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Welcome to The Reanimatrix, my first attempt to experiment with the Literature forum in some way. ~_^

Basically, I want to take a moment to explain exactly what this thread is and how you can participate in it.

First and foremost, I want to express the fact that this is not an RPG. Instead, it is intended to be a collection of short stories, written by myself, by other members and by actual authors who have an involvement with the Wachowski brothers' series.

I decided to make this thread because of my upcoming RPG, The Matrix Revelations. Originally, I was writing some basic skeletons related to the history of certain characters within the RPG. But as I was writing them, I decided to expand this concept, to allow myself and other writers to create short stories that explain various events relating to The Matrix and its history.

If you've seen The Animatrix, you know what I'm talking about. It is a collection of animated shorts. Each short sheds a little light on some aspect of The Matrix, whether it's the war between man and machine, or a beatiful demonstration of a ghost house (and how the Agents handle the "clean up" of it).

My intention is to use this thread to write short stories about events that relate to The Matrix Revelations, but which also relate to any of The Matrix stories in general.

This will also give me an opportunity to read what others write and if you have an interest in the RPG itself, it will give you a chance to demonstrate your creativity as it relates to The Matrix.

I want to make something very clear at this point though; there are no limitations on what you can do. I don't want you to write an epic story, though -- these are short stories. However, you can be as creative as you like. You can write a poem, or a narrative, or a diary entry and so on. You can even create a short comic strip if you like. The choice is up to you.

As we go, I will also post the works of "official authors" who have written short Matrix stories. You can read these for your own enjoyment (they are free anyway), but you can also use them to develop your own ideas.

Most of all, I want everyone to have fun. If you loved The Animatrix, this thread should be right up your alley. Feel free to experiment with ideas and different styles of writing, feel free to use images (your own art or something else) and feel free to explore any aspect of The Matrix universe that you want.

So, to avoid further rambling, I'll kick this baby off with my initial entry. Have fun!

EDIT: Oh, and please note; I'd like it if people included their comments on other people's entries within the same post as their own entries. So if you want to comment on people's stories, please also include your own short story as well. But make sure to seperate comments from stories. I recommend using the "< hr >" HTML tag to do this (without the spaces). But you can do what you like (different colours, images as dividers, etc).

---

THE REANIMATRIX
INDEX




CAIN'S AWAKENING
BY JAMES


KNITTING
BY SIREN


A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR'S ONLY MEMORY
BY ZIDARGH


GOLIATH
BY NEIL GAIMAN


REBIRTH AND DEATH
BY ALAN


A "MACHINE'S" CALL TO DUTY
BY ZIDARGH


ZENITH
BY MIMMI


DRONE ROBOT CONVERSATION
BY ALAN


MIDNIGHT CHASE
BY JAMES


SOAP-BOX SERENADE
BY UNBORN LORD XION


PULLING THE PLUG
BY CHARLES


WITNESS
BY BOBA FETT


PIRATES' MISSION: PART 1
BY MR. MAUL


PRINCIPAL CONCERN
BY SIREN


AND THE SUN WILL RISE UP
BY SHINMARU


SYSTEM FREEZE
BY POPPY Z. BRITE


CAUSE TO EFFECT
BY MIMMI


CONTROL
BY SUBLIME2004


I FEEL
BY ANATEMA


LAYERS
BY ALAN


THE RABBIT HOLE
BY BIO


CASSIE
BY LORE


BLUEBIRD
BY WHO?


GHOST STORY: LOST
BY REFLUX


FROM THE ARCHIVES: LUCY
BY CHARLES


THE CHASE
BY JAPAN_86


SEVERING TIES
BY SUBLIME2004


ARTFORM REQUIEM
BY AJEH


IGNORANCE IS BLISS
BY SOLO TREMAINE


THE TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
BY SHINMARU


ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR
BY LORE


CONNECTION
BY KAZUKO


TWIN VOICES OF EDEN
BY CYRIEL


A NON-BELIEVER'S ACCOUNT
BY SUBLIME2004


IDENTITY CRISIS
BY BARON SAMEDI


ONE
BY MIMMI


SOLILOQUY OF THREE: ONE
BY CYRIEL


FROZEN HEAT
BY SIREN


REALITY SHOT
BY WONDERSHOT


REDEMPTION
BY SOLO TREMAINE


ANOTHER FIRE STARTER: PART ONE
BY BIO


NEW MANAGEMENT
BY JAMES


THE MAN IN THE BLACK SUIT
BY EPITOME


RENAISSANCE AFFAIR
BY ANATEMA


BOARDWALK CAFE
BY KANE


THE AWAKENING
BY EPITOME


BUT...IT'S SHINY
BY ALAN


MY LAST STAND
BY EPITOME


NOT SO CRAZY
BY JJRIDDLER


LAST THURSDAY SESSION
BY JAMES


UP IN THE AIR
BY JJRIDDLER


PLUG ME IN AGAIN
BY REISE


KISMET
BY MIMMI


THE WORLD TURNS
BY JJRIDDLER


A HOUSE OF CARDS
BY MIMMI


DISSOLVED GIRL
BY SEAN


EVERYONE FALLS THE FIRST TIME
BY EPITOME

---

Caine's Awakening

When I look back at how it happened, I'm still amazed. You hear of people having out of body experiences during surgery, but what I went through was ridiculous. And for what seemed like hours and hours, I actually did think that I'd died and gone to hell. I'd been booked into the hospital for surgery on Tuesday, I remember that much. It was in the middle of winter and I remember that the windows in the car were fogged up. My wife was driving. I miss her so much. But that's all I remember. I remember being in the car and rubbing the passenger side window with the cuff of my shirt, to get a better view of the hospital as we approached it.

I don't remember actually leaving the car though. My memories beyond that point are vague. I know that I was having wonderful dreams while under the anaesthetic, that much I am sure of. But something happened, something that shouldn't have happened. My dreams stopped abruptly and I felt conscious, although I couldn't seem to open my eyes. I couldn't hear anything either; not even the sound of the heart rate monitor, or anything that one expects to hear after waking from major surgery. Instead, I still felt like I was flying -- or rather, floating. And suddenly, there was a strange jolt to my body. That's the only way I can describe it. It was like the feeling you get when a shiver runs down your spine, except that it shook my entire body violently.

And then I woke. I opened my eyes to a nightmare. There was no comfortable hospital bed, with crisp white sheets and soft pillows. I was under water, or so I thought. But it wasn't water, it was something else. It was cool and wet, but also thick and gelatenous. At first I was afraid of drowning, but I realized that I could still breathe. I was enveloped in blackness, though. For some reason, I couldn't see. It hurt to open my eyes. I blinked several times -- or I tried to blink -- and each time, I saw flashes of vivid pink and black. As my eyes began to adjust, I was able to keep them open for longer periods with each blink. And it was only now that I began to realize my situation. I was submerged in what seemed like a bath of strange pink liquid and I could hardly move, as my arms and legs were apparently tied down. I tried to scream, but it didn't work. My mouth was covered by something. Whatever it was, it felt cold and hard.

I tried to swallow and discovered something else; the tube was not only connected to my mouth, but it also ran all the way down my throat. I could feel it inside my chest, too.

Perhaps I passed out. I'm not entirely sure what happened. I remember opening my eyes very briefly now and again, and seeing pieces of metal fly past my face very quickly. It felt like I was falling at an incredible speed. I was still cold and wet.

The sheer coldness of the water woke me. Despite the fact that I'd been a swimmer for my entire life, I had great difficulty in that pool. It wasn't that I couldn't remember how to swim, but I simply couldn't make my arms or legs move. There was something wrong with them; even when I closed my eyes and fought with all of my strength, all I felt was pain in my limbs.

Upon reflection, I don't know how it was that I didn't drown.

Eventually, I managed to push myself forward in the pool and drag myself out of the water. For a moment, I just lay there on the ground, breathing slowly. My skin felt oddly warm now that I was out of the water. And my limbs still felt lifeless and numb, though every time I attempted to move, the pain shot through them again. I was even too weak to cry, should I have had the desire to; although I think that I was far beyond that. I was terrified, like never before. Had I really died on that operating table and gone to hell? At the time I seriously entertained the thought. And although I now know that I hadn't died, perhaps the reality was still quite close to it.

While I lay there, I fell in and out of consciousness. Finally, I gathered the energy to sit up. Upon doing so, I also noticed that my ears had unblocked. Before, everything had sounded as though it were deep under water. But when I sat up, I could hear all sorts of alien sounds. The world around me was like a landscape from another planet. I was surrounded by a thick white fog, which I could barely see past. When I finally stood up and looked toward the sky, I could only just see through the white plume that covered me. What I saw beyond it looked like a skyscraper; a tall black column that almost stretched beyond the sky itself. But it wasn't a skyscraper. It was covered with countless egg-like objects, which were all emitting a soft pink glow. They reminded me of the strange pink liquid that I'd seen when I first woke from the operation. Each one had something inside it, but from where I was standing, I couldn't quite tell what they were.


http://www.otakuboards.com/attachmen...id=18480&stc=1



I turned away from the pool and began walking along the cold ground, one painful step at a time. With every step, my legs wobbled uneasily. The ground below my feet was smooth, but it wasn't grass or earth. As I looked ahead of me, my eyes began to focus a little more. The clouds of white fog were clearing and I could see the blackened horizon in the distance.

It was then that I noticed the fields. I'd never seen anything like them before; fields of tall, angular plants that stretched for miles in all directions. I approached the edge of the field slowly, taking care not to trip over my own feet. As I came closer to the first plant, I realized that it wasn't a plant at all. Although it looked like some kind of tree, it was clearly synthetic. It was covered in thick cables, which littered the ground at its base. Each branch -- if that's what you'd call them -- had attached to it a single egg-like object, much like the objects that I'd seen on the columns only moments ago.

I approached the lowest branch of the nearest plant and ran my hands over the egg's cool surface. It was slimy on the outside and covered with grime. I pushed the dirt away and looked at it more closely. Although the surface of the egg was cold and moist, there seemed to be a faint heat coming from within. It was an odd sensation to be standing beside such an object. But nothing prepared me for what I saw, when I peered into its deep crimson core. I saw a baby. A human fetus, to be more precise. It was curled up in the center of the egg and I noticed that there was a small black cable attached to the back of its head.


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As the realization of what I was seeing dawned upon me, I keeled over on the ground and vomited. My stomach groaned violently, as the thin white liquid splashed across the smooth ground. I held my stomach for a moment and tried to catch my breath. The world around me was hazy and it seemed to swirl endlessly around my head. It was then that I lost consciousness again.

When I woke later, I dragged myself to my feet and began wandering through the fields. Part of me wanted nothing more than to die, to end this insane nightmare. At the same time, part of me wanted to survive and to find answers. I wanted to get out of there, to find safety and comfort and most of all, I wanted to see my wife again. Did she know where I was? I entertained the thought that as I was walking through those fields of unborn children, my wife was standing by my grave, weeping into a black handkerchief.

I must have walked for hours and hours. I remember that I was trying to avoid looking at those terrible glowing eggs. Sometimes I'd pass one and notice the fetus move slightly. It was incredibly unnerving. I had tears streaming down my face as my thoughts wandered into a myriad of dark places.

I could hear noises above me. And occasionally, I could make out the silhouettes of enormous, insect-like creatures, as they were hovering above the fields. They had spotlights underneath their heads, which they seemed to be using to comb through the individual plants, though it was difficult for me to tell. They also had long arms, with large, metallic claws on the ends. They used these to scoop up the glowing eggs. Although it was difficult for me to see, they seemed to be despositing the eggs into gigantic baskets on their backs.

Eventually, I stopped walking. Apparently I had come to the edge of the nearest field. I saw a massive canyon ahead. It was as though a piece of the ground had been torn away; the edges of it were slightly curved toward the sky and broken all the way along. When I looked down into the canyon itself, it seemed to stretch for miles underneath the Earth's surface. I remember seeing thousands of pipes, cables and wires everywhere, covering its vast walls and snaking their way down into the darkness far below.

Suddenly, a heavy sound enveloped me. I covered my ears, but it was no use; the sound was so loud and deafening that I collapsed and screamed at the top of my lungs, begging it to stop. I opened my eyes and saw one of the gigantic insect creatures hovering above me. One of its grotesque arms slithered down beside me and grabbed the nearest egg. As its claws gripped the egg, I could hear the sharp "clink" of metal touching glass, or whatever those things were made from. It tore the egg from its stalk and brought it up to the basket, which was well beyond view. I closed my eyes and covered my ears, as I waited for the noisy insect to move away.

I lay there for hours, on that freezing metal earth. I heard every terrible sound around me. I felt the cold, sharp wind biting at my skin. I wanted to die.

---

Chop. Chop. Chop. The hollow sound of a knife slicing through cucumber was all that Mary was able to hear. The television was kept nearly silent. Mary found the woman on the television to be rather irritating. Her voice was scratchy and grating; Mary’s aged ears could not endure the screechy racket. After all, this was the time of day that Mary sat in her chair and knitted, as she did every day. She was getting older and had adjusted comfortably to her quiet afternoons. Bothersome television clamor was a nuisance that she did not care to have.

Her meal was sitting on a white TV tray to her right. She hadn’t been able to finish her sandwich and there was a tiny bit of tea left in her cup. The tea was surely cold by now. It had been sitting there for five or ten minutes. Mary didn’t drink much tea anymore. She had lost her appetite lately, too. She was just getting tired, she assumed.

She was knitting a blue and green sweater with black trim. She had been knitting it for the past few weeks, getting more of it completed each day. It was supposed to be for her grandson, David, but she had not seen him in years. He was probably all grown up now, with his own life to live and didn’t have time to visit his grandmom, she thought. This made her rather sad and she stopped knitting. She felt a lump forming in her throat and a tear began to roll down her wrinkled cheek. Mary sniffled, holding back the rest of those tears.

The chopping in the kitchen stopped. Mary quickly dried her cheek before Sarah walked in.

“Mary,” she said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just…had a little tickle in my throat,” Mary replied.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. You go ahead and finish cooking dinner.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You go on,” Mary assured her.

Sarah went back into the kitchen. Chop. Chop. Chop. Mary went back to her sweater. It was almost done, just a few more days left. She resumed looping the thread and running it through the fabric.

A strange sound compelled Mary to look up from her sweater. “That didn’t sound like chopping,” she said, “that sound came from the hall. What’s going on out there?”

The sounds were getting closer and closer to the apartment door. Mary thought she heard someone fall. Was there another fight going on outside? If there was, it must have been over something awfully important. Mary wished the noises would go away and then the door slammed open, crashing into the wall. A man stumbled in, panting and breathless. He looked like he was running from the Devil himself. Thunderclaps echoed in the hall. Bullets pierced the door, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere. Another thunderclap. The man ducked and Sarah’s hat flew off the coat rack. He got to his feet and ran into the kitchen. Mary heard the back door open.

A figure ran by the entryway, but it wasn’t Sarah.

A Private Investigator's Only Memory

You know, it's funny really. I didn't even know that this place existed, or did I have any form of intuition that I was going to dissapear on that night. It simply happened all at once. When I first got here I couldn't do anything. I didn't know who I was, where I was or what I was, but it all came back to me. Well, everything except for my memories of life. There was this one thought that kept hitting me hard from inside, and I've yet to find out whether it's based on reality, or purely on fiction. Anyway, you need to know it seems so I'll give it a shot.

It was a good night. I liked the rain and God blessed me with it. Having just entered my apartment from another job that consisted of me spying on someone for someone else's wife, I let out a deep breath and sat down on the black, leather sofa. I remember I was having trouble getting work, and it was beginning to bring me down. Standing up again to avoid creasing my beige raincoat, I approached the small fridge and opened to find one, single beer left, I took it of course. Snapping it open on the kitchen draining board, I took a sip and enjoyed the strong, fermented liquid that ran down my throat. Letting out another sigh of relief I turned around in my one room apartment and heard that faint clicking a computer makes when it's loading.

Funny, I thought. I remember I even switched the computer off at the power source due to it's constant crashing habits, but I shrugged the thought off none the less and took this opportunity to perhaps find some more freelance work. Sitting down in the desk chair, I placed down the beer after taking another sip and turned on the flat-screen monitor. The screen glowed for a second as the electrons rebounded off of the glass tube and I was then given a simple, text based template. It was nothing but black, save for the odd pop-up that pestered me at times. I've never seen this before, I thought as I stared at the monitor blankly.

All of a sudden, a message was making itself apparent as each letter appeared in a left-to-right direction, the text in a green font. All it stated was, "We know who you are." I shrugged it off as if it was another advertisement trying to get me interested in purchasing some company's product and tried to exit the screen, but all the attempts were in vain. I couldn't get out. Great, I thought sarcastically as I went to switch it off at the power, the switch had already closed the connection to the computer.

In wonder I grasped the seat and pulled myself up to sit on it once more, only to be met by another small message on the monitor screen. This time it said, "They're coming for you." Having been a bit freaked out by this comment I typed in a message also, "Who is coming for me?". The little cursor blinked but disappeared as the third message was written, "Someone wants to meet you. Go to the Shinkoku Line and board the 24:36 train."

Now that's more like it, I thought in the hopes that this could be another job proposition, I was willing to take anything.

"Follow the White Rabbit," a fourth message appeared and all of a sudden, the computer turned off.

I wasn't going to lose out on another opportunity and so I grabbed my sunglasses regardless that there was no sun and pulled my door open of which I ran down the apartment corridoors into the street. From there on, my journey to the station in memory is kind of blurred for some reason, maybe it's not important or something. But there is more.

Running up the steps and through the warden-less turnstiles, I waited on the platform of the train station and looked up at the electronic, schedule board. '24:34:48', the time stated, I was going to make my train. The station was deserted except for a little, old woman who seemed to have seen too many years go by, and the rain outside dripped onto the edges of the yellow-bordered platform.

Hands in my pockets I stepped out of the roofing shelter to look for if the train was approaching. Three, breaming lights could be seen in the distance and they become larger as the lights neared. Right on time, I thought as the lights belonging to the train neared even more with a swoosh of the brakes. As the train stopped, the old woman stood up and walked over to the carriage nearest to me, she was carrying a white bag that was as wrinkled as much as her face. The White Rabbit? I questioned in my mind. As the carriage door opened, I stepped up and grabbed the railing to which I found an empty car. Taking a seat that faced the paintless wall, I closed my eyes and heard the little woman slowly finding a seat. The train then pulled off of the platform and continued it's journey.

After what only seemed like a few minutes, my train reached the Shinkoku Line Station and so I wiped the steamy glass to look for this 'person' I was supposedly going to meet. There was no one. The train moved on suddenly and I hit the wall in frustration of my gullible behaviour. The old woman didn't seem to stir at all. Everything was silent except for the rattle of the baggage bays overhead, but suddenly, hurried footsteps could be heard becoming louder and louder. The door connecting the two carriages together opened and all of a sudden a woman walked through, dressed in black leather, with black hair and black sunglasses. She looked down and met my eyes, I could tell something was going on.

"Come with me." She spoke softly and reached out her hand of which I took and stood up.

"Who are you?" I asked but for no reply.

"Come on." She said as she looked further down the carriage.

All of a sudden a sound similar to a narrowband connection could be heard and the old woman began to make violent spasms. She then began to morph into what looked like a well dressed, neatly shaven man who wore sunglasses and an ear piece. He then looked up at the woman and smirked, "There you are."

"Come on!" The woman shouted as she tugged my hand. My adrenalin rushed through my veins as we charged down the carriage to a service telephone. The man stood up and did not run but just walked calmly towards us, picking something out of his pockets.

The woman desperately grabbed for the phone which was now ringing eerily. I began to breathe faster as I realised what the man was picking out, a gun. Reaching into my coat pocket, I pulled out the same and aimed it straight at the man's head, tonight was not the night I was going to die. Pulling the trigger, I made a very accurate shot which failed in hitting the target miserably, he simply tilted his head to the side.

"You won't be able to kill him! Let's go!" The woman shouted to me as she reached for my hand. As I reached for hers I heard a large thunderclap of which my head jolted uncontrollably. Barely missing her hand I fell to the ground and looked up to the now hanging phone, the woman was gone, as was the man. I couldn't hear anything except for the deep echoes of the train's movements, my sunglasses fell off and I began to feel cold. After seconds of shock, it appears I blacked out. But not for the worst.

I had only woken up.

Just a note, guys. I'd like it if you would all include titles to your pieces, so that I can create an index of short stories and their authors within the first post. ^_^

I'm really pleased with this so far. I encourage everyone to give it a try and to branch out as much as you like.

I am going to take this opportunity to present an official piece, written by Neil Gaiman. Hopefully this should also provide some ideas. ^_^

---

Goliath, by Neil Gaiman


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I suppose that I could claim that I had always suspected that the world was a cheap and shoddy sham, a bad cover for something deeper and weirder and infinitely more strange, and that, in some way, I already knew the truth. But I think that's just how the world has always been. And even now that I know the truth, as you will, my love, if you're reading this, the world still seems cheap and shoddy. Different world, different shoddy, but that's how it feels.

They say, here's the truth, and I say, is that all there is? And they say, kind of. Pretty much. As far as we know.

So. It was 1977, and the nearest I had come to computers was I'd recently bought a big, expensive calculator, and then I'd lost the manual that came with it, so I didn't know what it did any more. I'd add, subtract, multiply and divide, and was grateful I had no need to cos, sine or find tangents or graph functions or whatever else the gizmo did, because, having been turned down by the RAF, I was working as a bookkeeper for a small discount carpet warehouse in Edgware, in North London, near the top of the Northern Line, and I was sitting at the table at the back of the warehouse that served me as a desk when the world began to melt and drip away.

Honest. It was like the walls and the ceiling and the rolls of carpet and the News of the World Topless Calendar were all made of wax, and they started to ooze and run, to flow together and to drip. I could see the houses and the sky and the clouds and the road behind them, and then that dripped and flowed away, and behind that was blackness.

I was standing in the puddle of the world, a weird, brightly coloured thing that oozed and brimmed and didn't cover the tops of my brown leather shoes (I have feet like shoeboxes. Boots have to be specially made for me. Costs me a fortune). The puddle cast a weird light upwards.

In fiction, I think I would have refused to believe it was happening, wonder if I'd been drugged or if I was dreaming. In reality, hell, it had happened, and I stared up into the darkness, and then, when nothing happened, I began to walk, splashing through the liquid world, calling out, seeing if anyone was there.

Something flickered in front of me.

"Hey," said a voice. The accent was American, although the intonation was odd.

"Hello," I said.

The flickering continued for a few moments, and then resolved itself into a smartly-dressed man in thick horn-rimmed spectacles.

"You're a pretty big guy," he said. "You know that?"

Of course I knew that. I was 19 years old and I was close to seven feet tall. I have fingers like bananas. I scare children. I'm unlikely to see my 40th birthday: people like me die young.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Do you know?"

"Enemy missile took out a central processing unit," he said. "Two hundred thousand people, hooked up in parallel, blown to dead meat. We've got a mirror going of course, and we'll have it all up and running again in no time flat. You're just free-floating here for a couple of nanoseconds, while we get London processing again."

"Are you God?" I asked. Nothing he had said had made any sense to me.

"Yes. No. Not really," he said. "Not as you mean it, anyway."

And then the world lurched and I found myself coming to work again that morning, poured myself a cup of tea, had the longest, strangest bout of deja vu I've ever had. Twenty minutes, where I knew everything that anyone was going to do or say. And then it went, and time passed properly once more, every second following every other second just like they're meant to.

And the hours passed, and the days, and the years.

I lost my job in the carpet company, and got a new one bookkeeping for a company selling business machines, and I got married to a girl called Sandra I met at the swimming baths and we had a couple of kids, both normal sized, and I thought I had the sort of marriage that could survive anything, but I hadn't, so she went away and she took the kiddies with her. I was in my late 20s, and it was 1986, and I got a job on Tottenham Court Road selling computers, and I turned out to be good at it.

I liked computers.

I liked the way they worked. It was an exciting time. I remember our first shipment of ATs, some of them with 40 megabyte hard drives... Well, I was impressed easily back then.

I still lived in Edgware, commuted to work on the Northern Line. I was on the tube one evening, going home - we'd just gone through Euston and half the passengers had got off -- looking at the other people in the carriage over the top of the Evening Standard and wondering who they were - who they really were, inside - the thin, black girl writing earnestly in her notebook, the little old lady with the green velvet hat on, the girl with the dog, the bearded man with the turban...

And then the tube stopped, in the tunnel.

That was what I thought happened, anyway: I thought the tube had stopped. Everything went very quiet.

And then we went through Euston, and half the passengers got off.

And then we went through Euston, and half the passengers got off. And I was looking at the other passengers and wondering who they really were inside when the train stopped in the tunnel. And everything went very quiet.

And then everything lurched so hard I thought we'd been hit by another train.

And then we went through Euston, and half the passengers got off, and then the train stopped in the tunnel, and then everything went -

(Normal service will be resumed as possible, whispered a voice in the back of my head.)

And this time as the train slowed and began to approach Euston I wondered if I was going crazy: I felt like I was jerking back and forth on a video loop. I knew it was happening, but there was nothing I could do to change anything, nothing I could do to break out of it.

The black girl, sitting next to me, passed me a note. ARE WE DEAD? it said.

I shrugged. I didn't know. It seemed as good an explanation as any.

And then everything faded to white.

There was no ground beneath my feet, nothing above me, no sense of distance, no sense of time. I was in a white place. And I was not alone.

The man wore thick horn-rimmed spectacles, and a suit that looked like it might have been Armani. "You again?" he said. "The big guy. I just spoke to you."

"I don't think so," I said.

"Half an hour ago. When the missiles hit."

"Back in the carpet factory? That was years ago."

"About thirty-seven minutes back. We've been running in an accelerated mode since then, trying to patch and cover, while we've been processing potential solutions."

"Who sent the missiles?" I asked. "The U.S.S.R.? The Iranians?"

"Aliens," he said.

"You're kidding?"

"Not as far as we can tell. We've been sending out seed-probes for a couple of hundred years now. Looks like something has followed one back. We learned about it when the first missiles landed. It's taken us a good twenty minutes to get a retaliatory plan up and running. That's why we've been processing in overdrive. Did it seem like the last decade went pretty fast?"

"Yeah. I suppose."

"That's why. We ran it through pretty fast, trying to maintain a common reality while processing."

"So what are you going to do?"

"We're going to counter-attack. We're going to take them out. It's going to take a while: we don't have the machinery right now. We have to build it."

The white was fading now, fading into dark pinks and dull reds. I opened my eyes. For the first time.

So. Sharp the world and tangled-tubed and strange and dark and somewhere beyond belief. It made no sense. Nothing made sense. It was real, and it was a nightmare. It lasted for thirty seconds, and each cold second felt like a tiny forever.

And then we went through Euston, and half the passengers got off...

I started talking to the black girl with the notebook. Her name was Susan. Several weeks later she moved in with me.

Time rumbled and rolled. I suppose I was becoming sensitive to it. Maybe I knew what I was looking for - knew there was something to look for, even if I didn't know what it was.

I made the mistake of telling Susan some of what I believed one night - about how none of this was real. About how we were really just hanging there, plugged and wired, central processing units or just cheap memory chips for some computer the size of the world, being fed a consensual hallucination to keep us happy, to allow us to communicate and dream using the tiny fraction of our brains that they weren't using to crunch numbers and store information.

"We're memory," I told her. "That's what we are. Memory."

"You don't really believe this stuff," she told me, and her voice was trembling. "It's a story."

When we made love, she always wanted me to be rough with her, but I never dared. I didn't know my own strength, and I'm so clumsy. I didn't want to hurt her. I never wanted to hurt her, so I stopped telling her my ideas.

It didn't matter. She moved out the following weekend.

I missed her.

The moments of deja-vu were coming more frequently, now. Moments would stutter and hiccup and falter and repeat.

And then I woke up one morning and it was 1975 again, and I was sixteen, and after a day of hell at school I was walking out of school, into the RAF recruiting office next to the kebab house in Chapel Road.

"You're a big lad," said the recruiting officer. I thought he was American, but he said he was Canadian. He wore big horn-rimmed glasses.

"Yes," I said.

"And you want to fly?"

"More than anything," I said. It seemed like I half-remembered a world in which I'd forgotten that I wanted to fly planes, which seemed as strange to me as forgetting my own name.

"Well," said the horn-rimmed man, "We're going to have to bend a few rules. But we'll have you up in the air in no time." And he meant it, too.

The next few years passed really fast. It seemed like I spent all of them in planes of different kinds, cramped into tiny cockpits, in seats I barely fitted, flicking switches too small for my fingers.

I got Secret clearance, then I got Noble clearance, which leaves Secret clearance in the shade, and then I got Graceful clearance, which the Prime Minister himself doesn't have, by which time I was piloting flying saucers and other craft that moved with no visible means of support.

I started dating a girl called Sandra, and then we got married, because if we married we got to move into married quarters, which was a nice little semidetached house near Dartmoor. We never had any children: I had been warned that it was possible I might have been exposed to enough radiation to fry my gonads, and it seemed sensible not to try for kids, under the circumstances: didn't want to breed monsters.

It was 1985 when the man with horn-rimmed spectacles walked into my house.

My wife was at her mother's that week. Things had got a bit tense, and she'd moved out to buy herself some 'breathing room'. She said I was getting on her nerves. But if I was getting on anyone's nerves, I think it must have been my own. It seemed like I knew what was going to happen all the time. Not just me: it seemed like everyone knew what was going to happen. Like we were sleepwalking through our lives for the tenth or the twentieth or the hundredth time.

I wanted to tell Sandra, but somehow I knew better, knew I'd lose her if I opened my mouth. Still, I seemed to be losing her anyway. So I was sitting in the lounge watching The Tube on Channel Four and drinking a mug of tea, and feeling sorry for myself.

The man with the horn-rimmed specs walked into my house like he owned the place. He checked his watch.

"Right," he said. "Time to go. You'll be piloting something pretty close to a PL-47."

Even people with Graceful clearance weren't meant to know about PL-47s. I'd flown one a dozen times. Looked like a tea-cup, flew like something from Star Wars.

"Shouldn't I leave a note for Sandra?" I asked.

"No," he said, flatly. "Now, sit down on the floor and breathe deeply, and regularly. In, out, in out."

It never occurred to me to argue with him, or to disobey. I sat down on the floor, and I began to breathe, slowly, in and out and out and in and...

In.

Out.

In.

A wrenching. The worst pain I've ever felt. I was choking.

In.

Out.

I was screaming, but I could hear my voice and I wasn't screaming. All I could hear was a low bubbling moan.

In.

Out.

It was like being born. It wasn't comfortable, or pleasant. It was the breathing carried me through it, through all the pain and the darkness and the bubbling in my lungs. I opened my eyes.

I was lying on a metal disk about eight feet across. I was naked, wet and surrounded by a sprawl of cables. They were retracting, moving away from me, like scared worms or nervous brightly coloured snakes.

I was naked. I looked down at my body. No body hair, no wrinkles. I wondered how old I was, in real terms. Eighteen? Twenty? I couldn't tell.

There was a glass screen set into the floor of the metal disk. It flickered and came to life. I was staring at the man in the horn-rimmed spectacles.

"Do you remember?" he asked. "You should be able to access most of your memory for the moment."

"I think so," I told him.

"You'll be in a PL-47," he said. "We've just finished building it. Pretty much had to go back to first principles, come forward. Modify some factories to construct it. We'll have another batch of them finished by tomorrow. Right now we've only got one."

"So if this doesn't work, you've got replacements for me."

"If we survive that long," he said. "Another missile bombardment started about fifteen minutes ago. Took out most of Australia. We project that it's still a prelude to the real bombing."

"What are they dropping? Nuclear weapons?"

"Rocks."

"Rocks?"

"Uh-huh. Rocks. Asteroids. Big ones. We think that tomorrow unless we surrender, they may drop the moon on us."

"You're joking."

"Wish I was." The screen went dull.

The metal disk had been navigating its way through a tangle of cables and a world of sleeping naked people. It had slipped over sharp microchip towers and softly glowing silicone spires.

The PL-47 was waiting for me at the top of a metal mountain. Tiny metal crabs scuttled across it, polishing and checking every last rivet and stud.

I walked inside on tree-trunk legs that still trembled and shook. I sat down in the pilot's chair, and was thrilled to realise that it had been built for me. It fitted. I strapped myself down. My hands began to go through warm-up sequence. Cables crept over my arms. I felt something plugging into the base of my spine, something else moving in and connecting at the top of my neck.

My perception of the ship expanded radically. I had it in 360 degrees, above, below. And at the same time, I was sitting in the cabin, activating the launch codes.

"Good luck," said the horn-rimmed man on a tiny screen to my left.

"Thank you. Can I ask one last question?"

"I don't see why not."

"Why me?"

"Well," he said, "the short answer is that you were designed to do this. We've improved a little on the basic human design in your case. You're bigger. You're much faster. You have faster processing speeds and reaction times."

"I'm not faster. I'm big, but I'm clumsy."

"Not in real life," he said. "That's just in the world."

And I took off.

I never saw the aliens, if there were any aliens, but I saw their ship. It looked like fungus or seaweed: the whole thing was organic, an enormous glimmering thing, orbiting the moon. It looked like something you'd see growing on a rotting log, half-submerged under the sea. It was the size of Tasmania.

Two-hundred mile-long sticky tendrils were dragging asteroids of various sizes behind them. It reminded me a little of the trailing tendrils of a portuguese man o' war, that strange compound sea-creature.

They started throwing rocks at me as I got a couple of hundred thousand miles away.

My fingers were activating the missile bay, aiming at a floating nucleus, while I wondered what I was doing. I wasn't saving the world I knew. That world was imaginary: a sequence of ones and zeroes. I was saving a nightmare...

But if the nightmare died, the dream was dead too.

There was a girl named Susan. I remembered her, from a ghost-life long gone. I wondered if she was still alive (had it been a couple of hours? Or a couple of lifetimes?). I supposed she was dangling from cables somewhere, with no memory of a miserable, paranoid giant.

I was so close I could see the ripples of the thing. The rocks were getting smaller, and more accurate. I dodged and wove and skimmed. Part of me was just admiring the economy of the thing: no expensive explosives to build and buy. Just good old kinetic energy.

If one of those things had hit the ship I would have been dead. Simple as that.

The only way to avoid them was to outrun them. So I kept running.

The nucleus was staring at me. It was an eye of some kind. I was certain of it.

I was a hundred yards away from the nucleus when I let the payload go. Then I ran.

I wasn't quite out of range when the thing imploded. It was like fireworks - beautiful in a ghastly sort of way. And then there was nothing but a faint trace of glitter and dust...

"I did it!" I screamed. "I did it! I ******* well did it!"

The screen flickered. Horn-rimmed spectacles were staring at me. There was no real face behind them any more. Just a loose approximation of concern and interest. "You did it," he agreed.

"Now, where do I bring this thing down?" I asked.

There was a hesitation, then, "You don't. We didn't design it to return. It was a redundancy we had no need for. Too costly, in terms of resources."

"So what do I do? I just saved the Earth. And now I suffocate out here?"

He nodded. "That's pretty much it. Yes."

The lights began to dim. One by one, the controls were going out. I lost my 360 degree perception of the ship. It was just me, strapped to a chair in the middle of nowhere, inside a flying teacup.

"How long do I have?"

"We're closing down all your systems, but you've got a couple of hours, at least. We're not going to evacuate the remaining air. That would be inhuman."

"You know, in the world I came from, they would have given me a medal."

"Obviously, we're grateful."

"So you can't come up with any more tangible way to express your gratitude?"

"Not really. You're a disposable part. A unit. We can't mourn you any more than a wasps' nest mourns the death of a single wasp. It's not sensible and it's not viable to bring you back."

"And you don't want this kind of firepower coming back toward the Earth, where it could be used against you?"

"As you say."

And then the screen went dark, with not so much as a goodbye. Do not adjust your set, I thought. Reality is at fault.

You become very aware of your breathing, when you only have a couple of hours of air. In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out. Hold....

I sat there strapped to my seat in the half-dark, and I waited, and I thought. Then I said, "Hello? Is anybody there?"

A beat. The screen flickered with patterns. "Yes?"

"I have a request. Listen. You - you people, machines, whatever you are - you owe me one. Right? I mean I saved all your lives."

http://www.otakuboards.com/attachmen...id=18502&stc=1

"...Continue."

"I've got a couple of hours left. Yes?"

"About 57 minutes."

"Can you plug me back into the... the real world. The other world. The one I came from?"

"Mm? I don't know. I'll see." Dark screen once more.

I sat and breathed, in and out, in and out, while I waited. I felt very peaceful. If it wasn't for having less than an hour to live, I'd have felt just great.

The screen glowed. There was no picture, no pattern, no nothing. Just a gentle glow. And a voice, half in my head, half out of it, said, "You got a deal."

There was a sharp pain at the base of my skull. Then blackness, for several minutes.

Then this.

That was fifteen years ago: 1984. I went back into computers. I own my computer store on the Tottenham Court Road. And now, as we head toward the new millennium, I'm writing this down. This time around, I married Susan. It took me a couple of months to find her. We have a son.

I'm nearly forty. People of my kind don't live much longer than that, on the whole. Our hearts stop. When you read this, I'll be dead. You'll know that I'm dead. You'll have seen a coffin big enough for two men dropped into a hole.

But know this, Susan, my sweet: my true coffin is orbiting the moon. It looks like a flying teacup. They gave me the world back, and you back, for a little while. Last time I told you, or someone like you, the truth, or what I knew of it, you walked out on me. And maybe that wasn't you, and I wasn't me, but I don't dare risk it again. So I'm going to write this down, and you'll be given it with the rest of my papers when I'm gone. Goodbye.

They may be heartless, unfeeling, computerised bastards, leeching off the minds of what's left of humanity. But I can't help feeling grateful to them.

I'll die soon. But the last twenty minutes have been the best years of my life.


http://www.otakuboards.com/attachmen...id=18503&stc=1

---

I am bored I stare at my screen, and it stares back A stark white canvas, with one infernal line blinking Always blinking It doesn't move It just blinks Forever more But no! It moves It types It is asking me, 'Who am I' Where am I? My mind boggles, I feel sick I pass out, my head hitting the desk with a thump Eyes opening, bleary, painful Floating. Floating? Why am I floating? A tube drives deep into my chest Yet it doesn't bother me It is like it is a part of me And has always been there But my suspicions are taking me over Why is the tube there? Why do I float? I rage, and rip the tube out I lash out against nothing I black out once more Whilst floating Awake Not floating Covered in goo, sticky Covered in wires, like some sick fetish Where am I? Who am I? I tear the wires out one by one Raging once more, Until the insect appears, And I see, never more

A 'Machine's' Call To Duty


"Is A112 ready?" I heard a voice similar to mine speak out.

"Affirmative." Then, I heard a second, followed by silence.

As soon as I opened my eyes I noticed that the head of my model had been altered. There, staring me in the face was a glass visor of a transparent nature with a tint of turquoise. A few meters and readings were scattered across but they did not move, or change for that matter. I didn't know why I had been tampered with at all, but I eventually found out.

Somehow I managed to see through the visor and realised what I really was looking at. A large, oblong dome for a window was being supported by a metallic structure that encased everything, including myself. Through the window all I could see was a dark grey ceiling, and so I wanted to find out where I was. I went to move... but I couldn't. I went to move my head... but I couldn't. I was bound by an unknown force.

"Hello?" I called out in the hope that someone would answer me.

All of a sudden, my body and head jolted as the force that bound me seemed to be lifted. I noticed that they were black cables retracting into small cylinders surrounding me. I could now move and I tried to do what I attempted to do earlier with success.

Having sat up, I looked at my body. My smart clothing had been removed and replaced with armour of some sort. A reading appeared on my visor stating, 'Synthetic material. Plastic adhesive coating = Form of protection'. Protection against what? I thought. But I was inevitably going to find out.

I then looked around and noticed a figure next to me that seemed to have been disabled from it's power. It was dressed like me, built like me, I thought it was me. I then looked around and noticed another figure, and another, and another. Each built and modelled exactly like me, but all of them were powerless.

I had no idea what was going on, but I continued to survey the area. All of us were positioned between two pedestals of some sort, each containing a lever on each pedestal with a form of trigger at the top. Next to every right pedestal was a glowing button with a number blinking every second, decreasing in value. It seemed as if it was a countdown.

The small, round room of which 'we' were in was small and dark. So dark that I felt alone.

[7]

So dark that I felt isolated.

[6]

So dark that I felt afraid.

[5]

So dark that I felt I needed someone.

[4]

So dark that I felt I needed anything.

I had never experienced these feelings before. Are these, 'emotions'? I thought.

So many thoughts struck me all at once, it felt like my system was deteriating, as if I was about to break down at any moment. And then suddenly, the room shook violently and the deep screeches of a metal hull lifting, sounded. I was thrown back and the cylinders around me shook as their cables slithered like snakes towards my limbs, attaching themselves. My hands were pulled towards the levers on the pedestals and my index fingers were positioned upon both triggers. Then, my legs were bound by round, metal clasps as if I needed to be supported, and eventually I would need to be.

The lights scattered around the room flickered until they lit up for the last time, this time permanently. The room was filled with a bright light which was dimmed by a thin, blue layer that surrounded the room. I turned to look at what came upon my fellow 'clones', I had thought they were thrown at all different angles, but they were now attached the cables I were, eyes opening and blinking every now and again.

I took the chance to communicate with the robot below me, "Hello."

"Hello." It replied with a tilted head towards me, staring blankly.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"We are inside another machine."

"Another machine?" I repeated in question.

"In a sense yes. It is more like a weapon. Think of it like a cell, and we are the nuclei."

"How can I be a nucleus if I don't even have the knowledge to operate this weapon?" I asked.

"You have the knowledge." It replied once again, monotonously.

"Why are we using a weapon?"

"To fight the war."

"What war?" I asked, storing the information for further use.

"The war between man and machine."

Suddenly, it's head returned to it's position, looking up at the globe-like window. The room itself seemed to be lifted and rotated at a ninety degrees angle forwards and so we were practically dangling. The room we were in then shook with every... Step? I thought. And we were plunged into darkness, stepping into nothingness until the black surface in front of our 'weapon' opened horizontally and everything was gloomily lit. We seemed to turn in both directions and I noticed there were three times the amount of us, each group of 6 in what seemed like a metallic monster with huge legs and four spiny tentacles. Is that what I'm inside? I thought.

"Commence battle operations." A scratchy voice sounded over the intercom, and from then on, I knew exactly what to do for an unknown reason.

Ahead was a destroyed field, letting off explosions every now and again as swarms of man and machine charged against eachother. The sky was black, there was no sun and so I wondered how I was still functional.

A platoon of armed men could be seen nearing our 'weapon' and so I reacted with a pull of the right lever causing a black, pointed whip to be seen penetrating the lead-trooper's chest. The tentacle lifted the screaming man while it was fired at from the platoon but it didn't affect or damage it whatsoever. Then, the tentacle automatically took control and returned to pluck another troop, only to be placed above again.

"Begin the harvest." We all said simultaneously.

http://www.otakuboards.com/attachmen...id=18511&stc=1

Touch me now, while I can still be sure it’s real
Breathe with me, before I die from artificial air

Look at me, remember you promised not to let go
Convince me, the nightmare was a mere reflection of a ghost

Stay by my side, you know it’s not time to leave
Come with me, let’s bring life to what was once a dream....

Where is this?
Where is this?

Where is it happening
Happening?
Where is it
happening?

Where is this?
Where is this?

This is where we roam.
This is where we go.
It is our home.
We won't let you have it.
It's our own.

Where is this?
Where is this?

But you should've known
You should've known

This is where the machines roam.
This is where the machines roam.

---

A child--the innocent bystander of every story that's had its yarn. The question that's pertinent is if you can sew them right. Or if you cut them in the process.

We were all children once. Look over at that elderly man there--the one that's at the bus stop, the sun on his face like a halo. He was once a child. And look over there--the alley. There's a bum there. He's got a long beard, and a strained face. It's sure you could smell the reek of alcohol from him, since he's got a bottle in his hand. He was once a child.

We were all once children.

How can something as beautiful as this come torn away? How can it leave us, like it wasn't ever there? It's such a paradox. From the outside, it looks contradicting. How can anyone lose their essence--lose the child in them? But deeper in, in most peoples' eyes, it's really gone.

Gone is the imagination. Gone is the wonder. Gone is the splendor. It's all gone.

All of it.

What took it? How could it possibly have been taken? I know I will fight for my child. But what happened to the rest?

I've seen it. Yes. I have. I have seen what's taken it.

The world, it's one big machine. The way it functions. The way it appears. The way it eats at you. The way it shows itself. It's all a machine.

Each and every day, we awake from our sleep: from our dreams. We wake up to go out and waste our lives away doing what this machine wants us to do. What it tells us.

Get an education. Learn about humanly-created facts. Devices. Ideals. Subjects.

Get a job. Get experienced in your job. Uphold the status quo. Get your money. Save some of it for retirement.

Get a nice house. A nice car. A nice wife. Get a nice life. Get a nice reason to your existence. Get a nice way to live.

It's all about it being nice when it's not nice at all.

All the while, your heart's slowly ripped right from your chest.

The cold metal will first feel your hair. Then your neck. It will touch your lips. Your lips will flutter in fear. You will feel the metal and it will numb you. You are touched by the machine. Deus ex Machina. Your are touched by the God that comes from the machine. What it does to you. What it forces you to do. What it tells you to do. Your are brainwashed. You are stymied. Hampered. Impeded upon. And in the grip of this God that comes from the machine, that watches over it all, you become so disillusioned that you can't even see how much of a waste of time it is. All of it. The machine assimilates you and moves you on.

To assimilate you, it'll take your heart. Just your heart. It's nothing much. Nothing much at all. In the heart there's many things. There is blood. There is capillaries. There is veins. There is movement. There is beathing: a resonant thud-thud. And here there is no machine. It is all muscle, cells. There is no machine.

But are our bodies not machines themselves? Just shells we wear? Perhaps it is true. But it is our minds. From our minds we ascend. With our minds we are more than machines. Even if our minds are cold and calculating in what they do, there must be something more there. Is there?

I have searched for the answer. I believe what makes us different from machines is we feel emotions. And we have feelings. And most of all, we have heart. Hearts that're far more than blood, tissue, muscle, capillaries, cells, atoms, electrons, neutrons. You can go small as you want. There's something more to it than that.

And that part of me I won't let Them take.

I can feel the machine probing me. Feeling me up. It wants to entice me. It wants me to break down to it. To give into it. It wants my heart.

It wants the me I know to die so the me I don't know comes to life. The me who has an iron heart. Who is a machine in every way. Flawless in action, unfeeling and cold in demeanor. That's what it wants.

Some have lost. Some have let the God that comes from the machine gain them. Let Him conquer them. I won't.

Over in my mind, I see what it's like. The metal hand, it grasps you. Comforts and numbs you till you can't feel anymore. Then, when you're least paying attention, it slowly crawls its fingers up your bare chest. Crawls like a worm.

It comes to the center of your chest. It gropes there, feeling. Feeling the warmth of what's down there. It knows the warmth. It knows it's not needed.

Then down. Down it beats into your chest. First it bruises your skin, softens it up. The beating resonates in your ears, but you are too dumbed to hear it. Too numb. Your eyes are off in the distance, they aren't your own eyes anymore. They are someone else's. The someone else of you.

The middle of your chest now a bruised smear, the hand retracts, moves its fingers back and forth, back and forth. It prepares.

Then.

Then with intense speed its hand rears down. Its fingers, held open, dig into the middle of your chest. The skin is punctured, torn. It digs deep in, moving its mechanical fingers for leverage. Down in. Down in it goes. The blood. The anomalous pain you cannot feel. Then with precison unlike in human nature, it is at your heart. Holding it. Cradling it like it's a baby. Like it's a baby for it to own. Like it's given birth to it. It's nourished it, nourished it from a fetus to what it is now. And it's true. It has nourished it. You've been alive in the world--the way it is, the way it acts, its proclivities, its banalities. You've been with its everything since the beginning. It had you from the beginning. Had you enslaved. Servile, you had done what you had done, thinking it was right.

Now it comes down to this. The stealing of your heart. Of the thing that makes you most you. The thing that's different than anyone else's. The thing that has you in it, and is the you you know in every way.

Thud. Beat. Thud thud. Beat. Can you hear it? Can you hear it beating. Beating as its hand's in there? I can. And it's dying.

This is not the first time it's been in your heart. It's fingered it before. Fingered it like it had an itch to. There are scars on your heart from where it's gotten you before. But this isn't before. Scars are memoirs of what should never be allowed again, but it is too late now. It's too late for you. The machine has you. It's got you down with just its presence, and now it's got you by your heart.

I can feel it touching your heart. I can feel it, and it is sending shivers up my spine.

The hand lies in there for a while. Just cradling your heart. Feeling it up. It's taking its good time. It's taking its good time because it knows it has its good time to take.

Then it goes in. It's a well-trained killing machine. It knows right where to go. It goes to your vena cava--the largest artery in the heart. It chokes it with its two fingers. Then it grabs the rest--blood dying and all--and brings it out. It holds it in its hands for a while. You're still sitting there. Blind to it all.

It sets your heart down--it's dying now, the beats are slowing; soon it'll be gone. Gone forever.

It comes at you and takes a metal heart out. Cold still. This one's cold steel. It's steel cold.

And in you it goes.

It's too late now.

When you finally wake up--when you finally feel a hint of what is taken, when you finally know what's happened--that your whole life was stolen from you from the beginning, you'll be too old to do a thing about it. You'll be old, emaciated, inundated, debilitated. Wasted away. There'll be nothing you can do.

When you die you'll die alone. You'll die alone because you don't have your heart.

I won't let it happen to me. I am standing outside the bus stop as I write this. The old man I was talking about--I can see it in his eyes. He's been dead a long time. I feel numb. I feel dead too. But in that dead carcass of nothing, in that dead carcass of nothing that's inside me, that I'm swallowing, I feel something moving. I feel something slithering and heartening me. It tells me to keep me me, and not let the machine take me.

I listen. Walking in the bus, I listen.

They all follow their God here. Their God who made Jesus Christ. Their God who put him on the cross. That God comes from the machine. God isn't like that. God isn't.

God is not judicious. If he were judicious, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. Wars wouldn't have happened. Suffering would not have happened. The machine we live in today wouldn't have happened. If God was what they say he is, then I'd still be a child. I wouldn't be changing, struggling to keep me me. Struggling to have it.

We all carry our crosses. We carry them our whole lives, and we suffer as much, if not more than, Jesus Christ did in that one day. The machine tries to help us carry it, but it can't.

You're going to be crucified by that cross one day. I'd rather make mine the real me. I'd rather write on it what I want. I'd rather bleed and sweat and cry on my own. Not for this machine. Not for this waste of time world. Not for this.

But I can't.

It's funny that those who have full hearts are seen as the most empty.

---

In we go
In we go
In we go
Go go go
In we
In we
Go

In we go
We go

Goodbye heart
Goodbye

---

This plays on the idea that the machines are just like humans. It pits two clone-field harvesters in a 'human-like' conversation.

---

The machine glided through row upon row of humans, idly checking each pod with it sensors as it passed.

Alive, alive, alive, dead, dead, alive, dead, dying, alive The machine stopped. They had fought a bitter war with the humans for this? Turning around the machine beeped to its closest mechanical neighbour:

Hey Jim? Did you picture this when we slaughtered those humans? Both the machine and Jim were very old units, around since humans breeded naturally.

No way man! 'Jim' beeped back. I was seein days just lazin around at ground level, barrel of oil in one tentacle, human pods to leech energy off in all the others. I tell ya Rob, we missed out when we signed up for 'civil duties'

Blegh, Rob beeped. Civil duties? More like servo-draining hard work. Both machines beeped in a random matter - it was what served as a laugh. The Architect's voice cut into the back of both machines minds as they beeped, bringing them both back to earth.

You two! Back to work! Efficency is done 0.0000000000000000007% because of this idle chit chat!

Jim sighed.

See ya at the docks Rob, he said as he glided away. Rob waved with a few dozen of his metallic tentacles in farewell.

If some 'free humans' don't get me first The two hulking machines laughed once more, before getting back to their allocated duties. Free humans was an old joke among the lesser machines.

Dead, dead, dead, alive, alive, dead, dead...

Again, I want to remind everybody to include titles with each piece, so that I can credit you. Mitch, I removed the two song lyrics posts, because they were neither your own work, nor were the "official" Matrix stuff. But everything else is fine, so it's been left as-is.

Also, I want to stress that I'm not holding people to any constraints about what they post, except that obviously, you have to post Matrix-related stuff that is your own work. So far I'm incredibly impressed with everything I've seen, and I really want to encourage people to post their work here -- please do not be concerned about your post quality, or English skills.

This is one occasion where I really don't care. If you have fun writing your piece and if you really want to submit it, please do so. There aren't any requirements on post quality in this thread, provided that your piece is Matrix related and within reason (so obviously, something that's two lines and unreadable wouldn't qualify).

Anyway, here's my next piece. Like the first one, it's based on my original character notes. Actually, this is my original set of notes for Sabine. I decided not to edit it, unlike my first one.

Oh, and, CrH...I borrowed your HTML for this one. Thank you. ~_^

---

Midnight Chase

http://www.otakuboards.com/attachmen...id=18543&stc=1

Sabine was a police officer; a traffic cop, to be precise. Highway patrol. Nothing too out of the ordinary. That is, until a high speed chase changed her life forever. She was tailing a speeding truck in her cruiser for several kilometers, until it finally pulled over on the side of the road. And just as she went to give the driver a ticket, he took off at full speed. Sabine jumped into the cruiser and gave chase. The pursuit lasted for more than an hour, until it came to a horrible end. Sabine raced along a highway bridge, which sat over a wide river. She sped along beside the truck and edged toward it, in an attempt to force the driver to stop. But she was not prepared for what followed. The truck driver veered across the broken line and nudged her cruiser; there was only a slight kiss between the two vehicles, but it was enough to send Sabine's cruiser lurching sideways through oncoming traffic. Sabine's eyes were wide with terror, as she attempted to gain control of the vehicle. But it was too late. The cruiser ploughed through a concrete barrier and dived off the bridge, toward the murky water hundreds of meters below. Sabine stared intently at the wall of blackness that was fast approaching. She stared so intently, that the wall seemed to slow down. It was no longer speeding toward her, but rather, it seemed to be creeping away from her. Sabine looked away from the river, which now appeared as a tiny speck in the distance. The car was gone from around her and she could no longer see it. Instead of falling, she was flying high above the world. For a moment, it was peaceful. She could hear water running nearby and birds calling in the distance. And then, as suddenly as it had started, the black river approached her again. She began falling faster than before. And just as she hit the river's surface, her eyes opened for a second time. She was immersed in a pink gelatenous liquid.

---

My attempt at a Matrix-esque story. Personally, I don't like it that much. But I'm not the one who's reading it, eh?

~~~~~~~~

The man stood atop an old crate, at the corner of 180th and 5th. Stood there for two days.

Cars and people milled about, hearing but not listening. Who would listen to such a loon? He looked crazed, with his wild eyes and messy hair, rumpled tie and disheveled clothes. His face was grimy and lined, and he looked like a Holleywood Hobo.

"We must awake to the real world!" he yelled. "This world is a false-hood! A mimicry of existence! It is not real! I have seen the true world! The world beyond! We must awake! Awake to reality! We must go through the rabbit-hole!"

"Looks like someone's been chasing the 'white-rabbit'," a young man said to his friend, who mimied smoking a joint.

"We...we must not let them win! We must find the truth!

"But they don't want that! NO! They want us to stay here! They want to use us! Use us as their...their batteries! Batteries for the foul machines! The machines that threaten to enslave man-kind for all eternity! We must stop them!"

All around him, people shrugged off his words. Who should listen...who would listen? He was just a crazy, after all.

"We must awake! AWAKE!"

~~~~~~

Just a crazy. They knew that. The men...in the black coats. They took him away, kicking and screaming like the crazies do. They took him, and he didn't come back.

Why, do you think?

He had been there for two days, you see. They must've finally figured it out. And they got rid of him.

Really?

Yes. No more crazy conspiracy theories. No more cries for awakening. No more psychoes standing on the street-corners, yelled their insanities. No more.

Isn't is kind of suspicious, thought?

You're right. Those men in black coats were kind of suspicious. I mean, they didn't have badges or anything. But still, they must've been FBI.

You sure?

But who else could they be? They must've been police, or FBI, or CIA. They had guns, and black coats, and sunglasses. Who else would dress like that and take some crazy away?

Hm...

I mean, he was crazy, right? He couldn't have been in his right mind, right? He...he was wrong...right?

No.

No? He was right? Then...then what can we do? Awake? How?

You must...

Wait. What was that? That noise? Like a car...a car outside...

They're here for me.

You? They want you? For what?

Knowing.

Knowing? Knowing what?

I...I have to go!

Go? Go where?

You have to hide! They'll get you too!

What? Why?

You heard...

Heard? Heard what?

The soap-box serenade...

I haven't posted a short story in a while, and, to the best of my recollection, I've never based one off an existing property. So, here's what I ended up with. Sorry if it's somewhat boring. No cool illustrations either. =/

I am proud of how I managed to blur the lines between sexes though; there's never a clear distinction made as to whether or not the speaker is male or female (unless I messed up somewhere and don't realize it).

If the relationship to The Matrix material is too subtle or not what you're looking for here, just delete my post and private message me briefly so I don't feel too embarrassed or anything.

Pulling the Plug

The opening curtain had only just been raised, and there I was, approaching the final act.

I only knew the morning because you would draw back the curtains and tidy up around me. The early morning rays would filter through the musty panes, and breathe a soft incandescent glow into the otherwise cold linoleum. It was truly the loveliest part of the day. Far superior to the clear navy sky of night.

Otherwise, the same picture frames, wallpaper, medicine bottles and cables plugged me into one misery--this life for me. When I said the days ran together like the pain, you said you understood. The ache and I were constantly thrusted into a bitter, meaningless void. I would fall like a stone, and no matter how far down I was pushed, it remained bottomless. Suffering redefined. I was breathless; I didn’t want it. But, at the same time, I didn’t feel comfortable living in the past tense yet, either.

You said, Give me your hand.

And I did. It looked like it belonged to a child as it disappeared into your palm.

I looked into your eyes, those big beautiful eyes, those pulsing, swelling pools of compassion that had swept away so many sleepless nights over the years. There were lots of reasons I gave my hand to you, but to see you cry wasn’t one of them. And God bless you, your eyes were moist, but they never gave way. You stared into those glossy black orbs of mine with firm courage. You were good that way.

You never dwelled on your emotions because you didn’t want to make me feel guilty and I didn’t want you to think I wanted you to feel guilty. That was good enough for the both of us.

You told me, If I could take your Leukaemia, I would.

The stability in your voice was as thick as a curled eyelash.

I believed you.

I felt a peaceful smile crawl across my face. I heard the notes--and they formed a lullaby. I felt a great sense of uplifting that would sluice the fear away. My eyes shut and I faded off into never-never land. It was a full experience. That’s what made me want it all the more.

My slumber chipped away at the day like a pickaxe

When I awoke, the last rays of sunlight were slivering across the fertile bluegrass. My deep-set eyes and aquiline nose were unmistakable in the half-opened window‘s reflection. In that transparent visage, I saw you. I made myself not miss you. You holding my hand. You shifting in the undersized chair beside my bed. You brushing the back of your hand against my pasty cheek. You tidying up around me. You probing me with questions.

You weren’t doing ordinary things. You weren’t feeding the dogs. You weren’t listlessly thumbing through junk mail to find the bills. You weren’t pressing your breasts against a date’s shoulder at the climax of a scary film. You weren’t chatting idly over a cup of coffee.

How was it that, when you told me you would take my sickness, I believed you not realizing you already had?

A spring chill was in the air, nipping at my toes, carrying with it a subliminal sense of finality.

I wondered what you would be doing right now.

I plucked a wire from my body, and then another, and then another with undeniable ease. Outside, the steadily-darkening sky was becoming filled with a very heavy, thick-looking substance; a curiosity for anyone who should see it. I ripped more wires from my veins; the surrounding cacophony of mechanical beeping transformed into a long whine. Soon, the sky clouded over with ominous thunderheads.

Others surrounded me, screaming frantically, pleading for me to stop, flailing their arms as if to prevent the sky from falling.

They screamed, These are what's keeping you alive!

My mouth was closed. It wouldn't open. I couldn’t tell them anything.

A roll in the heavens preceded a blinding glint across the night sky that seemed to slice it in two. A surge of electricity popped the bulbs above us in a slow motion shower of golden star-shaped sparkles. And suddenly, there I was--struggling in a sludge pond, gasping, bleary-eyed, a helpless infant ready to be crushed or cradled but uncertain of either destiny. Thunder echoed, before another bolt cracked out across hard, dead lands, across jagged rock edges protruding out of the earth. Death--was everywhere.

The sludge began to bubble and froth. The gelatin on the outermost edges of the pond thinned into a liquid state, while the center coagulated and steamed like a boiling kettle. The middle began to rise up like the stalk of a strange liquidous/solid hybrid substance. It boiled and frothed still more. The stalk rose some twenty feet out of the pond. Then, it began to take form. Gigantic, tentacle-like legs emerged at the base. Trunk-like arms extended from the sides, dripping a thick ooze back into the originating source, yet the extremities themselves lost nothing in the way of mass.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. If I said I didn’t wonder what this purgatory had in store for me.

Amidst all the confusion, however, when nothing made sense at all, when everything I knew fell apart at the seams for the second time in my short existance, one thing did manage to become perfectly clear: The old cliche was wrong; surely I should have seen my life flash before my eyes. Instead, I pulled from it what was most important; I concentrated on what made it worth living to begin with. I thought of you, baby, dancing on a sunset strip somewhere outlined by a golden glow, a bleeding pink sky permeating your form, and I thought to myself, Whatever this is, whatever happens from this moment on, whatever is left unsaid between us, I‘d bear it for you in a heartbeat.

Witness

It was three years ago, before I was freed from the Matrix. I’d just begun contemplating a tactful way to ask my father for permission to go into the courtyard and play, when cold, echoing words began to fill the crisp autumn air. Then the sounds of a brawl began resounding through our apartment, and my father yelled for us to get on the floor. I was scared, and a little jealous. Everyone else was in the kitchen, which had a balcony that overlooked the courtyard, which was were the fighting seemed to be taking place. I debated crawling into the kitchen to see what was going on, but knew that my parents would be furious with me if I did. So instead I waited, listening to the voices outside grunting and groaning in agony of a feirce melee. I heard the swoosh of something cutting through the air like a sword, then a eerie crunch as it made contact with a body. Most likely it was a turf war between local gangs. There was simply no other explanation for such a large fight.

My attention was diverted to the kitchen, as I heard a strange noise, and muffled cries of pain. I placed my head on the floor and looked under the closed door of my room into the kitchen. A kitchen where, moments before, I was sure had been my family. Now, they were gone. Vanished from their prone positions on the floor, and nowhere to be seen. I got up, and looked through the keyhole of my door, terrified. The pounding of several pairs of shoes reached my ears as someone else walked though my house, down the back stairs, and out the door into the courtyard. It could have been several people; I was too scared to think straight.

Adrenaline pounded through my veins. Curiosity overpowered fear. I opened the door and nervously peeked out. Seeing nobody, I walked over to our balcony and looked down. What lay below was like nothing I’d seen before, or since.

In the courtyard below was a pile of men. They were all jumping on top of each other, as if trying to cover something beneath them. Stranger still was that all the men were wearing the exact same clothes. Upon closer inspection, they all were the same. Like identical twins, only there were about a hundred of them. I blinked and pinched my arm, but the dog pile of human clones remained.

A muffled voice spoke from deep within the pile, and I didn’t catch what he said. Then the others started echoing him, in a malevolent and gleeful way. Then silence filled the courtyard for the first time in what seemed like years. Nobody in the pile moved.

Then a cry came from the middle of the pile. A scream of rage so loud it pierced the mound of bodies it was enveloped in. Then the mountain of clones exploded.

Men in business suits went flying in every direction, one straight up into the sky for fifty feet before plummeting back to earth. Then a different figure caught my eye. One man emerged, who would have struck me as cool because of his sunglasses, if I hadn’t been completely scared. Moving with confidence and without a trace of emotion on his face, he looked around at the “clones”. Seeming neither worried, surprised or scared that he was surrounded by a mob of identical men, the different one gazed skyward. He knelt down, and the pavement beneath his feet rippled like water. After slowly raising his head to look up, he flew away. I was shocked. He just flew away. Just like superman…
In perfect unison, the clones looked up after him. They watched him, as did I, until he was no more than a speck in the distance.

Then the clones began dispersing. They exited the courtyard though every available exit, all one hundred of them, in just a few seconds. I began to worry that they might come into my house, but my curiosity got the better of me and I stayed to watch. One of the clones had stayed in the courtyard. Just one. Like all the rest, but different. He began to walk towards the main entrance to the courtyard, a door behind the bench. The doorknob turned in his hand and he was about to leave when he stopped. The “clone” raised his head and looked straight at me. It, whatever it was, stared into my eyes with a look of utter contempt and I stared back. After a moment, he left.

"Hurry up, man."

"Dude, shut up." This is a lot harder than it looks, thought the boy,
attaching the alligator clips to their corresponding wires. Field hacking: A
lot more work than conventional hacking, but bigger overall payoffs. The pr-
ocess involved taking a regular old phone cord, replacing the head with the
head with the alligator clips, and then going on a late-night stroll. These
boys were on one of these strolls.

A week prior, the "Dude, shut up" kid had noticed a payphone he had
never seen before, while riding the bus home from school. It was tucked away
in the alley between "Zhao Jiancheng's Noodles-2-Go," and "Big Bad Bill's G-
uns." Chinese food and guns. Right next to each other. Only in New York.

This kid, which shall now be referred to as Jonathan, immediately de-
cided that this was the spot. The next day, he managed to talk his mom into
eating at Noodles-2-Go. They got there at 7:00. The street lights flickered
on. Jonathan and his mom were finished eating by eight. As They were leavi-
ng, Jonathan took note that the light above the payphone hadn't come on. P-
erfect.

When the two arrived home, apartment 15b, Jonathan went into his r-
oom, flipped on his computers, and IM'd his friend.

50UL FL4Y3R: i found it.
us3r fri3ndl3ss: ?
50UL FL4Y3R: the perfect site.
us3r fri3ndl3ss: ??
50UL FL4Y3R: 4 a mission!
us3r fri3ndl3ss: ??????
us3r fri3ndl3ss: what r u talking about?
50UL FL4Y3R: just come over u retard.
us3r fri3ndl3ss: k. >:E
us3r fri3ndl3ss has logged off at 8:25PM.

Ten minutes later the intercom buzzed in apartment 15b. Jonathan’s
mom answered it.

"Hello?"

"It's Nick."

"Oh. Just a sec," said the mother, pressing a button on the intercom.
45 seconds later Nick was at the door, and then inside 15b.

"John's inside his room...I think."

"Thanks, Mrs. V." Nick walked down the little hallway to the door wi-
th the upside-down American flag taped to it.

"About time," said Jonathan as the door opened.

"What were you rambling about earlier?" Nick asked this with a confu-
sed air.

"I found the perfect phone for a field mission."

"Oh. Sweet."

"Yeah, and it's in an alley with a busted street light."

"Is it next to that one Chinese place?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"I blade there all the time. They have the best moo-goo-gai-pan."

"Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"I didn't think you liked moo-goo-gai-pan."

"That's not...shut up. Get me my stuff so I can get the police schedule"

"Fine." Nick went over to the bed and pulled out a milk crate from under
it, then he opened the air vent and removed a small safe. "Armageddon-proof" read
the sticker on the bottom. Small, golden, raised letters on top said "Dave." In-
side the crate was a collection of CD's and a hat.

"Shall we be working with the Flag or the Rage today?" asked Nick, pulli-
ng out two CD's.

"Umm...the Flag," said Jonathan, putting on the hat. It was an "I sailed
with Long John Silver's" pirate hat. Nick popped the CD into the computer and An-
ti-Flag came blaring out the speakers.

Nick sat down next to Jonathan at the second computer.

"While you're doing that," said Nick, "I'll play operator." With that,
Nick reached for his backpack. He pulled out an old hard hat he'd swiped from a
Bell truck. It had an engineer's hat ductaped on top. He also pulled out a head-
set that had a Verizon sticker stuck to it.

"All aboard! The 8:45 train is now leaving. I'll be your social engineer
for this trip. all passengers must have their passwords, credit card, and social
security numbers out and ready to be punched." At this, Nick punched the air n-
ext to him, followed by a verse of "Crazy Train."

"Quiet. I need concentration," said Jonathan. He slid a key into the s-
lot of the safe, then put in the combination: 17-20-45. One thing left. He pres-
sed down the raised text, "Dave," and the safe opened. Inside there were five f-
loppy discs and one mini disc. He pulled out the floppy that read "Homework,"
and slipped it into the drive.

Jonathan dialed the modem of the police station with his computer. "I
just discovered this number a few days ago," he said, "it should help us a lot."
A log-in screen appeared. Jonathan typed in "Administrator" under screen name.

"All I have to do now is get the password." He opened the program on the
floppy disc. When it came up, it immediately started running through words in a-
lphabetical order through the password field.

"This might take a while."

Ninety minutes and four bottles of Jolt later...

"Ugh...this is taking forever."

"Hey, John, I just called my mom and told her I was spending the night."

"That's good," said Jonathan lazily. Just as he said this the password
generator stopped on the word "Maria."

"We're in," said Jonathan with a smirk. "Now schedules, schedules, ah...
schedules. Print, and here we go."

"Great. Now we can see when they patrol the mission area," said Nick. "I'm
going to get ready for bed."

"Okay." Nick left the room. Jonathan leaned back in his chair, yawning.
Just then the screen went blank; a green line flashing.

"What the..." Jonathan slapped the side of the monitor. Words began to a-
ppear on the screen.

I know what you are planing on doing.
Don't.

Who are you?

Don't do it.

The screen clicked, and then the computer restarted.

“Principal Concern”

The main office was rather sizeable for a school of this size. A handful of students sat in alternating chairs along the wall, their eyes locked in a gaze as if they were staring at some distant hope of a freedom just outside of their reach. They saw nobody enter. They saw nobody leave. Their purpose, it seemed, was simply to be.

“I hope Jakob isn’t in any trouble,” Samantha whispered as she and her husband, Adam, walked quietly into the office.

“Don’t worry, Sam,” Adam replied, “I’m sure he’s fine. This is probably just one of those conferences.”

“I hope so.”

“Sam, c’mon, hun. We’ve been here before. Nothing’s changed.”

“I’m still worried.”

“I know. Just relax. There’s nothing to be worried about. Here, sit down over there.”

Samantha sat down in between two of the synthetic, blank faces. She looked to her left and tried to smile at him. She faced right. The girl’s earphones weren’t going to be unplugged. Samantha faced forward again, a queer worry creeping upon her face. She looked up at Adam. He was busy talking with the receptionist. Samantha folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.

“Mr. and Mrs. Paterson,” the secretary said, “the Principal is ready to see you now.”

The hallway was a narrow one; the walls were colored a greenish tan and the paneling was simple and efficient. There was no wasted space in the office. Everything was ordered in a neat precision. The operations were almost cold, hard calculations.

“Here we are,” the secretary chirpily announced, “you can go right in.”

The door closed behind them.

“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Paterson. I’m glad that you were able to attend our meeting. Please, have a seat.”

They sat down. The Principal produced a folder.

“I called you to discuss your son,” he looked down at the folder, “Jakob’s educational progress. Now, it is on record that he suffers from a variety of learning disabilities. It is fortunate, however, that these difficulties are milder than this administration had previously observed.”

Adam and Samantha looked at each other in confusion.

“Mr. and Mrs. Paterson, I, like members of our faculty here, am very impressed with Jakob’s zeal and inclination to certain forms of higher learning. I have spoken with his mathematics instructors and they all agree that his capacity for abstract numerical patterns far exceeds any student they have had in recent years.

We feel that Jakob should be enrolled in an accelerated computations program held at one of our more technologically advanced campuses in the Tri-State area, in order to encourage his further intellectual growth so that he may be a fully functional contributor to society.

While I am supportive of this initiative, I am required by law to inform you that your contact with Jakob will be restricted while he is involved in this program. Limited contact with the outside world is essential in creating a network for Jakob’s abilities.”

“Well, we don’t know what to say, really. I mean, we’re deeply honored and we’d like some time to think about this, if you don’t mind,” Adam replied.

“Take as much time as you need. If you wish to proceed, my secretary has the necessary paperwork.”

Adam and Samantha rose from their chairs with unsteady knees. Samantha opened the door. Adam extended his hand to the man behind the desk.

“Thank you, again, Mr…uh?”

“Smith.”

“Thank you, Mr. Smith. It was a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was all mine.”