wall. MIDNIGHT AVE. Whatever an ave is.
A low rumbling starts in the distance, one I can feel as much as hear. Lights glow in the tunnel, and wind rushes past as a train screeches into the station, coming to a stop.
The doors slide open, and a man wearing a suit and tie steps out. He lowers his sunglasses to look at me like he's known me all his life.
"The Channel," he says. "We meet at last."
