Ch. 5 The Reason
The parade of seven rebels did not shock the Glitch Manager at all. She smiled lightly as they entered the room.
"I haven't noticed you in a while. Must have been more careful in the past few months," she said eyeing Morpheus.
Morpheus would have had no way of knowing who she was because she very rarely shows herself in this form and usually only when she's doing something she doesn't want the Mainframe to know about. So it surprised me that he was not at all surprised to see her and did not question what should have been a curious comment.
"So you are the First Target," he responded.
Now, let me just tell you that the Glitch Manager is really old. She has been around since the very first Matrix nearly a millennium ago. So she was never surprised by anything and was almost always on top of what was going on. But for the first time I had ever seen, she was totally bewildered.
"You better not start shooting at me, you wild monkey."
A couple of the rebels stifled giggles.
"Please," Morpheus began, "We have much to discuss."
What is going on here? He doesn't want to tell me jack shit, but he wants to talk to her and he doesn't even know who she is! Not that I thought he knew exactly who I was.
The Glitch Manager eyed him suspiciously. "What could you want to say to me?"
"We want to ask you for your help."
Now this made the Glitch Manager laugh as it had made me want to laugh. "Look, rebel, I don't know who told you what, but they were lying. I do not help humans except by keeping their little habitat relatively glitch free."
"Just listen to what I have to say. If you refuse, you refuse."
The Glitch Manager smiled and produced a large, fluffy armchair out of thin air and plopped down onto it. "This might be entertaining."
I was still sitting on the floor, now quite ignored, thoughts colliding violently in my mind until I came to a simple conclusion: this had been a set-up all along. But they would not know, they did know enough…
Morpheus and Niobe were seated on the couch on the wall opposite me that I had been unable to see until I was struggling with my bonds. A clear indication of just how nervous the rebels were around me that during the three hours I was guarded, no one had been seated. The other five stood, looking back and forth between me and this new apparition. "Hey, didn't you shoot him twice? And where's the tape?" the rebel who had first attempted to shoot me whispered to his companion. The other just shrugged.
"Oh, yeah, which one of you bastards kicked me?"
I had honestly been too dumbfounded by the entire situation to think of retaliating for my treatment, but now that I had been reminded, I was not sure if I should attack, run, or sit and wait to see what would happen. They all once again fully armed, so attack would only be an option if the Glitch Manager felt like aiding me in my vendetta. Unlikely. But I did not think that she would let them harm me either after going through all the trouble to heal me. I looked at her and asked silently what she planned to do. She reacted as though she had heard me.
"Aren't you curious what they have to say?"
I nodded. "But they wouldn't tell me anything. I'm not sure if they will now."
The rebels, except Morpheus, were all quite agitated now because they seemed to think that the attack option was the one I would choose. But I had always been notoriously curious and if in fact the Glitch Manager could get them to speak, I wanted to know what was being said.
She spoke now, "Oh, he'll behave himself as long as you leave him alone…for the moment anyhow."
The rebels did not look as though they were going to accept that statement, but Morpheus was content with her assurance and they just looked at me nervously with their weapons pointed in my general direction. Foolish, really. After all, who's more dangerous, someone who can stretch duct tape or someone who can produce luxury furniture out of nothing?
"So…you were going to tell me something?"
"Over the last six months, many things have changed, but many things remain the same." Oh, no, not again! But I really could strangle him this time. Oh, he better not…
"The machines have been unwilling to release humans from the Matrix that wish to leave as they have promised-"
The Glitch Manager cut him off. "I know for a fact that that is not true. Removal of an individual from the Matrix before death alerts the Plant Operators to release them because they are defective and may damage the holding unit. There have been two times as many exits in the past months than anytime in the past." She glared at him, daring him to contradict her. I always marveled at how she was able to obtain more information irrelevant to her function than anyone else. It's probably why she liked me.
"This I will not dispute," Morpheus said. "Yet whenever we enter the Matrix, we are still chased away if we are located in time."
The Glitch Manager laughed. "Of course you are! Did you think the Mainframe would allow you to remove every human from the Matrix? It was agreed that those that wanted to leave, those who knew about the Matrix before the agreement and had not left yet, would be allowed to go. Certainly no one ignorant of his confinement would wish to escape it. You are coming in to tell people the truth and that is not acceptable! What this has to do with me, I'm not sure I want to find out."
But I had known since he repeated the line he used on me to her what he would want from her and so did she.
"I'm not sure what you can do for me, but I do know you are one of the keys."
The Glitch Manager smirked.
"And how do you know that?"
There was a pause.
"The Oracle told me so."
His answer did not surprise me, but it did anger me. The treacherous old woman was at it again. It was not enough to arrange peace with our sworn enemy, she had to actively take humans from our power supply. What did she think she was doing? Letting more humans go would hurt everyone involved, us because we need power and them because they cannot support an expanding population. How were they going to feed all these new people? How were we going to make up for the loss? She was too much of an idealist. She did not deal with the world as it was. She was the mother of disorder and I seriously wondered if she had foreseen that she would be the end of us. This was entirely her fault, the failure of my life was her fault, and I could never forgive her for it. And to think she had told me on our first and only meeting that everything would be fine.