CHAPTER THE FIRST
This place was dark. The greenish blackness of night oozed into the floorboards and walls. A staircase checkered with black and white tiles followed upwards to a salon with an impossibly high door. Sat in a tattered, burgundy chair was Thadeus, captain of the Osiris. The captain sat alone, his crewmates still aboard his vessel. The door to the hallway was open. A voice called from the reservoir of darkness.
"I believe that's my seat."
Thadeus looked up to the facetious smile of his equal.
"Captain Morpheus," he said.
The beleaguered captain of the Nebuchadnezzar nodded, slightly bowing. He returned his comrade's greeting.
"Captain Thadeus," Morpheus said. "I'm surprised you've been able to broadcast since they moved." They were the sentinels; the machines moved their primary nesting spots closer to Zion's preferred areas within the tunnels to hack into the Matrix.
"One of these days, we won't be able to outrun them," Thadeus said.
"Not only can we outrun them—we must."
Thadeus scoffed. His voiced frustration broke the stoicism feigned by his heavily tinted, tightly rimmed sunglasses.
"Unless we adapt our hovercraft technology to outrun them or bullet them to Hell, how can you say that?"
Morpheus' head tilted forward. The magnanimity of his voice, his candor, and his conviction made even the most mundane of utterances a sermon, full of promise and hope for providence. Again, his toothy smile betrayed the solemnity imparted by his tinted, temple-less shades.
He replied, "Neo."
"Goddamn it, Morpheus. Do you expect me and my crew to rely on your word for Neo's abilities? Especially those you say he has on the outside?"
"You forget, Captain, that he neutralized a squadron of sentinels with only his mind."
"Once," Thadeus replied. "And how many witnesses do you have to that?"
The force of that reply was rivaled only by its untimeliness. The Nebuchadnezzar had previously enjoyed an unusual surplus of crew members until a few months ago. After Mouse, Dozer, Apoc, Switch, and Cipher, the ship eventually lost Tank, who succumbed to his injuries via an EMP blast by Cipher. Head command at Zion was understandably reluctant to issue the Nebuchadnezzar new crewmates unto which to lay waste with the ship's many exploits and notoriously "ugly" hacks into the Matrix. Morpheus was thus issued only one replacement mate: A Johnny-come-lately to the operator shift named Link, brother-in-law to the late Dozer and Tank. The mightiest ship in Zion's fleet had been reduced to Morpheus, his operator and co-pilot Link, his first mate Trinity, and third officer Neo.
In a rare show of remorse, Thadeus doffed his glasses. "I'm sorry," he said.
A silence consumed the room. Thadeus would never enter the Matrix again.