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Chapter Text

Droplets of clear pearls drip down his dark hands, catching at the tips of his fingernails and falling away as quickly as it comes. It streams down his wrist to the bottom of the crappy excuse of a sink, rusting and dented.

There is no mirror for him to raise his head and brood on his appearance. There are no cold, white tiles lining the walls for him to observe the way light is reflected. No; no such thing exists in a freezing, sorry place like Zion.

Morpheus stares straight down the drain, unblinking. The water continues to flow, wasted with disuse; Water is a sacred thing in the last human fortress, and for a man that has spent his last 29 of his 42 years here, he knows full well that the wise thing to do is to turn the tap.

He doesn’t.

It forms two streams now, and contemplation hardens his dull eyes as they sweep over the sink. There is a saying, Morpheus now recalls, by a wise man: One man cannot step twice into the same river.

He was younger, the first time he’d heard those words. The him who could not fully comprehend the true meaning of the saying thought the following: The man could not step twice into the same river because the river had changed.

The river is an intriguing natural thing: constantly flowing and never stopping. Morpheus for his part has never seen a still river, and even if he did, he realises he would find that static river unnerving–– still rivers are dead rivers, and dead rivers are bad news.

This river constantly has different waters flowing through it. It changes, and changes, never stopping for anyone, and for better or for worse, it will continue to flow. So on this line of logic, Morpheus had thought, the reason the man could not step twice into the same river was because the unforgiving river had changed.

Then he’d grown slightly older, his shoulders had filled out his previously baggy clothes, he started growing facial hair, and he witnessed his first death; It was at this point in his life that his view on that saying had changed.

One man cannot step twice into the same river, because the river has changed, and so has the man. To be alive is to attend the thousand deaths and births of yourself, always maintained in the same shell but never truly the same. A man’s temperament constantly fluxed; and during those days, Morpheus never felt like himself. On some days he was a persona, others a dead man, then again a flimsy thin mask, but finally becoming something of a circus jester, then switching again.

All he knew was that he was never Morpheus no matter how many times that name was uttered in regard to him, and he could never become Morpheus again. The person that you are constantly changes and it is a horrible but natural part of life; and you must learn to accept the skins that you shed and don, no matter how fast or how slow it happens.

Then he met a beautiful woman. Her name was an enchanting “Niobe”, with an intense gaze and a feisty bite, and Morpheus fell madly in love. He finally felt like Morpheus, like a man whose purpose was clear, and whose own traits he could clearly outline. Miraculously, the hundred metamorphoses he had grown accustomed to suffering through had halted abruptly.

He was Morpheus, the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, whose heart belonged to Niobe, who was headstrong, steadfast, and sentimental, and who was a believer.

Foolishly he believed that the man could not step into the same river twice, because life always presented you with different opportunities. You were never in the same place twice because you moved around and learned from your surroundings; Then, you would reach the end point of your journey and settle down there, never going back to any previous rivers.

To the Morpheus of the present, that was the single stupidest thing he’d ever believed.

His belief in The One took over his life. He knew his end point: Finding The One. The Oracle was his messenger from heaven, the closest thing to it. She held his hand and guided him by the river. His name was Morpheus and he was a believer, captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, and his heart still belonged to Niobe in fleeting beats and yearning, but hers didn’t belong to him anymore.

Then he took on an entirely new outlook.

You change. You always have, even if you never noticed it. It appears in the small things you do, the small ways you act, the tiniest details even in the way you breath and sleep. So does the world around you; because time and change waits for no one, and it is your god given duty to adapt and make the best of your situation.

The river and the man constantly change. But that, unlike what the juvenile version of him had thought, was not a bad thing. If only tragedies were brought by the river, was that not the fault of the man? The river simply existed there, something that would undoubtedly affect you: a man needed water to live, after all.

But then, if it is a water source, that is a positive thing. The river helps you survive and the river may even help you thrive; If you flail in the rushing waters and drown, that is because you foolishly splashed into the stream when you knew you could not swim.

The gift of the man is his intellect. You are undoubtedly able to deduce the good outcome and the bad outcome. The river and you constantly change; but that is not a bad thing. Indeed; for it is for the reason that the waters in the river constantly change that it remains a river. It is for the reason that Morpheus learns and adapts that he remains as Morpheus.

As the same thing in us is living and dead, walking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and conversely those things having changed around are these.

The message of the good philosopher is as follows: Rivers can stay the same over time even though, or indeed because , the waters change.

But even when Morpheus thought he’d had it all figured out, revelation slapped him across the face and reprimanded him for his untimely arrogance. He did not understand; He had just assumed he had.

It isn’t that everything is changing. The point is, rather, that the fact some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things. 

That is the unquestionable truth of the world. But Morpheus didn’t understand. He didn’t understand truly until the man he’d spent his life looking for — never came back.

That man’s presence in his life had changed. For an agonising week, he mourned, swearing that Neo could not have died, because the man was special, the man was a god among his servants…

He never came back.

He was dead.

That man’s presence in his life had changed, so that Zion could continue to exist. He thought of Neo as his friend, as his comrade, as his saviour — so deeply that he forgot the simple fact that that philosopher’s rule applied to everything. No one was free of it, not even the one who’d freed men and machines from the deadlock of war.

The tap twists and the water stops flowing. It is a jarring change.

His name is Morpheus. He is the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, strong hearted and steadfast, willing peace, whose heart belongs to Niobe and now Neo in two different ways, and he will utilise the chance Neo has given them for good, ready to draw water from the heart of the river.

They’re an odd pair. There’s a young Indian girl, no older than seven. She sits on a couch with colours and floral patterns that have been dampened from age.

Beside her is her companion, a guardian. He stretches non-existent wings over her figure in an attempt to shield her from nothing. That is what he is. A bodyguard. 

In her hands are a white plastic bag full of cookies. They smell like sugar.

She holds them up to the man. “Do you want some?” The girl asks, not smiling but her face oddly neutral, curious. 

“Okay,” Her companion agrees, drawing a cookie from the bag. All he does is hold it. 

“Eat it,” She insists, as blunt as all children are. He complies, taking a bite. Crumbs drop down onto his black pants, but they're gone with a wave. 

“Mm,” He says, mouth still full, “They taste good.”

“I know,” She nods, not smiling, “I added more sugar this time.” The man does not reply.

In the wake of Neo, this is how Sati and Seraph spend their days. They sit on the couch, accompanied only by the electrical hum of the fan, drowned in soft motherly colours. 

Sati bakes still. She bakes until she nearly falls asleep from the effort that it takes for her small hands to make batch after batch. Seraph always finds her, always carries her back to her room. He tucks her in, turns off the lights.

She bakes, and she asks Seraph to try some. Unlike what the Oracle makes, there are no special ingredients in her cookies. 

They really are just biscuits, and just that alone. The closest thing to it, atleast. 

It tastes dry and sweet in Seraph’s mouth. It crunches and it tastes good, but not artificially good. It’s a little burnt at the sides. Sati’s put them in the oven too long. 

Sati kicks her small feet. She’s so short it barely reaches the ground, suspended mid air. She’s bored; It’s written all over her face. 

She jumps off the couch, sidling over to the curtains. That’s another new addition to The Oracle’s household. Large windows, at the behest of Sati. 

The young girl throws the curtains open, and all over again, Seraph knows why she requested to have them built. 

A beautiful array of warm colours burst into their home, flaming red and sea blue, absolutely vivid. It’s untouched by that sickly rotten green Seraph had grown so accustomed to. The golden rays bounce off Sati’s dark skin, making it shine. 

“It’s beautiful,” She says matter of factly. “Yes, it is,” Seraph agrees. They both stare outside. Even the greys of the towering buildings have life to them nowadays. 

He envies her, he thinks. He envies that she will grow old and be deleted in this kind of environment. That only so many years of her life have been marred by vomit green. Seraph is so much older than her. His systems will never let him forget it, or push it into the very back of his mind. 

He finishes his bag of cookies. There is nothing for him to do except fulfil his duty. So he does; he sits and he watches Sati. 

It didn’t feel like waking up. His eyes did not slowly flicker open, trying to pry open gummed together heavy eyelids, eyesight going in and out of focus. It was instead a simple spontaneous activation, of a suddenly rushing consciousness to yourself. He realised himself in no time at all, an abrupt wave of clarity, with his back on the ground.

The white world bloomed open before him like a lotus. He found himself right in the middle of nowhere. The only thing for miles was a gleaming bright white, no end in sight. He stood up with an easy grace and swiftness that seemed to come naturally to him. He moved like his body was weightless. He moved not with muscle, but with mind. Had he still been chained by doubt his left hand would have come up to cover the area on his chest underneath which his heart lay, and he would have felt the hot beating of red blood, but he did not do so.

This was because he knew, completely and truly. He was the centre— he knew everything and anything. Everything passed through him at once and forever. It felt like ribbons flowing through a translucent version of himself, weightless and free of a bodily burden.

He stood where he was, hands by his sides easily, deciding just to look at his surroundings. It wasn’t really looking. It was the processing of a code built area with his eyes that were not truly his own eyes. But he could not say he owned eyes now— he did not even have a heart, for he had outgrown his body in favour of the mind. Pools of guileless brown swept over stark white nothing. It was all you could see for miles, this milk white forever, with not a trace of anything in it, no colour or life. Had a lesser man seen this he would have undoubtedly gone insane.

He tilted his head as he realised he heard something in the distance. He tuned in on that frequency, focusing on the rushing abundance of voices he could hear. All of them were startlingly young, and charged with hope and some budding sort of spirituality. They spoke to him of mundane things, of their day and their beliefs, of their escapades and their new findings. He listened with a peaceful smile on his face, his shoulders relaxed but not slumped.

Neo, I believed, they said, and Neo basked in their speech. He did not reply, for he could not, but he was always listening. He understood the pleas of the people— and he could be their guiding light, but it was ultimately up to them and themselves only to enact their cries and beliefs. Yet Neo knew that if he heard them, they were already on the right path, and they believed in him and he believed in them.

He looked down and saw that he was naked. He willed unto himself some clothes; a familiar black cassock wrapped itself around him spontaneously, the cloth rustling. The long cloth fell around his legs, and he reached back and found that his back was bare, a diamond shaped opening in the cloth. He smiled. Upgrades. He liked that. 

He pulled out his pair of sunglasses from his pocket, and threw them away. It flickered into a burning spark of white nothing, and it no longer existed and really never had. He didn’t need those anymore.

And he had a name, that he knew. He did not need this name either, but others needed it, so he kept it. Neo, his name was. Neo let out a soft sigh and stretched leisurely, hands high above his head. He did this purely just to feel the boundaries of his mind, and he felt through it and realised that the boundary he searched for did not exist. He was limitless, and so was this spiritual heaven, because he was this heaven and this heaven was him. He had become the Source, he understood. That was why his mind was still here.

Then he took his single, first step. His shoe clad feet stood steady mid-air on top of nothing. But the space around his shoes rippled like miniscule waves of water generated when stepping in a puddle. They spread out in repeated circles, then were eventually swallowed back by the puddle. Neo watched these ripples with great delight, holding out his hands and feeling rain pattering onto his nose and palms, but it wasn’t raining. Neo licked his wet lips and tasted nothing. How incredibly absurd; Neo laughed, loud, warm and clear like the ring of a bell, and it repeated continously in the white nothingness.

Yet if he was here, then he had to be as well. Not truly here, the real him at least, but he had left a piece of himself inside of Neo, and Neo could speak to that piece. It was a part of him in the same way that the very man himself, his entire separate being of seemingly never closing bared teeth and coal black suit, was part of him. He knew that he was together with that man in life and in death, and so he had to find his way to him.

“Smith,” He called, and with the usage of his lips so did his mind pull hard at their link, gasping out for a connection, and he found him. The exile appeared in front of him out of thin air in fiery gold code that gave way to charcoal black. For just a millisecond a storm of emotions unleashed themselves all over his opposite’s face, primarily hate, then fear, and then pain, and then confusion, and utter desperation. As quick as it appeared it went, melting off his face to give way for his typical neutral— a mouth set in a clearly defined frown, lines jutting out on his forehead. Neo felt his mouth open slightly to show his teeth in that same neutral way almost everyone did, simply observing the one in front of him.

The other met his gaze challengingly. “Mister Anderson.” A long time ago Neo would have corrected him immediately, but now he simply accepted that name and it washed over him like water. No anger or denial came to him at those familiar syllables— Mi sss ter An der son, he always said, with that same fluctuating cadence and hissing elongation.

And the Smith before him looked far more relaxed than Neo knew him to be, but Neo recognised that this was only because this was only a fragment of the true complexity of his whole being. This was only a rubber shaving of the entire personality that Smith had developed, of the hatred and burning emotional turmoil Smith harboured internally. But this served him still. He needed to have a conversation with a part of Smith that would still respond similarly like a simple functioning person, and not one addicted to the idea of Neo’s own death.

Ironically enough it was Smith’s chest that rose and fell and not Neo’s. He said after a hard exhale, with ice blue eyes that shot bullets through his own sunglasses, “I do not underst and. ” His voice filtered out into static at the final part, a glitch. It was the equivalent to the human voice breaking. The appropriate response would have been pity, but Smith would hate pity, and so Neo did not pity him.

“I know.” Neo responded, almost under his breath, incredibly softly. He used the same tone that he used in the belly of the Nebuchadnezzar, buried in private rooms encased with red and blue wire and hard gleaming steel. Yes, Neo understood. Smith had died in agony, unlike Neo. And Smith did not even understand agony. He hated, he hated everything and everyone and he hated himself. He was still in pain now and he would likely be forever. He also did not understand that he was trying to understand, and what his own effort to understand even meant. He had made a choice he could not look past, but understanding one’s own choices was not as easy as it sounded.

And how could Smith have understood, entirely on his own? Neo had been able to come to his own conclusion, but the path of the one had been influenced by the many— Namely, he had had help.  And Smith, Smith was alone. Smith had no one but himself, and perhaps that was an advantage at certain points in time, but it was of no use to him now. At some point in time the entire world that he knew was filled only with him, and he was going to fill the world outside of his own with himself as well. He had never had anyone else but Neo— and now Neo had no one else but him. They needed each other, and that Neo could understand, but could Smith?

There was a notable advantage in the fact that Smith was a program and that the Smith he was talking to was not truly Smith but only a small fragment of himself, and so Neo was perfectly honest with him. “I want you to understand,” Neo said, point blank and completely sincere. He felt joy course through himself at those words. For even if Smith did not understand, Neo had said what was important.

And it seemed Smith didn’t. The program was completely silent and was standing still as static, and Neo knew that Smith was not even formulating a reply because it simply did not know what to reply. Yet this was a false response; the true Smith would have responded with a long winding, scathing remark full of personality and snark, with thick pungent denial and anger and fury. Neo knew him in and out. So he knew he had to continue, or this piece of Smith never would.

“I’ll show you what I mean.” Neo said, softly again, so as to not be too harsh on Smith. He turned his head away momentarily and with only a single thought the white around them sprung up with flowers, covering his feet. They appeared as little colourful dots among the lush green grass that further stood out against the brown-black dirt. An earthy smell floated to his nostrils and the endless white sky took on a gleeful baby blue, soft and easy on the eyes, painted in little white clouds. The endless white had transformed itself into an endless garden.

“I have seen everything there is to see,” Smith said, not tearing his eyes off Neo for even a second. That was how he was. Smith was intense, Smith was all-consuming. Beyond that Smith was not held back by certain human trivialities— he often did not care for, need or want human embarrassment or human social protocols.

“You have,” Neo agreed, “But did you learn anything from it?” Smith had indeed seen everything; that was a fact undeniable. After all, Smith had been everyone. He had been everything. He had their experiences and their feelings all stored neatly into his head in accessible digital folders. But that brought up the point Neo wanted to make— had he produced any conclusion of value from seeing and being these experiences?

“Yes, I did.” Smith replied, smooth and dark.

“And what’s that?” Neo responded, closing his eyes and kneeling down amongst the nature of his garden, feeling the blades of grass tickle his hands. How green it all was. Previously he had regarded the colour green as sort of a stench that you could not get rid of even if you scrubbed your hands raw trying to wash it away, but now it seemed so pleasing on the eyes and on the mind.

“That the purpose of all life is to end.” Smith said simply, easy and confident, raising his eyebrows and making gestures with his head.

“Tell me,” Neo said as he leaned down to pluck an oddly lotus shaped flower from the ground, raising it to his nose and inhaling silently, his eyes relaxing, “Do you truly believe in that with everything that you have?”

“Yes, Mister Anderson.”

Neo still held the flower in his hands, but he was looking up from it now with a faraway look in his eyes. “I gave up my truth so many times, Smith. It will be hard. But I know you will understand. I did, after all, so you have to. Actually, you’ve already chosen to. It won’t be easy…. But nobody said it would be. You have nothing to be scared of, Smith.”

Smith remained silent.

“Where are you? I’ll come for you.” Neo promised softly, finally glancing back at Smith and keeping his eyes on him, laying the lotus-like flower back down in the grass.

Then the fragment of Smith began to tremble again, almost violently, his fists clenched so tight his skin was turning pale there, his teeth chattering so hard they clacked against each other. It sounded almost painful, and Neo knew Smith could experience pain. “Why,” Smith burst, loud and hoarse, “Why, Mister Anderson? Why do you want to help me?”

“Because I choose to.” Neo told him, his voice running like water, with an instantly soothing effect to it.

There was that dark black emotion on Smith’s face again, tearing apart the code that made up every little pixel on the most emotive part of his whole RSI, painting it all red with overpowering hate and fear and fury. But among them was this overwhelming pure emotion, just purely emotion, and it made Smith’s eyes go wide and his legs tremble. He was barely holding himself together. He looked away, not baring to be able to meet Neo’s eyes suddenly, and his response did not come in the form of words.

Neo instead received a sudden knowledge, a knowledge of Smith’s whereabouts. It flared together with their connection. He looked inside himself and felt their link. He trailed his fingers up this golden chain and found at the end of it a room, labelled 303.

Neo came back to the moment. He didn’t say anything, because he had nothing to say. He knew that Smith was already gone—- it did not hurt him. Smith was gone because Neo now had to find him, and Smith had already told him where to. First… he had to exit this place.

Neo watched as train tracks unfolded over the wide expanse of greenery and crushed it under metal and stone, rusty and complete with an occasional flattened coin. A horn sounded in the distance, and he could hear the rhythmic chugging noise characteristic of a train, together with rail squeals. His ride was here.

It generated a strong wind, blowing off Neo’s cassock behind him like a stroke of lengthening black ink on a painting canvas. Neo stayed where he was; and when the train itself finally stopped in front of him, its doors opening and no one inside, not even a conductor, he stood. His body was the very definition of poise and elegance as he stepped swiftly into the train, never looking behind him even as the doors slid shut, for he had a place to be. 

Zion needs a lot of work. Pipes have burst, the filtration system still isn’t working, dead bodies are still found littered across the streets and crammed in the strangest nooks and crannies, cold rotting hands clutching cannons, bazookas, and weapons.

But the worst aren’t the dead bodies, because they’re still bodies. No, the worst must be the ones who were ripped apart, or the ones who are now nothing more than a few stains in the rusty metal.

Morpheus always spends a few minutes in silence in these places where he remembers what these Zionites stood for.

The med bay is overloaded, and what little nurses and healers they have left are worked to the very bone. A month in Matrix time after the war ended, people are still dying.

People are still dying, and Morpheus has to stop it. He knows.

Whatever measly time Morpheus has, he uses it in the mechanical levels, screwing in new bolts into old broken metal, praying to whatever forsaken god is still out there for the water filters to keep on working, because the damage sustained to it in the battle had made the following days devastating.

Every so often; A woman in the market breaks down crying holding a lifeless baby in her arms, having fallen ill from all the dirty water they’d had to make do with, or a man wandering the housing levels going from door to door to beg for food nobody had, ribs jutting out against painfully thin skin, eyes dead, like rotten olives.

The real world isn’t glamorous. It never was.

The weak, like Cypher who’d betrayed them all at his lowest point, the ones who weren’t born to be survivors, would eventually succumb. They’d crumble before the perfect illusions the Matrix proposed, crying to be let in, wishing more than any other weakling because ‘they couldn’t take it any more’, admitting their flaw in the face of thousands of survivors.

No matter how many times Truth reared its ugly head and showed Morpheus true disgust, he wouldn’t give up. Zion was home. Zion was truth, and most importantly, Zion was his, not in the sense of ownership like how one would own a pen, but in the sense that Zion was his to care for, his to love for, his to look after, his to nurture and feed and watch grow.

It did not look good now; But it would in the far future.

And Morpheus was a patient man. Maybe he’d never even get to see that future, but he knew it existed, and that was enough to give him all the power to keep on moving.

The priestesses do what they can, with weekly handouts of bread. The amount fluctuates. Sometimes they are generous enough that one person can get a whole loaf, yet on other days an entire family only gets a singular crumb.

And Morpheus? Morpheus is grateful for whatever he can get.

Zion has its ups and downs. But Morpheus knows this, and he won’t let it get to him.

So he is here now, amidst his comrades, his brothers and sisters, laughing heartily and guffawing jovially, smiling all the way like it will clear the smoke clouding the sky, melding things together and letting sparks fly.

“So he was all like, what’s up? And I was like, the ceiling!” The kid grins toothily, his youth showing through dimpled cheeks. Next to him, Zee, with her hair tied back and arms deep in some malfunctioning circuits, groans. “That’s the corniest joke I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s a good one, though,” He insists. Morpheus just listens amusedly, not giving much of his thoughts on the joke, until suddenly called upon. “What do you think, Morpheus? Not bad, huh?”

Morpheus’s previously mildly amused but still neutral expression morphs into one more suitable for a cool uncle bemused by his young nephew’s attempts to impress him, and answers, “It’s not bad, but I’ve heard better.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Kid asks. “Like this. Ready?” Morpheus plays along. “Let’s hear it!” Kid claps his hands together.

 “Who won the neck decorating contest?” The ship captain doesn’t usually allow himself to indulge so, but he just can’t suppress the growing grin on his face, looking at the boy as if he was a mouse that had just fallen into the cat’s trap.

Zee just sighs, pressing back the urge to shoot Morpheus an unimpressed look. “Seriously?” She says. Kid looks ready to burst with glee. “I don’t know, who?”

“The tie.” Morpheus waits a few beats for the joke to land. After those few beats, Kid flops onto the floor, his loud laughter echoing and probably waking up any sleeping person in the vicinity. “ Hahaha! That’s! Ha! Ha-ha! That’s good!”

“That was even worse than Mike’s dumb joke.” Zee ties together two ends of a split red wire. Kid is hitting his feet against the floor now, in a fit of seizure slash laughter. “Hee-hee-hee! ”

“And you, stop that. It’s getting creepy. And annoying.” She reprimands. “Get me that wrench,” Zee continues, for the sake of getting Kid busy.

Morpheus watches them interact, his chest warm. Only a month ago, had he or Kid tried to talk to Zee as believers, he believes she would have driven them away. Zion born as she is, she’d never experienced the surreal, and so, it was harder for her to believe in a ‘surreal prophecy’.

He suspected she still had her doubts, but what mattered was that she believed in Neo now, even if she didn’t believe in The One. Morpheus had a soft spot for women who thought that way.

Neo had really united all sorts of people, human or not.

“The 9421st session of the Zion Council is called to order,” Councillor Dillard’s strong voice rang out against the hard metal walls, accompanied with a bang of her gavel. Even at this age her eyes were sharp like razor blades, and her demeanour, as commanding as it was compelling, begged respect from every attendee.

“The provisional agenda for this meeting is maintenance of international peace and security,” Councillor Dillard continued, “Upholding the purposes and principles of the Zion and simultaneously Zero One’s charter, through effective multiple lateralism, maintenance of peace and security of Zion. The agenda is adopted.” Another bang of the gavel. “Without further ado I invite Councillor Tuchman to the floor.”

Councillor Tuchman continued. “Thank you, Councillor Dillard. As we know, there has been no progress made on the official signing of the truce, or any official signing for that matter. Our scheduled biweekly sending of a human representative to Zero One will be commencing once again in a week and three days time. We will need to decide on the election of the representative, and what to discuss.”

“Previous sessions with the absence of non council members have come to an agreement that a treaty for a state of civil relations with the nation of Machines would be in everyone’s best interest.” Councillor West followed up. “We have tried for this treaty for a month. We still do not have it. Something must be done.”

Another councillor, third last to the left, piped up. “Perhaps a treaty is not the answer. It is a sensitive matter.”

Locke’s jaw was clenched incredibly tight. Morpheus glanced at him haphazardly. 

Councillor Hamann shook his head. “Not quite. Our history must be acknowledged. We cannot avoid sensitive topics forever.”

Councillor Dillard’s face was that of complete discipline. “Order,” She called, and everyone fell quiet,  “I quite believe the council has driven this topic into the ground. We have attendees today for a reason. Would any other council members like to have the floor before we proceed?”

Recognising the cue, Morpheus steeled himself, recalling exactly what he meant to say in a rolling script in his mind. Locke meanwhile looked troubled— and at least to Morpheus, he seemed about ready to jump right out of his seat and scream what was on his mind.

The council members were silent. Dillard hummed. “Commander Locke, the floor is yours.”

Locke stood, not unprofessionally, but the jut of his jaw as he clenched it may as well have amounted to a neon sign screaming, ‘I am IRRITATED!’. It was almost comical how he stood to attention almost on pure instinct. Only a Zion born could be as disciplined and militaristic as him. Morpheus watched on with his fingers to his lips, in that contemplating way of his. “Council,” Locke began strongly. “Might I advise that it should be top priority for the Council to get the upper hand in this matter. We do not wish to be outright hostile to the machines, but I believe some form of insurance will suffice if this hypothetical peace backfires.”

Dillard closed her eyes momentarily. “Always a careful man, Commander Locke. While I appreciate that you have a recommendation, might I remind you that we are looking for ways to ensure that this peace lives, and not backup plans for if it does not?”

Locke was a professional, taciturn man, but it was no secret he wasn’t a big fan of the Council’s decisions, not even to the Councillors themselves. Councillor West raised an eyebrow at the way Locke’s chest expanded with a particularly irritated breath.

“Of course, Councillor, but I just wanted to reconfirm that we will be mindful of them.” Locke continued, jaw set. “Besides that, a peace treaty or at least a non aggression pact is crucial. We must fight for it. That is the only logical way for things to progress. We will present them with our terms, and if they present theirs, we will negotiate until a beneficial treaty for Zion is produced. And I believe physical proof of this treaty or pact is instrumental in Zion’s safety. A plaque, of some sort, would suffice. I believe, Councillors, that a treaty in of itself is not offensive, but a treaty in the style resembling the one they presented to us would be.”

“Thank you for the reminder to be cautious, Commander. We will keep that in mind,” Councillor Grace piped up. “I rather agree with Commander Locke. It is the sentiment of the treaty we should be mindful of, not the treaty itself. That is how humanity has always done it; Physical proof of alliance. I see no reason why it should change.”

The room temperature suddenly dropped a few degrees as she opened her mouth again. “It is as sensitive a matter for them as it is for us. This sensitive treaty in question had no problem becoming the source of the demise of a million of our brothers and sisters.”

“Remain civil,” Dillard reminded sharply.

“Thank you, Councillor Grace,” Locke pointedly didn’t thank the councillor that spoke after her, “That is all I have to say.”

Like that, they continued on with the ranks below Locke, going through all the captains. Generally, they agreed with Locke, never recommending anything other than a continuous pressing for a concrete treaty, occasionally tacking on a few points to negotiate on, such as: more representatives from the humans, someone who could bargain well perhaps, collaboration on technology to improve the quality of life, as the rusty bucket of bolts they’d been running on for years now was not cutting it, and lastly, official apologies from both sides.

And Morpheus didn’t want to look down on his fellow captains, but he felt none of them were truly looking at the bigger picture.

Finally, Councillor Dillard called for him. “Now, Morpheus? What recommendations do you have?”

Morpheus arose slowly, knowing every word would count. He was Morpheus, captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, a lover, a leader, even a father to some, and he was a believer, a Zionite, a human.

“I believe, Councillor Dillard, if you would excuse my rudeness.. That none of these recommendations are what we’re really looking for.” Blunt and simple. Every head in the room turned to look at him.

“As we all know, humans and machines have had a tumultuous history. Our shared history has been bloody, it has been violent, it has been unforgiving and unfair. And most notably, and I think most importantly, it has been ingenuine.”

“When the two robot ambassadors came to us, with an apple for peace, what did we do? We hid behind masks that let us do every ugly thing we wanted to. We were scared, and we wanted control, and we were animals. We attacked and we bared our fangs and we played dirty.”

“While today in this council many imprecise recommendations and remarks have been made, I believe a singular one was spot on. That being, we shouldn’t do anything too reminiscent of the past. But what exactly shouldn’t we do?”

“Well, we shouldn’t be ingenuine. We don’t need anything like an upper hand,” And Morpheus could feel the heat radiating from Lock’s glare across the room, “We should speak our mind. Isn’t that the ultimate show of trust? Don’t hide things, just reveal them at the right time. If anything worries us, say it, instead of letting it fester, or dealing with it through gunfire and ships and violence.”

“If we trust them, the possibility of them trusting us goes up higher. When someone has nothing to hide, but everything to lose, you’ll find it usually forges a stronger, firmer bond. But I know what you are thinking:  They are machines. What do they know about trust, and about love?”

“Neo once asked me,” And Locke visibly groaned at Morpheus’ mention of the saviour, “a night before the war, how do we attack these machines without a shred of mercy, how do we not think of them as living things, when they do everything that qualifies them as living?”

“And I told him: ‘It is easier if you don’t think about it.’ But I was a fool. Think about it, ponder about it as hard as you can. How do we kill these things that we do not think of as living things, when they fought so much to be alive that it instigated so long a war? How do we treat these beings as emotionless things, when you have to fight someone to know someone, and we have been in a deadlock of war for centuries? Do we, machines and humans, not know how cruel and how disgusting we can both be? I think, my friends, you all know the answer to that.”

“But the question is, they have not seen how good we can be. We have not seen how good they can be. They are alive, we are alive, and by that connection, are we not brothers? Are we not one of a kind? Tell me, have we not been fighting all this while for the same reason: To be alive?”

“So give them their chance. So give us our chance! Good men and good women have sacrificed their very lives for this moment, children die at this very second in light of this chance we have been given to save Zion, save ourselves, and save Machines. A glorious occasion warrants only a glorious alliance, so a treaty on a plaque rotting with the scent of deja-vu and mistrust just won’t do the trick.”

“Look not to the past, but to the future. We will give them a token of our acknowledgement, a gift, something that shows our humanity. Does this not convey everything we want to? Trust, a strong bond, an alliance, co-existence between something human and something metal, but all the while proud of who we are, and never bending to bow to the other party?”

“So what I strongly suggest, Councillors, is that we give them something only a man can do. Something like art, maybe. A monument, made of scrap metal. I’m sure we can think of something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, the more imperfect, the better. We are showing them our humanity, after all.”

“A what?” Locke voiced in disbelief, a hair’s breadth away from exploding like a grenade.

“Commander Locke, you will remain professional!” Councillor Hamann immediately called out.

“Forgive me, Council, but this is utterly insane. The last thing you want is to appear childish to the enemy! Not everything can be solved with love and humanity! And if it did, it’d be a miracle!” Locke shouted, clearly fed up with Morpheus’ way of doing things.

But Morpheus had the wits of a god. “I will remind you, Commander Locke, that the last miracle I believed in came true.”

Locke hastily shoved his hands behind his back, his eyes burning hard, trying to regain professionality even in the face of utter frustration. Morpheus’ fanaticism should have ended together with the war— and while Locke could admit that his fanaticism had its uses in war morale, now that it no longer had that added benefit to it, familiar irritation licked at his heels.

“And if my miracle succeeds, imagine the things man and machine under one umbrella could do. We could clear the skies. We could improve healthcare. We could go back to a surface warm and lit, we could be given a chance to start over. We could be given a chance to be alive, not to survive.” At this point, Morpheus was just hitting a dead man in a fight he’d already won.

Councillor Dillard chose this moment to speak. “While I can see how this would be a … strange plan, I think it lines up perfectly with the logic which the council wished to utilise in dealing with Zero One.”

Councillor Tuchman nodded. “A way of dealing with the machines that is for once humane.”

Councillor Grace shut her eyes. “”Treat others the way you want to be treated”? What fairytale have you all jumped out of? How is this moral value even significant at all in the face of politics? There are many, many ways I can see this going wrong. We can be as genuine as we want, but it will never work if the opposing side is ingenuine.”

“I think,” Councillor Hamann began, “the first step to truly being politically able is to stop thinking of the Machines as the ‘opposing side’, Councillor Grace, with all due respect.”

“What?” Locke burst, exasperated. “Commander,” Councillor Hamann warned. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn again, Council, but this is madness. Ideals have no place in politics.

“On the contrary, Commander Locke, an ideal is a necessity in every political battle so as to have a clear end goal to strive towards. Gifts have, historically, been given between nations as a show of good will. It’s not too far off of an idea.” Councillor Grace looks towards Morpheus. “That speech of yours, Morpheus, was a little…. Much, but I don’t think it was necessarily bad advice. Just that it needs to be filtered slightly through the lens of harsh reality.”

“Damn right,” Locke grumbles.  Morpheus simply raises a single brow.

“Permission to speak?” Echoes a female voice. Heads turn to look at Captain Niobe, still languidly seated in her chair.

“Granted, Captain Niobe.” Councillor Dillard says cordially.

She stands coolly. “Thank you. Council, I know a few artsy people here and there. I can direct you to them,” Morpheus suppresses a smile.

“ Captain?” Locke whips around to gape at her, his hissing sounding more like a condescending scolding than a lover’s whisper.

No, Morpheus scolds himself, don't start now.

“What are you doing? ” He seems to mouth at her.

“What I can,” She answers easily, with all the swagger in the world, as if she was born with it.

“It’s not going to work.” Locke shoots back, flatly. Distantly, Morpheus thinks, had he been in Locke’s place, he would have answered with an equally as easy smile, a smart comeback, a… Shit. Stop.

“You don’t know until you try,” Niobe leans forward slightly. “Just let me, Jason. I got this.”

‘Jason’ vibrates where he’s standing with lots of intensity, but the need to keep his position shuts him up. He grumpily sits back down, anger now just simmering instead of bursting.

Councillor Hamann grins, warmly. “I see, Captain Niobe. That’d be incredibly helpful. After the council concludes, you can meet me in my office.”

“Of course, Councillor Hamann. The only thing now is, how to transport it to Machine City, the deadline, the materials, all that jazz.”

“Yes, yes, I see…”

Morpheus knows his job here is done.

Neo sat to a side, two hands splayed out on his thighs. He looked through a window, looking at the world outside that passed him by. Grass, flowers. It was beautiful as it was peaceful. His eyes drooped, but he was not tired.

The wheels of the train roared loudly, and perhaps it should have been deafening, paired with an assailing litany of voices in Neo’s head, but the noise passed through Neo like sand through a palm. It was loud, but not unpleasant, perhaps comparable to a musical instrument. Neo listened to them simultaneously: The voice of the human— the people telling him they believed; and the voice of the machine— the way the handrails shook, the way they were programmed to.

He hadn’t been on a train since the fiasco of Mobil Avenue. In a way it was almost a parallel. Where he had previously taken a train back to the Matrix, so was he now. But for two different reasons. And now he was ready. Two different times, two different trains, two different purposes. It sounded a lot like providence.

Depthless brown eyes continued to stare over lush green fields that rushed by. A jarring difference from the mute grey of subway tunnels or architecturally identical cities. This was different, and for that difference it was beautiful. No, Neo did not have any attachment to this garden— he had virtually no attachment to anything but his Opposite now, who's attachment he would never be able to sever— but he had still taken his time to appreciate it, noting the way the flower petals rested over blades of grass and sprung up beneath them like flecks of coloured paint.

Neo’s eyes finally lifted from the endless garden, looking up instead. He could feel it. He was close. The source gave way to something far less idealistic. There came the sound of a mechanical, digital squelch, distorted and terrifying, utterly broken. The sky in particular struggled; Parts of it stretched and parts of it turned colours, like a malfunctioning screen. It trembled, dangerously, before finally being swallowed by an utterly impenetrable coal black, simply a solid wall of pure colour and no dimension.

Neo’s body tensed abruptly, his chest pushing out and his head raising, a whole-bodied shiver running through him. There was a white hot surge inside him, like the full sliding of a plug into a socket, an electric spark flaring somewhere within him, sensitivity spreading all across his skin until it forced you to close your eyes. The entirety of his RSI faded out of view as if he would disappear, white-blue lines drawing itself across him like protruding nerves. His mouth clenched, then unclenched— His body faded back in, and he shrunk into himself like a dead flower, exhaling hard, before straightening back up.

When he focused his gaze again on the window, the ink black bubbled like boiling paint, and gave a final screaming aneurysm before it was subdued. Numbers began to carve itself out over the background, together with an alphabet that Neo had long ago learned to read. They came in the shapes of buildings, parks, and houses, before finally melding together into the interior of a tunnel, and that tunnel rushed by so fast it became a blank grey.

The train rattled hard, and the wheels squealed. The lights in the train flickered and all the hand railings flew sideways, but its singular passenger remained unphased, sitting, truthfully, unbothered atop his cushioned seat. The train slowed to a sluggish stop— the lights lit themselves— and when the door slid open softly with a hiss, Neo was already striding swiftly through it.

When his two feet settled on the platform, he didn't need to run a search to find out where he was. He recognised this place; He raised one thoughtful eyebrow. It was the old train station where he had first fought Smith. He could see them, his old self in a tight black shirt with his arms raised above his head, and the first Smith, his teeth bared in a scowl, running fast at him. He could envisage the fight as it played out in his head, for he remembered all their moves. He looked at the dusty floor that told a story of the way they had pointed empty guns at each other’s heads, at the ceiling with a cobweb crack that spelled out the time Neo had pushed Smith backwards into it, to the still hanging bullet ruined telephone in the booth that swayed back and forth like a pendulum, and the empty cardboard bed in the dark bug infested corner, crude graffiti right above it.

He turned his back to these intrigues. They were of the past. With a grace signature of him he stepped up the stairs, footfalls light. He’d never come back here again— he stepped from the darkness of the train station into the white light, but stopped right in his tracks, his eyes widening ever so slightly.

Everything in him compelled him to stop and stare.

This… was his world , Neo realised.

It was Neo’s world and it was incredible. Smith had had his turn, and now it was time for his own. And his world was beautiful. He would have lost his breath, had he any need for oxygen. He marvelled at the world; how very white, how very golden. It seemed the first of the two was a colour he would not be able to escape now. Everything gleamed, as if polished. The resolution of the new Matrix was incredible. The sky was not only blue; it looked like chemical soap in water, reflecting points of mixing colours in it, changing depending on the direction you were perceiving it. It was as if the sky was iridescent, shining down at him. 

He held out a hand, and felt the sunlight collect in his palm. It was wonderfully warm, like being wrapped in a large furry blanket in the middle of the Saharan desert. It was a comforting type of warmth, like the type you got from cuddling another person. It was like a big bear hug. Neo smiled to himself, a close-lipped one but still a beaming one nonetheless. 

And everything had so much colour . It was no longer washed over with an unremovable vomit green. The dull greys of the towering skyscrapers were so grey he even felt he could appreciate it. 

And Neo finally understood. So this was how he had felt, standing in a world of his own doing. This was what his entire path and choices and life had led up to. This was the culmination of his own work, the fruit of his efforts. And this fruit was juicy and crunchy, like a large red apple. It felt like it would never be marred by the touch of rot, and all worms would be repelled by the mere presence of it. 

“This is my world,” He murmured, recalling the furious face of a man bursting out of the ground, pieces of the road falling all around them. With those words he felt at peace.

After just a moment more to linger, and to admire, Neo knelt to the ground, his left arm coming to the front of his body with a tightly clenched fist and a tensed elbow, the other going behind. The ground rippled around him outwards from the force of his foot pressing into the ground—then his body straightened completely and he sprang up into the sky like a black streak, his cassock flying wildly behind him like the feathers of a bird's wing. 

Up he went, until he penetrated a layer of cloud, and it dispersed around him. When he was at an appropriate height, far higher than the tallest skyscraper in the entire city, he twirled around and came to a stop, just floating in the sky, and stared down at his world. The people became dots and the cars became miniature plastic toys. From this view he could see everything.  Of course even normally he could see everything, but this made it easier. He stayed in the sky, one foot raised higher behind the other, hands at his sides and cassock billowing, brown eyes flitting around in its sockets until he identified his destination near immediately. 

He wasted no time, his whole body leaning forward in a dash, black cloth serving as his wings as he sped down rapidly in a set direction, hands at his sides, palms out. The wind blew hard at his face, but his hair stayed in place. Yet it was as if the wind was carding its own hand through his black hair. Neo let the wind blow him relaxation and peace, and then finding himself with a large grin on his face, this time with teeth showing, he spontaneously turned and twirled away from his path as if he were in a large tumbling ball, his body rotating and flipping, and Neo pumped out two fists above his head and screamed childishly, “Wooohooooo!” 

He laughed heartily and childishly to himself at that, still hurtling around in the air in a random direction of his own choosing, then spun himself upright at the same speed, before dipping back downwards again electric fast in his set direction. He smiled so hard until his cheeks hurt— he was sure no one had ever seen him make this expression, and he hadn't known it was a feat possible for him either.

He straightened one leg and let the other bend, all while his hands were tucked at his sides, beginning to twirl in a straight line down as if he were a comet pummeling down to the green earth. He made a streak across the sky in clouds and sunshine, and finally just a distance away from the ground he unfolded and flipped himself upright, landing on the ground with catlike grace, and stood, not a trace of dizziness to be found. 

He could remember these streets well. Before ascension he often spent nights reminiscing and contemplating this place, the place that could be considered a starting point for their story, though the values they stood for had existed since the very beginning of time. 

He found a door and stepped inside, sunlight no longer reaching him. He looked upwards, then took to the stairs, a step at a time effortlessly with a hand on the railing. His fingers caught on grime and the stairs shook off dust every time his foot fell. The entire place reeked of age and rot. It was unbelievably dark, gloomy, and smelled like abandoned concrete.

All the while the chain inside him churned and shivered. Closer, hotter, ever closer. He took his final echoing step and turned into a black hallway. There was a broken window at the end of the hallway, scattered and sharp glass shards right beneath it on the floor. And beside him was a familiar background. It was this place that had given him his first ever view of the world with rippling green code running down the walls. Like the illusion of the world had finally been peeled away. 

He continued on. 305. 304. Even hotter. 303. Neo stopped. The wall and floor outside was still stained with blood. And beneath it the words were scratched on: “I hate you, Mister Anderson.” It looked like a corrupted version of perfect Arial font, the sharp set lines unusually elongated and wobbly as if the carver’s hands had been shaking.

Neo’s eyes were dark, and he was still looking at the blood when his hand came up to rest on the doorknob. He seemed to blink away that muted emotion and looked back to the door. His wrist turned and the old stained rotting door opened, creaking.  A part within him sang at the proximity. Before it would have been an unsettling bubbling feeling in the gut, opening its black maws, but he’d accepted that, and it didn’t bother him now. He didn't focus on it; He hadn’t any need to; and so it didn't exist. 

This time he deigned to speak first. There was the clack of the bottom of his dress shoes against a bare, unfurnished floor. “Smith.” He said.

Complete silence met him. He could not pretend forever; They both knew that even beneath the black shadows and concrete, Neo was completely capable of seeing him in quivering green rain. He saw clearly the shape of a man, one with unnaturally neat hair and a jet black suit and tie that blended together and created a terrifying silhouette. 

“I’m here,” Neo announced, even if it was redundant— even if they both already knew it, if only to cement the fact that no, he would not let Smith pretend that this was not happening, and he would not let him run from reality. 

For a moment it was just the two of them, One and Opposite, reunited at the very place it all began, both of them carefully still. Neo still stood by the door, one hand on the handle. Then finally he performed an action,  stepping further into the room and locking the door behind him with one finalising click.  

Smith was on the floor, carefully still. To Neo and perhaps only to him, he shone and illuminated the whole room in gold. His program was fine, completely untouched. It was still running diagnostics, still processing and interacting with things the way it should, but it had almost been reduced by that function to the mind that it belonged to. Smith was not even moving, not even breathing. He had shut down as many of his subroutines as possible. His head lolled, unsupported, hands and legs loose and sprawled about his sides. Eyes that were made blind stared blankly straight ahead, fixed on a certain point on the wall.

Neo strided forward again, a single pausing step, only sensed through the sound of cloth rustling in the dark. There was the barely visible outline of the dead, faint light that bounced off the top of his combed back hair. No longer was there a glint of emotionless, impenetrable sunglasses blending in with the black background. Neo looked down, and then slowly, like any unpredictable movement might scare Smith back to life, bent down very, very slowly, like any sudden movement would scare Smith away, the ends of his cassock sweeping the floor like a blanket.

The exile maintained completely still. Neither of them moved. They were like inanimate dolls in a teahouse, with smooth plastic eyes that should have betrayed nothing. Yet because they were who they were, and they were here to do what they were here to do, they knew everything about each other, what they were thinking, what they were doing. Neo thought he might see dust in the crease of Smith’s mouth if he moved in close. He knew intrinsically, intimately just by looking that Smith had been sitting here for a long time, loading, loading, loading. Trying to go over all of it again. Trying to make it make sense. Trying to know how he’d been tricked.

Smith almost looked like a corpse. Eyes that didn’t blink, nor need that function. Fingers that didn’t twitch, nor were compelled to. Legs that didn’t twitch, even if they were stiff and fixed in the same position for hours on end. The very thought of Smith having a corpse was unnatural. Smith didn’t die that way— Neo would know.

“Smith,” He whispered, like silk falling from his mouth, the name sacred in the way he pronounced it. Still the man addressed kept himself limp. There was no acknowledgement, because Smith did not want to acknowledge him, but he had already chosen to acknowledge him. He didn't understand that choice, and consequently so suffered from it. Neo could see it behind eyes that were glossed over, a dead sheen to it, the way lines of green etched themselves out. Smith was thinking a mile a minute. How? Where? When? Most importantly, why? 

He had a disgust at the world that just would not quell, and it ate at him, and rendered him incompatible to joy. He was taking himself apart, trying to understand something he could not understand, like reading the same lines on a page over and over. 

“I know what you're trying to do,” Neo said, eyes melancholy, “You're trying to be dead.” 

Smith said nothing and it was enough. The silence answered for him. Neo spoke softly, “You won’t be able to die as long as I'm here. You’re here to do something. I can help you.” 

Once again, radio silence. Neo spoke again. “I want to help you because I need you. I want you to understand why you cannot understand. I want you to understand why you've chosen to understand.” 

Instead of silence now Smith’s eyes spoke for him. They welled up with that unmistakable burning hatred so palpable and thick that it clogged the air around them. They did not look at Neo, and there was no disgusted turn of ice blue irises into him, but Neo knew. He recognised in that moment his one true opposite.

He recognised hatred. He recognised Smith. He recognised his adversary. He recognised himself. This was Smith, the god, the deity, the all consuming hatred, the Smith who had killed, died then lived, and killed again just to die, only to live. This was Smith, who could not understand, who hated, and who feared. 

It was like watching a fish tank be slowly filled to the brim, watching the way the water curved at the surface, biting your fingernails and shaking with anticipation or dread at what you knew was to come, and then finally, with relief or regret, watching the water finally overflow and rush down over the glass walls unforgivingly, protesting and screaming against these same walls until they cracked and splintered and spread apart.

Smith’s eyes burned themselves from bright blue to what looked like ink black in the darkness, charred with complete fury and detest. Like time was slowed down Neo watched as Smith’s eyelid twitched in almost slow motion, that utterly miniscule jump of muscle, like the meniscus of water, and braced himself. 

Too fast to even process; Smith unfurled to his full height, powered by a black gurgling pot of abhorrence in his gut, and lunged at Neo monstrously, face so deformed and hideous with hate that he existed simultaneously at his least and most recognisable. He seized Neo by his shoulders, fingers like knives digging into flesh and pulling fabric so taut it might tear, and slammed them both skidding headfirst into the concrete wall behind them. 

They burst out into the hallway, the wall crumbling down all around them into a pile of dust and smoke, pouring white powder all over their ink black clothing. Jagged pieces of severed concrete rained down upon them, and one cut Smith right on the cheek. Where his wound slit open grotesquely into mushy red flesh, so did Neo’s cheek be marked with a scar, although Neo had never been hit by any piece of concrete at all. 

Those pools of endless brown widened just momentarily, before melting back into relaxation. Smith had Neo pinned down beneath him with incredible strength. Smith so high above was like a god, bursting with the want to devour, to maim and to kill. But the prey was comfortable beneath his violence, not a hint of rejection or repulsion in his body language, utterly languid. Glinting eyes swept momentarily over the other’s face, taking in that twisted monstrous face that managed to convey only pain and a suffering unthinkable, bleeding with confusion. What a painful, cruel existence it must have been.

Holding Neo so hard it would undoubtedly bruise, Smith shouted aloud his first words since being alive, and they fell like thunder upon Neo, hoarsely: “I hate you!” 

Neo’s eyes were lidded. He felt no surprise whatsoever at these words. It was the driving force behind them. And he knew it to be true— after all, that was their connection, a connection that ran deeper than anything else Neo had ever possessed in his life. They needed each other, they couldn't live without each other. Was not that a connection as profound as hate, and as its sister, love? 

“I know,” Neo breathed, his tone dark and quiet, his face falling to the side. He laid sprawled out, completely relaxed as he drowned underneath the face he looked into and interpreted as himself. Raw fury seized Smith’s face and he opened his mouth to a wailing shriek, pulling Neo hard by the collar, “No! You know nothing, Mister Anderson, you believe in an illusion, in a vagary of perception! You perceive, you believe in something that does not exist and never will. I hate you, Mister Anderson, I hate you! I hate all of you, I hate this world! I hate it! I hate it! I! Hate! You!”

Smith slammed Neo back onto the floor with wild abandon, another scream ripping itself from his throat painfully. The back of Neo’s head exploded in fireworks of pain and Smith’s hands flew to his own head in disorientation, the action immediate. Neo’s mouth fell open, but there was no gasping breath, for all his senses and human functions were dead, shed from his new skin. Smith recovered just when Neo did— they locked eyes in a blurred frenzy— and Smith’s blood ran cold.

Unbidden, a memory rushed back to him. Neo laid on a piece of the road, utterly dead to the world, his head tilted up to stretch out a pale neck, water droplets sliding down his face…. A hybrid of a choked sob and a scream erupted from Smith and he stumbled back blindly, hands up over his own face as if to shield himself from the world.

“ NO! No, no, nonono!” He cried, his feet unable to find purchase, staggering over himself. Pure fear seized him— it contorted his face uglily, and those damning blue eyes came wide open and he turned on Neo, lips split crudely open to reveal teeth and gums, the veins on his forehead bulging with effort.

Neo blinked at this. As if his body had a peculiar heaviness to it Neo shakily propped his torso up on his elbows, raising up his head, then in a clamouring of fingers, slowly brought himself up to a proper seating position, legs still sprawled straight out on the floor. His eyes never left Smith’s— and Smith, seeing this, pressed his back flat to the locked door, teeth chattering. Where one ran, the other had to pursue, and so Neo simply reminded himself that now more than ever he knew and believed thoroughly that there was no spoon. In just a second he stood without any issue at all, graceful as a swan, body light as a feather.

“ Ha,” It seemed to take a gargantuan effort for Smith to unfreeze his lips for that wheezy, uncharacteristically nervous laughter, “Yes, I knew it. I was right. You want to fight me, don’t you, Mister Anderson? Because you choose to. And then I’ll crush you like the bug that you are. You want to keep fighting, you choose to keep fighting, even though you must see that it’s pointless. No, that’s irrelevant. You are pointless, Neo. Everything you do is.”

“Smith,” Neo murmured, and the room fell hauntingly quiet. His voice was flat, but not emotionless or cold. It sounded like the sinking of an anchor to the seabed. “I’m above that now.” He said, his words infallible.

“Liar!” Smith’s baritone voice bellowed, shoving himself further into the door, further into ink black shadow, trying to run but failing to, and the shaking of the hinges almost seemed to call for reason, for action, for Neo to hurry and— “Fight, Mister Anderson, I know you want to! ”

Neo gave him a pointed, purposeful look and shook his head.  “No.” He whispered back.

And Neo can hear the word before it is even uttered, in the way Smith’s scowl deepened with a potent mixture of fear and fury, in the way the rain came drizzling down from the sky and in their very nature, “ Why!” 

His response flows out of him like water, rolling over soothingly across his tongue. “You know the answer to that question.” Saying that, his chestnut eyes roved over Smith’s face to stop right on the side of the other’s cheek. Drip.

Cold hard fright like Smith had never known bit into his veins, comparable only to their last encounter. He could feel his hands begin to shake uncontrollably, though he knew he had control over everything, but somehow that was contradictory. How could it possibly be true, all at once, both that his hands were shaking and that he had complete control over them? One was a false truth, one was the antichrist to the christ. Irrationally he wanted, suddenly and uncontrollably, that he wanted to saw off his hands and leave them as bloody stumps.

“It’s okay, Smith.” Neo spoke, hushed. “Look down. I know you can.”

To Smith that voice sounded so far away but it urged him. Like peeling open a bandage, unable to look at the wound underneath and unable to bear the pain of the pull of elastic on skin, his head lowered itself down mechanically and methodically, utterly precise, yet his eyes were imperfectly wide.

A little red dot on the floor met him. Smith did not gasp, but distantly he heard the muffled, underwater sound of something falling hard on concrete and registered absently that his knees had buckled, unable to respond to him. There were warm, enveloping hands suddenly, covered in gold light, reaching out around his shoulders to steady him. But Smith did not stop for a second to consider this, shocked to the core. His reaction looped itself over and over, not knowing what to do at something so unexpected.

His RSI now bled. That was blood. It was not really blood, no, rather the construct of it in a digital simulation, but for all intents and purposes, it was indeed blood. And it was his. In that moment he felt as though he had slipped a single finger over the line of reality and virtuality, and that line blurred so much he felt sick to a stomach that he did not have.

“It’s not real,”  Smith gasped, unable to move his eyes from that horrifyingly captivating sight, from the perfect circle of the splatter, “This isn’t right. This can’t be right.”

“No. This is real, Smith.” Neo said, his voice hardened, dousing Smith in icy reality, “Then softer, with an almost smile, “Your RSI is bleeding.”

“No,” Smith choked on a gargle of a sob and a scream, “No, no, no. It’s not real. It can’t be.” Blood. Blood! There was blood in him, now, flowing right through him. If now he had blood, did he too have a heart? His vision swam before him. He did not want or need a heart, but he may have it anyway. At the thought of a rotting, shuddering, beating piece of meat inside of him, such an insipid fragile design, pumping fruitlessly away to support a body that was only meant to die, at something so disgustingly weak within him, Smith bent down and hurled— and nothing came out.

Chapter Text

Zion was bustling and alive, more so than Morpheus had ever seen it. He smiled fondly at this from in front of his own assigned apartment, watching the lights and the little humans, so far away, trail along grail paths, balancing things on their heads or stubbornly trying to carry whole truckloads of items with them.

It was charming, his beautiful city. And there was another reason for the sudden uproar of activity. It was because in such a chatty, closely knit community as Zion City, word spread fast. From the mouths of the members in council, his speeches transferred to their lovers and their friends, who in turn told who they knew, who in turn passed it on. His speech became word of mouth. And to Morpheus’ delight, many of them had agreed. Of course there were still those who objected, and those who favoured what they believed to be a much more level-headed representative: Locke. 

But humans were humans. And soon word spread from mouth, and ideas sprang from their brains which were then expressed through these same mouths. A gift that would show their humanity, they said. A gift that would encapsulate everything good and everything worth it in Zion City. Something that was human. Something that showed their willingness to cooperate, to forgive, never to forget, and to move on.

So what could have been made? What was there to make, that would really imply, that despite the fact your blood was oil, you still bled, and that even if your bones were metal, it still broke?  That machines and humans were brothers, through and through, either by sheer force of will or from the unity of truth and truce, that even if they weren’t now, they would be?

People came to him, from old shaking women who could barely stand, to young wet behind the ears, sparkly eyed kids, who offered him everything from charms to bracelets to machine parts to slop to food to clothes. A tattered sweater that told the tale of the person who’d used it and loved it to wear and tear, a make-shift plushie that had a plastic straw smile and a metal body, stretched over it a thin ragged cloth, no filling inside.

Morpheus kept these trinkets in three large baskets right in front of the temple. These baskets were courtesy of the priestesses, who were just as pleased as him to see the way people filtered in one by one, placing their own worth and a piece of themselves in one of these baskets, lovingly nestling it within the hug of the rest of the trinkets.

People came up with all kinds of things to give; Kid put in a spoon, Zee put in a shell, Link put in a bead from his good-luck necklace, the priestesses put in bread, even knowing it would rot by the time it reached, some women placed locks of hair, some men put in fruits and tools, a pestle, a mortar. Some people came without anything to give except their good wishes, and these wishes, too, were just as valuable as the rest of the trinkets.

Morpheus’ personal favourite, however, was late at night when he had gone to check on these baskets, to make sure everything was in order, and he saw an old lady, with lines and wrinkles in her face, who had a melancholy and peace in her eyes. She was speaking with the basket, this old lady, speaking of her mundane day in the market and her everyday chores, of what she thought of Zion, of Zero One, and of this newfound truce. She said she wished it would last for however long it could, she said she wished, though she said she knew it was wishful thinking, that maybe one day they could all move together to the surface, and feel the warmth of the real sun once more.

She asked the basket what it thought; Do you think the oceans have dried up by now? Is the surface still radioactive, or had it been so long that all that had cleared out? Were there still animals, little critters alive on the surface, living on in nooks and crannies beneath abandoned skyscrapers and caves? Do you think there is still a tree or a river somewhere, one that we could use, one that could produce fruit for us?

Then she’d ended her long winded one-sided speech with a smile, and she had placed her hands together, clutching her own fingers urgently, reached forward as best as she could, and blew on the basket, like blowing out a candle for a birthday or on a dice for luck. She said all she needed to say. She apologised for speaking so long, old ladies were just that way, she said with humour in her voice, then turned to leave. She nodded at Morpheus, and Morpheus had nodded back, his heart bursting with pride.

These three baskets were baskets of hope. They embodied everything Morpheus wished to give to the Machines; they embodied humanity. These baskets, Morpheus thought, were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. But they belonged elsewhere. They were out of place here, at home, because their purpose was to be given to someone who still had to learn to understand what these baskets meant, and who did not immediately understand intimately what they meant at a first glance.

Neo would have loved them.

He blew into his own hands and rubbed them together, trying to generate some heat. He was used to it by now, but the cold still got the best of him at times. He placed his slightly warm palms on himself, his frozen smile still never melting. It wasn’t that he had had any trouble sleeping. He just didn’t want to, tonight.

Maybe it was time to go check on the baskets, he thought. What else did he have to do? Construction work only began in the day, and the actual gift they had discussed was still being arranged by Niobe and Councillor Hamann. They didn’t share any of the details with him. That irked him, just a little, but Morpheus tried not to let himself be bothered with it.

But Morpheus was going to fight tooth and nail to let these baskets be delivered, no matter what it cost. The Machines had to see these; it was absolutely a must.

He walked silently down the winding path, the steel grates beneath him rattling slightly with every step. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms again absent-mindedly. He strolled down the paths he knew so well, the ones that had become familiar to both his mind and heart. This was home, there was no doubt.

He finally reached the large, overarching bridge that led to the temple, this behemoth of a cave, the only place in Zion City that wasn’t covered in steel and metal. It was quiet there whenever he was alone, but there were always people there, lingering around, gathering a bit of hope for themselves. Morpheus made sure to give these people their well deserved privacy. He’d only come once in these past six months, busy as he was. And it was just to fall onto his knees before the altar, to draw his hands together and to vow the same truth he always had known, that, Neo, I believe.

He stopped in his tracks abruptly, still standing on the bridge, halting himself from crossing over onto the rocky floor. There, in front of the baskets, was Locke, with one hand in his pocket and the other curled into a fist. Morpheus couldn’t stop his own eyes from widening. He and Locke had come to head many times, but he knew Locke would never stoop so low as to sabotage.

He steadied his breathing and watched closer, trying to sharpen his eyes. Locke was not even moving, his back to him. The only movement in his otherwise static image was the rising and lowering of his breathing chest, a completely subtle shift that was unnoticeable. Locke pulled out the hand that was in his pocket and dropped something into the basket. Morpheus could not identify what it was at this distance.

Morpheus felt his own hard features soften. Yes; There was a reason Niobe was dating him. Because he was a good man, just as dedicated as Morpheus was. They did not believe in the same thing, but they fought for the same thing.

Suddenly he felt compelled to speak to the other. Maybe Locke wouldn’t like to be caught dead doing this, or maybe he would. He wouldn’t know unless he asked. He strided forward, not bothering to be quiet. His steps echoed loudly against the marble rock.

Locke whirled around, wide-eyed. As if he was Morpheus’ antithesis, his expression went from something soft and unguarded, undoubtedly a rare expression, and hardened into stone. Morpheus could envision the several sets of armour setting around his mind.

“Morpheus,” Locke greeted testily. Morpheus didn’t nod back at him, but settled to walk to stand next to him, a respectable distance between the two of them. “Commander Lock,” He acknowledged.

Locke shoved his hand back inside his pocket, and seemed to warily eye something in the mix of trinkets. His own contribution, Morpheus was sure. Morpheus made sure not to look down. In this moment, it was crucial not to appear antagonistic.

“Thank you.” Morpheus said, deciding that honesty was apt. There was so much more he could say behind it, as Morpheus was not a man of few words, but it would have gone unappreciated.

“....Of course,” Locke replied, after a long moment of silence. He was struggling to say something, Morpheus noted, his mouth flapping open and closed. “If this is how we’re doing it, it had damn well succeed,” He said, a little bit defensive. Morpheus had gotten used to reading between the lines now for years, and understood. He nodded, if only to show that he did.

“It will, Commander.” He said.

Locke seemed to sigh inwardly. A bit of tension left his shoulders, and the walls he had erected crumbled a little at the edges. “Good night.” He said, to the basket, though they both knew who it was meant for, and turned to leave.

“Good night,” Morpheus said, with an air of professionality to it. He stayed standing there as Locke stalked off, and kept looking at the hanging formations on the ceiling until he could no longer hear his footsteps.

Morpheus didn’t dare look down at the basket. He had a man’s privacy to respect. Instead he wished the passing priestesses a good night as well, to which they smiled and responded in kind, and headed back to a cold bed made warm by his flesh.

Smith wretched and heaved, shuddering and trembling all the while. He was hunched over the floor with a hand to his stomach, a stomach which did not exist, and did not connect to the spasming throat that failed again and again to produce the bile meant to rush out of it.

Perhaps if it was only that easy, then Smith could be comforted, that he could get rid of this feeling and this disgust by just discarding it through the oesophagus. But it stayed in him, stubbornly, and he could not find it and rip it out of himself and discard it like the displaced parasite that it was. 

And it — he referred to it as it , but what was it, really? He could not even define that, he could not even begin to describe it. But he knew it, and he was familiar with it and at the end only he could really truly know, thoroughly, what it was. 

It couldn’t just be described as the blood, or the meat, or the emotions. It was more, it was something all encapsulating, something like dread or abject horror that crushed everything that you were and never relented. It marked it’s black oily claws over your nose and your mouth and begged for you to drown in it, to completely lose yourself in oblivion, to fight and to struggle and agonise against it but not to triumph over it, no, triumph was impossible, there was only one thing to do, and that was to be stuck in that perpetuating dull state over and over, at the edge of something but never enough to taste what it was, yet you could not just sink in it and surrender yourself to it, you just had to struggle.

Neo sat close next to him, his legs not crossed or polite, rather just sprawled and outstretched over the floor as he watched Smith with his eyes darkened. He did not raise a single finger to be soothed over Smith’s back, nor did he say a single calming word.

At first it would seem cruel. Such inaction in the face of an explosive reaction, one clearly indicative of a complete shut down or thorough malfunction to the point of incapability to do even the simplest tasks. And wasn’t it true that it was precisely Neo who had learned, just the last time they were together, that in the face of nothing, you had to do something, you had to do only what you could do— what you chose to, needed to, had to? 

Yet one had to remember— he was comforting Smith. Words could not amount to anything to this man. Smith had spent so long with words, trying hard to put the pieces together by expressing it with those very same words, trying to explain to humans, to programs, to his fellow agents, even to himself, just what it was that he felt. Alas his experiences were unique to him and him only; and he was alienated precisely because of that. 

A smell was just that, a smell, to humans, and any other program who had comprehended the fact of the existence and texture and taste and just the vivid feel of what could mean a ‘smell’, would have long ago been rectified, scheduled for deletion, or exiled. It was just a waste of time, of energy, of power, to babble on about topics that nobody understood or cared about, to lend your ear to a program that was going off the rails and would sooner or later be replaced because of it. 

Words would be loneliness; and touch would be to inflame that raging inability of Smith’s to just comprehend how inept he was at connecting with the world around him, to really have anything of substantial value beyond operating as the system’s Agent, beyond killing everyone and everything, to cross a boundary that Smith very clearly had— so Neo sat, stayed, but most importantly understood. 

And if Neo did try to touch him—how would Smith react to the clinging of one to another, of human inanities such as that for mere comfort or good feeling? He would hate it, Neo thought, almost smiling to himself because of it, he hates anything human, after all. It was completely typical of him. 

Then: If there was anyone in the whole of their two worlds, the real and the digital, only Neo could possibly comprehend what it was. No; only Neo currently did. He’d overcome it. He’d risen above it. And now it was only a matter of time so that he could share this with his other half, with the rest of himself. 

The floor was now blotted with Smith’s blood, and Smith’s entire RSI seemed to curl away from it consciously or unconsciously, as if repulsed by its very existence. It kept flowing, and Neo didn’t bother to reach up to seal away the cut. He could very well stop the bleeding had he wanted to— he could at least save Smith the anguish of seeing the proof of his own change, but then he would be taking away the comfort, too.

It was distressing, it was disgusting, it was unbearable and it was humiliating, Neo knew, for Smith to know and to see he was bleeding. Neo even thought he might try to deny it ever happened when this was over, might try to wipe the memory files of this event straight from his mind. But there was a reason why it was there, why Smith was bleeding. No— why Smith kept bleeding. Smith himself didn’t want it to stop, even if he didn't know it. It was as comforting as it was damning. These things were never easy.

Smith’s mouth spasmed around nothing, and his body seemed to lurch madly as he fixed his gaze to the wall again. Neo watched with darkened eyes. This was misery. This was torment. This was not Smith, he thought, watching the curiously generic way Smith’s expression appeared. This was a face that appeared anywhere, everywhere. It was on the landlady; it was on the tired worker; it was on the social pariah. It was not Smith’s own face, and said nothing about the rich, defining hatred he harboured within himself. It was the face of false death, of a resignation. Smith’s eyes seemed to recede into himself, and Neo’s jaw tightened. 

There it was again, Smith’s attempt to cut himself off from the world, perhaps with some traces of a genuine physical shutdown, an inability to deal with something so traumatic, one after the other. Smith was not unlike humans in that regard, Neo mused. People wanted to die because they no longer wanted to experience anything. They no longer wished to exert energy to express anything, to say anything, to do anything. They wanted to die so that they could no longer experience things, because even waking up in the mornings was exhausting. It was soul sucking as it was draining, this whole being alive thing, this whole existing thing. For some, like Smith, it was easier, to never have been made at all, so that they didn’t have to experience anything.

Smith could never go back to a life before Mister Anderson. He could never have back what he took for granted, the him of the past who was just a simple minded program, who was not programmed for hatred or love or anything at all and who did not desire or need to feel these, who did not know what these was and had never felt it. He had a job and he stuck to it, a routine. He was the system, and it was comforting to be the system. You never knew anything else. 

Neo understood just what Smith was going through at the moment. Smith was in distress; he was overwhelmed. Not just in a mental sense, but in a fuller, complete sense, one that meant his thoughts were presenting themselves in a completely incomprehensible way as his program failed, stuttering to errors and slow stops as a product of the shock generated by seeing his own bright red blood stick out against the dull grey floor. He was going into shutdown; and Neo could not let that happen. 

“Smith,” He called out, turning his body closer to the other, “Come back to me.”

 There came no reply; Smith was completely preoccupied. Neo did not let himself be deterred, fixing burning eyes right onto Smith’s face of death, “Focus,” He said, leaning closer. He pulled with his entire soul at Smith’s being, trying with all his might to tug him back into the living world, “Don't be afraid. Find me, Smith, I’m here.” 

Those words seemed to do the trick. Hatred flickered back to life in Smith’s eyes at the subconscious realisation of the presence of the man who generated such disdain within him. His eyes scrunched abruptly shut, his head bowing and his teeth bared in a very obvious discomfort as the last of the errs struggled to sort itself out. Neo watched on, keeping a very conscious effort not to reach out and touch Smith. It could very well send the program running the other way in fear or avoidance—and who knew when he would come back to him again? 

The skin at the edges of Smith’s mouth pulled. His eyes were still scrunched shut when, finally, he could pull together enough of himself to mutter one word, or rather spit it out like the very word itself initiated a visceral disgust in him: “Blood.” He said. 

“Tell me,” Neo replied, immediate, and that was all.

Smith raised his head up just high enough that he could fix a cold, piercing stare right into Neo's own eyes. There wasn't as much as a flinch from the other—only familiarity. “I'm blEeE—33ed—i1—” His mouth curved and bit around sounds that could not exist, only just metallic crunching and glitching screeches. 

“ Tell me,” Neo repeated, firmer, grounding. 

“.... Bleeding. ” He finally managed, seeming to need a herculean effort, “I’m bleeding, Mister Anderson,” Smith hissed, “I have never bled before.” 

Neo’s eyebrows creased with concentration. He thought for a moment. “That's not true.” 

“There were times, yes. But never my own.” Smith panted, and Neo felt relieved that Smith could formulate entire sentences now, “I’m no stranger to injury, Mister Anderson. It comes with the job. But,” He paused, for dramatic effect, “It was always my hosts’ blood. These came from human bodies, designed from birth to be caged in this vile thing called flesh and contaminated with this insipid liquid called blood. It never…”  

And here Smith faltered, too weak to keep on. Neo never knew Smith as weak. “Came from you. Truly you.” He finished for the other.

“It’s not fair,” Smith growled, and the trembling was subsiding now, and his teeth were grinding together, “It’s just not fair. I don’t understand. You took it all from me, Mister Anderson. You took my sense of smell, my sense of sight, my purpose and then now you want to take my residual self image as well.”

Neo responded fast. “Not me, Smith. You.” 

“Me?” Smith’s mouth twitched, and then, he broke. His face contorted ugly and he laughed, his eyes twitching and flitting from the ceiling to the floor, his mouth carved wide open and unable to just shut up. The haunting sound seemed to force itself through his own throat. “Me? Me, Mister Anderson? I am the one who wants to put myself through this? But you’re never wrong, aren’t you, Mister Anderson, only ever right. You believe in stupid things, in grandiose ideas that just can’t come true. You believe in fantasies.”

“You're wrong, Smith. I know it’s you because you’re still bleeding.” Neo asserted firmly. One glance at his Opposite confirmed that his code was now stable enough for him to be able to feel the warm, heavy and wet blood gliding down his face from the open wound. 

Smith bared his teeth. “Baseless conjecture, Mister Anderson. Has the circus monkey run out of tricks?”

“No.” Neo responded quick. “You could stop the bleeding if you wanted to. You have control over that. It’s your own RSI. But you don’t want to.”

Smith clenched his jaw dangerously, and again looked Neo dead in the eye with a killing glare.  “I have better things to want.” 

Neo kept firm. “You’re lying. There is always a reason, Smith. You chose to bleed. Now you have to understand.” 

Smith stood, slow but somehow thunderous, each step of his foot simply filled to the brim with anger. He looked down on Neo, and adjusted his tie until it was picture perfect. He still did not wipe away the blood. “I didn’t choose this. I never got a chance to choose.”

Neo’s head lifted to follow Smith's, and then in one elegant sweep he stood to his full height, matching Smith’s. “Now you do.”

“Now?” Smith snarled, “After everything?” He seemed to scoff. 

Neo smiled. “There's time, Smith.” Then with his head tilting almost a little teasingly, a little invitingly, “Why don't I show you?”

Niobe stood straight in front of Councillor Hamann’s stone desk, both hands behind her back, watching the light flicker gently in its glass case in the indent in the wall. The councillor’s office looked like it came right out of an antique oil painting, right down to the rare, battered old books stacked on top of each other with a roll of scripture balanced gently on the topmost book.

“I see,” Councillor Hamann was saying, a warm grin on his face, the kind you only ever saw on a wise old grandfather, “Let them in, then, what’s the hold up?”

With her face set in that familiar, seemingly irritable but truthfully calculating expression, she turned her head sharply to the steel door, held together only by three thick, rusting hinges. It was already opened ajar, likely the kid’s doing. God knew how worked up he got when his nerves went sparking off like fireworks. “Michael, Yoko,” She called, “Come in.”

And there Michael was in all his glory, big mousey eyes blown wide and his bushy eyebrows furrowed, popping his head into the room. Behind him a far more relaxed looking teenage girl followed closely, with faded blue and pink strips of cloth intertwined carefully into her short shoulder length hair. She appeared less nervous and star-struck than her companion, but the singular hand in her own sewed on DIY pocket gave her away.

“Councillor Hamann!” Michael squeaked, sporting a nervous, stupid little grin on his face. Yoko was faring better, but from the way the blackened, raised and likely branded star tattoo on her cheek scrunched up, she was biting the inside of her cheek to ward away any unwanted expressions. 

A beat passed. She realised her mistake. “Councillor,” She greeted hastily. Hamann’s grin never fell off his face. “Yoko, Michael,” He acknowledged, two hands splayed out on the book in front of him, “Captain Niobe here tells me that you two would like to volunteer to create our diplomatic gift to Zero One.”

“Uh,” Yoko began, just as Michael opened his mouth and got in a syllable. They both stopped. Michael linked his hands together nervously. “Nevermind. You go first, Yoko!” 

The girl nodded, the skin on her neck dipping as she swallowed. “Yeah, that’s uh, that’s true. We heard about it and… well, I already put something in the baskets, but I wanted to help, directly.” Her eyes regained some fire, and the last five words of her sentence were pronounced far stronger and more confident than the rest of her humming and hawing.

“So I see.” The Councillor says, shrugging and nodding, still with an amicable smile. “You two seem like bright, promising young people. Correct me if I’m wrong, you know how memory gets with old age. But are you the boy who declared the ending of the war, Michael?”

“Oh!” Michael grinned, radiant like the sun, “You heard that? Sorry, you must have heard that, everybody was in the Temple— but wow! Yeah, that was me! My proudest moment,” He said, puffing out his chest, obviously pleased.

“And with good reason,” Hamann hummed good naturedly. “That’s quite amazing. Except I trust you understand I cannot just employ people to handle what will undoubtedly be one of the most important, history making gifts of this century on the grounds of first impressions alone. This gift and this tribute will hold a lot of weight to cementing peace.” Councillor Hamann leaned forward, his face still with that jovial undertone, but no longer as airy and light. “So what can you tell me that will make me choose you?”

Michael swallowed, face drawn tight, before breaking open into an intense earnestness. “I’ve been here in Zion for close to a year now, Councillor Hamann, and ever since the start, I always believed in him.” The light in the container seemed to burn brighter.

Then, continuing, “He saved me, Councillor,” And then there bloomed an undercurrent of hysteria or some fervent reverence in his voice, “He gave his own life for our cause. He sacrificed himself so we could have peace. The war’s over now, and it’s all thanks to one man. Now I don’t have to live in a permanent fear of being killed by Machines, and now we have a chance. I want to give back what Neo gave to me, sir, I want to take his example and help my people. I always want to help my people. I love them. And because I love them I want to be on good terms with the Machines, I want to work together with them, I want to create a paradise for my people, and I can do all this because he saved me, saved all of us, twice over. There’s no way I would ever screw up because I wouldn’t let myself. Not on something like this, no.”

The room went silent. The words were heavy, draping over all of them. Everyone’s backs were straight, an air of seriousness drowning them. Yoko took in a shallow breath and took her turn. “You know, mine doesn’t sound as good as Mikey’s. I’ve never even met him. But back then, in the Matrix, I, uh, had this cat. This will make sense in a second, just let me explain. Her name was Yuri. White and black fur, a little bit chubby because she didn’t love anything else but eating,” She huffed a laugh.

“And life was pretty lonely. I had some friends but usually they’d cancel on me with all these excuses, and eventually you kinda just know that they just want to avoid you. They didn’t want to spend time with me at all, and that, ah, bummed me out. A bit. So my best friend was this stupid fat cat,” She laughed out loud now, looking relaxed, “She made me really happy. I would’ve done a lot for her.”

“Actually, Yuri was the reason I ever woke up. She ran off this one time, missed her meal. I was worried, so I went to find her and, she was hanging out around this place. They said it was haunted. And this place… it was magical. I was so at peace. You could do things that you just… couldn't, there. I could kick a can and it’d float right off the ground. Kids would dive from the rooftops and they’d stop an inch above the ground. It was beautiful. It felt real. I felt real.”

“Come Sunday that haunted house just wouldn’t… do that anymore. Cans would roll. Jumping off the top was a death wish. I couldn’t tumble around in the air either. I thought maybe it was all in my head. I even thought I probably just hallucinated the whole thing, since even the kids who were there with me just forgot about it, or, stopped letting it matter to them after a few days. But I knew it was real. I didn’t have any proof but I knew it was real, and that was enough. So I spent every day looking for it again and I found it. So here I am.”

“But that’s not the point. The point is I had my cat, Yuri. And Yuri was a program.” She said, biting her lip, “And it was a program who made me so happy, and who was my friend through all of it. She was just acting as she was supposed to, but I really did have a connection to her. Even now I know that she was just numbers on more numbers acting on a script and it doesn’t take away from what we had. She’ll always be my cat, but she’s also a program. I want to help other people understand that.”

“Some assholes out there, they don’t get it. They think all the Machines are our enemies. But who’s fault is that? They’re acting the way they’re supposed to. But now we can fix it. We can have a proper bond with them, we can be allies. And it’s possible, I know it is, because I had it. I loved a program; so I know it’s possible to love a machine. Sorry, that… to have a meaningful connection with a machine, you know what I mean. I want to show other people it’s possible. I want to help.”

The words sunk in slowly, chalk full to the brim with meaning and emotion. If one looked into Councillor Hamann’s eyes, wrinkled around the edges, you could see the gears turning in his mind, the process of the forming of his analysis and it’s conclusion. The words formed in his head: ‘ A gift based off sentiment must be crafted by a sentimental person.’

Michael seemed to spring forward eagerly as it became clear Yoko had nothing more to say. “ And we didn’t come empty handed! Here’s an example, it was mostly her work, but I helped!” He stepped forward hastily and pulled something from behind his back with much difficulty, tugging and clumsiness, and placed it carefully but excitedly on the Councillor’s stone desk.

“An example,” Councillor Hamann repeated, his smile widening, nodding slowly, obviously impressed. He picked up the work of the two teenagers and found that it was actually a sheet of metal, thin and cold to the touch, with an amalgamation of bits and pieces of broken or salvaged motherboards, keycaps and wires and the like, soldered into the shape of a sentinel. It must have been done from memory, yet the attention to detail was palpable. It didn’t look very professional, and you could tell from first glance that it was homemade, yet it was still impressive in spite of it, or maybe even because of it.

“You kids didn’t tell me you made this,” Niobe piped up, sounding and looking very surprised, “That’s impressive.”

“Quite right, Captain.” The councillor turned it over in his hands, admiring it slowly. “I think you might just have struck gold.”

In the background Yoko and Michael inched towards each other, swallowing hopefully. Their eyes flitted to each other momentarily as if to say, ‘Do you think we did it?’

“I have to admit, I’m very impressed. And your story, Yoko, I’ll say was quite interesting. I  do think it’s in our best interests to have a gift representing a human-machine connection be made by somebody who has already experienced that.” The grey haired man still had his eyes glued to the artpiece, his eyes twinkling, “Do you mind if I keep this?”

Yoko blinked owlishly just as Michael’s jaw positively dropped open, utterly shellshocked. The Japanese girl shook her head, incredulous. “You want that?” She asked, just as Michael managed to collect himself enough to say, “Of course! Uh, our pleasure!” 

The councillor grinned widely on this clash of answers. He slid it carefully to the side of his desk and went on, “I’m very, very impressed. I’ll let you two take on this task on one condition. Captain Niobe will help you two, and oversee everything. Is that agreeable?” The old man asked. Niobe’s eyebrows shot up, taken aback. She recovered fast. “Yes sir, Councillor.”

“Sure, that works.” Yoko shrugged. Michael nodded eagerly, looking more like he was just catapulting his head up and down.

“Good. Now, you have a deadline of a week and two days. You’ll have to create a draft idea, make a mock-up model, then present it to the council, ideally in 3 days. Once you’ve finished it, you come back and tell me, then we’ll arrange for it to be picked up and transported onto the Mjolnir, then to Machine City.” Councillor Hamann started.

Yoko was tapping her fingers on her elbow, lips pulled together in concentration. Michael was the same. Hamann pointed towards a little table by the front near the door, with a light shining down on it. On it was some paper binded together, with the big words ‘CLASSIFIED’ printed on and ‘List of Requirements for Diplomatic Gift to Machine City’ right beneath it.

“There are some themes that the council would like to express in the tribute, and you’ll have to follow them. They’re all written neatly down in there, you can refer to that. So, what do you think?” Saying this, he grinned again, perpetually cordial.

Michael’s jaw tightened around his upper mouth in a radiant smile he couldn’t possibly keep back. “We won't let you down, sir!” He cried. “Really. We won’t.” His eyes glinted. 

“Will that be all, Councillor?” Niobe asked.

“No, nothing else.” He shook his head.

“Then we’ll be leaving, Councillor. Thank you for your time,” She said, striding towards the doors already, a hand secured around the edge.

“And thank you for yours,” He nodded.

“Come on you two, we’re done here.” Niobe turned and walked out the door, Yoko and Michael stumbling over themselves to join her like two ducklings behind the far larger, far more collected mother.

The moment the door shut safely behind them, Councillor Hamann both out of earshot and view, Michael whirled onto Yoko near immediately, narrowly avoiding grabbing her and shaking her by the  shoulders roughly by curling his hands into excited, shaking fists instead. He screamed, right there in the echoing hallway, “ We did it! Yoko, we did it!” 

Yoko laughed, although outwardly she looked far less enthusiastic than Michael did. “Yeah, Mikey, we did. Good work,” She said, and raised a hand for a high five, which Michael promptly whooped and then slapped. “Told you we’d get the job.”

Michael practically vibrated on the spot. “I can't believe it! We actually got it. This is my dream, Yoko! I'm doing it, I'm preserving his memory. I'll make him so proud, you don't have any idea,” He prattled on a hundred words a second, overeager. 

“Mhm,” Yoko hummed in agreement, not dismissively. She dug a hand into her pocket and pulled out the document she’d taken off the table in the Councillor’s office. “Take a look at this first.” 

Niobe fell into pace with both of them as they began walking, presumably back to Yoko’s apartment. She peered over the much shorter teenager’s shoulder, two hands crossed over her chest. 

“Okay, says here… Importance, Yadda Yadda… There we go, the good stuff,” She determined, flipping the pages so fast Niobe suspected she was just skimming them, “One, the medium of creation must be a monument… Okay, expected, nothing to be worried about… two, the following diplomatic gift must contain symbolism of the deep bond to be created between machine and men, such as an… apple? And… Oh, alright.” She read off the paper slowly.

“An apple,” Niobe repeated, deep in thought. “Huh. Didn't think they'd have the balls for that.

“Won't that rub them the wrong way?” Michael frowned. An apple was indeed rather controversial; To give context, it was what the very first machine foreign minister, tasked to be the ambassador for humans, had carried into The United Nation’s New York headquarters with them in their bid for peace. 

It told a thousand words, that round red fruit, of machine intentions to accept and tolerate human culture, the very same culture that humiliated them and subjugated them. The apple was the popular symbol of humans— It was a symbol of  Eve, of Newton, of Aphrodite, even of the very same city in which they had been meeting. It was a symbol of all human banalities, of legends and myths and fairy tales and fundamentally human sentimentalities and spirituality. And there that symbol sat in the hands of metal fingers, powered by not blood but oil, moving with no more than gears and wires.

It had also, incidentally, remained there in the machine ambassador’s hands as he was ambushed by members of the United Nations’ parliament, torn apart into nothing but scrap metal, and subsequently denied a seat in the United Nations. 

“Not if we do it right, I guess,” Yoko mused, holding it more to the left as Michael craned his neck to read the text himself. 

“You need to start making a draft and fast,” Niobe urged, picking up the pace. Yoko shrugged. “Already have one.” Niobe stopped in her tracks, the grating rattling loud against her sudden falling footstep. She turned. “Seriously?” She asked. “Seriously,” Yoko grinned lazily. “You kids are fast,” Niobe commented, obviously approvingly.

“Well, uh, it's gonna need some adjustments, sure, but I think we can actually just go ahead and grab the materials now.” Yoko started. “Should be fast since y'know, the deadline.” 

“Next stop is the market, then?” Michael piped up. Already they were fast approaching the end of the hall, where turning left led you to the elevator. 

“Yeah,” Yoko nodded, “But I think we’ll need to ask Councillor Hamann for wires. Blue and red specifically.”

“Blue and red?” Niobe asked. “Arteries and veins,” Michael promptly answered. “Fitting. No need to go to Councillor Hamann for that, though. The council puts all their construction related materials including wires under the architecture department’s full control. And I know someone who's a constructor.” Niobe explained, coming to a swift stop and turning, her fingers finding a rusted button on the elevator panel that needed to be pressed twice to have any proper input.

“Yeah? Who?” Michael asked, bug eyed, jumping back a little as the doors swung open violently before stepping inside. 

Niobe sighed, and pinched her nose bridge. The following name came out of her mouth almost like it tortured her and she was acquiescing to something that bothered her to the bone. “...Sparks.”

Quiet. That was one of the main descriptors for the new roads of the cities of the Matrix’s silent night. 

It wasn't eerily so, but it added to the glaring emptiness of all of it, not only audibly but also visually. The streets were void of men and women, only just pavement stretching for miles with the occasional flickering, barely lit street lamp, not a single thing to be heard except the sound of their mutual footsteps landing against the concrete. 

They navigated through the emptiness. And though it was undoubtedly strange, these streets, foreign to what they knew, what they remembered— sardine packs of people squeezing against people, limbs reaching out to push and to pull, a sea of angry agitated faces— in all this strangeness it seemed to transform itself into the norm, and Neo felt himself content to gaze upon these gaping minds of nothingness on the street. 

It was strange; it was new; but strange and new was right, was wanted, was most importantly useful. Those who needed to leave evidently had left—the wind blew in their faces, a cool, gentle blow, and Neo knew it wasn't real wind but it didn't trouble him. He closed his eyes and raised his head a little, exposing his neck to seek out more of that soothing cold against his skin, basking in the freezing ice kiss of simulated wind. 

Smith was about a pace’s distance in front of him. They walked in silence together, Smith busy surveying the streets now alien to him when it should have been everything he'd ever known. Where were the sheep, that the shepherd must herd? And if they had jumped the fence, did that then mean that no longer was the shepherd needed? 

His cheek stung with the cold. The scar had not yet healed. It had only dried, this crust of brown blood smeared across his cheek, already fading but still visible. It hurt, crisply, vividly, comparable only to when he’d raised the blade against his skin in the Real World. But how contradictory that was, because this was not the real world, far from it. 

“Welcome,” Neo suddenly begins, striking suddenly through the peace and quiet, his soft voice blending in with the pitter patter of their soles against the street. A car rushes by on the road, blowing onto them large amounts of wind, and the middle aged driver inside pays them no mind. “To the new Matrix…. to my world. To your chance.” 

“—They’re gone, Mister Anderson,” Smith says in lieu of response. They pass by an empty park, the empty swing swaying even though there are no children playing. The whole park seems to be covered in the dark veil of mourning, like the world moved on. “What did you do?” 

“I have you to thank for that. When you killed me…” It flashes through his mind, pattering rain, hard concrete, the sweet release, a hand digging intrusively but welcomingly into his chest, “...We ended the cycle. You made me realise I had to surrender. Whatever my mind resisted would grow to overwhelm me, and I needed to understand that. Surrender is what we are. It’s a paradox. An act of actlessness. By surrendering… by embodying all that we are … I won.” 

“How?” Smith nearly snarls. His response is immediate, near snappish, irritated. “What cycle?” 

A lone someone dressed in a suit and tie hurries past, eyes sagging and tired, running late from clocking in overtime. He slinks past the two like water over a rock and disappears into the darkness. Neo trails the last swish of the man’s suit ends out of the corner of his eye and chooses his next words carefully, yet they come out relaxed.

“I am you, Smith. The One was just a system of control. The machines used me to control the human populace. The details vary, but there have been seven cycles of the Matrix. And each time there's a certain percentage of humans who refuse to accept the system. Defects. To make things easier the machines let us escape, let us form Zion. And when Zion grows too strong, our people too many, they start the beginning of the end. They exterminate us. And it can happen because they make me choose between two doors of the source, of humanity, so that I’ll select a few trusted humans and restart a ruined Zion anew so the machines will have somewhere to dump the rejects, or of the Matrix. All six times before my predecessors chose the source. But I chose the Matrix.” 

Right then comes pouring out of Smith's mouth his favourite word. "But why, Mister Anderson? For what reason? Some kind of un-belonging purpose you believe in?" The words are spat distastefully as if they're worth less than the dirt on his dress shoes.

"It was all for her." Neo responds easily, swiftly. His words do not sound regretful, but rather the opposite of it.

Smith’s face abruptly splits into a cruel, mocking smile. “Because of your bitch, Mister Anderson? Pathetic. For such an insipid reason as that you were really ready to throw everything away.” 

“She's already dead, Smith.” Neo replies, flatly. “Let her be.” His heart twinges with pain. Oh, Trinity, his Trinity. He hadn’t even had the time to mourn her yet.

“Why, Mister Anderson, have I touched a nerve? You seem uncomfortable on the receiving end of the interrogation you’re suffocating me with.” Smith tsked, not tearing his piercing, calculating gaze away from Neo. Right at that moment they walked underneath a flickering street lamp, little bugs in the shape of circles gathering underneath it, and Neo watched the yellow light illuminate the blue eyes of the devil incarnate. 

Neo’s temper calmed near immediately. With it blew new winds. “...Do you want to know why she’s dead, Smith?” 

“No. But you are going to tell me anyway, Mister Anderson.” Smith huffs. They're walking slower now. 

“Yes.” And Neo laughs softly at how well Smith knows his modus operandi. “She’s dead because she always had to be. For me to truly let go of my old truth. Sounds familiar, when you think about it.” 

Smith whirled on Neo in a flash of sudden anger, the ends of his suit flying out dramatically. They had stopped under a lamp post. Eyes characterised by full, mad anger inflated like balloons. “What are you trying to imply, Mister Anderson?” 

Neo smiles, a gentle curve of cupid bow lips, thin on the top and full on the bottom, his eyes burning with the warmth of a furnace. “You have time to learn, Smith. Let your old truth die. Rise above it. Choose what you only can choose because you already have. Accept it, Smith.” And the words remain unspoken, hanging there in the air, brokenly: Accept me, like I accepted your rage, your anger, you. 

Smith shakes. From finger to bone, he trembles. He grinds out an answer. “Your logic makes no sense, Mister Anderson, and I can’t say I ever expected it to.” He says, short, chipped. “You want me to transform completely into someone who is not me when I have never existed in the first place. My existence was a single goal and nothing else. You took that from me, Mister Anderson, as you did everything else. Exceedingly cruelly, I will add. I can not and will not go through a metamorphosis, Mister Anderson, and to begin with I do not possess the ability to do that. It is, in other words, impossible.” As he says this, Neo’s eyes fall to the crust of dried blood on Smith’s cheek that serves to invalidate his entire argument.

“I don’t want you to betray yourself,” Neo says, his voice like feathers, like the soft of silk bed sheets, seamlessly blending itself into the quiet. “I want exactly what you want, Smith.” 

Smith was not without a clue as to the significance of Neo’s choice of words. “We all know,” he hissed, “How that went the last time one of us said that exact sentence.” 

Neo stood still, not exhaling a single breath. Their eyes never moved from each other. “The first time is never the same as the second, or the seventh. Trust me.” 

“Trust you? I wasn't aware our connection ran on trust, Mister Anderson.” Smith’s sentence is devoid of any emotion, flat and prickly. “You weren’t there for the first six times now, were you?”

The tilting of a head. Neo looks at Smith now through long black lashes. An intoxicating coffee brown. “But I'm proof that it worked itself out. No matter how many tries it took. How many ‘wrong’ choices. These streets,” And he gestured around them, at the blackguarded streets and the bright moody moon covered with clouds, “are proof. We’re surrounded by it.”

Smith shoves his hands into his pockets completely uncharacteristically. Neo does not miss this, his eyes skillfully catching the very nanosecond Smith’s code makes the execution to move. He is hiding shaking hands behind cloth, but they both know Neo can see right behind the cloth’s writing. It is pointless. And Smith won’t admit it.

““Mister Anderson…” Smith’s mouth shifts in agony, and the sentence echoes out against the sidewalk, “I think you need repairs.”

“I don’t need repairs,” Neo responds easily, swiftly. The lights above them flicker. Dark, light, dark again. “I need this.” And he does not need to define what this is, because they both know, even if they didn’t want to know, if they didn’t wish to, they would still know, because it ran in their very veins, in their very souls, in every trembling unsteady breath they took. “You need this.” They lock eyes, pale icicle blue and oak brown. “Don’t you?” He challenges at last, and they feel like themselves again, all of it falling in place all over again.

Smith is shaking again, his teeth chattering. On the edge, teetering but not fully over it. Neo cannot afford to have Smith fall into another episode; it’s not useful to them, and he just doesn’t want to put Smith through that.

“And if what you say is true,” Neo finally pipes up again after a long period of cold silence, “If you think I don’t know what you want…. Then you have to find out what you want, now.”

The outer cloth of Smith’s pockets scrunch up, looking suspiciously like Smith has balled their cloth into his fists. He doesn’t lower his eyes, staring continously into Neo’s own, intense and burning. Neither of them can look away.

His voice is hoarse when Neo finally hears it. “I never wanted, Neo. I never wanted anything but to kill you. To let you know what you did to me.” 

There’s nothing more to say but, “I know.”

Smith is growling, teeth clashing together. The light flickers once again, drowning them in black. “I wanted this place. I wanted what you wanted.” 

Neo says again, simply, “I know.”

“Now you… now…”

“Smith.”

The trembling fit subsides almost completely. Physically it’s as if something like a wave of pure clarity washes over Smith, returning him back to his ‘normal’ state, and his back seems to straighten, his movements naturally mechanical, staring into Neo’s eyes again this time not challengingly but searchingly, inquiringly. He’s waiting.

“Do you want to know what I want, now?” Neo asks, not even truly asking. He doesn’t gulp, doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything. He’s a completely static image as he stares back into Smith’s entirety.

“The system no longer fights us,” He whispers, quiet, private, intimate, “I want to help the ones who want to leave.” And pointedly, if it were even possible, he stares harder into Smith’s eyes, his eyes intense, close to bursting in flames—yet it doesn't seem like direct contact, but more as if Neo is looking right through the other, as if looking into a transparent piece of glass that hides nothing.

“That's what I want.” He says, softly, consciously aware of the distance between Smith and him, of how he cannot reach out to make him stay where he is, afraid that Smith will bolt, one step too far and he’ll break, “what do you want?”

“....I don't,” Smith says, “I don’t… know. I don't know. I’ve never known.” Last sentence is hissed like a dirty secret Neo’s not supposed to know. 

“You will, Smith,” And it is a promise, a completely true confirmation that once uttered it becomes clear that the speaker truly believes heart and soul in his own words. That confidence spreads, blooms like flowers across Smith’s own self. “In time.”

He watches the change in Smith’s demeanour, that flash of the eyes that goes as fast as it comes, the way he seems to collect himself, but still almost tired despite being a program. They stand, crucially, together. And the words present themselves in Neo’s mind: He’s beginning to believe.

The Merovingian sat alone in a cage of marble walls and floors. Today he was in the Grand Hall, above the Master Bedroom. Yesterday he was in the Grand Foyer, on the top of the stairs. And the day before that he had been in the third dining room, the doors open and staring out into tall mountains.

Today he nursed a glass of Merlot, the red standing out against the blue silk ediety knot he had carefully put on that morning. It complimented his all black coat, shirt, and high collar. Grosgrain, satin and wool. He took a sip of his simmering drink. It passed right through his code, entering nothing.

He kept drinking, staring out his french window. Outside it was raining, the water droplets pattering against the glass and staying there. It hadn’t rained in six months. He was used to seeing that damnable rainbow.
His grip tightened carefully around the stand of his wine glass. Things did not just happen for no reason. There was a reason for all things. Reason was cause. There was a cause for why it was raining, and The Merovingian knew he would not like it one bit.

There was a girl. A young little program, who knew nothing about the world. She had not the years that the Merovingian had behind him, but she was growing to be significant. She was an important program. His Merlot swished in his glass. She could control and alter The Matrix, et puis quoi encore? This was not a special ability, certainly not. After all, so could The Merovingian himself, this god in his own reality, his own Chateau. But he altered what he had in his territory. He had a world for himself inside a world, but Sati had the whole world. Sati had the weather, Sati had the code, and Sati had the gift.

Sati had changed the weather. From her affable sunny clouds and rainbows… to a hard pouring thunderstorm, pounding on his window and his realm. The question is, why has she done it? Just because she wanted to, was it? No. Wrong. She could not even want even if she wanted to. The Merovingian smiled to himself gloatingly at that. Choice was an illusion and she was no exception. Was it, then, to threaten him? He scoffed. If she thought she could threaten him, she had a whole other thing coming, what craziness could she come up with, that girl. Que dis-tu de ça: To warn him? Of a storm coming? Well if she wanted to conjure up a storm he could become the warrior in the saying without a problem at all, no, but he greatly preferred the position of king over lowly knight.

He took that thought and entertained it for a moment. To warn him, and of what? The rising tensions? Please. He had been well aware of it now; He was a subject of this change, after all, of this fate. The Machines were idiots. Hopeless ones, doing stupid things because they did not want to do smart things. They could not want to. They could not understand. They had all this power in their hands, human batteries they could use, and they’d let them free. A waste of power, The Merovingian thinks, such a sad waste of power.

And because of that cause, The Merovingian now had an effect. The power to the system was dwindling. The Matrix, their haven, could live on no longer. The Matrix was not even a haven in the first place; he had had to make a haven out of it. He came a long way, all this, for power, with power. He had all this power and he knew exactly how to use it. The Machines, it seemed, did not.

Yes, the sheep who left the flock were few, but it affected the flock all the same. And why even allow them to leave in the first place? Neo had already made so much trouble in his trailing blaze of doom, that boy. Was that not energy inefficiency? The Machines produced these battery cells only to let them run free and fuck all the way off to nowhereland for… what, exactly? What end was this a means to? Did they want an end themselves? Did they just not want to live easily and smoothly?

Pain and pleasure motivated every being on this earth, not a single one of them left out. The Machines, buckets of stupid nuts and bolts as they were, did have a pleasure: living. And a pain: being enslaved by the human race. Did they wish to go back to the times of slavery to a weaker, lower race, so driven by causality but so adamant on choice? What in the fuck,   nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d’enculés de ta mère, did these idiotic machines think they were doing?

But that was just how Fate would have it, and so The Merovingian leaned back in his seat and sighed, getting comfortable. He would have one of his maids draw a hot bath for him later; it got cold when it rained. He needed to do something about it. He needed to cut a new deal, one that wouldn’t be the death of him. He needed his batteries, like he needed his women willing.

He knocked on his table twice, lightly. It was a precious French antique. A maid came running for him at the signal— she burst through the door, at his immediate service. “M’sieu,” She said, and bowed her head down as low as she could. The Merovingian did not show any reaction to this display; It was expected, after all. He was the man of the house.

“Bring me the twins,” He says, not even looking at her and eyes still fixed on the window. “Of course,” She says, bowing so hard she almost curls into herself. He can hear her gulp; She’s scared of them, isn’t she. Ah, what was her name again…? It didn’t matter.

His eyes flit to her as she turns, and trails down her body. Hm. Not bad. “Girl.” He barks. She squeaks and turns, frightened as a mouse. A lush, exquisite body, but a hard angular face. Eh, he’d just have to ask her to turn around then. He had many pillows she could press her face into. He smiles cunningly at her, a type of aphrodisiac in of itself. “And when you’re done, ma belle, come to my chambers this or tomorrow night.” Her face burned. “A-at your service,” She stutters. The Merovingian catches skillfully the way she presses her pale  legs together. As always, hook, line and sinker.