Title: The Best Homework Excuse Ever
Rating: PG-13. Limited language in this story; nothing worse than what you hear in the films.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own the Matrix trilogy, the canon characters, story or anything related. I can only wish that I did. I make no profit from this – I am merely exercising my writing skills for the reading pleasure of readers. However, I own this story. I own the character Chase, and Lady Delerith owns Ari.
Authors' notes:
Lady Delerith: Hey all, thankyou all so much for you reviews, it means a lot to us. Oh, if you are a fan of Sleepy Hollow (with the ever so hot Johnny Depp) if am currently writing a fan fiction for that, do not worry that its only a short prologue, I'll post more soon. Ciaou, love me XD.
Solia: Solia is not dead, she's just not here. Hehe. wipes tear away
THE BEST HOMEWORK EXCUSE EVER: Chapter five
Chase quietly got out of the 'borrowed' car, nervous and a little scared. Today was supposed to be her first, uneventful day back at school. She was meant to have chatted with her friends, misdirected Sadie, gone to classes... Done normal stuff. Instead, she had met another girl like herself, received another mysterious message from that secret person (who had turned out to be Trinity), been attacked by that man in the bushland, been picked up on the side of the road by strangers, been shot at... It was definitely the scariest day of her life to date yet also the most exciting.
"Where are we? I've never been here before," Ari said, following close behind her. How weird – Chase had known Ari for not even a day, and yet already she had known her as three different people.
"Near Brisbane City," Trinity admitted, slamming her door and starting toward a shabby building door nearby. She forced it open and led the girls inside. "We don't usually work here. It's too dangerous. You have to be careful when you walk down there." She nodded down the rickety wooden stairs. In the basement of the old building was loads of rubble and wood.
"People dump their stuff here," Trinity explained quietly as she started cautiously down the stairs. "Be very careful for sharp objects and rotted stairs. Follow me." Chase edged down the steps, testing them with her weight before allowing each to support her. To try and sidetrack her nerves, she glanced at Ari behind her.
"Why do you call yourself three different names?" she asked quietly.
"Amanda is what my parents named me when I was a born," Ari answered, rolling her eyes. "I hate it, so I nicknamed myself Kye."
"Kye has nothing to do with Amanda."
"It's my middle name. When I started hacking, I called myself Ari, because I liked that, too. It's really quite useful to have three identities sometimes. My old school counsellor reckoned I had a full-time identity crisis because I called myself something different everyday."
"Miss this step, it has a hole in it," Trinity said, hopping over it. Chase copied her. Trinity led them down past the rubble and old wood to another door. She turned to them both.
"Remember, don't lie," she said. "Morpheus knows practically everything. Good luck in your decisions. I only hope you make the right one." Without waiting for an answer, she unlocked the door and directed them inside.
Chase silently followed Ari into the dusty, dimly lit room. There were only four pieces of furniture in the room – an antique sofa, a matching single lounge chair, and two small tables. A tall, bald, dark-skinned man stood from the single chair, his long black cloak making a swishing noise. Trinity closed the door behind them as she entered.
"Good afternoon," the man said, smiling broadly. Trinity silently walked past the girls to stand at the man's side, giving him a respectful look.
"Uh, hello," Ari said awkwardly. Chase quickly echoed her. What else were they supposed to say?
"I am pleased to meet you, Ari," the man said, nodding at Chase's new friend with surprising respect. He obviously didn't see them as any less significant just because they were kids. "And Chase, too, of course. You two have no idea how difficult you are to find. But at last, we meet. I am Morpheus."
Chase glanced nervously at Ari. There was no going back now.
Trinity shot them both a reassuring look as she turned and left the room the way she had come in. They were alone.
"Please, take a seat, both of you," Morpheus said, indicating the two-seater couch. Chase sank slowly down next to Ari, not trusting herself to speak. This was like a weird, hazy dream, unreal.
"As I said, you two are very difficult to locate. Your knowledge of computing is obviously very good for two people of your young age. It took Trinity many long hours to find you. She arranged to meet you both inside the bushland around your school, but as you unfortunately discovered, an agent of the system found out and hindered the operation. No matter – you are safe for now.
"I was grateful when both of our current subjects enrolled in the same school. That made our jobs a lot easier. I hope that you haven't been too frightened by this ordeal, but I had to speak to you both. I have summoned you here today to offer you a proposal. You have questions burning at your minds."
"And you have the answers?" Ari guessed. Morpheus nodded.
"Tell me, Ari, Chase. What is the question you most want answered?"
"What is the Matrix?" Ari asked immediately.
"What is the Matrix," Chase agreed after a moment. She glanced at Ari again. They both wanted to know.
"The Matrix is this," Morpheus said, waving his hands vaguely at the room. "You can feel it now, when you touch these chairs. You can taste it when you go out to dinner with your family. You see it at school, at home, at the shopping centres. You can smell it when you are cooking your meals at home, when you do your gardening. You can hear it on the radio or when you talk on the phone. It is everywhere. You cannot escape it by yourselves. It is nothing but a cage, trapping your minds into it, making you see and feel and hear what it wants you to. But unfortunately," Morpheus continued, "you cannot just be told. You still wouldn't understand, even if I gave you both textbooks on this topic. You have to see it for yourselves to know what the Matrix is. You will not comprehend until your eyes really see it."
There was a long silence. Morpheus indicated the tables either side of their sofa. On each there was a glass of water.
"Now you have your choice," he said, taking a small silver box from his pocket. He tipped the contents into his hands. "I must have you know that I am only offering the truth, and nothing more than that. The most tempting choice may be more risky, but it is your decision. You are both old enough to make your own decisions, are you not?"
Chase again glanced at Ari. She seemed to be doing it a lot now, which was surprising, since they'd only known each other for a few hours.
"I guess so," Ari decided.
"Surely you don't want your parents in on this?" Morpheus asked with a knowing smile.
"No," both girls said immediately. Neither of them wanted their parents to know any of this hacking stuff. If Chase's mum ever discovered that she'd doing this, the close-mother-daughter smile Marilyn and Carrie shared that Chase so wanted to be a part of would be a very distant, very laughable fantasy.
"Usually it is a wise choice to target younger minds," Morpheus continued. Chase listened with a blank expression, not knowing what the hell he was talking about. "Younger people are much more open minded, but now you all get drug education and those don't-accept-candy-from-strangers talks. Well, ignore those for just today." He opened the first hand. Two clear blue capsules. "In one hand, you can choose to wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You tell your parents that you caught the wrong bus home. I never contact you again, and you live your lives the way you like. In the other hand," he opened the second hand to reveal two more pills, identical to the blues except that they were red, "I show you more, how deep the rabbit hole goes. I show you the truth and you leave this," he waved his hands around at the room, "behind."
There was a moment of silence. Chase turned to Ari once more, the expression in her eyes saying simply, 'I will if you do'. Ari did nothing but stare back at her with the same look.
Chase studied the four pills offered. Should she choose red or blue?
"What's the worst that can happen?" she asked finally, taking a red pill from Morpheus' open hand.
Dumb question.
Ari watched her for a moment, then took the other red capsule. Both picked up a glass of water from the tables either side of them, but only Ari placed the pill on her tongue and swallowed mouthfuls of water to get it down her throat. Chase stopped herself and stared at the capsule.
By taking this pill, which could be a dangerous drug for all she knew, what would she lose? She had never realised before exactly how much she took for granted.
Her parents, who considered her strange, but cared for her all the same.
Keira, who was the only other family member that seemed even slightly out of place.
Sadie, who she pretended to dislike but would actually defend with her life.
Her many friends, so many friends, who liked her enough to ignore that she was slightly off kilter.
And Carrie, her twin, who had protected her against the popular bullies in primary school that had figured out that she was different. Carrie, who had swapped desserts with her when they were six and dining at a posh restaurant because Chase (then Sophie) had had seen a flicker of a green number 2 in her chocolate sprinkles. Carrie, who had handed in her own history assignment last year in place of Chase's when Chase had spent her entire night searching the net for a way into a web site promising answers and hadn't a moment that night thought about her assignment.
"Ugh," Ari muttered, putting the glass back and touching in her throat. Chase stared at her.
"Not much to lose, I take it?" she asked. She noticed the thin white scars on her new friend's wrists and wondered what it must be like to have no fear to lose something because there was so little emotional cost. Maybe Ari's home life was messed up, she didn't know. But Chase had so much to live for. She had spent her life looking out for those reasons, remaining a good daughter, sister and friend and pretending not to be different for their benefit. She'd always selflessly pushed her real self into the corners of her mind to protect her relationships.
Ari shrugged and shook her head.
"Chase, if you had my family, you'd be begging for an excuse to take an unknown pill," she said gently.
Maybe it was finally time to stop pretending to be normal, to stop pretending to be Sophie, and to finally do something for Chase, who needed this. She popped the capsule into her mouth.
Amazingly, it had no taste whatsoever.
Morpheus smiled for a moment before he spoke. "Follow me."
He got to his feet and started for the only door in the room, the way they had entered. Chase and Ari followed him through it and into a shadowed area a little further down, where another door was well hidden in the darkness. He pushed it open and showed them inside.
Chase had never seen so much computing equipment that she couldn't identify in one place. Computers, wires, machines, phones and then a whole bunch of stuff she didn't know the names of. It seemed odd that, beside two odd-looking, perhaps dentist-related chairs, was an antique mirror.
Trinity was here, and somehow those two men (Cypher and Apoc?) had turned up, too. There was also a formidable-looking woman with short white blonde hair, and a man with dark blonde hair worn in a careless, casual, longish fashion to his chin, medium-coloured skin and a relaxed, friendly face.
"Time is always against us. It is precious. Please, take a seat," Morpheus said, indicating the chairs. Chase took a seat beside Ari when she sat down. Trinity pressed a button on the machine she had been working with and came over with wires and those white circles that stick to skin and hold the wires there. Without speaking, she attached the wires with the stickers to Ari's forehead, neck, and arms. Nobody in the entire room spoke, in fact, and the only sounds were that of their breathing and the bleeps of the computers. Trinity moved on to Chase, pressing the stickers to her skin to hold the wires.
She left them and went back over to her machine. Apoc glanced up at Morpheus, who gave a small nod, and he tapped a few keys with his fingers. The noise seemed to resound in the quiet room.
Ari gasped softly. Chase spun around in her chair to check on her. Her eyes were practically glued to the mirror – and when Chase also looked at it, she, too, was surprised.
"That's impossible," she said stubbornly. It was. It wasn't normal for mirrors to 'melt' and appear to be nothing more than molten silver managing to defy the laws of gravity by standing vertically without spilling. Morpheus, wrists clasped behind his back, wandered toward them calmly.
"That kind of attitude won't be of any help when you want to learn about the Matrix," he said simply.
"But it is," Chase argued. "I know it isn't possible. All laws of physics, maths and science prevent this from happening." She pointed at the mirror.
"It's happening, isn't it?" Ari asked. Obviously she didn't have Chase's obsession with physics.
"I thought you were the kind of person who would say, 'rules were made for breaking'?" the blonde woman said to Chase with a smirk.
"I know it isn't possible," Chase repeated, weaker than before. "This is why we have gravity. I know."
"You know, do you? Imagine what you'll know by tomorrow." Morpheus shook his head and smiled. "I can't believe you're letting your logic block your curiosity. Go on – I know what you both are dying to do." He nodded at the mirror.
Both girls turned back to the antique mirror.