BECAUSE LIFE IS…
Part III
CHANGE
The impeccable, infinite
whiteness of the construct. There’s an eeriness to it, in its purity.
White.
Empty.
Perfect.
If you take a space, any space,
and empty it of all objects and matter, of anything substantial, that’s what
you have left. A construct. A pure, empty white void.
And there… Neo, talking on a
cell phone: "Guns. Lots of guns."
He looked like one of us, now.
Black. All in black with black shades hiding his virgin eyes. I knew, though,
that if I could have seen through the glasses, the innocence would have been
fading. That sole figure of black in the field of perfect whiteness.
The guns came rushing at me as I
approached him, racing from a nowhere that was infinitely far away.
For a moment we stood there,
forcing ourselves to muster up the strength to do what we were about to do,
fully aware that no amount of strength would be enough.
Not until he believes, I thought. I choked down the phrase as
soon as it surfaced.
"No one’s ever done
anything like this before, Neo."
He looked at me, determination
set in his stance. He picked up an uzi and snap-cocked it in one swift motion.
"That’s why it’s going to work."
I hoped he was right.
In combat, there is no time to
be afraid. Instead, the fear attacks you in anticipation, riddling your stomach
with holes before a single bullet has been fired. I didn’t want to let him
enter the building first—we didn’t know who or what would be awaiting us. Tank
assured us that the lobby level was safe, but this didn’t seem a good time to
depend on the predictability and structure of Matrix code. Things were slipping
out of their pattern, I could feel it.
I knew that the reason was
standing beside me, wearing black.
I should have insisted that I go
first, but the fact remained that this was his show. I had no idea what his
plans were, or even if he had any at all. So I had to suppress the frustration
and follow, hoping against hope that some of the abilities he denied having would
manage to push their way through his scepticism.
I entered with the bomb moments
after the first shots had sounded, the metal detector resolutely announcing my
entrance like some half-wit crier. Instinctively, I took out the guard as he
called for backup, but I knew it was too late. I took my place alongside Neo,
matching strides, and at the same moment we threw aside our spent weapons. I
had hoped that we could make it to the elevator before the main security block
arrived, and then could let the bomb take care of the rest of them. The sound
of quickly approaching footsteps drowned out that hope, though, and we stopped
to face the onslaught.
They jogged in, dozens of people
dressed in the same intense black as we were. "Freeze!"
I turned to Neo and saw my own
determined reflection in his glasses. Without another thought, I dropped the
bag and dove for cover as Neo jumped to the other side. Adrenaline surged and
healed my shattered stomach, and the thrill of the fight took over.
I lost count of the number of
coppertops I took out in that brief few minutes, and the specifics of the
battle elude me. Every move you make is a reflex, there’s no time for
processing. It’s frustrating, sometimes, fighting them, because there’s so much
they don’t know. The unfairness of the situation is horrific; we fight the
machines, and yet it is only the humans that get killed. Only unsuspecting
slaves.
But then again, I guess they
were never really alive to begin with.
I wondered how the machines
would manage to cover that one up.
The bomb was still sitting
exactly where I’d dropped it by the metal detectors. I picked it up and met Neo
at the middle of the room.
The elevator doors closed behind
us with a "ding" that echoed off of broken columns and broken bodies,
heralding our departure and shutting the carnage away.
I shed my coat and stooped to
arm the bomb as Neo hit the emergency stop and pried open the ceiling hatch. I
set the timer and followed him up through the roof of the car, where he was
already clasping his harness to one of the cables. He shot the binding of the
first cable and I relaxed instinctively, absorbing the shock of the car’s
slight fall with my knees. Without a word I stepped over to him, forcing myself
to ignore the heat in my gut as I pressed my body against his, one arm around
his shoulders, the other firmly holding the cable. His muscled arm snaked
around my waist, much stronger here than in the real world
… the closeness…
…the closeness was almost
overwhelming.
And then he looked up and
whispered something I didn’t understand, something about a spoon, and I made a
note to ask him about it later as he shot the second cable and the elevator
counterweights yanked us up through the shaft.
I barely noticed the rush of hot
air that surged up as the bomb hit bottom.
The scrimmage on the rooftop
was, for the most part, hardly even a fight. The simplicity of it unnerved
me—there were Agents in the building and coppertops all over the place, and yet
all we ever had to fight were drones. SWAT guys, again, just like in the lobby.
For Christ’s sake, you’d think that after we single-handedly kicked the asses
of two full units, they’d leave us the hell alone. No such luck, though. They
really were drones. Suicide machines.
Out of the corner of my eye I
noticed that Neo was holding his own quite nicely; his training wasn’t
finished, but apparently it was good enough. He reverted to hand-to-hand when
his "lots of guns" started to run low, and did just fine with it. I
kept an eye on him anyways, though, nailing the one guy who came a little too
close with a well-aimed knife through the eye. The last batch of feds who came
at me were on the ground in seconds, and I turned to see how Neo was faring. At
the same time, he turned to face me, and—
Oh, damn. That guy in the back,
there by the edge, in the helicopter—he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead… and now…
oh shit--
An Agent. It was an Agent. I
knew this had been too easy.
I tried to scream, to warn Neo,
but my voice froze in my throat. Neo was looking at me, and he could see, he
could see, but I couldn’t scream, oh God, I couldn’t scream, and--
Recognition flashed in his
features, and he froze.
What the hell was he
doing?
Suddenly, he spun on his heel,
pulling his last remaining guns from their holsters on his thighs, and fired.
He emptied both clips, and of course, the Agent dodged every single bullet,
despite my burning hope that maybe, just maybe, he could pull it off.
"Trinity!" His voice
snapped me out of my daze just in time to see the Agent pull his gun—
"Help!"
No, Neo!
Some morbid corner of my mind
dared him to prove it, to prove himself now, to take this perfect chance and
force himself to realise what he was actually capable of. But that thought was
gone as soon as it came, and as I heard him call my name I realised that I had
to protect him. It was my duty to protect him, but more than that—I needed
to protect him.
A sudden understanding hit me
like an axe to the skull: I would have to get between him and the Agent.
I would have to take those
bullets.
But before I could move, before
I could tackle his RSI to the ground and cover it with mine, the first horrific
shot was fired, and—
It happened.
Neo became a blur of motion as
the bullets came at him. His body was bent impossibly back, his arms flailing,
torso twisting, bullets flying—
He looked like an Agent. He was
moving like an Agent.
And then, an instant later, he
was on the ground, and the bullets stopped, and he was still alive.
He was still alive.
But so was the Agent.
The Agent walked up to Neo’s
fallen body, and I saw what was going to happen. Without having to think, I
ripped a .45 off of some dead SWAT guy and slipped around behind the suit. I
heard the click of his pistol cocking as he aimed, and his parting words to
Neo:
"Only human."
Oh yeah? "Dodge this." My gun was
pressed to his temple, and I fired.
A flicker of electricity, and a
dead SWAT heli-pilot fell to the ground in front of me.
Neo was still on the ground, and
I extended a hand to help him up, my confidence returned. I knew for certain,
now, that he was the One, but the question remained: did he believe? I
had to push him. He—I—WE needed to know.
"How did you do that?"
He looked at me, bewildered.
"Do what?"
"You moved like they do.
I’ve never seen anybody move that fast." Come on, Neo, admit it. You
know it as well as I do.
"It wasn’t fast
enough." He pointed to a surface wound on his shoulder, and I wanted to
shake him, hit him, do whatever the hell it would take to force him to
understand the truth. Well, almost anything…
Anything except…
The void in my stomach was
burning with a heat as white as the construct. But it wasn’t my place, anyways,
I reasoned. Nobody could tell him he was the One, he had to know it for
himself. And besides, we still had Morpheus to save, and we knew it would only
be a matter of time before more Agents turned up.
At the same moment, we turned
our gaze to the abandoned helicopter that sat by the edge of the building where
the Agent had left it.
"You know how to fly that
thing?" he asked.
There it was, again… that
innocence. It was still there, in his eyes. He still didn’t fully understand
the way things worked for us, in the Matrix. Understandable, though—it was,
technically, his first mission. "Not yet." Then, I pulled out my phone,
and dialled up Tank. "Tank, I need a pilot program for a V-212 military
helicopter."
For a moment, my head went blank
as the directions were uploaded into my brain. The instant I opened my eyes
again, I looked at Neo. "Let’s go."
Using uploaded skills is always
a bit of a trip the first time. I sat down inside that helicopter having never
seen anything like it before, and I knew exactly how it worked, which buttons
to push, which wheels to turn. And then, we were flying, me at the controls as
Neo fed a round of bullets into the rear-mounted machine gun.
I couldn’t see what was
happening behind me as I lowered the helicopter beside the building. The sudden
gunfire was the only notice I had that we had found the right floor, and I struggled
to keep us steady that close to the window. A moment later, the gunfire
stopped, and I heard Neo’s whispered encouragement: "Get up, Morpheus. Get
up. Get up!" And then more shots, and again, Neo’s cry: "He’s not
going to make it!" And then…
He jumped. He jumped out of my
helicopter. I hazarded a glance behind just in time to see Morpheus and Neo
collide in midair and then fall. I felt the sudden jerk as they hit the end of
the rope, and I started to lift us up over the building.
More shots, and the fuel gauge
started to drop frighteningly fast. There was a roof, there up ahead, I just
had to get there… drop Morpheus and Neo, and then… well, fuck it, that’s what I
had to do, and as for my own sweet ass—well, I’d worry about that later.
I felt them touch down as the
warning alarm on the fuel gauge began to beep furiously. The needle was below
the empty mark. There was no way I would be able to land this thing. The engine
was sputtering, and I was falling—
Without thinking, I unstrapped
myself from the harness and caught the other end of Neo’s rope. A well aimed
shot broke the binding, and then I was falling—or flying—into the side of a the
building… praying that the rope would hold… praying that Neo would hold on to
me.
The glass spider-cracked around me
as I collided with the window, and I waited, expecting the rope to give or
break and me to go falling into the cavern between the buildings. But then,
no—I was moving up. I was being pulled up. And I looked to the roof, and there
was Neo, looking over the edge, one hand moving at a time as he hauled me up to
safety.
I didn’t mean to fall into him
like that. My arms, shoulders, and back were burning from holding my weight
under the rope, and as soon as I got a foot under me, the rest of everything
just gave out, and I fell. He caught me.
And again, the smell.
Oh, God, the scent of him.
He had just saved me. I had put
my life in his hands, I realized, and he had protected it at the risk of his
own. And the void was a gaping wound in my stomach, and I thought that whatever
was pulling at me from my centre was going to turn me inside out—
No. Not now, Trinity. Your
independence, remember? Your strength? Don’t get dead, Trinity. He has to figure it out on his own,
and you can keep your goddamn emotions to yourself. It would break me if I
told him. Not now. Not ever.
…your weakness…
"Do you believe it now,
Trinity?" That was Morpheus. I had almost forgotten about him. Before I
could answer, though, Neo cut in.
"Morpheus…
the Oracle, she told me--"
"She
told you exactly what you needed to hear. In time you will learn, Neo, that
there is
a difference between knowing the
path and walking the path."
Exactly, I found myself thinking. I can know
I love him. I just can’t act on it. My resolve was fading, though, and I
knew it. I wanted to tell him, but…
Morpheus was dialling up Tank,
and they spoke for a moment before Morpheus pointed the direction, and started
walking. When we reached the edge of the roof, he stopped, nodded one last time
into the phone, and hung up.
"Let’s get out of
here," I breathed, a little faster than I should have. I had to get us
moving before all my emotions consumed me. I led the way, jumping to the next
rooftop, the other two right behind me. The ease of it was still thrilling to
Neo. He was grinning like kid in Disneyland when we stopped five buildings
away.
The innocence was still there.
He had just killed a few dozen men, but none of the guilty, hardened anguish
that I knew festered in my eyes appeared in his. It was like he still wanted to
believe the best of everything. I didn’t even realize I was staring until his
brown eyes met mine, and I saw his pupils adjust to focus, and then they were
burning a hole right through into the very depth of my soul. He took a step
towards me. I broke the gaze, turned, and disappeared as quickly as I could
down the stairs, covering my discomfort by pulling out my phone and calling for
the exit, letting it ring twice before I remembered that Morpheus had already
called back on the first rooftop, and then hanging up before Tank could answer.
I stayed a few steps behind Neo
the rest of the way to the exit. Maybe he really wasn’t the One, I reasoned.
Maybe he was just a regular guy who was damn good at freeing his mind. If he
was the One, he would know it by now. He would have to. How couldn’t he?
He—well, we, I guess—had just saved Morpheus from three Agents, and
gotten out alive. Maybe our fates contradicted each other. Maybe it all really
was mumbo-jumbo. Maybe I didn’t really love him…
Bullshit. That last one, I knew
for sure. A few moments earlier, I had been prepared to put myself between him
and an Agent—something which I had never even remotely considered before, for
anyone. "No one can tell you you’re in love," the Oracle had told me.
"You just know it, through and through, balls to bones." Know
thyself. Well, that much, I knew. I knew it, and it was killing me from the
inside.
Morpheus caught up to me as I
walked, but I was so caught up in my own world that I didn’t notice him until
he started speaking.
"Thank you, Trinity."
I looked up at him, not sure
what he was talking about.
"For coming after me,"
he explained. "Thank you."
"I’m just glad you’re safe,
Morpheus."
"Yes, I am safe, and I have
only you and Neo to thank for it. And I do thank you." A pause. "But,
Trinity…"
"Yes?"
"You know you shouldn’t
have done it." There was no condescension in his voice, only concern.
"It wasn’t my idea."
"What?" Confusion was
written in his brow.
"Neo. He said something
about the Oracle, and having to make a choice…" I let my voice trail off
as my gaze drifted up and fixed itself on the gentle movement of Neo’s back as
he walked. "She told him he isn’t the One, Morpheus."
He shook his head knowingly, a
slight, cryptic smile on his face. "She told him what he needed to hear,
Trinity. That’s all." He looked at me. "Trinity… what do you
believe?"
"I believe you know what I
think," was my quipped reply before I turned and followed Neo down the
subway steps.
The phone was already ringing
when we arrived. Neo picked it up and handed it to Morpheus, then caught the
dangling receiver and placed it back in the cradle.
A moment of silence.
It was killing me from the
inside, loving him.
What did I believe?
I believed it was killing me not
being able to tell him.
…become your strength…
I had to tell him. Was this the
right time? Was this the right place? No, not really, it wasn’t. But I had to
do it before the bubble in my gut broke and I broke with it.
"Neo, I want to tell you
something…" He turned to face me, and those eyes, those perfect,
still-virgin eyes… I nearly choked. "But I’m afraid of what it might mean
if I do."
The ringing phone echoed through the empty station, and we both ignored it. His
face was crumpled with concern, and I tore my eyes away.
"Everything the Oracle told
me has come true. Everything but this…" I couldn’t breathe. I was
suffocating on the words, and…
No. Not now. Not ever, Trinity. Not EVER.
A train rushed by, and I seized
the distraction to step forward and pick up the receiver. I turned as I held it
to my ear and HOLY FUCK A BULLET AN AGENT and I was swallowed into the
real world.
"Neo!" It came out
before I even knew I was speaking.
The receiver was shattered,
which meant no entrance for me and no exit for Neo. I raced to the monitors as
soon as I was unhooked, expecting to see Neo running for his life. Instead, he
was standing perfectly still, facing the Agent in the desolate space of the
subway station. And then, at the same moment, they ran and jumped, firing into
the air, until they collided in the centre of the floor, both of their guns
jammed tight to the other’s head. A second passed, then they stood. Their lips
were moving, so I knew they were talking. We have no sound translator on the
viewscreens, and while I could have deciphered what they were saying directly
from the Matrix code, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the sight of him on the
screen.
A violent rattle tore me away
from the Neo’s image and over to his flesh-and-blood form as he shook and
writhed in his chair. He was getting his ass kicked. And then, for a few
minutes, he picked up, landing a few solid punches, and it looked like maybe,
just maybe, there was hope.
And then he got pinned to a wall
and the Agent was pounding him, fists moving so fast they didn’t register with
the monitory delay, and Neo was shaking violently in his harness—
"Jesus, he’s killing
him." And he was. I tore off a piece of my sleeve and used it to wipe the
blood off of Neo’s convulsing form.
The alarm sounded, and I raced
with Morpheus up to the cockpit. Sentinels.
"How long?" I asked
him.
"Four, five minutes."
He picked up a comlink, "Tank, charge the EMP."
Despair seized me. "You
can’t use that until he’s out!"
Morpheus exuded confidence as he
looked me square in the eye, "He’s going to make it, Trinity."
And somehow, I knew he was
right.
I thought back to that moment at
the subway. I had been able to see in Neo’s eyes that he still didn’t believe,
and I knew I had to tell him. I had to. But that would be the end of the
Trinity I had worked so hard to maintain—the one that really didn’t give a
shit. If I confessed now, there was no turning back. That was a bond, a dependency,
that I was stuck with.
So I stood there, watching him
get the shit beat out of him by a machine. The words of the Oracle echoed once
again inside my skull…
…your greatest fear…
…your fear of weakness…
…will become your
strength…
…your strength…
And I still couldn’t say it.
…fall for him, child…
… in love…
… the One…
…fall for him…
And then I watched him get shot
by a machine.
…your weakness…
…strength…
…weakness…
…weakness…
…weakness…
Killed by a machine.
…become your strength…
…fall for him…
…in love…
…when he needs you…
And I still couldn’t say it.
…in love…
…your weakness…
…will become your
strength…
…your strength…
I watched him as he coughed and
died.
…in love…
…you’re going to need him,
too…
…need him, too…
…need him…
…needs you…
…NEEDS you…
…in love…
I watched the monitors go
flat-line.
…in love…
…need him…
…in love…
…the One…
…in love…
I watched his body go limp.
Lifeless.
…the One…
…in love…
…needs you…
…in love…
…the One…needs you…
…your strength…
… in love in love in love
in love in love in love in love in love…
I snapped.
It was like an out-of-body experience.
All of the sudden, my consciousness, and everything that went with it—my fear,
my past, and even my pride, stepped out of me. It was like I was hovering in
the air watching myself as I poured my heart out to his lifeless body.
"Neo, I’m not afraid anymore…"
…in love in love in love in
love in love in love in love… The words pulsed through me in time with the beating of my
heart. …in love in love in love in love in love…
"The Oracle told me that I
would fall in love, and that that man, the man that I loved, would be the
One."
…in love in love in love in
love in love in love in love…
"So you see, Neo, you can’t
be dead."
…your strength…
"You can’t be."
…the One…needs you…your
strength… to fall for him…in love…IN LOVE.
"Because I love you."
…your weakness…it will
become your strength… your strength…
"You hear me? I love
you!"
…in love in love in love in
love in love in love in love in love in love…
I was still watching myself, but
I could feel the void swelling inside of me, the burning hole, expanding until
I felt like an empty cavity enclosed by nothing but my skin. I watched myself
kiss him. Everything felt muted, subdued by my clouded senses. I watched myself
as I tried to purge myself of the void in my stomach, to push it out through my
lips to his and let him breathe it in, then breathe out, then breathe in again,
revived.
I love you.
I watched myself gasp when he
inhaled, and then suddenly command him to get up. I watched myself call him
back from the matrix, screaming for him to get the phone. The laser of the
nearest sentinel crawled towards us, and I watched as I threw myself over him,
shielding his prone body with my own.
The EMP surged.
I love you.
I watched myself smile and go
teary-eyed as he woke up and looked at me… I watched myself stroke his cheek.
The void was stretching and it hurt, it hurt so much for want of him.
My strength… in love… with
him…the One… with YOU.
Then he kissed me. And as his
lips touched mine, I rushed back into myself. I was living again, not just
watching. I didn’t want to miss this. Everything that had been muted raged back
to normal sensation. His lips burned mine, and the void that had been burned
out by his scent was now filled with his taste. I needed this. I needed
him. Like nothing before, I needed him.
I don’t know how long we stayed
like that. It could have been a few minutes or a few days, I don’t know. I lost
myself in him. I had never, ever felt so… whole. The void was gone and I
felt full—crushingly, blindingly complete. This was the first time I had kissed
a man outside of the Matrix, with my real lips. And feeling this, now, made me
wonder how anyone could ever make do with the shallow sensation of the Matrix,
with the subdued sense-experience that comes from the machines’ inability to feel.
Now, it was hitting me full-force. It stung beautifully.
The euphoria was temporary.
Reluctantly, I pulled away. Neo would need immediate medical attention, and I
knew it. He had survived in the Matrix, but this was the real world, where he
was no more or less human than I was. I reached down and unplugged him, and
then offered a supporting shoulder as he slowly stood up. He winced visibly as
he rose, and leaned heavily on my shoulder. Within seconds, Morpheus, who had
obligingly stayed away until this point, was there to support Neo from the
other side, and Tank followed closely behind, though his own injuries prevented
him from helping us.
Nobody said a word as we walked,
but my mind was racing at a million miles a minute. The fear started to trickle
back. The old fear. The fear of dependency, the fear of attachment and need. As
soon as I realized what had happened, the trickle turned into a flood. By the
time we had brought Neo to the remains of the medic quarters, I was feeling it
with the same full force that I had before. With it, the void came back. Not so
all-encompassing as it had been just a few minutes earlier, but more the small
pit-of-the-stomach hole characteristic of my earliest encounter with Neo.
The fear took over.
How could I have been so
ridiculously stupid? To confess my love to him… shit. You get emotional, you
get dead, remember? I can’t do this now. I can’t.
…your weakness…
I helped lay Neo down on the
table in Medical, pulling his shirt off to reveal half-healed bloody chest
wounds on a torso that was much thinner and weaker here than in the Matrix. I
remembered the feeling of his arm around me back in the government building,
firm and densely muscled. Here, his ribs still protruded like piano keys and
his arms were more bone than flesh. It would be hard, now, for him to make the
transition between realities, but I knew he could do it.
He was the One, after all.
Morpheus dug up some anaesthetic
and a syringe, so we put Neo out for a while to cleanse his wounds and stitch
up the worst ones. He needed a more permanent medical facility, one with better
equipment and a power source that hadn’t been ravaged by sentinels, to check
for serious internal damage. Tank was online with Zion as we worked, sending
for the nearest best-equipped ship in the quadrant.
Neo began to wake just as
Morpheus and I were cleaning ourselves up. I walked over to him and rested my
fingers lightly on his clammy forehead.
"Rest, Neo." He closed
his eyes obligingly. I left.
Within hours, a nearby ship, the
Wintermute, had picked us up. Neo slept fitfully for most of the two-day
journey to Zion. I heard him call my name, once, during the night, while Tank
was watching over him. I pulled my arm over my head when it happened, managing
to convince myself that my staying away from him was the best thing for both of
us. But when somebody knocked on my door a few minutes later, I knew that
whoever it was probably had other ideas.
I didn’t answer, but the door
creaked open anyways.
"Trinity, may I come in?"
It was Morpheus.
"Morpheus… yes, come
in." I sat up quickly and turned to face him. He leaned against the closed
door, arms folded across his chest, head tilted down and slightly away from me.
"What’s wrong,
Trinity?"
"Nothing." Everything.
"Hmm." He wasn’t
satisfied with that answer, and he knew it wasn’t the truth. Morpheus knew me
too well for lies; my mannerisms were second nature to him.
"You know, if this were
anybody but you, I would accuse you of being childish." He paused, and
then shook his head, as though to clear it. He looked up at me. "But you…
you were never a child. You’ve been mature your whole life. So tell me, why are
you doing this to yourself? Why are you doing this to him?"
"I don’t know what you’re
talking about," I lied, knowing full well that he would see right through
me. He could always see right through me.
"I think you do."
He didn’t move for a moment,
obviously expecting me to fill the silence. But I had nothing to say to him.
With a sigh, he came and sat down beside me.
"Trinity… Did you mean what
you told him?"
I became too fascinated with the
lint on my blanket to answer. What could he do, pull rank and force me to see
Neo? I still wouldn’t go. I thought of Morpheus’ insubordination. It had saved
him, and that made it acceptable. Well, this would save both Neo and myself. I
couldn’t see Neo now—it just wasn’t worth the risk.
Morpheus was still looking at
me. "That’s what I thought."
"You’re jumping to
conclusions, Morpheus."
"I know you too well to
jump to conclusions."
Frustration began to boil up
inside me. "Yes, you know me well. But with all due respect, sir, don’t
pretend to think you can read me like a book." My tone had taken on an icy
edge that frightened even me.
I think Morpheus was more hurt
by my formality than anything else, because he became more subdued, after that.
"I think you need this."
I forced the edge out of my
voice, but I was unable to keep it from shaking and I couldn’t bring myself to
look up at him. "Please don’t pretend to know what I need."
He recoiled like he had been
hit.
A moment later, he stood up and
moved to the door. A hand rested on the latch when he turned to face me again.
When he spoke, his tone had lost all of its customary formality, and he sounded
tired. Old, and tired. "It’s been twelve years," he said quietly.
"Twelve years since I unplugged you. From the statistics, we should both
be dead, but..." his voice trailed off and he looked down again, rubbing
one hand slowly over his bald head. "You know… I don’t think of myself as
superior to you. I haven’t for years. It is only experience that defines my
rank above yours. I would never be so disrespectful as to command your personal
life. But you’re like a sister to me, and I just hope you understand that I can
and will be there for you." He sighed. "I have never seen you happy,
Trinity. I just want to see you happy." With that, he slipped out the
door, closing it quietly behind him.
I was still sitting there,
picking at the lint on my blanket, when the lights came on the following
morning.