AN: Less than a week until Opening Day! I just got my tickets for this season's games at Shea Stadium. My mom, sister, and I go to every Sunday game the New York Mets are home. We go to other games too, of course, but we have tickets for every Sunday. It's fun…most of the time…except when the Mets are playing poorly. Then it's not really all that fun. Anyway, here's some more about a baseball player who'd starting to discover that there's more to the world than just how fast he can throw his fast ball. If anyone's read any of my other stories and if you squint really, really, really hard you might find a few clues about Pixie, my other original character, and possibly why she's run afoul of the Matrix. That's about the only connection to that story here, though. Anywho, thanks to everyone still reading this and please feel free to leave me a review! I'd love to know what you're thinking or what I should improve on.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the characters I made up and their Real World alter egos. I don't own The Matrix, The Animatrix, or any of that cool stuff. I'm broke and I just finished graduate school for my Master's Degree. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"Little boy he adjusts his hat, picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says "I am the greatest when the game is on the line"
And he gives his all one last time.
And the ball goes up and the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
The world's as still as still can be, the baseball falls
And that's strike three." (From "The Greatest" by Kenny Rogers)

Though it seemed like only yesterday to Robert, almost a year had passed since the fateful meeting with the woman who called herself Calyx. Nearly twelve whole months had gone by since he'd started his search for the meaning behind the disappearance of the young girl named Anneliese Rose. A search that, despite his best efforts, wasn't exactly turning up any new leads even after almost a year. No matter how many times he found something about it, it was just the same story…written in a different way.

It was funny, to Robert-- though he was starting to think of himself more as Wheeler instead of Robert these days and not for baseball reasons anymore --just how much nearly twelve months could change a person. Everyone Robert--Wheeler --knew talked about how things changed once someone became a teenager. Everyone said to be prepared for the world to change, especially when one was in high school. They said it was like being a small fish thrown into a huge pond.

No one could prepare the young baseball player for just how different things were going to become for him. If he would have sat down and made a list of just how different things were going to be for him, this wouldn't have even cracked his top ten. Maybe not even his top twenty, Robert wasn't sure.

High school, for the now fourteen year old boy and according to his parents, was supposed to be the best time of his life. They'd insisted on that fact since he was a small boy, telling him stories about their high school days and the high school days of their friends.

According to everyone he'd ever talked to, Robert was supposed to find himself a high school sweetheart, someone he could settle down with once he go into college, just like everyone else in Arcadia. He was supposed to play baseball on the Varsity squad and get himself noticed by baseball scouts-- the actual ones and not the strange men in dark suits that Calyx had warned him about and that had a tendency to show up at every game he played --so that he could head straight into the minor leagues for some team.



What team didn't really matter to Alan so long as his son was in the minor league systems someplace. It just meant he was one step closer to his goal, though Robert wasn't too sure anymore who that "his" was. Was the goal of playing in the major league his father's or his own anymore?

College, in his father's opinion, wasn't necessary for his son. No, he was too good a baseball player to have to go to college. Only the players who weren't good enough to get recruited out of high school, the players who still needed more "polishing," missed recruitment out of high school. Robert was supposed to be good enough as he was at the moment to make it through to the promised land of the minor leagues.

That wasn't how things seemed to be working out, though.

The girls that went to Arcadia High, their local high school, held little interest for Robert. Almost every one of them reminded him of his mother in a strange and younger way. They all wanted their big ticket out of Arcadia and they saw Robert as their way out of town. Surely, he'd take his girlfriend with him when he left for the minor leagues. He'd get them out of the boring small town they all called home.

He'd heard his own mother admit once, to one of her chatty friends on afternoon, that she'd only really fallen for Alan because she thought he was her ticket out of Arcadia. A life of fame and creature comforts was what Faye desired. She wanted to be recognized as the wife of a famous pitcher not a local shop owner with two sons and a moderately sized home.

Robert couldn't help but think that the girls he went to school with were thinking the same thing. They wanted a ticket out of town, a ticket to fame and fortune, and everyone said he was destined to become a famous pitcher someday. What better ticket out of Arcadia was there?

Then again, the whole baseball thing didn't seem as certain as it was supposed to be either. Robert had made the Varsity squad by the literal skin off his teeth. There were far too many skilled juniors and seniors in the school to allow one little freshman boy to be a starting pitcher. No, Robert had been shunted to no-man's-land, the place where good pitchers went to die.

Robert had been-- or was in the process of being anyway --converted into a relief pitcher.

It was a role Robert was unused to and one his father felt he was completely unsuited for. Actually, Robert might have agreed with his father on that one. He really didn't like the whole waiting in the bullpen, far away from the action, for a possible chance to pitch gig. As it was, he hardly ever got his turn anymore because of all the seniors and juniors on the varsity team. Most games he sat languishing in the bullpen, staring across the expansive outfield and trying to remember what it was like to actually throw a baseball to a batter instead of to the bullpen catcher.

Robert knew he should have been more bothered by the fact his coach was letting less skilled people pitch ahead of him. In his head, the young boy knew he should have been as angry as his father was about the whole being converted to a relief pitcher thing. Robert knew he should have been in the coach's office every day demanding that he be allowed to start games once again otherwise he'd leave the team. Fits and threats should be been thrown within earshot of anyone who had anything to do with the team. Robert knew that, by hook or by crook, he should have found a way to be allowed to start games again.

The funny thing was that Robert-- well, more Wheeler than Robert despite the fact they were one and the same --didn't particularly care. He did care, in a way, but it wasn't as 

much as he thought he would have cared. He missed pitching once every five days but he didn't miss it as much as he thought he should.

Baseball had been the entirety of his world for such a long time that any change to it should have rocked his world. Without being able to identify himself as a starting pitcher for the Hornets, he should have been without an identity. He should have felt lost and adrift, betrayed by the game he'd given his heart and soul to for most of his life.

The funny thing, to Robert anyway, was that his world and his identity had changed some in the past year. Baseball was still a big part of everything Robert said and did but there was a part of him, Wheeler that was something else entirely.

After finding new information about the disappearance of Anneliese Rose through the "usual channels" turned up dead end after dead end, the young man decided to try a new way of getting information. If they "usual channels" failed him, there were always the more unusual, and probably illegal, ways to find information. Ways that if he were ever caught using, his parents would probably draw and quarter him before the police came to arrest him.

Robert knew of a few boys in his school that had a rather...interesting...hobby. It wasn't exactly a legal hobby and that bothered Robert just a little. Still, it had become obvious that legal means weren't going to get him the information he was supposed to find. Drastic steps had to be taken in order to find out just what Calyx had been talking about. In this case, drastic meant the possibility of doing something that just might have been illegal. Robert decided that maybe, just maybe, the risk was worth it. To learn just whatever he was supposed to about Anneliese Rose and about Major League baseball, drastic measures might have to be taken.

The young boy knew they were the people he needed talk to, the people he needed to get help from. Oddly and ironically enough, he'd grown up just next door to one of them. The two boys-- he and Gregory, his next door neighbor's son --had been thick as thieves until Robert discovered baseball and Gregory, like Robert's own brother Arthur, discovered he wasn't exactly the athletic type. That was when the divide happened between the former friends.

It had taken quite a bit of cajoling to Gregory, also known as Reaper, and his two friends to help him but Robert eventually did. All it took was him promising them-- Gregory, Mitchell, and Timothy --that he'd try his best to stop the baseball team from tormenting them at lunch. Like any high school, no matter how clichéd it was, the popular kids still made it practice to torment those who weren't as popular.

Not that Robert had ever done anything like that. As a matter of fact, he tried to stay on good terms with everyone. It made going to school a whole lot easier if he wasn't at war with certain parties and had to remember who his allies in said war were. If he was friends with everyone or, at least on good terms, he could concentrate on his grades and baseball. Well, mostly baseball anyway. There were other things that had his focus now.

It was the three of them, three budding hackers who'd banded together because of common interest and in the spirit of sharing knowledge that showed Robert just how to find the deeper meaning behind the disappearance of Anneliese Rose.

Taking the name "Wheeler," since he wanted to stay true to his baseball roots even if baseball and hacking were two totally different fields, Robert set about creating a new persona. One that wasn't going to be a famous baseball player someday. One that wasn't 

being chased by every girl in his high school in the hopes he'd take them out of Arcadia one day. One whose father wasn't telling him to take steroids in order to throw harder because, according to his father, throwing harder would make him a more desirable player and it would earn him his starting position back.

Wheeler, as Robert often thought of himself now, sat in front of his father's desktop computer, hands poised over the keys, eyes as wide as saucers he tried to take in what he'd just stumbled upon.

More than once Wheeler had heard the expression "The truth is stranger than fiction." He'd never set any store in the whole expression since fiction was, well, fiction. That was what made it more interesting than the truth because it wasn't the truth. The story he'd just stumbled upon, though, was stranger than the truth he'd been told. Anneliese Rose, according the story, was just a small player in a larger story. A story that had absolutely nothing to do with cult leaders, and a young girl being coerced into running away from her family because of it.

The story Wheeler had found during his day's searching was definitely something that the people in Arcadia wouldn't be able to tolerate hearing. They wouldn't be able to fathom it, understand its depth and just how serious it was. Well, serious in a way that seemed important to Wheeler but probably not to anyone else in Arcadia. If he were to tell them what he'd learned-- what he and the others had discovered thanks to Calyx's little tip --they'd probably think he was insane.

They'd say the stress of trying to pitch and be a "normal" high school student had finally gotten to him. Maybe his parents-- especially his mother since his father was keen on pushing him as hard as humanly possible. --would give him a break but he wasn't so sure about that. They'd probably just send him off for an "extended vacation" to his grandparent's farm so he could "heal" and get the so-called insane ideas out of his head. It was always easier, in Arcadia, to ignore a problem than to deal with it head on. Well, ignore it and then gossip about it behind the problem person or family's back.

The story he'd learned, the truth behind the disappearance of Anneliese Rose, only began like the story he'd been told so many times before. Other than that, though, the story was nothing like what he expected.

It was true that she'd met a man online named Elric. That was the only truth to the story that had riveted everyone in Arcadia then and was still talked about now. Other than that…the truth of the story was far stranger than the fiction everyone in town knew.

It had been Elric who'd, for whatever reason he had, introduced Anneliese Rose to the world of hacking and what he called "the truth." It had been this mysterious Elric character who'd pointed her towards the idea of "the Matrix"-- an idea just as mysterious as the true identity of Elric. The truth about the Matrix, as far as Wheeler could see it, was the goal of Timothy, Gregory, and Mitchell's hacking. --and had been the one to escort her out of Arcadia after about a few years later

It wasn't that story, though, that left Wheeler shocked. No, it was something else he'd found out about Elric.

The something that Calyx had hinted to when they met that day in the dugout. The something tucked away in the archives of the Major League Baseball website. Something other than the fact the commissioner of baseball knew more about how rampant steroid use 

was than he was letting on. That fact alone had enraged Wheeler for several days when he came across that bit of information but that was neither here nor there at the moment.

Wheeler stared goggle eyed at the file he'd just discovered. One he was sure was for him and him alone.

The file had been tucked in the bowels of the Major League Baseball website, headed with the phrase "The Baseball Ace." Wheeler guessed that the unassuming title-- after all the major league was full of aces of all shapes and sizes and positions and in stages of development --was to keep the file safe. No one was going to bother to delete some bit of data about an "ace" of some kind. The young boy guessed that everyone who worked for Major League Baseball assumed that it was some report about some kid from the back of beyond who could play baseball better than anyone in the history of the game...or something like that.

Either way, the young boy opened the file only because Calyx had called him "the baseball ace" on the day they'd met. It might have been a strange little coincidence but, still, Wheeler couldn't help himself. Using a trick or two that Timothy-- Abel --had taught him, the boy made short work of the firewalls that stood in his way.

The file he'd found had little to do with baseball and pitching and more to do with the man called Erich, the man, according to the note attached to the file by Calyx, who Wheeler should seek out. He'd be one of the people who could help Wheeler find the "truth" about the reality he was living in.

At least, he would have been anyway.

According to the file, which contained what looked like an information dossier about Erich, he'd been banned from ever entering "the Matrix" because he'd gotten involved with a "trapped" human. Not involved in the same way he'd been involved with where Calyx was concerned. That sort of involvement was condoned by whoever ruled people like Erich and Calyx.

Apparently he'd gotten some young woman-- named Thora Elisa Ford --pregnant despite the fact he was "out" and she wasn't. No one was quite sure how such a thing happened and, because of that, Elric had been banned from ever entering "the Matrix" again. He was no help to anyone anymore. Several months after his meeting with her, no one had heard from Ms. Ford either. She, like Anneliese Rose had gone missing and her child was presumed dead.

"I don't get it," Wheeler mumbled, speaking to him and the computer screen as if it could give him the answer he was seeking.

All of the information he'd found out about Erich wasn't exactly useful. He'd heard of the Matrix-- Who hadn't really? It was something many hackers chatted and debated about on a regular basis --but he wasn't sure about anything else he'd found out. All he did understand was the fact that Erich couldn't help him in the same way he'd "helped" Calyx and whoever Thora Elisa Ford was. He wouldn't be able to get information from this individual, whoever he actually was.

With a sigh, Wheeler guided his virtual personal to a message board he'd started to frequent, one pointed out to him by Mitchell or Booth as he called himself. Looking thoughtful for a moment, trying to figure out just what he wanted to type in the black box on the screen, Wheeler put his fingers to the keyboard and started to type.



The first line of his post...the title he chose for his little mark in the virtual world.

"What is the Matrix?"

AN: Here are some translations on the names used in this chapter. If you look carefully enough you'll see why they're important!

Elric- "Elf Ruler" in Old English

Thora- In Nordic mythology, the name of the wife of the Danish Elf King