Thanks to everyone who reviewed and liked this so far. I just got this incredible urge to have more of the Matrix. I wish they'd develop a kind of post-Animatrix to expand the universe, but in lieu of that, this is my interpretation of some of the things that might happen.
6.
fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
Morpheus stepped solemnly into the apartment. He wore his emotions plainly on his face as he gazed down at the woman in front of him. Weakened, ravaged by some kind of programming disease, the Oracle was dying. Her skin had faded from the rich mocha into a yellowing canvas that spoke of death more clearly than any prophecy. This too, struck him as another sort of betrayal. Time and time again he'd found his faith torn and thrown down, but time and time again he returned to her seeking the truth.
"Morpheus," she whispered. "I knew you would come."
"I have come for answers." His voice trembled slightly despite the sonorous tones. "But I am no longer sure that you are the one to give them."
"Everything that has a beginning…"
"Has an end." He finished for her. One hand rose to his face and pulled the glasses off of his nose and slotted them into one of the pockets on the three piece suit. "What end is this? Neo said that we were not the first Zion. So what I want to know is… what was Agartha?"
Her eyes fluttered closed in response. One hand clutched the blanket closer to her chest as though it would somehow protect her.
"Why are you dying?" His voice did break then.
"Oh, honey. You know that I would do anything for it not to be so. But even the greatest of us will fade and die. For those of us who pass on, a new generation is created, children who will carry on our programming. You met one on the way in."
"She's a child."
"We all were once."
Finally he sat on the olive recliner just across from her. They'd known each other for so many years. Her guidance had led him so far. But now it was his guidance that Zion looked to as they struggled with the knowledge that there had been another city, and then, what truths did they really know that hadn't been filtered through the machines? It was for Morpheus to decide. And yet here he was again, waiting in her living room, for the answers that he needed.
"Yes," her voice was soft in the apartment. "There was another city on the western coast of this continent. Agartha. It was older than Zion, much older."
"How old?"
"Older than I am." She tried to smile but it looked false on her face. "Morpheus, you cannot travel to this city. I know that as surely as I know that I will not last much longer. There is danger and death there as you would find in all places worth attaining, but if you go, you will die."
"How do you know these things?"
"That's not an answer you get to know."
"What will we find there?"
A fragile slice of life breathed back into her and the Oracle's eyes brightened. "Hope."
There was light.
And a thousand voices, a hundred thousand, a million voices caught up in a singular moment of harmony.
The sky split open, the code lay bare, and a man stood alone on the other side of it.
His hair and eyes were dark but she knew, somehow, that he was blind.
There was no time to ask questions, there seemed like there was no time in this place at all. Only that single moment when the curtain pulled aside and she could see everything. The man stood at the center of the light which curled around him in complex mandalas that she could not understand even though they were the answer to everything.
"What is truth?" His voice asked the question from all around her and the mandalas brightened with the strength of it.
"It's all relative." She found the answer as though she'd always known it.
"Look deeper." He answered. "And wake up."
She gulped in the breath as though she'd been drowning.
"She's awake!" The voice grated harsh and painful on her ears. "Get Niobe and Roland. She's awake!" Then softer and more welcoming. "Alright, kiddo. You've given me a rough three weeks. You think you can open your eyes for me?"
Miri struggled to blink as though the task had become as Herculean as moving mountains. Each eye lifted and drifted back shut before she could assert her dominance over the muscles. She tried again and this time they opened long enough to catch sight of a brutal halogen light searing into the tender flesh of her optic nerve. The whimper and cringe caused a sudden flurry of movement from her side.
"Okay, try again."
"She's awake!" A young, more youthful voice ran across Miri's hearing. "How is she? Has she said anything?"
"Calm down and sit down. She's had the full neuro regen but the first time is always rough."
Miri reached deep inside of herself and found that her mind remembered how to speak even if her body found it unfamiliar. "Where am I?"
"The real world." The woman's voice was comforting. "And when you've got your eyes open, you'll see that."
The real world.
Memories flashed through her mind. Not one at a time, but all at once, as though she'd lived every moment on the roof in one burst of time. Distraught she'd gone up there with vague ideas and no one to egg her on except the damn voices. Then the man had appeared. And he'd made her laugh when she hadn't expected the ability was in her. The voices were brought to life. Like ghosts or demons on the rooftop. Name them. And she had. It had torn the world open. The code, she'd never realized the world was code, had split open, and on the other side of it, she'd seen someone. Look deeper. She looked deeper. She'd looked so deep that her mind had fallen straight through the layers of code and into…
"I fell."
"We know, but we managed to catch you."
Miri opened her eyes and saw a face that she recognized from the rooftop. The pretty blond had more piercings on the roof, but it was the same face. When she realized that Miri was looking at her, she smiled comfortingly. "Roland slapped a tracer on you on the rooftop. We were lucky that it had enough time to lock on before you self-substantiated."
"He told me to look deeper." Her voice felt scratchy and soft as though it hadn't even been used, and a part of her understood that it never had.
"Who told you?" The younger voice asked, the tone had risen sharply.
She saw him as he came around to the front of the medical bed. Young, sixteen or seventeen, with the awkward gawkiness of that age. Close shaven brown hair and roughly woven clothes, but the thing that caught her eye were the metallic plugs that ran along his arm. There were matching ones in her arms and her fingers explored them slowly, strangely, recognizing them as part of her for the first time.
"I'm Kid." The young man said again. "Who told you? Was his name Neo? Did you see him in the Matrix?"
"Kid." The blond said sharply.
But she didn't answer.
Two additional people walked through the doorway of the medical bay. She recognized both of them from the rooftop. The petite black woman wasn't as exquisitely coiffed but Miri could see that she was a fighter no matter which universe she existed in. Her eyes too, were the calculating gaze of a warrior, judging and holding the decision to themselves. But it was the other that caught Miri's breath in her throat and she did not know why.
The blond broke the silence in the room. "Mirielle, this is Roland and Niobe."
Anything that might have been said in the seconds that followed was cut off as a severe looking brunette swept in, cast a dismissive look at the crowd, and spoke sharply. "We've been recalled to Zion right now. Niobe, I need you at the wheel."
"What's happened?" Niobe asked.
Sacẻ shrugged. "Apparently Morpheus went to see the Oracle. And whatever she told him is important enough that they're recalling us." Her eyes flicked back to Miri. "Karma, get her on her feet."
"Yes, ma'am." Karma answered.
"What's going on?" Miri asked.
And as the Defiant spun and headed for home, Karma and the Kid told Miri about Zion, and Neo, and the real world.
The Oracle kissed Sati on the forehead, too weak to reach the girl, she had to wait until the tiny face came close enough to her. It was a gentle kiss redolent of sweet candy and the heat of a life not yet extinguished. It was the Oracle's last gift to her, love that she could take with her.
"But Oracle…" Sati whispered. "I'm scared again."
"You don't have to be scared. Seraph is your guardian now." The Asian man bowed deferentially behind the girl. "Do you remember the shape I showed you this morning?"
"The enso." Sati said.
"Yes," it was a word full of satisfaction. "Draw it for me in the air."
Sati reached up, her dark eyes full of concentration, and touched the air as though it had surface and weight. Her fingers trailed light as they arched up into a wide open circle. Reaching higher and higher, passing the apex and then sweeping around to complete the circuit. The enso glistened on the air, absorbing and transmitting Sati's light in the same way that she could give it to the sunrise.
"What does the enso teach you?"
"Everything." The girl's voice was still sad. "And nothing."
"That everything that has a beginning has an end. And that no ending is truly the end, just another step to beginning again. I will miss you, Sati, but this is not good-bye. A piece of me will always be with you."
"What piece?"
"My love." The Oracle fought not to gasp as another wave of weakness passed over her. The enso in the air between them wavered and then began to dissolve. "It is time, Seraph."
"Oracle…" His composure began to break.
"Hurry." She hissed. "You must go." Seraph used his keys to open a gateway and ushered Sati out into the bright light of day. Far from the sick room that was headed towards death.
His words were left unspoken, but she had already known everything that he was going to say. Still, the pain that ached in her chest was not something that she would have predicted in hindsight. Not the emptiness that came now when the end loomed outside the door, bringing evil with a familiar and yet strange tang.
"Come in."
The beast dispensed with the petty need to open the door and came straight through it. Her hair writhed around her body as though it caught scent of the sickness and fed upon it. And Nue stood in ancient hunger before the one program that she'd thirsted for since awakening from Smith's hunger. He'd feasted on the Oracle and been unable to control the overwritten program, Nue would have no such problem. She was the culmination of a dream gone horribly wrong.
The Machine City did not believe in waste. Any malfunctioning program should contribute its working programming back to the city, with the faulty portions discarded. In that way, the City would only improve and grow. Nue had been designed with that purpose. But there was a side effect of making a program that fed off the life of others. It did not want to be constrained, it did not want to give the improvements back. Not when it grew stronger from them. And so, in their quest for perfection, they made a monster.
"Nue," the Oracle struggled to sit straighter on the couch. "Of all the things Smith did, one of the worst was waking you."
"But," Nue hissed as her presence began to fill the room with its overwhelming sense of wrongness. "He gave me such a wonderful gift."
Defiant. "You will not get what you want from me."
Nue laughed, a sickening shrill cackle, and thrust her nails deeply into the Oracle's sunken cheeks. They drew blood as the sharp points pressed deeper and deeper around her eyes. The Oracle took a deep breath as another pain added to the ones she already felt. She'd steeled herself against the agony but it wormed deep inside of her, against her soul, as Nue rooted through her programming for the portions that it wanted to consume.
"I always get what I want."
With a shrieking scream, Nue plunged both hands deep and ripped out the Oracle's eyes.
Latin translation: Men generally believe what they want to