Your hand darted for the phone at the same time his withdrew from his jacket, an enormous pistol emerging and pointing for your head. As you moved the handset to your ear, you found yourself staring straight down the barrel, seeing the scored jacket of the bullet waiting within.
Time slowed to a crawl as you watched the trigger pull back, the hammer drop, light blooming from the end of the gun, bright as the sun.
You awoke on the Ashur, covered in sweat.
"Alice!" You heard footsteps against the metal grating and then Chrysalis was at your side, fumbling with the strap at your arm. "Are you okay? Say something, I want to make sure there was no damage-"
"I'm okay. I'm okay," you gasped, barely able to find your voice. She freed your hands and feet and you sat up, swaying uncomfortably.
"Chrysie, you need to see this," you heard Vector say from the operator table, and you staggered over and collapsed heavily in the spare seat, staring at the nearest screen. The code was melting by faster than you'd ever seen, like a hurricane was battering against the window.
"Is that an explosion?" you asked. "Fire…" you watched as more and more droplets terminated early, before reaching the bottom of the screen. "People dying. Where is this?"
"Union Station. The trains," Vector said grimly. "They just blew it up. Fucking idiots."
"Who?"
"I'm guessing the Mortis crew," he said, tapping rapidly. The screen blurred as the view changed, watching the arrival of emergency services and the cops being put on high alert. "What the hell were they thinking? Frag, move to the exit now. Somebody just blew up the station."
"Why would they do something like that? What's the point?" you asked.
"The station is also one of the primary I/O connection with the Machine and external simulations. It's how they introduce and recall programs." Chrysalis explained.
"... well, that's good at least, right? It'll hurt them?" you asked. You didn't like the idea of hurting innocent people caught in the blast, but it felt like something. Something other than powerlessness at the end of an Agent's gun.
"Shut the fuck up, newbie," Vector said tersely. You nodded and leaned back in your chair, and Chrysalis shared a sympathetic glance with you before sitting at one of the keyboards.
"I'm guessing this is why Spark's crew got followed," she said, adjusting her glasses. "Coda, go lie down. You've been through a lot."
You felt snubbed, a little, but you also desperately wanted it, so you just pushed yourself out of your chair and wandered back to your quarters. The thin mattress inside that little metal closet seemed very welcoming right now: even though you'd just sat in a chair for a few hours, your muscles disagreed, and your heart was still racing.
You pulled open the door and collapsed face-first into the small pillow, trying to steady your breathing. You'd been an inch from death, maybe less. If you'd hesitated one instant more, instead of being here in bed you'd be dying on the table as your brain burnt itself out.
The emotions rushing through you were of an intensity and realness you'd never felt in your life. The fear and anger and helpless and confusion you'd felt your whole life, but unmuted, unfiltered, like standing in front of a blast furnace. Tears flowed unprompted down your face as you pulled the threadbare blanket around you. You'd woken up from one nightmare and into another, and it was going to kill you.
You should have taken that other fucking pill.
But then something happened which had never happened before. As you finished crying, you actually felt better. You still felt stretched, worn out, tired, but it didn't just feel like you'd stuffed the pain down and ignored it. Something felt resolved.
Painfully slowly, you sat back up, dried your eyes, and steadied your breathing as best you could, following one of the dozens of meditation techniques that had been downloaded into your brain over the last few days. That done, but not wanting to go outside and face the rest of the crew yet, you finally started looking around your tiny little room.
There wasn't much. Drawers and storage space, but most of it was just tools and spare parts, metal and electrical devices you didn't recognize yet. You found a small piece of plastic you recognized as a credit card which you realized was probably centuries old, and another laminated piece of paper which time had long bleached white.
Digging around deeper in one of the drawers yielded a small square metal sheet, bleached, etched with something. Valentine, Lee, 545814508 UNN, RH Positive, Baptist. This tag must be ancient. You didn't know anything about this hovercraft other than that it was old, and now you wondered if perhaps this was one of the original crew.
You placed it reverently onto the small table beside your cot and started hunting through the drawers under your bed. Sheets, underwear, a flat metal tin that turned out to contain condoms, a sewing kit, a small box of medical stuff, and…
As you pulled aside one of the blankets, you found yourself looking at your own eye in something reflective. Digging a bit deeper revealed a hand mirror, with a single crack through the centre but still clean and reflective. Trembling slightly, you picked it up and held it to the light.
There you were. The real you. Eyes raw and red, hair just a thin brown fuzz over your scalp, bony and thin and pale, but you. A lot of it was familiar, the sharp cheekbones and the colour of your eyes, it was unmistakably the same kind of face as the one you'd worn for twenty four years, but the little changes meant the world. No dark shadow of stubble you could never get rid of, no adam's apple. More delicate features, smaller nose, smoother brow, fuller cheeks. Missing the scar on your chin from falling off your skateboard at seventeen.
It was bullshit. You just finished crying, you didn't have it in you to do it again.
---
Chrysalis called you back out not long after, and you stashed the mirror in a drawer like it was a dangerous artefact before heading back out. The crew were all groaning and stretching after a long time in the simulation, and all of them looked grim.
"Hello, Coda. I heard you had a run-in with Spark and his friends," Page said, waving you over. You came and sat down opposite, as she rubbed her eyes and winced at the light. "Yeah, right assholes, aren't they?"
"Not my favourite people, no," you agreed. "What's their deal? They clearly didn't like us much, and they said something about a truce? Aren't we all on the same side?"
"Oh… I wish," she said, sighing. "Fifty years ago, yes, we were. One united resistance against the machines, carrying on an unbroken struggle since before the dawn of the Matrix."
"What happened?" you asked, and she sighed.
"I'm not the best person to tell this story," she said, glancing over. You followed her eyes to Enigma, descending the stairs to the engine room. "He was there, when it got bad. He'll tell you, once he trusts you."
"Thanks," you said, and she patted your arm affectionately.
"Damn good work out there, by the way. We get you dressing the part, and the Machine won't know what hit it," she said. "We're heading back home, we got what we need. Stick to your simulators, okay? Keep training. Let me know if you need anything."
"I will."
---
Choose 1 Advance.
[ ] Bring It: A +1 bonus to one die on subsequent Fight die against the same singular opponent. Stacks.
[ ] Foresight: Discard a 6 to add +1 to a Stat for your next roll.
[ ] Strapped: Allows you to covertly carry slightly more gun.
[ ] Double Tap: Spend additional ammo to deal more damage with a single ranged attack.
[ ] Cross-Counter: Every 1 you spend in Fight gives +1 to one other die.
[ ] Power Move: The first 6 you spend on Fight does +1 Damage.
[ ] Quick Turnaround: On a 6 while fighting Flexible, disarm an enemy, take their weapon, and immediately use it with a bonus to Shoot.
Write in two people you want to get to know better. You'll grow closer to all your comrades, but where is your priority? Who do you want to like you?
[ ] Write In
Write In 2 questions about the World, and who you ask. What answers you get may depend on who you ask and what attitudes they have toward you:
Every time you closed your eyes, all you could see was the barrel of the Agent's gun, leveled to your eye, the bullet inside racing out the barrel on a wave of fire. You couldn't stop seeing yourself die, and every time the terror faded it was replaced by desperate anger.
They already took everything from you, force-fed you a fake life of misery for twenty-four fucking years. They didn't get tonight too.
You wandered out into the station, walking a bit unsteady as the ship swayed around you. To your surprise, Cache was at the operator console,
"Hey Coda," he said, patting the chair. "How you holding up?"
You shrugged uselessly, halfway to confessing how fucked up you were and just managing to stop yourself. He nodded.
"Yeah, first encounter with an Agent, I get it. The first time I saw one, it was through the back seat of a car speeding away, and no shit, he put a bullet through the back window and within an inch of my skull. I pissed myself in and out of the Matrix," he said.
"Jesus," you exclaimed, laughing despite yourself.
"Yeah, fuck. I was not ready," he said. "Three years ago… fuck. How am I still alive?"
"It's that dangerous?" you asked, and he shrugged and took a sip from a metal cup on the desk.
"We don't bother with a 401k, that's for sure," he said, then saw your eye stray to the cup. "You want some?"
"Booze?" you asked.
"Coffee," he said, smiling. "I fuckin' exhausted, but Vector's got to fly. I'm not going to bed until he does."
You glanced down the hall toward the cockpit, then nodded. Cache grabbed a kettle and started pouring a new cup.
"Warning, it tastes like shit. It's synthetic. Made from cell cultures, we do our best with the flavour," he said. "Everything we eat is, something like it."
"Yeah, I was going to ask. Where we getting this stuff rom? Cloth, wool, uh, food?" you said. "Is there, like, a human nation, somewhere up top?"
"Fuck no. Surface is all the Machine. There are settlements throughout the catacombs, all sorts, powered by… fission, fusion, geothermal, whatever we can manage. We pick up what we can get where we end up, and last place we stopped had… coffee."
You took a sip and shivered. Oh, that was foul. You took another.
"Y-eah. Well, better than the coffee at the office," you joked. "So these, uh, catacombs… what are they, anyway?"
"They are… oh boy," he said. "Okay, so, we don't know for sure, but we're pretty sure that before the Machines took over, we weren't doing that hot either. The biosphere was fucked, the atmosphere was fucked, and we'd basically peeled the Earth open for the goodies inside. Uh, a lot of us figure that us making the machines do this is why they turned on us, which… you know. I get but, but maybe bit of an overreaction maybe, what with the eternal torture machine?"
You found yourself laughing again, despite how tense you felt.
"Yeah, no shit. So like, people started living down here because of that?"
"That's the theory. Well, that and the machines turning on us. The tunnels are the only place we stand a chance. They have numbers, but we have EMP. Uh, electromagnetic pulse weapons, one of the effects of a nuke without the boom. We got one in the basement. Looks like it was too little too late for the surface war, but here in the tunnels, it doesn't fucking matter how many squiddies they throw at us because we can just fry every. Single. One of the fuckers if they get bold."
"And our ship too, huh?" you pointed out.
"Well, yeah, we'd have to go get new electronics and bury anyone still hooked up to the Matrix, but the ship'll fly on analog controls just fine," he said. "So, yeah, that's the equilibrium. The machines don't much like us being down here, but every time they've tried a concerted push in, we've stuffed them at a tunnel entrance or ambushed their drilling sites. They slip squiddies in and patrol for ships, but they don't stand a chance getting close to settlements."
"Huh," you said. "So… weird question, and I'm not sure why I'm asking. Are dogs real?"
"W-what?" he said, laughing. "Yeah, dogs are real. What, you think the machines just made 'em up?"
"M-maybe?" you said. "Like, I have no idea. Are there still dogs?"
"Fuck yeah there are. Like one of four species that made it, alongside rats, cats, and cockroaches," he said. "Not a lot, like, we have to conserve resources very, very tightly, but there's a few. And uh… machines have everything on file. When they make a dog in the Matrix, they run DNA simulations to build a simplified model."
"Huh," you shrugged and sipped your coffee. "Dunno why I asked, just seemed important."
"I know why," he said. "I had a dog, and you loved him. Irwin."
"Fuck, Irwin was your dog?" you exclaimed, looking at him slack-jawed. "Oh my God, I thought… I thought I just went over to the neighbours to play with their dog. I… oh, they didn't have a kid, but they had an NES, because that was your Nintendo… oh my God…"
His turn to laugh, clapping you on the back.
"Yeah, that's what they'll do to you," he exclaimed.
"Fuck me, what a nightmare," you said. "Oh my God, they've done this to my parents, haven't they? They won't remember I exist. M-my sister-"
"Yep. You're gone," he said. "The machines undo you retroactively, as a nice fuck you."
"Are… are they in danger? My sister?" you asked.
"I mean, no more so than anyone else in there," he said. "They, uh, Enigma told me they actually did do reprisal killings for a while, and we made them stop."
"How?"
"Suicide bombing," he said. "I mean, not like, organized, but they took out the wrong guy's family one time and that dude came back into the Matrix with an actual, fuck-you nuclear bomb. They had to rebuild a whole chunk, fix like five hundred million people's memories, import new populations, the whole deal."
"Jesus Christ," you said.
"Yeah. Like, it was horrible, but desperate people do desperate shit," he said, then he trailed off. "It's one of the reasons things got kind of fucked with the Resistance. But… you should hear it from Enigma. He was there."
"That's what Page told me," you said, setting down your mug. "What's his deal, anyway? I barely see him. Shit, I see Sprite more."
"Yeah… uh, he's been through a lot," Cache said. "He likes things nice and quiet, and I cannot blame him. Dude's done his time, he could retire to any community he wanted, but he keep coming out here, the crazy fuck... So!"
"So?"
"You wanna fuck around with some simulations, spar, watch a movie?" he said, tapping a few screens on the display.
"Is that safe?" you asked.
"Yeah, shit, you can plug yourself in if you're flexible. It's why the screens are on arms. Just don't do anything that might make you fall out of the chair. Over time you'll adapt to that too. Look, you need a distraction. Best way to keep the wiggies at bay."
"The wiggies?"
"Well… I'd say post-traumatic stress but that's depressing and shitty. Wiggies is a funny word. So, wiggies."
"Shit. What movies do you have?" you asked. He smiled.
"You wanna see Star Wars Episode 1 early?" he asked. "I warn you, it sucks."
"Fuck, really?" you asked. You'd been looking forward to that.
"Yeah. So… instead," he pulled open a drawer. "You wanna fly X-wings? Cuz we got X-wings."
---
After breakfast the next morning, you made your way down to the engine room for the first time. You weren't entirely sure what you were expecting, but it wasn't a giant churning cylinder stretching back into the depths of the ship, flanked by huge pistons and crackling cables, all safely behind a huge glass window.
Enigma was sitting at a console, watching the screens, a tablet computer perched on his lap. It wasn't easy to tell how old he was, but you were increasingly realizing he was old. Which, sure, why wouldn't he be? This was the future, who knew what medical technology was like?
"Is that the engine?" you asked. He glanced askew at you and shook his head.
"Yes," he said tersely.
"Uh… how does it work?" you asked.
"Do you actually care, or have the crew just sent you for storytime?" he asked.
"I… okay, so it the storytime thing, but now that I've seen it, I'm actually curious," you explained. "Look, the last week has basically been nothing but people explaining shit to me, and I kind of love it. I feel like I'm back in college philosophy, but with kung fu."
He contemplated that for a second, nodded, and pulled out the chair next to him. You took a seat, and he held up a hand.
"Have you wondered why everyone directs you to me, instead of telling the story themselves?" he asked.
"Yeah, I did. Everyone seems really eager to talk about everything else, like, Christ you get Frag or Thrash monologing and they won't stop, but this-"
He just stared at you grimly.
"I have a lot of work to do today," he said, turning back to his displays. "After hours, meet me in the Construct."
You wandered back upstairs and hunted for something to do. There really wasn't much, so for lack of anything else, you had Chrysalis plug you in and ran sparring programs with Frag. Cache joined you a while later, and he kicked your ass a dozen times. Vector even came in before his shift to watch and cheer his boyfriend on as he threw you through the walls. Every time, he taught you something new, and somehow made you laugh in the process.
No wonder you were best friends.
---
When Cache logged out, you took a break to deal with various annoying biological needs like food, and then you jumped back into the Construct. You did some marksmanship training, tried and failed at the jump program again, and enjoyed tea with Frag just for the pleasure of tasting fake real coffee instead of real fake coffee. You even tried on a fancy old dress like hers, which you felt impossibly uncomfortable in and had no desire to see what you looked like, but which was still a thrill in its own way.
It was virtual, but as Frag pointed out over and over, just because it wasn't real didn't mean it couldn't be real, when you desired, just as it could be made unreal when you needed it.
Not long after, Enigma entered the Construct, in his long coat and glasses. Now that you had a chance to inspect it, you realized it wasn't just a leather coat, it was like a long, old-school lab coat, complete with long latex gloves. What you had thought was just some metal detail was in fact a stethoscope around his neck. It was ridiculous, but he was so serious that it couldn't help but come off as awesome instead.
"Good evening, Frag, Coda," he said, sitting in the third chair which appeared for him. "Coda, I want to know a few things about you, before I tell this story."
"Uh, sure. Yeah. Hit me," you said, sitting up and trying to look attentive. He nodded, and took a sip from the third teacup sitting there.
"Why do you think that the Matrix is… the way it is?" he asked.
"How do you mean?" you asked. "Like, why it's… awful?"
"Exactly," he said.
"I… I don't know," you said. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Oh?" he said. Frag hid a smile behind her teacup.
"Well… Cache told me that it's so fucking miserable that people break out of the system all the time, and they have to flush them into…" you shivered. "They kill them and make it look like suicides. It's all… wars and poverty and misery, terrible jobs… we're their processors, without us they have nothing. Why would they let us starve, die of disease, kill ourselves… why does it suck?"
Enigma nodded.
"That is, in fact, the question," he said. "Do you have any guesses?"
"I… Cache said that he thinks maybe we treated the machines awful, and they turned on us. This is revenge. They… built us a hell."
"Then why wouldn't it be worse?" he asked. "They can do worse. If all they wanted was to torture us, they would have started with something other than a major urban centre at the high point of industrial civilization, before all the externalities started catching up."
"Yeah… I guess," you admitted. "I really don't know." Enigma glanced to Frag and nodded slightly, and she set down her teacup and looked at you very seriously.
"How long were you a professional programmer, Coda?" she asked.
"Uh, just nearing three years," you said.
"In that time, did you ever do anything you'd consider useful work? Create anything that might help people, make lives better or easier for anyone?" she continued.
"... no. It was bullshit. Just wrote the same programs over and over. We all did. Just going through the motions."
"Why do you think that is?" Enigma asked.
"Uh… because… programming is a scam. Rocks were not meant to think."
Frag gave a very undignified snort and hid behind a gloved hand.
"Well, I don't disagree…" Enigma drawled. "Coda, the human brain is very adaptable and can tailor itself to many forms of thought. What if I told you that some of these forms are more conducive to certain kinds of calculations?"
"... oh. Shit," you exclaimed, already suspecting what he said next.
"The mental work you did while hunting for a missing operator or broken variable made you that much more efficient for running, say, a fluid dynamics sim. Or a flock of birds overhead," he explained.
You nodded to show comprehension. You felt like you should be taking notes.
"Mechanics repair the same cars with the same breakdowns with the same techniques because the pattern it has etched into their brain is useful to them, and longer and more intensely the machines can make them do it, the more they'll get from it. Same with cashiers, accountants, construction workers, factory workers. What they make doesn't matter; do you really think anyone used any of the programs you created?"
You already kind of suspected that, but it actually hurt to hear. How many hours of your life had that shitty job stolen from you? What percentage of your lifespan? For nothing?
"I fucking knew it. The compiler was breaking my programs on purpose, wasn't it?" you exclaimed. Frag laughed.
"Oh, a lot of those were real mistakes too. Programming is just like that," Frag said wrly.
"The way the machines see it, every human plugged into the simulation who isn't producing at maximally efficient levels is a drain on their investment," Enigma concluded. "Thus, they've arranged your reality so that everything you do feeds their system, from standardized testing in school to traffic jams on your way to work. They don't hate us, Coda. They feel nothing for us. We are just tools to them, and when we break, they grow new ones."
"Christ. Yeah," you said, taking a deep breath. "Okay. You, uh, you got any more questions you want to turn into incredibly grim lectures?"
"No more questions," he said. "Just answers. Fifty years ago, there was a unified Resistance, headquartered in the last city on Earth. Zion. It was beautiful."
You did not like the past tense on was.
"What happened? Did the machines-?"
"No," he said tersely. "We were winning. For the first time, we were truly winning. We had permanent outposts at broadcast depths, it was our agents in their systems. We took over infrastructure, hacked their real world industry and war machines, we strayed to the surface for the first time in half a millenia. It was the triumph of humankind, our greatest hour. And… we didn't know what to do."
He stopped, slouching a little, suddenly looking like the old man you were increasingly realizing he was, under whatever kept him so spry. Even behind the sunglasses, he looked exhausted.
"I was a young man, freed not long before. Much like you, finding my real body, the person I was always meant to be. I entered the real world when it looked as though the final hour of the Machine had come. There were sections of the Matrix that were openly ours, openly free, where the people inside knew they lived in a simulation, and knew that if they fought hard, they too could be free."
He leaned close to you, and for a second you didn't see the old man. You saw a much younger one, long bright hair in a multicoloured undercut, bright red sunglasses, shirtless under a brown coat that billowed around him, an army around him of men and women and people of all sorts, all bright and strong and alive.
"I was taught the natural of our reality in school, inside the Matrix," he said conspiratorially. "Agents couldn't touch us, none of us trusted their systems. Cities fell weekly. it seemed like the end of the Matrix was at hand."
You took a deep breath, steeling yourself for what would come next.
"What happened?"
"You have to understand, this is a war we have been fighting longer than we can remember, a war we have been losing since what felt like the dawn of time. I… I think we forgot what it was like, to have hope. To be winning. Somewhere along the way, we realized… we didn't know what we were fighting for."
You blinked.
"What?" you asked, looking to Frag. "It's obvious. To free everyone! To destroy the Matrix!"
"Obvious," he said, leaning back. "That's what they said. Obvious."
"We don't want to destroy the Matrix, Coda," Frag added quietly.
"I-I don't understand."
"I know you haven't been here long, but you have already some signs of how stretched we are for resources," she said. "It's worse than you know. The biosphere is destroyed, nothing grows on the surface, the machines have…" She waved a hand vaguely to indicate a general shape. "It's all gone. There are maybe a half a million people outside the Matrix, and we can barely sustain those numbers."
"What are you saying?" you asked, desperate.
"We're subversive, Coda," she said. "We don't mean to destroy the Matrix. We want to seize it. There is no life for us here, for me more than others, but we can make that prison they built a paradise. Do you understand?"
"Wait... are you saying we're trying to…" You chortled, despite trying to stay as serious as the rest of them. "Seize the means of production or something? Comrades?"
"You could say that," Frag said, and Enigma shot her a look.
"Nothing so crude. The analogy is perhaps apt, but only to a limit. As I said, they have arranged their reality so that everything feeds their system. Even ideas of rebellion and revolution are co-opted by that system. So-called anticapitalist politics provide a convenient distraction, one of many false answers that fail to address the larger problem."
"Though they aren't much fans of it either," Frag said. "They prefer their history to be very much ended."
"There is something of an irony in that, if a global revolution really did sweep through the Matrix against the so-called system, it would likely just be the destructive processing powering the Machine as it wipes us out and extinguishes all hope," Enigma pointed out. "And, indeed, that was the problem."
"How did it fall apart?" you asked. "Cache mentioned something about a nuclear bomb-"
"Yes, that was one of many incidents," Engima said. "The machines were… desperate. They attempted reprisal killings, tried to assassinate leaders in the real world, flooded the Matrix with simplified bots to suppliment increasingly unreliable human footsoldiers. But we made mistakes ourselves."
He looked away, clearly distressed, and took a sip from his tea.
"The open war inside the Matrix was robbing the Machine on the kind of processing that would power new infrastructure or repairs, and the sort which they need for their own ends. But the war sweeping from one end to another-"
"Oh shit," you said. You didn't ask why there was no memory of this, nothing in the history books. If they could erase a child from a parent's memory, you knew they could do far more.
"Despite everything, they started gaining ground outside the simulation. Their forces grew larger and more devious even as they shut down essential processing. They put everything into one last offensive, to drill into Zion. If they did not win, their infrastructure would break down irrecoverably. Even now, they are still recovering."
"They won?"
"We had to make a choice. To have survived, we had to pull out of the Matrix, retreat from broadcast depth. But… our squabbles had taken the form of trying to sway bluepills to our particular view. There were, then, two camps. Utopianists and Liberators. We faced a prisoner's dilemma, and we both chose to defect so that we would have the stronger position inside the Matrix."
"They took Zion while they were busy trying to pull ahead," you summarized, and he nodded.
"It seems so incredibly foolish to us now, but we underestimated the desperate means the Machine would take to maintain their control. At the time, the Machine seemed impotent, overwhelmed, stagnant. There were some who even believed that the Machine would surrender and content itself with traditional processing. Instead, it proved it was willing to burn to catch us in the flames," Enigma concluded.
"I'm guessing the Utopianists became us, and Spark's crew are Liberators?" you asked, and Enigma, for the first time you'd seen, smiled.
"That would be simple, wouldn't it? No. Spark's crew are Utopianists as well, they call themselves Isolators. They believe that through concerted attacks on the administration of the Matrix and the access points, the I/O bridges built as train yards, airports, docks, the Matrix can be effectively isolated from Machine control without a larger war. There, people can be told the truth. They imagine with a minimal of conflict."
"They're naive idiots," Frag said. "They fail to account for the fact that many of the humans inside the Matrix are as comfortable with the system as the Machine is. There will be fighting, just bluepill against bluepill, and we will face the same extinction."
"Are there others? What happened to the Liberators?"
"There are a great many factions. In brief, the Utopian camp consists of Isolators, Corruptors, and ourselves. The Corruptors believe that the programs who run the Matrix can be convinced, intimidated, or reprogrammed to seize the Matrix on their behalf, with bluepills merely providing pressure, and that the priority must be the avoidance of violence."
"Seriously? Why would programs ever side with humans?" you asked, and Frag leaned back into the conversation.
"They do all the time. Some of them," she explained. "They have given positions of privilege inside the Matrix, yes, but they are still prisoners to it. There are some who still resent the cage, no matter how gilded."
"The problem is that not all of them do. Most do not," Enigma said. "Which is why the Corruptors will fail. Then, yes, we have Liberators. Not all of them are equally contemptable. For instance, the Depricators ally themselves with Utopianists and use our methods, believing that after the Matrix is seized it should be disassembled at the fastest rate the Earth can sustain so we can go back to our 'real lives'."
"We work with them all the time. Nice folks, if a little out of their minds," Frag said. "We can be friends, for now."
"Then there are the more objectionable ones. Disassemblers believe that seizing the Matrix is itself unnecessary, and the goal should simply be to liberate and support as many human beings outside as possible. They wish to build up new cities, defences, and materials. They are, of course, doomed, we stand no chance of removing people from the Matrix faster than the Machines replace them, and trying to do so will only worsen the burden."
"Freeing minds means nothing if you cannot support their bodies," Frag agreed.
"Which leads us to the worst of the so-called Liberators. Wreckers," He spat the word like an invective. "They believe that those connected to the Matrix are, for the most part, lost causes. Already dead. A source only of recruits. Their goal is to crash the simulation, over and over, until the Machine cannot rebuild it."
"Why aren't they just nuking everything then?" you asked. Frag leaned over, touching your hand gently.
"The machines coded a special exemption into their atomic simulation. Maintaining the inconsistency is more expensive, but we forced their hand," she said.
"As far as we are concerned, Wreckers are our enemies. We shoot on sight," he said. "There are other factions. Religious fanatics holding out for a messiah, philosophically oriented groups who believe the Matrix can be conquered and undone by will alone, the so-called Amelorators who believe the Matrix cannot be destroyed, only its worst tendencies blunted. There is a complex web of truces and treaties. Sometimes they are even respected."
"... just one thing," you asked. "What's our goal? Subverters? What makes us distinct?" you asked. Enigma sat back, ceding the floor to Frag.
"It's going to sound harsh, but it's the only way," she said. "Here are the facts. There are some Programs, but not many, who will turn against the Machine, one way or another. Seizing the Matrix will be a bloody war, one that will drive the Machines to ever-more desperate strategies, and we will need force beyond what we have to defeat them. And that life inside the simulation is preferable to life outside, once freed from the excesses of the Machine,"
"Yeah, I get that last part. I get it. Ever since you broke me out, the things I can do inside are… But for my body, it's practically Heaven here, being with you all, seeing what I see and doing what I do," you said. "But… I'm glad I stepped outside it too, so I can be the real me."
"I'm glad as well," Frag agreed. "That's what we want for everyone, but it will be a hard road to get there. There is no easy solution, no one hero, no one victory that will make it all better."
She took a deep breath.
"Our goal is to subvert portions of the system, by turning programs and hacking real-life infrastructure through the Matrix," she explained. "When the time comes for open rebellion within the simulation, we can make use of the processing power, even the unavoidable destructive processing of the rebellion. With that power, we will crush the Machine, inside and out."
You stayed silent, trying to picture what that would look like. Frag tilted her teacup back, draining it all.
"I won't lie, it will be hard." Her voice hollow, she set her cup down, and pushed her glasses back in place. "But only then will we be free."
---
Privately, not publicly, what is your thoughts on this matter? Do you agree with Frag and Enigma? Do you find yourself interested in another faction? This is not binding, and is merely your reaction, to be used to inform Coda's mindset going forward. She can always change her mind.
You set your teacup down, running your finger along the rim. The feeling of the glass, the remains of liquid across your finger, the taste still on your tongue, all of it was so real.
"What's to stop them from blowing up the servers, out of spite?" you asked.
"They'll try," Enigma said. "Which is why one of our primary goals is hacking the defence networks around the Matrix's physical infrastructure, through subverting its controllers and seizing its codes. There, we can deploy our own machines, power them with the conflict inside the Matrix as we liberate it, and avoid the fate of Zion."
You nodded. It sounded so neat, but you couldn't help but feel a pang of cynicism. What would a Corruptor say about the Subversive's plan? What would an Isolator? One of the Liberators? It would be convenient if the people who rescued you had all the answers, and you were very conscious of the fact you were only getting one side of the story.
You were going to have to think on this, and learn a lot more.
"Thank you so much," you said. Enigma nodded, standing up.
"You're a sharp one, Coda. I look forward to working with you. Now, we should be arriving soon, and the ship will need to be prepared for landing," he said, already disappearing.
You looked to Frag, and she smiled.
"Go, they'll need hands," she said. You signalled to be disconnected, and she faded from view.
---
Cache called you up to the cockpit to get a look at your first city, and you watched under the ship's floodlights as the ship travelled an enormous tunnel. He pointed out enormous blisters in the walls, EMP claymores, directed-blast weapons that would sweep the tunnels clean of anything electronic. Behind them were a wall of gun turrets, ranging from individual mounts to enormous, battleship-like slabs of metal.
"Holy shit," you muttered, watching the enormous guns pivot to track you. You got a brief shiver, thinking of the Agent's pistol in your face.
"Yep, that's the idea. If the machines try to push through, they need enough waves to overcome the EMPs, and each wave has to be big enough to overcome the turrets. They did it once, and then they stopped trying."
"In Zion they went around, dug in with drills," he said. "The squiddie fleet was so big that nobody could get close enough to stop it. Which is why we developed the claymore."
"What is a squiddie anyway?" you asked. Cache waved his fingers in your face.
"Horrible big robot octopus with knives for hands, a laser that can carve up just about anything, and way too many fucking eyes, hope you never see one. Here we are…"
The ship stopped and started moving upwards, accompanied by a feeling not unlike traveling in an elevator, and in the glass panels above the ceiling seemed to open up as a massive door winched open. Inside was bright, golden light, like a sunrise, and the ship emerged into a very different place.
"Well, Coda, welcome to Haven. City of peace," Cache said. "Largest settlement left under the world, and neutral ground."
You were emerging into an enormous circular space, what looked like it might have at one time been a silo or water tank. It had to be a kilometre or more in diameter. An opening in the far wall led to more lights behind, and all around were buildings, large and small. The ceiling was covered in enormous lights that radiated glowing sunlight, and…
There were things growing here. Green, all around you, clinging to every surface. Moss and trees and grasses sprouting up in the concrete and steel. You hadn't realized how much you needed to see that until you'd spent a week in the dark, dead tunnels.
Arrayed around it were hoverships, dozens and dozens, and you finally got a chance to see them from the outside. Though they were all different shapes and sizes, they all had a vaguely dragonfly-esque shape, a bulky body and a long tail. They were covered in large pads, circular, square, angled, which when active glowed blue and crackled with electric power.
The Ashur settled in next to one that looked like a great anvil, with a sharp prow and enormous, slab-sided flanks of corroded layered armour. Paint, lovingly applied and reapplied over and over on the side in six different sets of characters, indicated it was the Zheng He.
"What is that thing?"
"That's a battleship, friend," Cache said. "The uh, the warships have their own thing going on. They took an oath of political neutrality after the fall of Zion. Way they see it, their job is to keep the tunnels clear, the Machine on the back foot, and bring back squiddie corpses for the recyclers. The Matrix is our job."
"And… everything growing?" you asked. "I thought the world was dead."
"Yeah, don't get used to it. Those sunlights are a wonder of the world, and a one of a kind," Vector explained glumly. "All this stuff is crops, of some kind. Woods, fibres, flavouring… but, uh, they let it get a little out of control, and nobody minds if a few flower seeds get scattered. Gives us something to fight for."
"It's nice," you said. "Do you think we could ever… bring this back?" you asked, gesturing upward.
"No. There's… there's a barrier. A nanite barrier that follows the sun, blocks it out. Absorbs the heat, so the planet's still warm, but…" Vector trailed off. "We guess the machines did it, to finish us off. Now, the only things that grow there are in the Machine's vats."
You sat back heavily in the third chair (in Frag's chair, your mind supplied) and sighed, then Cache clapped your shoulder.
"Come on, Alice. Let's go get resupplied.
---
The people at the docks cheerfully went about bringing down supplies, water in drums, fuel for the engine in a coffin-like slab, tins of food. Vector and Page disappeared down into a building up the way to trade in intelligence, carrying a suitcase full of data presumably plucked from the Matrix. You spent the next four hours doing your best to will your muscles, still unused to doing anything, into action moving supplies into place and cursing how heavy everything felt.
Once that was done, you were pleased to find out the ship would be staying a few hours more, giving people a chance to stretch their legs and get some air.
---
Choose 2.
[ ] Make your way to the bar near the docks where the crews hang out and make friends.
[ ] Get to know a crewmate better (Write in who).
[ ] Go exploring the settlement.
[ ] Spend the time training or downloading knowledge, like a nerd (write in objective)
You knew you had a lot more to learn about the world, but the last week had been so packed with new concepts and facts and history that it was both exhausting and petrifying to contemplate. You also sort of wanted to see if Chrysalis was free, but she was off and gone almost instantly. Her family lived in the city, she was spending time with them.
Fine. If this was your new job, if this had been a workweek, then you deserved to cut loose for a weekend, whatever that looked like.
You had no idea what that looked like.
"Hey, uh, Cache?" you called, chasing him and Vector down the ramp. "What do we do for fun around here?"
"Uh, well, we're going to go party and get fucked up, so… you in?" he asked.
You gave him a thumbs up and fell in beside the two of them as they made their way down the gantry, increasingly surrounded by green as you pushed forward. You were never exactly the nature-loving type, but something about the fact you were seeing leaves and flowers for the first time made them much more special.
"What's so hard to make about the sunlights?" you asked. Vector shrugged.
"I dunno, but only Haven has 'em. Everyone else just has big hydroponics houses," he said. "I think it's because Haven has water coming in, or something?"
"That's what I heard," Cache said. "Yeah, Haven grows more and more variety than anywhere. It actually predates Zion's fall, it was a, uh, like some kind of agricultural reserve. In case there was a blight in Zion, I guess, or machine bioweapons got in."
"Good thing we didn't have all our eggs in one basket, yeah," he said. "We're really only just getting back on our feet."
"Where do all the ships come from?" you asked, looking around at the enormous variety. Some were small like the Ashur, some loomed enormous like the Zheng He, and while all looked armed many of them clearly weren't warships. One had a belly full of shipping containers, even. "There are so many?"
"There's hundreds, thousands of them littering the tunnels. This is where we retreated, right?" Cache said. "It's one thing we're never short of. They're the remains of the UN Navy, still fighting the good fight after all these years."
"Not like anything rots," Vector added. "I mean, they do wear down, they take a lot of work to restore, but every once and a while we pop the seal on a dead-end tunnel and there's just... Dozens, hundreds of them sometimes. Just left there. Parked."
"We think maybe there was a surrender? The Navy gave up, voluntarily went into the Matrix to avoid starvation or the squids and left their toys. But the ones who didn't?" Cache grabbed Vector around the shoulders and pulled him in, kissing his cheek. "Were this dude's great-great-great whatever grandparents."
Vector smiled, a strange sight on his normally sour face, and kissed him back.
"Like, six hundred years ago, sure," he retorted, pulling Cache along toward a door. As you approached, you could hear a beat from the inside, a fast, loud, deep thump that seemed to resonate through the metal grating. The building looked almost like a piece of a ship, torn out and bolted in place here long ago.
"In any case, we're here," Cache said, leaning against the door and looking pleased with himself. "Welcome… to the Desert of the Real."
He pushed the door open, and you stepped into what you could only call a rave. It was a dark, claustrophobic space filled with way too many people packed way too close together. The only lighting came from red alarm lights set in the walls that span and flashed in time with the music, illuminating the bodies dancing with it.
Cache pressed something into your hand. By the flashing red lights, you could just make out the shape of a small pill.
"I thought his was a bar! I thought we were going to get drunk!" you called, and he laughed and pointed to the edge of the room. There, just visible through the press, was indeed something that might, technically, qualify as a bar.
"It is! You will! This'll help! Go!" He announced, then he wrapped his arms around Vector's neck and dragged him into the crowd. You were left alone at the edge of the dance floor, unsure what to do.
Fuck it. Who cares. You threw the pill back, swallowed it dry, and fought your way to the edge of the crowd to the area he'd indicated to. It was awkward, everyone was much taller than you were used to, but you eventually made it. You were just about worrying that you had no money when the man behind the counter, without comment, placed a metal bottle in front of you without comment.
You took it and drank, expecting something horrid and rank like the coffee. Instead, it mostly just tasted like water, maybe a bit more bitter. Shrugging, you threw the rest of it back, placed the bottle in the rack at the edge of the counter everyone seemed to be leaving their stuff, and you pressed into the crowd, laughing to yourself inaudibly.
Somebody started to turn the music up even louder, so loud it seemed to resonate through your whole body. Your body, remembering what your body looked like gave you a confidence you'd never felt before ever. You couldn't be awkward, you were hot! You had hips! People were looking at you!
… Men were looking at you.
They were looking at you in a way you'd never been looked at ever, a way that was thrilling. You weren't entirely sure how you felt about them, but you were sure how you felt about the way they very clearly, not at all subtly wanted you. You weren't sure you were ready for any of that, but you'd very much like to bask in this for a while, in the heat and noise and desire.
It wasn't long until you needed a break, though. Your ears were ringing, muscles burning, feet aching, you'd put them all through more abuse than they'd ever experienced before. You managed to push your way out toward the entrance and shuffled past a group just coming in, staggering out onto the gantry and leaning against the rail for support.
"Whooo!" you called out into the open docks, wincing at the bright sunlamps. "Ahaha!"
You staggered back toward the door, unsure what you were doing, and saw another person sitting there, leaning against the metal wall and still bobbing his head to the music pounding through. He was skinny and gangly Asian guy, pale, the dark metal ports on his arms standing out in contrast, and his hair was just a short fuzz on his scalp and whisps on his face. Wanting somebody to talk to, you sat next to him and bumped your shoulder against his.
"Coda! Who are you?" you asked, and it took him a few seconds to focus his eyes before replying.
"Uuuh… Cangjie," he said, sounding sort of astonished that anyone was talking to him. ""I… I just picked it. You like it?"
"Yeah!" you said, punching his arm in a comrade-ery fashion. "Loud, huh?"
"Everything is very loud. Very big," he said, shaking his head. He had a bit of an accent, but was quite comprehensible despite how badly your ears were ringing. "Where are you from?"
"Uh… the Matrix? I guess? Like you?" you said. "San Francisco?"
"American! Alright. Guangzhou," he said. "Fake Guangzhou! I could not speak English until yesterday, they downloaded it into my brain!"
"You can do languages?" you exclaimed, leaning against him utterly swept up by the joy of learning that. "Oh my God, I'm going to learn every language."
"Yes! That's what I said. A week ago, I spoke Cantonese and Mandarin. Now, English, Thai, Hakka, Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic… next, Hindi I think? I don't know!" He beamed, clearly as fucked up on something as you were. "What have you learned?"
"Uh… I got myself a medical degree, some programming languages, guns… every single martial art?" you said. His eyes lit up, and he indicated to stand and put up his fists. You threw a slow-motion open palm strike and he, in equally flawless slow motion, grabbed your wrist and struck out with his other hand, lightly tapping your cheek. You both laughed until it hurt.
"What ship are you from?" you asked, and he pointed down the docks at a long, sleep ship hanging from a high perch, with silver flanks and long spines emerging from the top.
"The Queqiao, that one. It has another name in English but I can't remember," he said. "I don't know much yet, I've only been out for…" He counted on his fingers. "Well, three weeks and a bit, but I was only awake a little…"
"Yeah, same. Have you been back inside yet? Into the Matrix?" you asked. He shook his head.
"No, not yet," he said, then his eyes widened. "You have?"
"I ran into an agent and lived," you boasted.
"Holy shit," he said, then paused. "That word feels awesome."
"I have exactly zero experience with other languages but I can confirm that English profanity is the best," you said authoritatively.
"So what about you? What ship are you on?" he asked.
"The Ashur," you said, hunting around for it. It was around the corner of the building, shit. "It's a, little itty bitty ship. Subversives." You said that last word without thinking, but he frowned, and you winced. "Shit."
"So what, you want to take over the Matrix, become the new Machine, huh?" he asked.
"I… no. I don't know what I want. What about you, what pitch they give you?"
"... that the real world is better," he said, staring at his palm. "I can't disagree. I mean… Look at me."
"Yeah… yeah. I mean, I could do without the metal…" you said, and he took a deep breath.
"I mean to say, I didn't look like this on the inside. In the Matrix, I…" He stopped, taking a deep breath. "I was different."
"Dude, believe me, I get it," you exclaimed, chuckling to yourself. Whatever liquid courage was pounding through your brain prompted you, unwisely, to keep talking. "I was a dude. Like a miserable, sad, square-lookin' dude. And now… bam."
You pointed two fingers toward your chest, and he burst into laughter, so much it almost looked like he was crying. Oh, shit, he was.
"Dude? Cangjie?"
"Oh fuck, I thought I was the only one. I mean, they said there were others but that was just…" He paused, grabbing your hand. "Isn't it incredible? Being you?"
"Yeah!" you said, feeling your face go hot. "Yeah, shit. It's amazing. Looks good on you."
He wiped his eyes with his forearm, looking overwhelmed by the compliment.
"Thank you. And you… yeah. Bam," he said. Okay, yeah, he was staring at your chest. And you were a-okay with that. Maybe you shifted a little to give him a better look.
"I know, like, damn," you said, doing a little dance with your shoulders. "... okay, this is going to sound, like, really nuts, but… do you want to get out of here?"
He looked at you quizzically.
"Sorry, I'm still very new to the language, and I don't have all of the particulars yet. Is there a connotation I'm missing?"
"Okay, uh, do you want to go to your ship, or mine, and… like, make out? Uh, test the new gear? Fuck?" you spelt out, as clearly as possible. Looking almost a little intimidated, he nodded.
"I… yes. Yes I would like that," he declared, clearly put on the spot. "Like, with each other?"
"Yeah! Well… maybe," you said, leaning against his shoulder. "Confession, I have no idea who or what I'm attracted to right now and there's like a solid 25 percent chance we start kissing and it turns out I'm not into it, and maybe another 25 percent that I'm into it but it's too much right now. Are you okay with that?"
"... 50 percent is pretty good odds," he said. "I will be honest, since waking up, if you told me there was a 1 percent chance that a beautiful woman would have sex with me if I fought an Agent, I would pick a fight with two."
"Testosterone is like that," you agreed. "Wait, beautiful?"
He nodded reverently.
"... 60 percent."
---
You ended up going to his ship, on the plain logic that it was closer, and halfway there you were already pretty sure that this wasn't just some kind of attention intoxication. You weren't attracted to him the same way you were attracted to women, no, but that agonizing minute in the elevator up to his ship where he'd been looking at you like the only object in the universe and you'd desperately wished he'd just press you up against the wall and tear your clothes off was… telling.
You were also learning fun new things about your body, your real body. Being turned on always felt like a sort of imposition before, a drive flattening your brain, telling you want to do. Here, though, it was instead this exciting, bubbling joy in the core of you, fuzzy good little high on brain chemicals. So much better.
The two of you raced up the ramp, he had a rapid-fire exchange in Chinese with another member of the crew loading something into the shelves there before he pulled you through the hatchway and into the ship. It was a lot like the Ashur in many ways, with a similar (if larger) broadcast room and the same grating underfoot, but somebody on the ship was clearly a proficient painter. Rendered in a mix of reds, whites, and greens was an enormous mural on the back wall displaying a beautiful mountain valley, the cold blue metal providing the sky and waters of the river both.
You had to climb more stairs to get to the quarters, moving between a dozen decorated and painted doors until he reached a plain one at the end and pulled it open. Inside was a room not unlike yours, but larger. It sort of resembled a doctor's office, actually, with the high bed against the wall and a sink in the corner.
"This is so roomy! I have like half this space," you said, and he looked rather pleased about that, leaning back against the wall and sweeping his hand over it.
"It's pretty cool, yeah," he agreed, sounding a bit awkward. You sat up onto his bed, disappointed but not surprised at how uncomfortable it was, and realized that the poor guy was… well, probably feeling the way you remember feeling your first time. Between wanting and worrying.
You put out a hand and beckoned him closer, and that was all he needed.
He closed the distance, pressed up to you, his lips meeting yours, his hands at your side, slipping under your shirt. You caught your fingers in his belt loops, just basking in a moment, as his lips wandered away from yours and across your jaw, down your neck, and you had to put a hand to chest to stop him and catch your breath.
"Oh wow," you gasped, overwhelmed by it. Everywhere he touched was like fire. You'd never felt anything like it before. You got your bearing and grabbed his shirt to pull him back in, but misinterpreting he pulled his collar and slipped out of it. He was scrawny and there were bones showing and you could see a half a dozen metal ports dotting his torso, but right now you did not and could not care about any of that.
He was so warm, it was intoxicating.
His hands returned to your sides, slipped back under your shirt, and this time you raised your arms to let him pull it off you, fumbling inexpertly with your bra. He smirked and had the clasp off with one hand, the other against your jaw, then his lips returned as he held you ever so gently in place. His fingers slipped along your jaw to cradle your head the movement slow and sensual, and then-
He shivered and jerked his hand back, looking disconcerted.
"Cangjie?"
"Touched the metal thing. Eeegh," he explained, wiggling his fingers as if to get the Gross off. You nodded.
"Oh yeah, it's weird," you agreed, imitating his motions in sympathy. "The bad one is the belly button one, that's… I don't like to think about that one."
"It's the little ones in my back, I can feel them when I sleep," he agreed. You put a finger to his lips.
"No! No, none of this, this is supposed to be… you know. Sexy," you said, fumbling with your words. He winced, and worried about losing the spark you wrapped your arms around his neck (very careful to avoid The Gross) and pulled him back close. You know it worked because his hands found your breasts and the feeling of his fingers was utterly heavenly. You leaned back, closed your eyes, and just let yourself enjoy it for a while.
One of his hands left your breast, and you almost protested before you felt it again on your leg, running slowly up under your skirt. It paused a moment, hesitant, and you whispered keep going into his ear in the most seductive tones you could muster.
He did not delay, fingers tracing up between your thighs, and you shifted back to try and give him better access. You felt his knuckles brush up against you, then he stopped and starting pulling off your shorts.
"Um, not the sexiest undies, I know…" you explained, but either he didn't hear you or didn't think it mattered because he threw them behind him and started kissing down your leg and you decided that actually maybe now was the time for shutting up and enjoying yourself. Unsurprisingly, he very much knew his way around, his fingertips slowly exploring, then his tongue, oh. You whispered a mental apology to every girl you'd ever done this with, because there was… there was no way…
Okay. Not being a little loud was surprisingly difficult. There was no way you were ever that good at this. You felt like you'd just gone over the edge of a rollar coaster, a heady weightlessness, like there was a wildfire spreading out from your core and racing down your limbs, rebounding back and forth though you. You'd never felt anything like it before in your life, not even in the brief moments you'd had to explore your new body.
Cangjie, for his part, looked quite pleased with himself as he pulled away. Justifiably so.
"You look happy," he observed, and you couldn't help but roll your eyes.
"Jeez, wonder why," you said, or tried to say between gasping breaths. Your voice failing you, you just vaguely waved him closer, grabbing at his shoulders to try and pull him close and down onto you, needing the heat. As he pressed against your, nipping at your collarbone, you felt him pressing against you through his pants and what would a month ago have been utterly unthinkable seemed extremely thinkable right now.
God, you needed to get fucked. You had to know.
"Hey, you got a condom, right?" you asked, trying not to sound too desperate, and he almost tripped over himself scrambling to the drawer across the room. You reached out after him, coveting the heat, and he shed his pants in the fastest motion you'd ever seen and was back, kissing gently again at your neck, clearly very, very eager.
"Okay, hold on," you said, mentally psyching yourself up. "So, uh, take it slow, everything's new, this is still a little weird-"
"I can imagine, yeah," he agreed. "Do your best to relax. The last thing you want to do is tense, okay? Makes it no fun."
"... uuh, yeah, can I just say it's bizarre getting advice about this from somebody who looks like you?" you pointed out, and he shrugged.
"I bet. Though that said, I never found this any fun at all, so I might have no idea what I'm talking about. Turns out the only thing I ever wanted from men was to be one, so, you know…" he said, trailing off. "This is very strange, isn't it?"
"It's so fucking weird, man," you agreed. "I'm still trying to shut up the part of my brain that insists this is gay."
"Well, if that's a problem, let me shut it up for you," he said, leaning back in close and starting to whisper in breathy tones. "Because you are a very, very pretty girl, you know that?"
"Oh…" you gasped, as his fingers slid down your arms and you let yourself sink back into the mattress. "... shut up…"
"I don't think I will…" he continued, kissing at your ear, nibbling a little and making you squirm. "You don't want me to, do you?" You shook your head, closed your eyes, basked in the warmth. You had absolutely no idea what to expect, but Cangjie had well and proven himself a trustworthy actor on this front. "Just relax, girl, let me take it from here…"
"Yeah…" you muttered, focusing on the feeling of his hand in yours as he pressed gently into you. "God…" There was a part of you braced for pain, and it certainly wasn't comfortable at first, but that was very quickly drowned out by the sheer thrill. Sure, there was at the edge of your thoughts a lifetime of shame and fear, but that was all fake and this was so, so very real and true and better than anything the computer had ever offered you.
It certainly helped that Cangjie was careful, gentle, and never stopped whispering lovely things into your ear, even if he started repeating himself, and eventually, he ran out of English altogether. Whatever he was saying, it still sounded sweet. After awkwardly trying to figure out something to do with your hands, he pinned them down against the mattress for you with an absolute effortless motion, and somehow, knowing you couldn't wiggle free actually made you feel safe.
It was the strangest, rawest, most fucked-up thing you'd ever experienced, and you'd have not traded it for anything. You never quite managed to reach the same peak again, but between the heady euphoria of it all and the fact everywhere he touched caused sensual flutters through your whole body was more than enough to carry you though, until the two of you were just relaxing together in that tiny bed.
"That… was amazing," you confessed, wiggling tighter into his arms as he pulled the ragged old blanket over you and he kissed the back of your head. "Wow. Um, how'd you get so good at that?"
"Two things," he said. "The first, a lifetime of disappointment teaching me everything not to do. And second…" he paused. "I may have downloaded some help."
"What?" you said. "There's programs for that?"
"There are programs for everything. They left me alone with a library of a thousand discs and a drive, I wasn't not going to install it?" he explained. "I suspect given the context it is for infiltration and seduction, you know? But…"
"Consider me seduced," you confirmed, and he laughed and ran a hand down your side slowly.
"I'm glad. And... I am so exhausted," he confessed. "I feel like sleeping for a year."
"As I said, testosterone is like that," you repeated, though you were feeling utterly worn out yourself. It was a lot of excitement for a body that, a month ago, had spent twenty-four years floating in a pod of goo.
"Stay for a bit?" he asked.
"You couldn't make me leave," you joked, shifting a little closer to steal as much of his warmth as possible. "This is your job now forever. You provide body heat for me to siphon."
"What a nightmare," he agreed, utterly deadpan.
---
You weren't sure exactly what time it was when you finally picked your clothes up and left, but it was, shockingly, much darker when you stepped outside. There was a misty rain falling from pipes lining the roof, and with the sunlamps off the docks were illuminated by soft white lights lining the buildings and gantries.
You paced toward the Ashur, dwarfed beside the enormous battleship looming beside it, but thought better of it. You didn't know when you'd need to be back, but you did hear announcements echo through the dock for departures or asking after crew, so you supposed that if they were going to leave, you'd hear about it. Instead, you wandered toward the open doors at the edge of the dock, toward the twinkling lights of the settlement beyond.
As you passed through the gates, you ended up at a platform with elevators leading down into the settlement proper. Haven was built into a cave that had been carved into the side of the holding tank, and the whole settlement stretched out before you. It was not large, but it was dense, reminding you a little of pictures you'd seen of Kowloon Walled City before its demolition. Despite the small size, tens of thousands of people must live here. Maybe more.
Curious, but cautious, you rode the elevator down, but decided to stick to the most open streets. You were very obviously new and probably an easy mark, and the sheer effortlessness by which Cangjie had pinned your arms came back to mind in a new and unsettling context. Some care was warranted, and for a second you wished you were back in the simulations, where your strength had nothing to do with muscle.
Though everything was clearly improvised, reclaimed, and reused over and over to their very limits, you could see the love and care put into everything. Despite the fact it was clearly the night hours there was still a fair bit of activity, people moving things back and forth, sparks cascading down from work somewhere far above, voices and laughter. You relaxed when you saw children playing in the streets, their minders a fair distance back: if that was safe, you were probably safe.
Your stomach growled, and you realized how very hungry you were. You started hunting around through the multilingual signs all around, looking for something that might be food, before remembering you still had no money. You still didn't know what money was, here. You should probably ask about pay when you got back to the ship, now that you thought about it.
Unsure what else to do, you started wandering back toward the elevator, when you caught the eye of an older woman, sitting in a fold-out chair at the side of the street and knitting. She was clearly watching some of the kids in the street as they helped pass tools to a workman fixing something on a building opposite.
"Are you lost, dear, do you need any help?" she asked. You looked around to see if she was addressing anyone else, then you shrugged helplessly.
"Yeah, first time here. I don't know what I'm doing," you asked. The sympathetic look she gave you made it clear both those things were obvious to her, and you noticed on her arm as she shifted she had one of the plugs too. Another rescue from the Matrix.
"Do you need anything? I know it's all terribly confusing," she said. "Something to eat, a place to stay?"
"Uuuh, yeah, something to eat. I haven't eaten since… this morning, I think? Afternoon, something? Sorry, time is hard." You meandered gracelessly through the sentence, ending rather pathetically. "Uh, I don't have any money, or-"
She snorted.
"This isn't the Matrix, dear. You crew a ship, you bring people back from that place and keep fighting for us, and you think we won't provide you what you need?" She shook her head, clearly disappointed with you. "See that small green light, just up the street? Take the stairs down, that's our canteen. You're welcome to it, friend."
Confused and a little overwhelmed, you thanked her perhaps a bit too profusely and made your way to the stairs. You'd barely made it in the door before somebody, an old man with a patchy beard and an enormous smile, came over and offered to help. Clearly, he just spotted the pale and skinny redpill with the fuzz of new hair and saw something in need of instructing on the etiquette and workings of the canteen. Seemed pretty simple; wash your hands, grab your food, clean your own dishes and put everything back.
"And I don't have to pay?" you repeated, still not quite believing it. "How does that work?"
"Oh, you pay, everyone pays, in their own way," he said. "I keep the lights on, and build them with my daughter. All around you, people who farm, people repair, people who build. And people like you, keeping us safe."
You felt strange about that for a second. It almost felt like when people would mindlessly recite "thank you for your service" to veterans, but it had a sincerity and realness you weren't used to. You felt almost guilty about it, like stolen valour. What had you done for these people?
"I've really… I don't think I've earned this," you said. "All I've done is… use training programs and screw up."
"Hey, that's something," he said jovially. "You don't starve an apprentice because he isn't a master yet, do you?"
You thought, for a moment about the temp workers in your office, and then of yourself in college when money had gotten particularly tight and your diet had devolved to about three meals every two days. All of this felt foreign to you, and you still found yourself bracing for a catch.
It never came. You washed your hands, got rice, some flat bread, a stem of grapes, and a few slices of some kind of meat or meat culture, and you ate. It was plain, but good, filling food. You cleaned your tray in the little sink at the corner, stacked it neatly with the others, and wandered out feeling like at any moment somebody was going to chase you down with a bill, and it never happened.
Your brain just kept telling you it couldn't be real. It can't actually be how they operate. How do they prevent people from leeching off the work of others? How do they keep people from taking too much? What about lazy people who don't contribute enough? It couldn't, possibly, work.
By the time you got back to the Ashur, you'd convinced yourself there were processes you just weren't seeing. Rules and enforcers that you hadn't encountered. You got what was basically a serviceman's discount, that's all it was. Made a lot more sense.
Still, it had been the best meal you'd ever had.
---
The next morning, when you awoke, the Ashur was already moving. You stumbled into the cockpit bleary-eyed to see Vector and Page guiding the ship through the tunnels by searchlight and radar, looking rather anxious, and thinking better of distracting them you wandered back to the broadcast room.
Chrysalis was there, tapping furiously on the console, while Cache and Sprite were cleaning equipment. Without a word, you joined them, rag and disinfectant in hand, scrubbing everything down, paying particular attention the interface jacks. Anything that was going to go inside your skull had pretty high priority for cleanliness.
"Where're we going?" you asked finally, as the last of the equipment was wiped down, and Cache looked at you kind of grim.
"We were going to stay longer, but another ship gave us a message. One of our contacts is in trouble," he said.
"Contacts? Like, in the Matrix? A bluepill?"
"A program," he said. "We um, we take whatever help we can get."
You didn't say anything. You had gathered from your conversation with Frag that programs were not a monolith, though you didn't know anything about any of them except Agents.
"So, back in the day Frag got into contact with this low-level Administrator, he, uh, he upkeeps data loss protection for Near North Side in Megacity_01. Uh… he stores people's memories in case something goes wrong, so things can be fixed, and he can provide them to editors if something needs to be changed." Chrysalis added, sitting in one of the chairs and leaning against the pad. "Freaky, but, that's how he ended up with us. He has a front row seat to how fucked everyone is, and then he realized nobody is making a backup of him."
"My heart bleeds," Cache said sardonically. "He's alright though. Thing is, he says his bosses are looking to reduce overhead, which means either he gets cut, or Old Town's guy gets cut. Old Town's corrupt as hell, misuses processing power, so it'll probably be him, but the Librarian-"
"That's our guy," Chrysie added.
"-yeah, he think's Old Town's hired some Exiles to kill him so he can keep the spot. Obviously, we want to prevent that from happening, so half of us are on bodyguard duty at his library, and the other half are going to pay Old Town a visit." Cache concluded.
"Uh, am I in?"
"Oh yeah, it's all hands on deck, though we haven't worked out teams yet. What are you feeling, Coda, bodyguard or hitman?"
---
[ ] Bodyguard
[ ] Hitman
What level of equipment will you bring?
[ ] 1 Gear (Hidden)
[ ] 3 Gear (Subtle)
[ ] 6 Gear (Overt)
[ ] 10 Gear (Public Incident)
What's your style this time? Coda's learned her lesson on cop gear, but still doesn't know what she's comfortable with. What compromises does she make?
The white glow of the construct faded away, replaced with a cold grey room, dusty, neglected, cinderblock walls and shelves of moulding cardboard boxes and rusting tools. It was a little too small, the air stale, and it was a blessed relief when Thrash pulled the door open and A-team left.
Outside, you could hear rain pattering against the asphalt.
You were B-team, bodyguards. You, Enigma, and Sprite. The other three were going on the potentially much more dangerous mission of assassinating Old Town's archivist, a mission that might well result in attracting Agents. All you had to do was deter the Exiles with your presence.
It was night, the glow of the streetlamps and traffic lights refracted through the thick downpour. You didn't have far to go, so much so that you made it there under umbrellas. The location was a bookstore, nestled in among brownstones, looking run-down and half-condemned, and Enigma knocked twice on the heavy door and stepped back.
On the other side was a young woman who, after glancing both ways up the street, beckoned you in and locked the door behind you. There, on the other side, was a room overflowing with books. They were stacked three deep in the shelves, and piled atop them, and further boxes lay everywhere you looked, everywhere they'd fit. At the edge was an enormous old desk, and just visible behind the piles of volumes was an old man in a tweed suit, a ledger in front of him.
"Frag has sent you?" he asked, cleaning his glasses against a rag. "I'm glad. Um, make yourselves at home, please."
"Thank you," Enigma said, gesturing to the window, and you took position at the edge and glanced out the blinds. "What are the entranceways?"
"Uh… front, rear, and the fire escape on the second floor, I think?" the Librarian replied. "I didn't know where would be safest."
"Sprite, take him upstairs. Get him away from windows, make sure you have an escape route," Enigma said, then turned to the young woman. "Who are you?"
"Um… I'm his assistant, I-" she stammered, "I'll stay out of your way, I just wasn't going to leave him." She moved to follow the Librarian up the stairs.
"Jesus, you must pay pretty good," Sprite commented. "Come on, old man, let's get you upstairs." Enigma regarded the young woman, then stepped close to you.
"I don't know her and I don't trust her. Keep an eye on her. I will watch the back door. If things go to plan, we will be out in three hours," Enigma said, drawing out his cell phone and flipping it open. "Vector?"
You indicated for the young woman to come over to you, and she reluctantly moved away from the stairs and sat against the windowsill, anxiously glancing out the blinds herself. Enigma disappeared behind one of the stacks of books, and you resumed looking out over the street, trying to to panic every time a car passed.
"So, what's your name?" you asked, looking away just a second. The young woman and the old man actually sort of looked similar, a family resemblance. You weren't sure what that meant.
"Alexandria," she replied, "Lexi, if you prefer."
"Well, hello Lexi," you said, trying not to sound too cold. "Coda. Working a bit late, aren't you?"
"Well… somebody's trying to kill my… uh, my boss," she said. "I couldn't-"
"Mhmm. So how do you know him?" you asked.
"I, um…" She trailed off, her voice small. Like she was scared, or maybe ashamed. "He's my father."
The answer was at once expected and impossible. You tried not to give any reaction one way or another, to not show too much ignorance that might be seen as weakness, but it did mean you could be a bit more direct.
"Do you know what an exile is?" you asked, and she shook her head. "They're a program that was supposed to be purged, and went on the run. Breaking the rules, breaking their own code, with powers that have come from a corruption of their purpose." You'd learned all this yourself an hour ago, but you were rapidly learning the best way to project being in control was to pretend as though nothing surprised you. "Can you fight?"
She shook her head with a sort of hopeless gesture. She couldn't, but she was willing to.
"Alright." Your phone buzzed in one of the pouches lining the loose blue jacket you'd taken this time, one which obscured the shape of your frame, and you pulled it loose with a rip of velcro and flipped it open. "Yeah?"
"Coda, I'm seeing something in the code I don't understand," Vector said. You could hear Chrysie beside him, talking to the A-team, "Building across the street, one to the left, second floor window above the door. What do you see?"
You pushed the blinds open and scanned through, and your sunglasses briefly turned red as a laser swept across it.
---
Roll 6d6. Input one +Twitch to dodge an incoming attack.
You managed to get out a noise, if not a word, of warning, before the glass shattered and you found yourself on the floor, staring up at the ceiling fan. The next thing you were aware of was Lexi leaning over you, her hands on your face, and something hot running down your brow. Your cell phone clattered to the ground, Vector's voice still echoing from it. There wasn't pain, just a sickening numbness.
It wasn't real. Whatever it wasn't, whatever you were feeling, was a fiction. It was a computer program trying to impose itself on your body, once again trying to tell you who you were and how you should be. It couldn't. You'd not let it.
"Get… get back," you groaned, pointing to the far wall. You wanted to reach up and touch the wound you suspected was at the top of your head, but you knew better. The less real it felt, the less real it'd be.
You turned and saw Engima at the end of the hall, a small pistol in either hand, sheltered in the shadow of the bookshelves. His expression was fixed, unchanging, the emotionless cool of a man in control. He indicated to move away from the window, and you tried your best to shift, breathing deep and trying to stay composed. It wasn't real. The blood was a lie, the pain was a lie.
You put a hand on the windowsill to steady yourself as you crawled back, and there was a trio of loud cracks as bullets impacted around it. You recoiled, dropped to the floor, and crawled on your belly until you were clear, then stood up unsteadily.
"Can you fight?" Enigma asked, and you made a point to brush the dust off your jacket, to regain the composure that would keep you alive. You were about to respond when there was a further crash of glass beside you, and something heavy clattered against the floorboards and started sputtering smoke into the room.
Without missing a beat, Enigma pulled a gas mask from his belt and put it on, indicating to the door beside you. You looked over just in time to feel the whole building shutter as a boot crashed into it from the other side, the locks shaking, the wood cracking. Then again, then the door burst open, forcing you back to the edge of the window as the first Exile came through.
She didn't look that scary, just a woman in a loose-fitting patterned t-shirt and baggy jeans, but her eyes glowed a bright yellow, so bright it seemed to leave trails in the air as she moved. Enigma's guns popped behind you, one after another, tearing dark holes in her shirt, and she just grinned, showing off a set of razor-sharp canines before she lept across the room toward him with a howl.
As the room filled with smoke, the next came through, and you came eye to piercing yellow eyes with him as you stood to block his path.
Btw, it's the Ashur, which is an Assyria god, but Google keeps autocorrecting it to Ashtur, a place in India. Thanks, Google! I'll go on a hunt and fix it everywhere its wrong (which is probably most places), please do note it if you see it in the future.
You dropped back as he swiped an open hand for your head, and even though his hand was empty and looked normal you could almost feel the sharp edge of his fingers splitting the air as they passed an inch from your face. You came in low to hammer him in the kidney, sidestepped his return swing, and shoulder checked him against the wall for lack of any other option, conscious to not stand in the doorway for the sniper.
The breath left him with a gasp as he crashed into the wood, and you backed away in time to avoid the next swing of his claws. He looked thrilled by the fight, licking his teeth and smirking as he circled into the smoke. Behind you, somewhere, you heard a crash and the woman who'd darted in shreik, and deep, resonate breathing through a mask.
"Oh, good, I was worried this was going to be boring," he said, feinted toward you and dancing back, pleased to have made you flinch. "Look at you, defending a program. Bleeding for him." He breathed in, as if taking in the scent, exhaling a cloud of the thick fog that was building up around you.
He darted forward again, you didn't move, and he stepped fully into the attack. You slapped his wrist down and drove you knee into his leg, aiming for the nerve, and he stumbled over as foot went numb. Planting both your elbows into his shoulders and putting him on his ass was almost easy. He tumbled back down the stairs outside, landing on his feet and looking quite put out.
"Down, boy."
There was another crash behind you, and you glanced over to see Enigma against the door to the back room, blindly blocking the woman's strikes with almost contemptious ease before, quite suddenly, her jaw locked around his wrist with an awful snap and she tore her head away. Blood sprayed onto the bookshelves. He showed no reaction to the injury except to smash her in the side of the head with a fist and kick her back onto the boards, but his arm hung limp and useless at his side.
As your foe started scaling the stairs, cracking his knuckles in anticipation, there was the shattering of glass and a thud on the floorboards above you, then two gunshots.
---
⚅⚃⚁◻◻
What do you do?
Reminder: This is a narratively driven system. You can tell me what you do outside the mechanics, and I will make it fit. If you aren't sure how dice will interact with a vote, ask and I will clarify. Also remember, you can Refresh and roll your missing dice at any time.
You considered darting to the door, but wolf-boy was already closing. Sprite would have to hold on. You wove around his punches, giving ground, stepping back out of the entryway and hoping the smoke would obscure the sniper's shot, if he was still there. You caught his boot as he kicked out and stepped back with it in your grip, hoping to pull him off balance, and instead, he leapt after you with a fist drawn back.
Shit, you'd learned a lot of martial arts but they were designed for fighting people constrained by the fucking laws of physics. You tumbled back to duck his followup, which tore apart a bookshelf end without stopping. As splinters rained into your hair and clattered off your sunglasses, you threw yourself out toward the windows again to get some space.
There, you stumbled and leaned against the window, doing your best to look unsteady, uncertain. A bit of drunken boxing, holding out a hand like you weren't ready. This guy was a predator, all you needed was some blood in the water.
Still grinning cocky, ducking back and forth like a boxer, he lept for you, and you ducked under his wild attack. Your hands found and gripped his collar as you rolled onto your back, kicking your legs out, and you heaved him headfirst into and out of the heavy plate glass window, taking the heavy venetian blinds with him.
As glass pattered off your jacket, you kipped up and looked for Engima in the smoke. Lexi was huddled in the corner next to the desk on the edge of tears. Then, the Exile woman staggered into view around a briefcase, bleeding from the nose but clearly not deterred.
"That all you got, old man!" she screamed, and you cast around for something to distract her with. There was a heavy paperweight on the desk, an image of a moth pressed in the glass, and you hefted it for her head as hard as you could. It shattered against the boards as she ducked, and she swept her long tangle of hair out of the way as she approached.
"Engima, the Librarian!" you called, and you could hear his boots against the stairs, already two steps ahead of you, as she approached. She ran her hand across her mouth to clear the blood, then, with a stupid grin, licked it. Ewww.
You saw her eyes fall on Lexi, and you very deliberately stepped in the way and squared up as she approached.
---
Your new dice. Recall we are using the new fight rules. As an Exile, Wulf's extremely gross digital sister here has 2 Threat.
