August 2004
Disclaimer: Not even the title is mine. I stole it from Robert Heinlein. I also borrowed heavily from "The Animatrix" and stuff from The Zion Archives.
Author's Note: I've been writing this on and off since November, and I'm really not sure what it became at all. I just wanted to get it out there. Big thanks go to Imp, Juliet, Amata and Andy for taking a look at various parts for me, and special thanks go to Tamsin, who put up with my crap and kept kicking my ass on this one.
I always appreciate people's honest opinions, so if you think something sucked as, feel free to tell me.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
"To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."
-Robert Heinlein
Thomas A. Anderson was lost. Completely and utterly lost.The television blaring at the other end of his small bedroom was starting to make his head pound, the cheering of drunken revelers grating in his ears. Five minutes to midnight. He fumbled under his ratty, wrinkled blankets for the remote, and blindly punched buttons. The screen fizzled, and died, leaving him alone in the silent, cluttered apartment. He rolled back onto the bed with a groan.
The digital clock readout glowed green in the darkness. He dragged eyes away, focused instead on the unbroken white of his ceiling. He squinted until the darkness seemed to swirl before his eyes, movement in shadows across the room. He scrubbed tired eyes with the heels of his hands, and turned back to the clock, counting down seconds.
11:58
11:59
The minutes were endless.
12:00.
Noise erupted somewhere below him. A party. "Happy fucking 1998," he thought bitterly, and rolled over to bury his face in his pillow.
Some time later, he awoke with a start. Sweat trickled down his forehead from dark hair, and mixed with the damp already on his cheeks. Tears. He couldn't remember dreaming, but this wasn't the first time he'd woken up crying.Hot. It was too damn hot. He was going to suffocate. He pulled himself off the bed, legs tangled in sweaty sheets. He stumbled to his tiny window, fumbling desperately with the rusting latch. He wrenched the sill open, and shoved his face outside. Chill air rushed into his room, whipping over his cheeks, soothing burning skin, and he could breathe easy again.
He would not sleep again tonight. That, he knew. He padded to his computer, and slid into the well worn chair, repaired half-heartedly with duct tape. The monitors whirred to life, the familiar sound oddly comforting. Thomas sighed with relief, bent over his keyboard, and began to code.
-----Thomas was five years old, and his mother was telling him about snow. They were on a plane from Florida, on the way to Maine to visit his grandparents. He'd never seen snow, but it didn't sound all that interesting. He had his forehead pressed against the cool glass, watching the cars on the highway beneath them grow smaller. Everything looked too small.... the city looked like the models his father spent so much time carefully constructing in their basement. The trees looked as if he could simply reach down and pick them up, move them where he wanted. He smiled to himself as he imagined spelling out his name with tiny houses.
He watched the clouds for the rest of the trip, and if he squinted, he could almost see himself flying through them, torrents of cold air rushing past him as he wove through the fluffy white.
That morning, Thomas hadn't been able to keep the smile from his face as he sat fidgeting over his toast. His mother looked up at him from over her notes on her newest patient, and ruffled his hair."What are you so happy about this morning?"
He jabbed his fork at the toast, and tucked his feet up underneath him. "Had a dream."
His mother raised her eyebrows, amused. "Ooooh, what about?"
The small smile became a grin. "I was flying."
His mother smiled back at him. "Sounds fantastic."
The grin faltered a little, and he began to poke at his toast again. He glanced uncertainly up her, brown eyes wide. "Aunt Ellie says dreams are important. That they can tell you things." He reached for his orange juice. "Maybe I can fly."
His mother chuckled, and patted his shoulder. "Oh, honey. I don't think that's exactly what Aunt Ellie meant. Everyone dreams about flying. It's completely normal."
Thomas visibly deflated, and bent back over his breakfast.
-----He was twenty-seven years old, and he was going nowhere fast. He was trapped, a prisoner in his dead end job and his own scummy apartment.
Beth rolled closer to him, murmuring something unintelligible in sleep. He glanced down at her, and was almost surprised at the lack of affection he felt. He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing here. Desperately lonely a few weeks ago, when she had asked him out to dinner, he'd agreed, hoping to take the edge off the ache. And afterwards, when she'd asked him to stay the night, he'd agreed again.
But now, he just felt empty. She'd made him remember his distaste for sex... too hot, too sweaty. Beth was just another in the long line of women who had pursued a relationship with Thomas, hoping to improve him, to save him. But she didn't ease the loneliness. If anything, sleeping with her made him feel worse.
He rolled away, unable to bring himself to touch her, to hold her any longer. He moved to the very end of the bed, his back to this woman that he hardly even knew, and fell into uneasy sleep.
Expanses of pale skin, interspersed with gleaming metal. Cold, bone-chilling but refreshing, true.
Green rain pouring down around him, soaking through the thin layers of his clothing.
His eyes snapped open, and for a moment, he couldn't remember where he was. The air in the apartment was too thick, too heavy, pressing down on him. The relief that always came with the dreams dissipated, and he rolled off the old mattress to wedge the window open. He thought about going back to bed, but the body lying prone in his sheets made him turn back around.He finally decided on collapsing into his only chair, and flicked on the television in the darkness. The screen cast an eerie glow over his apartment, and he watched the shadows dance along the wall until morning.
He's tired of this place.
When Beth woke, Thomas was curled up in front of his bank of hardware, a bowl of stale cereal balanced precariously on one knee, intently watching a chat scroll down his screen. She sighed heavily. It was the same way every time she woke up here, and she was sick of it. She rose, and gathered up her clothes. He didn't turn around."Tom, I'm going."
No response.
"I'll see you later this week?"
He shifted a little, and dark hair fell into his eyes. He mumbled something she couldn't make out.
She exhaled harshly, and passed a fist over tired eyes. "Or not." And with that, she did her best to storm out of the apartment, careful not to trip over the coils of wires that littered the floor, and slammed the door behind her.
Thomas didn't even notice her leave.
----He'd been watching hackers since he was in college. One of his software design professors had told the class that to design secure software, you had to anticipate the weaknesses. You had to think like a hacker. A little overzealous, Thomas had decided to take that philosophy one step further.
He searched and searched, and after a tip from a classmate who was doing a little illegal business on the side, arrived at a colorful, seemingly innocuous website for "The Great Beyond Travel Agency." He'd poured himself a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, and started to dig.
His eyes were burning. There were layers upon layers of security. He knew he'd found it… and he was so close. He worked through the night, and missed his AI theory class the next morning.The phone rang. He didn't hear it. The answering machine whirred, and a cheerfully feminine voice filled the room.
"Hi Tom, it's Annette. I sit next to you in theory, and I noticed you missed today. If you'd like, we could meet for coffee and I could go over the notes with you. Call me."
Who the hell was Annette? Not that he'd be calling her anyway. His first attempt at intimacy had been with a girl that had lived down the hall; she'd been been after him all year. It had been… awkward, to say the least. Not anything he was in a hurry to do again.
He shook his head, and bent back to the keyboard.
At exactly 1:03 am, his computer screen blinked off.
His stomach dropped.
All that work… now he'd have to start all over again.
He bent dejectedly to reboot, but froze when the screen burst into color again, proclaiming "Congratulations." A synthesized version of Handel's "Alleluia Chorus" burst out over his speakers, the tinny sound echoing in the empty darkness of his dorm room. He'd done it. He was in. It was the stomping ground of the internet's most elite hackers. He'd passed the test.
----For months he monitored them, tracking their progress. There were chats and forums, where hackers shared decryption software, new ways to mask IP addresses, tales of victory and too-close calls, and lots of friendly banter. But he never joined in. He watched, and he learned. Thomas's skill and understanding grew, and his grades skyrocketed. Soon he was one of the top programming students in the department.
When he graduated, he was immediately offered a position at MetaCortechs, the premiere software design firm in the country.
His mother was so proud.
----"Tommy, your teacher called this morning."
Thomas froze over his cereal.
"She's worried that you aren't interacting enough in class. If you don't participate more, they might move you out of the honors program next year. And you wouldn't want to get middle school off to such a bad start, would you?"
He said nothing, and watched the light dance off of the milk in his bowl. He turned over the spoon, and caught his own distorted reflection, staring back at him, upside down. His mother sat down next to him, and rested her chin on her hand.
"Tommy, if you want to talk about anything, you know you can come to me. And not the way my patients do. I promise that I won't think that anything is wrong with you. I'm your mother. You can trust me."
He nodded into his cereal, and she rose, sighing.
----He was okay for about a year. He got up, went to work, came home, ate stale Chinese food and watched the hackers. But as time went on, and coding lost its joy, he spent less time sleeping and more time watching and reading. He found hacker internet lore fascinating, and god knew he needed the intellectual stimulation after hours in a cubicle. Creativity was not encouraged in the corporate sector, even if it might make a program more efficient. The first time he'd come in with a new solution to make one of their applications faster, his bosses had told him that the industry "wasn't ready for that yet." Bullshit.
He began to search along with them, brainstorming weaknesses in security applications and servers, though he never exploited them. He still never spoke in the chats, but he'd always loved logic games and brainteasers, and soon he found that figuring out how to bypass a system's shielding was one of the most elegant puzzles there was.
----He'd called in sick to work early that morning. There technically wasn't anything wrong with him, but he'd woken up that morning and hadn't been able to bear the idea of shaving, getting dressed, and shoving through the crowds on the subway. So instead he opened all of his windows, and sat on the middle of his bed surrounded by piles of blankets, watching reruns of old television shows. But after everything had resolved itself happily for the fifth time, he couldn't watch anymore.
So he logged on instead, and decided to dig into the other threads. See what he could find.
Under a section entitled "Puzzles," he found a topic with more replies than he'd ever seen on the forum.
A single glowing subject line, asking simply…
"What is the Matrix?"
----He tugged at his mother's sleeve, and she glanced down at him, a little exasperated.
"It's too hot."
She exhaled heavily.
"I want the air conditioner."
Bending down to him, she placed a hand on his back. "Tommy, it's fifty degrees in here! We put the air conditioner on this morning, remember?"
He shook his head stubbornly. "Too hot."
She stood again and picked up the dish she'd been drying. "Why don't you take your bath, and I'll be up to tuck you into bed in a few minutes."
He huffed a little, but turned and started up the stairs.
As he sat on the edge of the porcelain tub, fiddling with the faucets, Thomas had an idea. He reached for the cold water tap.
-----Thomas flicked on the lights in his tiny bathroom, and bent to turn on the cold water. Whenever he was frustrated, this was how he relaxed… lately it had become routine. He shucked off his worn t-shirt and slid out of his jeans. Soon he was stepping gingerly into icy water, and he sighed as he relaxed into the tub. The cold was a welcome relief. Thomas always felt at ease this way.
He took a deep breath, and slid lazily under the surface.
What is the Matrix?
It seemed to be the hacker's Holy Grail, of a sort. There were pages and pages of discussion, research, dissection. No one could agree on what it was, and for many, the search seemed all-consuming. He'd seen the Matrix mentioned in passing before today, but had always thought it was some other website, or perhaps a strange hacker catchphrase.
Obviously not.
When he had to come back up for air, the calm would evaporate as it always did after the beautiful dreams.
He stayed under as long as he could.
----When he finally looked up from his monitor, he realized he was alone in the apartment. Beth must have left… the light outside his window was dusky. He glanced down at the time display on the corner of the screen. Nearly six p.m.
Christ. He'd been at it all day.
He stretched, shoulders popping, and moved to turn on his television, catching the opening fanfare of the nightly news. Swiveling in his chair, he turned back to his keyboard to check his mail.
"…over 70 people dead in an attack today at National Airport. The suspects are believed to be members of the cell headed by the terrorist known only as Morpheus."
Morpheus. A name he'd seen all too often mentioned online. A legendary hacker. Sometimes associated with the… mystery.
He couldn't look away.
An hour later, he lay in his bathtub, letting the chill water lap lazily at his chest. Something about that news report had struck false. From what he could gather, the attack hadn't been premeditated. All the casualties seemed to have occurred while the terrorists were trying to make their escape. Several swat teams, and a platoon of military armed guards had been evaded, and many of them had been downed. By three people, two of whom were reported to be relatively small women. He'd been to National before. There weren't a lot of places to run.The terrorists had disappeared without a trace.
Thomas made a decision. He had to know more.
He worked quickly, silently in his dark apartment, the only sound the clacking of keys and the rumble of engines on the street below drifting in through the open window. It was such an easy hack; they'd never even know he was there. The State Police Department wasn't exactly technologically savvy. He found the reports, downloaded them, and got out quickly, making sure to cover his tracks just in case.There was nothing. Some names, grainy security camera captures of Morpheus that he'd seen floating around his forum, a list of causalities. The report was unusually bare. Not even a mention of the call to the airport, no record of the dispatch order. Absolutely nothing.
Maybe he'd find something somewhere else. Another state, maybe. News reports, anything.
He didn't rise from his chair until he was late for work the next morning.
----"Tommy, why don't you have a friend over this weekend? You'd have fun."
He shrugged. He wasn't really sure if he had any friends. The other kids at school were too noisy, too…. overwhelming. In his opinion, weekends were much better spent in his room, where it was cool and quiet.
"I'll call someone. We can have a play day."
----Thomas slid into his chair, heart hammering in his chest. His hands were sweating. He was going to do this. He had to. Months of searching, hacking on his own, and he was no farther then he'd been that first night.
A whisper. "Thomas…"
He spun around, and nearly slid out of his seat. No one there. There's no one there.
He was losing it. Completely fucking losing it. Just nerves. His mind was playing tricks on him.
Turning back to the screen, he gathered his resolve, and navigated to the thread that he'd been reading so much of lately. He took a deep breath, willed his fingers to stop trembling, and hit "Reply."
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Shit. Shitshitshit. He needed a handle. Of course he did, what was he thinking? Every decent hacker had a handle. Christ, he was new at this.New. Neo.
It wasn't classy, but it worked. He entered as little information as possible, and he sent it.
That night, with sweat trickling down his back, he posted everything he knew, everything he'd found. None of it added up… nothing made sense. They needed to take more drastic measures. They had names. Real names, from police reports. Maybe they could hack FBI. Or even IRS… they would probably at least have some old personal records, maybe could give some clues on how to find Morpheus.
When he checked the forum the next morning, hair tousled from sleep, there was a reply. The IRS had been done before, they said. Years ago, when they'd first started looking for Morpheus. They hadn't found much of anything then, and the hacker who had done it had dropped off the radar a few weeks later. Some people speculated that he'd found Morpheus, and had joined him. Others figured that after he'd cracked the d-base, there wasn't anything left for him to do. He'd simply gotten bored. No one had been able to crack IRS since then.Now that he thought about it, Thomas vaguely remembered the IRS hack. He'd still been young… a few years out of college. He'd been impressed.
The respondent had posted a link to a thread with more information on those thought to be involved with the Matrix… those thought to have the answers.
The name he'd been given was Trinity.
----Hundreds of miles underground, the first officer of the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar held her breath as Thomas A. Anderson saw her name for the first time.
Everyone else was sleeping, and the ship was quiet, except for the gentle whirring of the ventilation system. She drew her knees up to her chest, and watched the code cascade down the screen. Was it her imagination, or did he linger over her information, reading more carefully?
There was something about him that reminded her of herself. They'd gotten a batch of new potentials, coppertops displaying brain activity typical of rejection of the Matrix. He was nothing special, but for some reason, he was the one she liked watching most. She was fascinated by how quiet, how curious he was. He was strange. He had money, but seemed to be happiest living in a cold, dingy apartment.
So different than she had been. She'd been angry her entire life, seething on the inside. The smallest thing would set her off, and the rage would wash over her, until she was afraid she would be consumed by it. When she'd finally been freed, the anger dissipated, and though she searched for it sometimes, late at night, she couldn't find any of it lingering. She'd finally realized that it was captivity that she'd been struggling against, furious that she wasn't controlling her own life, furious that she was a slave.
But there was something about him that she recognized, even if she couldn't pinpoint what it was. She curled up more comfortably in the operator's chair, and watched silently as he searched for her until he fell asleep at his keyboard.
-----Part II to follow.