RATING:  R.  

DISCLAIMER:  I claim no rights to the Matrix characters or concepts; they belong to the Wachowskis and the WB.  And I’m useless to sue since I have no money.

SYNOPSIS:  What would have happened if Neo had safely escaped the subway station before fighting Agent Smith?  An alternate universe story.

THANKS:  To Kirstma, who gave me this idea by first asking the question I’ve attempted to answer here.  To Scottishlass, for saying “finish the damn thing, would you?!”  And, of course, to the great and wonderful MTS, who edits all my pieces so beautifully and asks nothing in return except my undying affection.

A/N:  This started as a pretty standard what-if story, dealing with the question above.  But it’s evolved into something beyond just that, really.  What do I mean?  Oh, that would spoil the fun. . . you’ll just have to read it, I guess.  The Wachowskis have given us such wonderful characters to play with, what can I say?  Part 1 basically sets the scene; parts 2 and 3 are more plot-driven and will follow shortly.  

THREE BULLETS - Part 2

“Do you see him?  Do you see the story?  Do you see anything?  It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible that is the very essence of dreams. . . .”

            He was silent for awhile.

            “. . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence.  It is impossible.  We live as we dream – alone. . . .”

            -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

II.  YESTERDAY

They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul, so we look each other in the eye when we speak.  It doesn’t make sense; to understand each other best we should watch each others’ mouths, watch the shapes made by the lips, associate sight with sound.  But we don’t – we look each other in the eye, intently.  We try not to blink, we try not to look away.  Always in the eye.  It is an unspoken agreement between us, especially.

Inside, we wear sunglasses as much for each other as for the strangers we encounter, though nobody ever says so outright.  Eyes look different in the Matrix:  colours change just a little, the way the light reflects, the imperfections of the pupil.  To look each other in the eye in the Matrix is to look into something so blatantly and obviously false, synthetic like the Matrix world itself.  This way the eyes aren’t distracting, we can look at each other without noticing how wrong we appear.  When we lose our glasses or are required, for some reason, to take them off, we avoid each others gazes.  It becomes instinct.  We are addicted to and dependent on reality; blatant displays of falsehood are repugnant to us.

Daytime in the Matrix is so beautiful it burns the back of the mind.  We feel pale, sallow, when we are inside; we have never seen sunlight and our artificial indoor lamps are a poor substitute.  We are struck, often, at the contrast of our appearances to everybody else.  We are free, we are outside, we know the truth.  We are enlightened.  But our skin is papery, the space under our eyes is dark. 

***

The morning came too soon, and Trinity didn’t want to get up.   She had learned to overcome the exhaustion that greeted her every day with the lights, but this time it was more than that.  Yesterday had been too long, too much for one day.  For one week, even.  Too much.

And what had happened in the subway, anyway?  What was it that had overcome her, pressing her to tell him now, to talk to him now?   The time had been wrong, the world had been wrong.  It has to be real, Trinity.  

But she wasn’t really comfortable with where she was at the moment, anyway, and to some extent she still wasn’t certain when it was that she had given in – she had been so self-assured, before, and things, in their own peculiar way, had seemed to make sense.  The world in general – and the Matrix, especially – were rational, they could be reasoned out and accounted for most of the time.  It was simply up to her to avoid the irrationalities.  So she tended to shy away from the things that were beyond the realm of the explainable, breaking everything down to its simplest components.  Emotion was kept to a minimum.

That wasn’t to say that she hadn’t loved the crew – Switch, Dozer, Mouse, Apoc… yes, she had loved them deeply in her own way, the way that made her smile when she opened her eyes after Matrix excursions and found that they were all still there, alive, the sounds of eight people breathing in the newly-woken silence.  She had loved them in the way that made her look forward to the card games they would play in the mess hall, gambling with their chores and hours of watch, Mouse always suggesting that they should play strip poker instead this time and Switch always cuffing him, lightly, across the back of the head in response.  She had loved them in the way that made her lungs and stomach burn – agony – as she watched them die.  

Even Cypher she had loved, in a way that had made sense to her – in some ways, she had loved him more than the others.  Because at the times when she became disillusioned he wouldn’t hold it against her; he never seemed insulted when, in her moments of weakness or especially after the death of a crewmate, she would confide that she wasn’t certain that the end of this would come in her lifetime.  Those moments were rare – her sense of purpose was unshakeable, usually – but they happened.  And there had been times she wished she could have loved Cypher in the way he wanted her to.  But she couldn’t – that kind of love wasn’t something she could stoop to, something she could abandon herself to, without the risk of losing her ability to calculate things, to reason.  There had been the one time – but no, she hadn’t loved him that way, not even then, when he had panted her name in her ear and they had held each other in the dark among the engines . . . 

But now Cypher – murderous, cowardly bastard –  was gone, and he’d taken four of those eight waking breaths with him, so the silence was more complete when she woke in her chair.  Five more bodies in the cryo chamber for proper cremation in Zion.  One a little apart from the others, that would be the first thing to land in the incinerator if every they ran low on space.  And she was glad she had never let herself love him that way.

But what, then, of Neo?

The words of the Oracle sprung to her mind – Your logic and your instinct will pull you in different directions, Trinity.  That had happened, back there in the TV repair shop, when she had answered yes to Cypher’s question and let her trust for him – the trust that had been erected over years – dissolve in favour of the way her breath caught in her throat when Neo walked into the room. And slowly, now, lying on her back with her eyes closed on the bed, she let herself slip back to the moment five years ago when her future had been set, laid before her like a dinner plate. 

The basement hallway smelled of mould and stale urine; the air was cold and thin.  Graffiti stained the walls: “For a good time call . . .”  “The Revolution is NOW!!!”  “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”  “Acid:  the ONLY orgasm.”  “Fuck you!”  “Tommy-heart-” and a scratched-out name.   But it seemed fitting, somehow, that the mother of the Revolution worked from a slum like this.  It’s not real, anyway.

Trinity walked a half-step behind Morpheus, more out of habit than anything else.  “You didn’t have to come down here with me, you know,” she said, “I would have been all right on my own.”

“I know,” Morpheus answered, looking back at her over his shoulder, “but it’s standard practice.  You know that.  Her guidance isn’t always . . . pleasant.  It can help to have somebody to meet you when you leave.”

She didn’t answer.  Instead she stood a little taller, pulling her trenchcoat squarer over her shoulders.  Her boots were chafing her calves, rubbing the soft skin just below her knees.  

“Here,” Morpheus said, stopping in front of a nondescript orange door.  He turned to face her then, standing back, hand held out for her to enter first.  

Inside was dark and smoky, smelling faintly of weed.  The room was panelled in dark oak with rustic, high-backed wooden furniture, and everything felt pleasantly worn to the touch.  The lights were dim.

There was a woman standing there, waiting for them; she wore jeans over boots, and a plain black t-shirt.  Her hair was dark and wavy, touching her shoulderblades, but she had eyes like a snake – silver and yellow and blue, sparkled together, and Trinity wondered what she could see with those eyes, why they could look at her and look through her at the same time.  

“Come with me, Trinity,” she said, her hand held up.  Morpheus sat on one of the stiff chairs near the door.  

She followed the woman through a door and down a short, narrow hallway.  The scent of smoke was stronger here, cigarettes and weed and traces of sweat.  But everything was eerily hollow, and Trinity could hear the echo of her footsteps rattling off the walls.  The woman stopped at the point where the hallway turned, sharply, though there was no door.  “Through here,” she said, standing back.  And Trinity walked on, turning, to find herself in— 

A bar.  

The smoke hit her like a wall, here, thick and cloudy, hanging stagnant at eye-level.  But otherwise the room seemed empty – chairs were upturned on the tables; there was a small dance floor near the back that was vacant.  Only the bartender was there, behind her counter at the far end of the room.  She was a tall, thin woman with a dark complexion, hair in long braids down her back – she was striking.  Her arms were crossed over her chest and she leaned back, against the wall, gaze fixed on Trinity, who hovered in the doorway.   They eyed each other warily for a moment from across the room.

Trinity was confused.  “Are you—”

“The Oracle?  Yeah.”  A smile tugged at the corners of the bartender’s lips, and they watched each other in silence for a few more seconds.  “Well, come on over,” she said finally, grinning.  She had a warm, full voice that reminded Trinity faintly of a lounge singer; she felt it envelop her, dense, seeping like a drug.

There were a few stools at one end of the bar.  Trinity leaned on one of them, one boot-heel hooked over the foot-rest, the other braced on the ground.  She bent forward, elbows crossed against the wooden counter.  The bartender walked over then, slowly; she wore bracelets that jingled with every step.  “So, Trinity,” she said, “how about a drink?”  

Taken aback, Trinity looked up:  “Uh, sure.”  

“Tequila,” the oracle said firmly.  “We’ll do it together.”  Trinity couldn’t respond before the bartender walked away and pulled a bottle off a shelf.  A moment later a shot glass, full to the rim of clear liquid, came sliding down the bar at her, slowing to a stop immediately between her elbows, not a drop overflowing.  The bartender followed it closely, holding another identical glass in front of her, loosely, between thumb and forefinger.

Trinity sighed and shook her head, running a hand through her slicked hair.  A beer would have been more her fare.  “So do I get salt and lemon, here?”

The other woman laughed.  “No way!  None of that wimpy stuff in my bar.  Take it straight.”  She held her glass in front of her, eyeing it firmly, as though challenging it.  “Come on.  Cheers!”

Trinity held her glass up in front of her and studied it through her sunglasses.  God, tequila.  She hadn’t had tequila since her unplugging, but damn, that was even worse than Dozer’s stuff.  She shook her head and sighed, clinking her glass against the other.  “Cheers.”  As she touched the glass to her lips she braced herself, tensing in anticipation of the burn about to hit her throat, exhaling—

But she hardly felt it at all as it touched her tongue and rushed down her throat.  Cool with a bit of a sting, dulling as it hit her stomach.  

The bartender held out her hand for the empty glass, exhaling softly through her mouth.  “Not quite the same when you know it’s not real, is it.  Hard to convince yourself to feel anything.”    

Trinity pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and nodded.  “It’s not the same.”

The Oracle smiled gently.  “But it’s better than feeling nothing at all.”  She paused for a moment to pull a pack of cigarettes out from under the counter.  Trinity could read the slogan printed on the side in bold letters:  You’ve come a long way, baby.  Or something like that, she thought.

“So tell me, Trinity, what do you know about yourself?”  The Oracle’s voice was soft, just a little raspy from the smoke.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you seem pretty self-assured, like you know what you’re doing with yourself.  I’m just wondering what you know.”

Trinity sat up a little straighter, pulling back her shoulders.  “I’ve been out for seven years,” she said, “I’m pretty familiar with everything in here, and out there.”  She waved her hand dismissively, as though “out there” were simply outside the building, or on the other side of the wall.

The bartender took another drag on her cigarette.  “Okay, then, what do you know?”

“I don’t know what you mean—”

“All right, all right.  Love, Trinity.  Have you ever been in love?”  A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips and eyes.

“No.”

“Think you ever will?”

“Ha, no, never.”  There was a tone of finality to her voice.

“Why are you so sure?”

“I can’t afford to fall in love.  Love slows you down, and I can’t afford to be slow.”

The Oracle nodded but didn’t break her gaze, eye-to-eye, waiting for her to continue.

“I know I value life,” Trinity went on.  “Once you lose that, it’s gone.  You can’t beat death.”

“Hmm . . . .”  The bartender stepped back, turning to the ashtray to ash her cigarette.  “You’re all about logic.  You know that your heart is irrational, so you follow your head.”

“Yes.”  Exactly.  Your head keeps you out of the trouble that everything else dumps you in, Trinity thought.

“That’s what it all comes down to for you.  Head or heart.  Logic or instinct.”  She punctuated her statements with a flick of her wrist, as though tapping the air with her index finger.  “And you’ve got your heart walled away so far that you’re going to think you’ve forgotten how to use it.  But you know, there’s so much riding on your not forgetting.”

“What do you mean?”

She hesitated, looking at Trinity sideways, through the corner of her eye.  “Are you sure you want to know?”  With one hand she pulled her hair back over her shoulders, bracelets tinkling.

“Yes.”

“Your logic and your instinct will pull you in different directions, Trinity.  In one hand, you’re going to hold everything you’ve always taken for granted – everything that makes sense.  In the other hand – well, in the other, you hold the future of the resistance, with all of its discomforts and uncertainties.”

Trinity lifted her head slowly, and inhaled sharply, through her nose.  “No.”  She said it decisively, shaking her head.  “No, there’s no way I can have that kind of influence.  I follow my reasoning.”

“Well then, this doesn’t matter to you, now does it?”

“No. . .  no, I suppose not.”

“All right, then, I guess there’s no point in my saying any more—”

“Where does my heart lead?”  The words tumbled out of Trinity’s mouth before she could stop them, overflowing like a tipped water glass.

The Oracle leaned forward then, bringing her face close to Trinity’s in a gesture of friendly intimacy, as though they were sharing a secret over a high-school cafeteria table.  She smiled knowingly, eyes twinkling.  “True love, Trinity.  With the best man of them all.”  Her tone thickened into something giddy and defiant at the same time:  “Everything you think you know will flip on its head, backwards.”

“The best man of them all?”  Trinity could feel her breath becoming shallow, her heart speeding up just a little.  Nerves, she told herself, just nerves.

There was a moment of silence, the two women holding each other’s gaze, locked in a tension that seemed solid.  “The One,” the Oracle said finally, lips twitching.

Trinity felt herself pull back as though slapped, like the recoil of a gun.  “The One is a legend,” she said, forcing the words out one at a time.  “There is no One.”

The bartender shrugged, then reached to butt out her cigarette.  “Well now, it looks like that’s going to depend on you.”

God, it was too much to think about that early in the day, too much to consider on top of everything else that was going on.  Trinity sat up quickly and immediately regretted it, as a shot of pain screamed its way through her left shoulder and upper arm.  A glance beneath her collar confirmed it:  the skin there was blotched in hues from purple to green to black, a bruised mass from her collarbone to her elbow resulting from her collision with the window of the office building the day before.  Groaning in frustration, she pulled something from the drawer under her bed, and went to the door.  Neo was in the corridor, walking to his room.

 “Hey,” he paused briefly beside her. “Where you headed?”

“Boiler room,” she said, giving a last tug to the rusty door-latch, before looking up at him.  

“Oh – something wrong with the engines?  Let me know if you need any help—”

A twitch tugged at the corners of Trinity’s lips, a bemused glint tinkling in the back of her eyes.  “There’s nothing wrong,” she said.  From her pocket, she pulled a crumpled foil packet, holding it out in the palm of her hand.  “I’m going for a smoke.”  Then, almost a reluctant afterthought, questioning:  “You can come with me, if you like.”

Neo took the pack from her, opening it to find seven or eight crudely-fashioned grey cigarettes, hand rolled.  Inadvertently he chuckled, shaking his head softly, and placed the foil back in her hand.  “Sure,” he said, shrugging, “I’ll come.”

The air in the boiler room was always clogged with a thin film of steam from the fusion reactors, light enough not to feel heavy when you inhaled it, but thick enough to cloud your vision just a little.  It was always hot down there, with the metallic, dry heat of machinery, that left skin feeling slick and lips feeling dry and tight, sweat collecting in the hollows of backs and necks.  Trinity pulled off her sweater and sat on the floor in her tank top, back pressed against the incinerator.  Neo sat across from her, leaning against the wall with his knees bent up in front of him.  He watched as Trinity pulled a tin can out from behind a cluster of pipes, then reached over and fully opened one of the cooling ducts.  She held the pack out to him.

“No, thanks,” he said, “I don’t.”

She nodded, then pulled one out for herself and set the packet down beside her.  A match flared and she touched it to the end of her cigarette, before shaking it out with a single flick of her wrist and dropping it into the can.  When she drew the smoke into her lungs she held it there, not breathing, for as long as she dared, before letting it slide slowly out her nose.  She leaned back, resting her head against the unyielding metal, and let her eyes close.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Neo said, after a few minutes of silence.

“I really don’t,” she replied.  “Very rarely.  Once every four or five weeks, maybe, or less.  Not addicted or anything.”

Neo nodded.  “Stuff’s bad for you,” he said, laughing.  Trinity’s lips twitched again and for a moment it looked like she might smile, but pulled back at the last instant.

“These aren’t even real cigarettes.”  Trinity lifted her head and eyed him through the steam, forearms resting on her bent knees.  “They’re just herbals, made from something this guy I know grows in Zion.  I hardly feel anything.”  She leaned forward and stretched to flick the ash off into the can.  

“Then why do it?”  Neo blurted out the question and instantly regretted it – he didn’t know Trinity that well, yet, after all, but he knew her well enough to know that challenging her so blindly wasn’t a good idea.

But Trinity didn’t lash out or jump to the offensive as he had expected.  Instead, her lips trembled again in that little almost-smile, and she shook her head, looking down.  “Because sometimes it’s better than feeling nothing at all.”  Neo could see the plugs dotting her arm, metal recessions set in the grooves between the muscles.  He fingered his own arm plug through the fabric of his shirt, feeling angry revulsion rising to his throat and coating it, like tar.  Despite the heat of the room, he would not roll up his sleeves.  Would he ever be as accepting of it all as she was, sitting there with her plugs staring openly at the world, unhindered?

“I guess I’m the only one, now,” she said, eventually.

“What?”

“There used to be a lot of us who would come down here from time to time.  Me, Switch, Apoc, Cypher, even Mouse.  We’d come down and play cards and pass a cigarette . . .”

Neo sat forward, inching closer, listening.

“Sometimes I’d come down here just with Cypher, and we’d talk.”  Trinity’s throat constricted briefly through the smoke, tendons bulging for just an instant before relaxing.  Her eyes were fixed on something above Neo’s head.  “He was a good friend to me, you know?  Because for a long time we were the cynics.”

“Cynics?"

“Disbelievers.”

“In what?”

She didn’t answer, and the ash-end glowed at him through the steam.  “Miracles,” she said, finally.

Neo felt his mouth go dry.

“The difference between us was that I still thought there was hope,” Trinity said slowly, eyebrows furrowed.  “I thought we could win anyway, maybe, and even if we couldn’t, that didn’t mean we should stop trying.  But he just thought everything was lost.  He was angry.  But I never thought. . . .”  Her voice trailed off, dissolving into the air.

“Are you still a cynic now?” Neo asked, hesitantly.

She met his eyes.  “No.”

There was a creaking sound—the door opening, feet clanking down the rusty ladder.  Tank.  Neo and Trinity watched his boots in silence as they touched the ground and passed around the side of a boiler to come into view.

“Oh – hey, guys,” he said, stopping as he noticed them.  He almost seemed to feel out of place, taken aback.  “I just came down to see why the duct was open.”  He waved his hand dismissively at the vent Trinity had opened, which was drawing the smoke out of the room and spitting it out into the sewer.  

“I’ll close it when I’m done,” Trinity said.  “Sorry.  You want?”  She slid the pack in his direction.

“No thanks.”  He laughed.  “I don’t get you Matrix-borns and your cigarettes.”  He shook his head.  “That shit’ll kill you.”

“Care to sit with us for a bit?” Trinity asked quickly, voice stiffening.

“I would, but I’m on watch.  I better get back up.  Oh, and Neo, Morpheus wants to see you in the cockpit when you have a minute.”

“All right.  Tell him I’ll be up in a minute.”

Tank nodded and retreated back behind the metal basin, and again, with soft clinks, his boots climbed back up and out.  The door closed.

“He’s got a point about the cigarettes,” Neo said, laughing half-heartedly.

“What, that they’ll kill me?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm. . . . Eventually.  In forty years, maybe.  But you know, in this line of work, we’ll be lucky to see five years – hell, we’ll be lucky to see five months.  So if this is going to kill me in forty years, I don’t care.  I like it, it relaxes me right now, when I need it.  And that’s all we’ve got, really.”  She looked up.  “The moment.”  

Neo watched as she took a last pull, then reached forward and pressed the butt determinedly, longer than she needed to, into the can, crushing it with the full force of her arm and shoulder instead of just her fingers.  “I swear, Neo,” she said, “the minute it looks like the end of the war is in sight is the minute I’m done with these for good.”  She shook her head and exhaled something that might have been a laugh, but mirthless.  “I think I’ll have another.”

He handed her the book of matches and watched as she lit one.  “I guess I should go up and see Morpheus,” he said.  

She nodded.  “Thanks for the company.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” he laughed, and headed up the ladder.

Trinity felt her shoulders relax with each step of Neo’s boots up the ladder, and finally let her head drop down in front of her chest.  Her pulse throbbed in her stomach as though it might break the skin.  Her fist clenched and she pressed it to the point below her ribs where it almost hurt.  Of all the spots to sit, Neo had chosen that one, leaning against the wall next to that pipe.  That pipe.  The memory of what had happened there, at that very spot, made her want to vomit now; she tasted bile, felt her throat constrict in a way that she recognized all too well.  

They had acted first and thought later.  She recognized that, now.  It wasn’t like they had planned it; wasn’t like it had been slow or pretty or romantic.  The thought never occurred to her before it actually happened – Cypher was Cypher, after all, her friend, her good friend.  But there were always times when the loneliness could become overwhelming, the coldness and the isolation, and that was one of them.  

They had all been down there playing cards, the whole crew.  They weren’t gambling that time, Trinity remembered; they were playing “asshole”.  She didn’t remember who won.  And at the end of the game everybody but the two of them had left to eat or sleep.  Trinity and Cypher stayed, though; they passed another cigarette quietly, just sitting.

“Hey – where’s your name come from?” Cypher asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Your name.  ‘Trinity.’  How’d you choose it?”

She shrugged, reaching to tap the ashes of the cigarette into the can.  “I don’t know.  I just read it somewhere – newspaper or something, I think – and liked the sound of it.  Felt right to me.”

He nodded, then chuckled a little.  “It’s kinda ironic, I guess.”

“Why?”

“You.  A name like that.  Comes from religion, you know, faith and shit.  But you, you’re like the opposite of that.  You do everything with your head.”

She chuckled, then, as she passed him the cigarette.  “Kept me alive so far, I guess.”

Cypher nodded.  “It’s my birthday,” he had said then, after a moment.

“Really?”  Trinity smiled.  “How old are you?”

“Four.”  

“Ha, funny.  Really, how old are you today?”

“Four.  I was unplugged four years ago today.”  He sighed then, blowing a thin stream of smoke between his lips.

“Oh, that kind of birthday.  Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Silence.

“When’s your birthday, Trin?”  Cypher had asked, eventually.

“Unplugging?”

“Yeah.”

“Six years ago, about, I think.  God, I don’t really remember.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”  Pause.  “Seems like it doesn’t matter much anymore, you know?  So long ago.  I’m more worried about tomorrow than yesterday.  And now more than tomorrow.”

Cypher laughed, then.  “I hear ya.  It’s all about living in the moment.”

“The moment,” she said, “yeah.”

Trinity had pressed the cigarette butt out in the can.  They were silent for awhile, just sitting; suddenly, she was painfully aware of him so close to her, side by side, their shoulders not quite touching.  “I guess I’ll head up,” she said, abruptly pulling away.

“Yeah.”  

They had risen at the same time and then both stooped to pick up the deck of cards.  Their hands touched.  Instantly, impulsively, he had grabbed her wrist and pulled her against him and then they were kissing, pulling each other closer and kissing deeply, frantically.  They had stumbled around until Trinity’s back thumped against a pipe and they slid to the ground.  It wasn’t pretty or slow or romantic – no, it was fast and desperate, pants bunched around their knees, shirts pushed up but not removed.  She felt relief, such relief, at the feeling of him inside her, of being so close to someone for the first time in so long.  The next morning they would both find bruises on their arms and shoulders from where they had gripped each other tightly, but Trinity couldn’t remember the feel of his hands on her skin.  All that stood out in her mind was the way her back had arched against the cold floor as she came.

They had pushed each other away, after that, and they never talked about it.  They had been young then (how young had she been?  If she had been out 6 years at the time, then…she was twenty, and he would have been twenty-two).  It wasn’t what Trinity wanted from him, and Cypher never pushed her.  Was it then that he had begun to love her, in that harsh moment between them and the engine?  The taste of his mouth had been repulsive to her.  She hadn’t cared at the time – she had needed the closeness then, at that moment, and he was there.  She had needed not to be alone.  At the time she wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing that she couldn’t love him, if it was somehow unfair.  Now, though, she was repulsed by what she had done with him, repulsed by herself.  The air in the room became thicker, suddenly, and it weighed on her, heavy against her chest.  Fingers of steam wrapping themselves around her neck, tighter, tighter.  She couldn’t breathe.  She had to get out of there, be away from there.  In a hurried movement she butted her half-finished cigarette, then rose quickly and emptied the can into the incinerator before stashing it in its hiding place.  She closed the vent and then sprinted up the ladder, skin taut, throat closing, gasping for air.

***

The ladder to the cockpit was cold to the touch, stinging Neo’s palms a little as he climbed.  Morpheus motioned to the co-pilot’s chair and Neo slid in, pulling his hands and feet back to keep from accidentally touching anything on the dashboard.  

“You wanted to see me.”

Morpheus was silent for a moment, unmoving.  His grip shifted on the controls.  “So . . . what do we do now?”

“What?”

“What do you want to do now?”

Caught off-guard, Neo was quiet for a few seconds.  “I don’t know,” he said haltingly.  “Why ask me?”

"These new developments give you greater influence in how we—”

“Morpheus. . . .” Neo cut in, and promptly realized what he had done and whom he had just interrupted.  His tone softened and became more tentative.  “The Oracle told me—”

“—what you needed to hear,” Morpheus finished for him.

Neo shook his head, exasperated.  Maybe she told me what you needed to hear.  “No,” he said.  “She told me I’m not the one.  I’m not the One, Morpheus.”  He pronounced each word clearly, individually.  “I am not the One.”

Morpheus’ face fell, chin coming down briefly to touch his chest.  “You’re wrong,” he said simply.

“I know what she told me,” Neo said, frustrated now.

“But perhaps not what she meant.”

Neo sighed.  “Morpheus, I’m sorry.  But I can’t pretend to be what I’m not.  I’m not the One.”

Morpheus was still for a moment, and he shook his head sadly.  “All right, Neo.  Get some rest.”

Neo nodded.  “I’m sorry.”  He rose, slowly, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders, and stepped to the ladder.

“Wait—”  Morpheus grabbed Neo’s wrist suddenly.  “Send Trinity up.”  

“Sure.”  And he was gone.  

***

Trinity settled into the co-pilot’s chair in the cockpit, gaze fixed out the window as Morpheus piloted the ship through the dark, narrow tunnels.  For a few minutes, neither spoke 

“So what do we do now?” Trinity asked.

Morpheus’ face was impassive for several seconds.  “I’m not sure,” he said finally.  “Zion, I think.  We’ll need a one or two more people with experience, and then we can try to unplug the rest to make a full crew. 

Trinity nodded.  She had assumed as much – but she loathed Zion, hated its absurd pseudo-normality, felt alienated in that world of everyday people.  It drowned her in its state of elevated consciousness, like you couldn’t hide from the throbbing masses.  The quieter personality of the ship was a reassuring constant to her.

“So – you sent for me.”  

“Yes.”  Morpheus nodded.  “Have you spoken to Neo?”

Trinity froze.  “Since we came back, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.  He . . . seems all right.”      

Morpheus paused as he slowed the ship, just slipping through a particularly narrow passage in the tunnel.  Then they sped up again.  “Trinity, what do you believe about him?”

Trinity’s hands came together in her lap, fingers gripping each other, white-knuckled.  What did she believe?  Damn, what did she believe?  The question threatened to choke her with its importance, to crush her.  “I . . .” her voice trailed off, and she couldn’t finish.

“He’s the One,” Morpheus said forcefully, more to himself than to her.  “He is the One.”   

Trinity’s gaze was distant, frozen somewhere beyond the windshield.  I know, she wanted to say, God, I know, I know.  But it wouldn’t come out.  She wouldn’t let it come out.  

“He needs to be pushed,” Morpheus said.

“We’ll kill him if we rush him.”  She kept her voice level, quiet, confident.  “I won’t do that.”

Morpheus sighed and passed a hand over his head.  “Yes. You’re right.”  He was silent for a few seconds, watching the tunnels, fingers cupped over his mouth.  “I just don’t understand it,” he said finally.  “He is the One.  Why would she have lied to him?”

Trinity knew he was referring to the Oracle, and said nothing.

“I’d like you to take him back to see her.”

“Just me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”  Trinity had visited the Oracle only once in her life; Morpheus made a point of always bringing the summoned recruits himself.  The thought of making this her moment of return was unnerving, to say the least; everything balanced so precariously and she feared that any wrong move might topple it in the wrong direction.  

“I don’t trust the machinery now, since the attack.  I’ll stay with Tank in case he needs help.  But Neo needs to see the Oracle again.”

She wasn’t convinced.  Why shouldn’t he go in, then, and she could stay behind to help Tank?  But as the thought pushed forward in her mind, she shook herself mentally and straightened herself in her chair.  If Morpheus wanted her to take Neo in to see the Oracle, he had good reason.  So she would take Neo in to see the Oracle.  

Morpheus kept quiet and hoped she wouldn’t question him, frozen for several seconds until it became apparent that she wouldn’t.  He did have his reasons for wanting to send Trinity and Neo into the Matrix alone, even for such an important cause.  For the more he considered the current state of affairs, the more the question of Trinity nagged at him.  He knew she was important, somehow.  He had known it from the time he had unplugged her thirteen years earlier, and when he learned he was destined to find the One, he knew that that was her importance.  He couldn’t explain it but he knew it to be true, knew it with the same force of instinct that guaranteed to him that Neo was end of his search.  And now, when things seemed so certain and yet so likely to dissolve in his hands, he could think of nothing to do but to send them out together and see what happened.  

“Keep a low profile,” Morpheus said, “I don’t want you picking up Agents.  This should be uneventful.”  

“All right.  When do we go?”  She looked forward again, out at the musty tunnel walls.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

She sighed.  “I’m always ready.”