Title: The Best Homework Excuse Ever
Rating: PG-13
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:
Solia: Chase and Ari are free, and this is their first day in Zion. As you would know after reading the previous chapter, the girls were freed simultaneously – in the same operation. Upon arriving in Zion they learn that no two people have ever survived such a difficult process and that the faithful people of the city are treating Chase and Ari's release from the Matrix as a sign that the One is coming.
Lady Delerith: Hey all, this is our new chapter, I hope you think it's good. Oh and, nomen nihil, if you read this, I hope don't expect us to forgive you for all that shit by that pitiful little apology.
Oh, a little self promotion here, my friend and I, not Solia, another friend, have been writing a story and I'd like all of you guys to read and tell me what you think of it. ?storyid1795638 Really hope you guys like it. It's a tad bit graphic Enjoy.
Solia: Yeah, what Delerith just said to nomen nihil – I second that.
THE BEST HOMEWORK EXCUSE EVER: Chapter Seven
ZION: Part one
"I can't believe they're just going to leave us here."
Chase nodded in agreement with Ari's comment. It had been two months since they had been freed from the Matrix and the reality was settling in, but now their primary rehabilitation and training was finished and they were being left in the cavernous underground city of Zion.
In the past two months she had slowly felt her body rebuilding its strength. She had monitored closely the regrowth of her dark brown hair, which, to Ari's annoyance, was growing at a pleasing rate. She was eating the tasteless gooey grey stuff that everyone else ate on hovercrafts and understanding the answers to the many questions she asked.
Chase could now comprehend that her entire life had been lived in her head, in cyberspace, basically, a thing called the Matrix, and that her energy had been used as a battery for an evil race of machines that had taken over the world, wiping the humans from the face of the planet and driving them into caves near the core of the Earth.
She could only imagine how Carrie would laugh if she were to say that to her twin.
She missed Carrie. She wondered how her sisters and parents and friends had reacted when she hadn't come home that night. She wondered what her school would do. She even wondered what had become of her schoolbag, which she had left in the car she'd been picked up in. What if police found that, showered in the glass of the broken window?
Now, she and Ari, her new best friend, the only person sharing her situation, stood in the doorway of a cave-and-steel apartment which housed four single, threadbare sheeted beds, a table with four chairs, a storage cupboard and a door which they had to suppose led to a bathroom. There was no one else inside but the place showed signs of being lived in by someone.
Coming from the lives they'd had in the Matrix, this was so far from luxury it wasn't funny. But it was warmer here than on the Nebuchadnezzar, the hovercraft (another thing Chase was starting to comprehend) Morpheus owned. Plus, this was the real world, and as real as it got, and ever since being freed, Chase had felt mentally better, no longer plagued by those inconsistencies and little glitches, which she'd recently found out were small gaps, or glitches, in the Matrix system.
It was amazing, this Matrix thing. So beautiful, the way maths, computers and science had been twisted together like this. It was incredibly interesting, although, to Chase, evil. Because it existed, she'd lost her entire life and she'd never see her sisters again.
Ari, on the other hand, didn't really think about the logical, artistic evil of the Matrix. She just liked it here and thought that everyone in the Matrix deserved to be free of their problems, like she was now. Chase was glad to note that Ari's suicide scars were gone from her wrists.
"I guess this is… home," Chase said finally, afraid to step inside. She felt like she needed a security blanket, or a soft toy to cuddle before she did so. Or a twin. Like that time when her parents had sent her and Carrie to a summer camp when they were eight. No one they knew was going, but their parents sent them anyway. Chase could still remember standing at the door of their cabin, terrified of the unknown, other kids behind the closed door. She hadn't been brave enough to go inside until she'd taken Carrie's hand, and they'd stepped inside together.
That had been the worst camp ever, and three out of the four cabin mates were completely horrible, but just having her twin with her had given Chase, then Sophie, the courage to step inside.
As Chase wrapped her arms around herself, Ari waltzed straight on inside without hesitation. She looked so different from the way Chase had met her, with her mahogany purple hair and impeccable school uniform. Now her short, short spiky hair was black (her natural colour) and she was wearing a light grey tunic over a dark one (for warmth). She had dark grey trousers and boots.
Chase's attire was similar; grey trousers, boots, ginger-brown undershirt and a maroon tunic. They had woken one morning on the Nebuchadnezzar and found the clothes supplied at the end of one of the beds.
"I think someone lives here," Chase said nervously. She took a deep breath and took one step inside. It was warm and well lived-in, but tidy for a cave.
"Of course someone lives here," Trinity said as she arrived. The girls turned to look at her. She'd been so great to them, such a friend. She seemed to like looking after them. Morpheus had said to them on a few occasions that it was strange for Trinity to be so nice to newcomers, although every now and then someone would be freed that she would simply take a liking to. According to the captain, those people usually turned out to be of great importance to the Resistance (the rebellion against the machines).
"How do you know?" Ari asked, looking around.
"Because these cabins are always used to house numerous people, usually new kids," Trinity answered. "The idea is to save space and to create bonds, like flatmates."
"Chasey, we have flatmates," Ari said brightly. Chase nodded, looking around cautiously. Already, Ari was coming up with nicknames for her. Not that she minded.
"Listen, you two settle in, okay? I have to go to Morpheus – he's signing your release forms."
"But what if we need something?" Chase asked worriedly. "What if we can't find the cafeteria? I mean, the food place?"
"Everyone here, in this city, will be willing to help you if you get lost, I promise," Trinity said. She smiled. "Your flatmates should turn up soon. The council has told them that you've arrived so they shouldn't be far away. I'll make sure I see you again before I leave, okay?"
The girls nodded, and she left.
"Great," Chase muttered to the silence.
"It won't be that bad."
"We're stuck in a cave."
"Yeah. But we'll make friends." Ari was trying to be optimistic.
The door opened and a girl of about twelve or thirteen entered. She was pretty, with perfect blonde ringlets for hair, short like a two-year-olds, and a freckly nose. She was about Ari's height or taller.
"Hi, I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner," the girl said. She looked sweet. "I'm Teardrop. I live here."
"I'm Ari," Chase's best friend said with a small smile. Teardrop said hello, then turned to Chase, who hugged herself tighter.
"My name's Chase," she answered.
"The whole city is talking about you two," Teardrop said, dropping down on the bed in the corner. The other three were spaced along the wall from there. "Talking about how you two were freed at the same time or something. My friends were talking about it – I told them they were crazy. It's impossible."
"No, it's not," Ari said immediately. "Morpheus managed it with us."
Teardrop's eyes widened.
"For real?" she asked excitedly. "At exactly the same time?"
"Yeah," Chase said, feeling uncomfortable.
"So you two are like, twins. Mind twins."
"Huh?" Ari asked.
"When you're freed, it's like you're being born again," Teardrop said. "I count it as a birthday. I'm two, if that be the case." She was so mature for a littler girl. "But you two were born at the same time. That's so cool. No one else has ever achieved it. Usually one dies in the process."
"I guess… that we're just lucky, then," Chase said carefully. "I really don't understand why you're so excited. We had nothing to do with it."
"Maybe both of you had to live, as though you have a special fate," Teardrop continued speculating.
"If you say so," Ari said, shrugging carelessly.
"I can't wait to tell my friends – they'll be so jealous," Teardrop said, her big blue eyes bright. "I'm sharing a room with the Twins. You have to meet Ricka – she was my old roommate, until a few weeks ago, when she moved out because she got married."
"How old do you have to be to get married here?" Chase asked, shocked. In the Matrix, underage marriages were highly uncommon, not to mention highly illegal in most places. Surely that would be carried on into the real world?
"She was twenty-one. I don't know the marriage laws – sixteen, I think. Anyway, she's really nice. She's a medic – that's what I want to be."
"A doctor?" At one point in her life, Chase had also aspired to this career track. At fourteen, she hadn't been sure. Now she had no idea.
"Yeah," Teardrop said. She had an American accent. Most people in the real world sounded American. They only Aussie here apart from Chase was Ari. "So. Do you want me to show you around?"
After Chase and Ari had picked out a bed each (Ari the second, Chase the third) Teardrop ushered them from the apartment and began the tour of the city.
"It's so big," Chase said, not for the first time, as she leaned over a railing a few storeys up.
"It's hard to believe sometimes, isn't it?" Teardrop agreed. "All made by people?"
Teardrop spent the next hour showing them different places and different ways to get to those places, but everywhere they went, people stared and whispered.
"Will it always be like this?" Ari asked in a low voice. "Do they stare at every new person?"
"No, just you two," Teardrop answered quietly as they stepped inside an elevator. "I don't think you realize how much of a miracle you really are. Two people freed at once, in the same operation… It just hadn't been done before. Nothing special has happened in years – Zion is starting to lose faith that anything good will ever happen. Until now."
"Until us," Chase said softly. A month ago she'd been shopping with her mother and sisters for her new schoolbooks, trying to get everything organized before the Christmas/summer holidays ended. Now a thirteen-year-old girl with perfect hair was telling her that she and Ari were the new faces of hope for a civilization of people they hadn't even known existed.
"What are they waiting for?" Ari asked. Chase didn't understand, but Teardrop seemed to.
"The One," she said simply. "Inside the Matrix there is a woman called the Oracle. She foretells the future and gives advice. She guided a man, more than a hundred years ago, as he freed the first people from the Matrix and began building Zion. After his death she prophesised his reincarnation as an all-powerful anomaly in the Matrix. So whenever something weird happens, like two teenage girls who somehow survive simultaneous release from the Matrix, the people of Zion seem to count it as a sign that the One is coming."
"So now we're omens, Chase," Ari said as the elevator doors opened. "High-school students no more… Omens."
"The Oracle prophesised the coming of twelve extraordinary people from the Matrix to proceed the coming of the One," Tear explained. "A ninth one was released about two years ago, a week or so after me. He seemed nice. Apparently he's really talented inside training programs and stuff." She smiled thoughtfully as she sidestepped a solitary observer. "Actually, I think he might have been Australian, too. In the Matrix, that is. Usually they target Americans as potential escapees. I guess there are a lot of wack jobs where I'm from."
"Are there many Aussies here?" Chase asked.
"No. Most Matrix-escapees are American. Or were, in the Matrix. I don't think I've met many other Australian escapees. You two and that guy…"
"Maybe our country just produces extra-special people," Ari said, and Tear grinned at her.
Teardrop took them now to the eatery. Some people ate at their homes, she said, but the eatery was more for lonely newcomers without families. Chase noticed that nearly everybody here, sitting at the long metal tables, had a steel plug in the back of their skull. Teardrop led them to the cafeteria at the end of the huge room. A few people stared. Chase tried to avoid meeting their eyes, but once she looked up. Her gaze was locked into contact with that of a tall, cute boy of about her age with hazel eyes. He had been laughing at something a companion said, but now he smiled. His hair was dark, and he had a tan complexion, like most native Zioners. But as he slowly raised a hand to run it through his hair, Chase noticed a black plug in his wrist. He was a Matrix-born, like her.
Chase forced a return smile, but was self-consciously running her fingers over the black plug in her own wrist. They were a part of her body now, like the silver plug in her head. Did Zion-born people consider that unattractive? Was there any 'racial' tension in this city between Matrix-born and Zion-born people? In the Matrix, it was disgusting how people treated those of different colour. As far as Chase was concerned, people were people and there should be no discrimination between colour or race. But here, although colour didn't seem to matter, there were no longer just people. Here there were people who were born and had families, and there were people who were little more than genetic creations, ex-batteries.
A tray was pressed into her hands, and Chase snapped back into reality. Even outside of the Matrix she was still prone to drifting off into her own thoughts.
"Thanks," she said immediately. The woman who had served her ignored her – she'd already moved on to the next person in line. Chase followed Ari and Teardrop to a space at one of the long tables.
This food wasn't gunky and gooey like the hovercraft food. It was made up of what appeared to be a mixture of synthetic fruits and natural fibres. It tasted better, too.
"So, what do you think of Zion so far?" Teardrop asked in between mouthfuls. Chase swallowed.
"Okay, I guess," she said. Ari started looking around.
"Any hot guys here?" she asked hopefully, craning her neck and sitting straighter. Chase remembered the boy with the pretty hazel eyes. She turned to find him.
"There was one over-" she began, but he was gone.
"Where?" Ari queried, leaning closer to Chase to try and see all in her line of vision.
"Nowhere. He's gone," Chase said, turning back to her meal. She wished now that she had approached the boy – who knew how long it would be before she saw him again?