Truths- Matrix story

[guesser]

This is story is unfinished, but it is long. Be warned. I'd really like to know what you guys think. Mostly an original character fic.

Title: Truths
Author: guesser
Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: As much as I wish I did, I do not own any part of the Matrix. It all belongs to the Wachowski Brothers, and Warner Bros. I do however own Rhea. She at least, is mine.



I remember being freed. I remember that first breath I took without that tube down my throat. I remember breathing in that damp, dusty air. I remember the feeling of the pod surrounding my body. Later, when I learned of the contents of the pod, I threw up�repeatedly. But most importantly, I remember being petrified. Never had I felt such a fear. In reality, it was quite possible that my first breath would very shortly have been followed by my last. I think the only thing that kept me alive was the fact that I blacked out.

I woke up on the table, my whole body numb. I tried to get up, to run away, by my legs refused to move. I thought I was paralyzed. I wanted to scream, but all that came out of my mouth was a weak squeak. There was a bright light in my eyes. Shadows hovered over me, strangers, but somewhat familiar. I strained my eyes, trying to see what they were doing. I wanted to go back! I wanted to go home! My heart was pounding in time to a beeping on one of the monitors. �Calm down,� said a voice. I looked up and saw Morpheus. I wanted to kill him!! Why hadn�t he told me this would happen to me? I chose not to recall that he had warned me. That didn�t matter. All that mattered was that I wanted out. I told him as much.

�I told you, Rhea,� he said calmly. � You cannot go back. Your have made your choice, and some choices cannot be unmade. Rest. The fear will pass once you have answers. Those will come when you are ready. Rest just a little while longer.� I didn�t know what to do, so I obeyed him. I closed my aching eyes, but I could not rest, so instead I simply slept, and I dreamt. I dreamt of home.

The next time I awoke my eyes felt better and I could look around. I was still on the table. I looked at my body. A man slowly worked to remove the numerous pin. I watched. The feeling was slowly returning to my limbs. I took my first easy breath in this place when I realized that I could move. The fear would soon return though.

They moved me. With the help of the man, I shuffled though tight corridors. The very sight of them was horrifying. They looked cold, menacing�dead. Finally, we stopped at a door. Depositing me in the room, the man left me.

The first thing I did was look for a mirror. When I found one, I thought I might throw up. I was disgusting! I stared at my pale face, my bald head, and then I saw the plugs. I�d hoped that they�d remove the plugs, but no. They littered my body, but I was still myself. That was my face looking back at me. My head spun, and I quickly sat down, putting my head between my knees.

That image in the mirror had made me realize a Truth that I was far from ready to face. My life was over.

The next months were a blur of simulations, training, revelations and explanations. I rejected the truth for a long time. I refused to believe it. It was just too horrifying. I�ve never thrown up so much in such a short amount of time. I finally accepted the truth; the terror subsided, and turned into a dull fear. It was always there in the back of my mind. Always ready to strike. Waiting to overcome me.


I learned to hide my fear, to control it. I stopped screaming every time the spike was pushed into the back of my head. Now, it was only my mind that screamed. I grew accustomed to the things around me. I got used to the Truth. Two Truths, actually. One was the Truth I had been so forcefully taught through those simulations. The other was the Truth that I had realized that first night in my room. My life was over.

Morpheus called my being unplugged �being freed�. I called it my living death. We lived in a dead world. The ships were cold, the earth was bare, and only in the core of this dead Earth was there a flicker of life. People lived in the ground, machines keeping them alive. Everyone loved Zion. They fought for it. They called it the last human refuge. I saw as just another prison. Only this one was a prison of both the mind and the body. Zion gave people hope. With hope they fought and died. Hope is the worst weapon because hope blinds. I didn�t share their hope of freedom. I was too afraid, and so hope did not blind me. My eyes were kept open, which led to my third Truth. The human race would lose the war. It was obvious.

We did not fight the machines. We hid from them. When we saw a sentinel, we waited in silence, praying for it to pass. When we met an agent, we ran. It was a pitiful way to fight.

The people of Zion called unplugging liberating minds. I saw it as creating soldiers. Everyone we unplugged was expected in one way or another to join the war against the machines. It never occurred to them that some might not want to fight. I guess that�s because that as far as I could see, I was the only one who didn�t. Maybe it was my fear that drove me, but I still had a mind, and that mind could not comprehend how it come to pass that the definitions of freedom and war had become so horribly fused together.

I didn�t know what was so bad with the Matrix. Morpheus told me that it was a prison. He told me that in the Matrix we were being controlled, while here, in the Real we were free. I didn�t see that. As far as I could tell, here we were being controlled just as much as we had been in the System. Here, we were expected to fight, to follow orders blindly. Zion was like hope. It blinded the masses. We had no control over our actions because there was always someone higher up telling us what our next actions would be. It puzzled me, but I did not complain. I could see that nobody shared my views on Zion, so I did not voice them. I still wanted to go back, but just as Morpheus had said, I could not. I had made my choice when I�d taken that pill, and it was something that would never be undone, though I would always regret it. I understood the why of it. It was not that the machines would not take my body, put me back in the System. It was that Zion would not give back a soldier it had created. It needed fighters, willing or not. And so, I realized that in my own way, I too had become a slave of Zion. It was not hope that kept me there. It was fear. Fear of Zion, and what it would do to me if I attempted to desert it.

Like a puppet I obeyed orders. I learned. In the training systems, I was told to �free my mind�. I found it ironic that a person whose mind was so hopelessly enslaved by hope was telling me to free mine. I didn�t see making the jump as bending the rules. I saw it as taking control.

Inside the Matrix, I was home. Yes, I knew that it too was a prison, but at least when I had belonged to this prison, it had never made me fight. I hated to fight. I was scared of what would happen should I ever lose. It wasn�t that I was afraid to die. I did not fear death, since in my mind I had already experienced it. I was however afraid of pain. That is why every time that the spike drove into my skull, my mind screamed. The spike was bringing me home, but I still feared the pain of the journey.

When we went into the Matrix, I knew that Zion expected me to fight, so I did. My fear of Zion outweighed my fear of pain. When I fought I was as quick and deadly as I could be, just so that it would be over. It wasn�t that difficult. I had learned to �bend the rules�, as Morpheus put it, very quickly. After all, these were the rules of my home. I understood them, and so it was easy to control them, to bend them to my will. I became one of Zion�s prized fighters. The commanders of the Resistance saw my quick fighting, as loyalty. They did not see the ever-present fear. Good fighters, to them meant good soldiers, and if like me those soldiers had good minds, they made good leaders. And so it was that as the years passed, I climbed the ranks of the prison that was Zion. And all around me, the people remained oblivious of my fear, of my anger towards Zion. All that mattered to them was that I fought for their cause.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Years passed and I became a faster, more accurate killer. Zion said I was helping the war. They said that they deaths were justified by the cause. I disagreed. We slaughtered the masses of the Matrix for the benefit of the few. It seemed that the lives of the minority were more important than those of the many. I disgusted myself. I was an assassin. I killed on command. I killed the innocent, the young and the weak, and Zion rewarded me for it. Why did I do it? Because I was afraid. I was still too afraid to act. And so I killed to keep my fear at bay. I hated myself. I wanted to kill myself. To free myself of this living death, but I was too afraid of the pain. I was pathetic.

I thought of sabotaging the Resistance, but did not. What could I, one person do anyway? Nothing, really. I used that to justify my cowardice.

I stayed on board Morpheus� ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. At one point, I remember catching myself thinking of the Neb as home. That almost made as violently ill as I had been during my training. I refused to accept that cold, dead, unfeeling piece of scrap metal as my home. The Matrix was my home. Sometimes I had to remind myself of that. Then, I had to remind myself constantly. I was getting too used to the world around me. I didn�t want to. My mind protested. It screamed, trying to reject the Real World, but it couldn�t hold on forever, no matter now much it wanted to.

And so I came to realize my next Truth. No matter how much I hated it, the Real World was home. Somewhere, in the back of mind, I had always believed that eventually I would somehow return home to the Matrix. I looked at the Real World, seeing not death as I had before, but life and I hated myself for it.

I accepted the Real World as my home, but I did not accept Zion. I did not accept the war. I would never go that far.

Every time we unplugged another person, I felt just like when I killed those innocents in the Matrix. I was ripping their life away from them, plunging them into the darkness of the Real. Once they were unplugged, I wanted to help them all go home. But none of them wanted to go. I watched as one by one, the new ones rejected their lives. I watched as they developed a loathing for the Matrix, for their homes. I watched as they all turned faithfully toward Zion, their eyes filled with the traitor, hope, as they too became blinded assassins.

I remember one person in particular. When we unplugged her, I thought that I had maybe found one like me. I thought that maybe I�d found a person who would want to go home, and I�d help her. I felt that by returning just one home, I could stop the constant guilt I felt.

Trinity. When Morpheus unplugged her, she just like me refused to believe. She seized up, closing herself off. She wanted to shelter herself from the sheer horror of the world around her. I remembered what that felt like. And so I told her I understood. She would have to remain in the Real World until people stopped worrying about her training, and her adjusting. Then, when the crew returned to constant thoughts of the war, I would tell her of my plan, and I would help her escape. First I would have to get close to her. So I trained her. I took her under my wing, teaching her everything I knew of control over the System. She became strong, very strong, stronger than I was. A lot stronger. I taught her to understand the System so that she could hold onto her love of it. But before I knew it, the disgust in her eyes turned to hope, the fear of the Real turned to faith, confidence, and worst of all, love of Zion. And so it was that I gave Zion the strongest fighter it had ever seen. The day that I looked into her eyes, and realized that she too had turned into a killer, I felt my first failure. Trinity had been my hope. I had vowed to never be blinded by hope, but I had been. I hadn�t seen the signs of Trinity�s change until it was too late, until I had molded her into the very things that I hated. I had failed her. I had failed myself.

Afterwards, I assured myself that should I ever find another that I could liberate from the prison of the Real, I would never, ever hope. I would never put as much of my heart or what was left of it into that person. Trinity had been my chance for redemption. I thought that I might never get another chance.

A year passed. In that year, I orphaned countless children, made widows of countless women, destroyed countless homes, and unplugged many warriors for Zion. Then, finally, I found another. Another like Trinity. He was my second chance. I would not make the same mistakes with him as I had with her. As soon as we unplugged him, I knew. He recoiled from everyone. Just as I had, he tried to yell, but out of his mouth came quiet moans. I leaned in trying to hear what he said. � Let me go home,� he whispered.


I watched as Dozer, our new medic from Zion rebuilt his muscles. I watched as slowly, my chance got pieced back together. He rarely opened his eyes. I guessed that they must hurt. When I asked him why he refused to look at the Real, he answered,
�I don�t want to see this place.� Those were the sweetest words I�d even heard.

I stayed with him. I had to. I had to make sure that Morpheus could no corrupt his mind like he had Trinity�s. I wouldn�t have it. I knew what my mistake had been with her. I had been too rash. I had tried to work quickly. I had taught her to understand the System, but I had not taken the time to make her understand why she had to go back. I had neglected to guard her from Morpheus� lies. Her soul had been pure of the corruption of Zion, and in my hurry, I had not paid enough attention to her beliefs. I would not make that mistake again.

Cypher would understand. When he opened his eyes, I knew that he would see this place for the disgusting pit of death that it was. I would use that to make him realize what I had. He had to go back if he could. I was too frightened to openly defy Zion, but I had watched him before Morpheus tore him from his home. He was brave. He would not be frightened to act. And I would help him.

Finally, after two long weeks, he was strong enough to be moved to his room. I watched as Dozer pulled, nearly dragged him down the corridor. His eyes were finally open. I looked into them, and there I saw an expression that I had never seen outside a mirror. He had the same regret in his eyes that I had. Already, like I did, he regretted taking that red pill. When he was put into his room, and Dozer had left, I went in.

If my plan was to work, I had to get to know him early on. When I entered, he was sitting on his bed. He didn�t even acknowledge my presence. He stared at the plug in his arm. Then, he began to claw at it, trying to dig it out of his flesh. His newly re-grown nail dug viciously into his skin.

�Don�t!� I yelled, rushing over to him, ripping his hand away from the plug.

�Why not?� he spat back. I could hear the defiance in his voice. �Good� I thought. �He is angry. He isn�t frightened. Anger can be his weapon.�

� It is pointless. The machine is a part of you.� That was the first sentence I spoke to him.
We talked. I wanted him to trust me, ad so I was kind. I was rarely kind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Morpheus taught him the Truth. That was the first test. I knew that if he were to believe all of that *beep* about the war that Zion kept spreading, he would never go home. I worried that he would break, but my worries were unnecessary.

Like Trinity, I trained him. I taught him to control the System. I taught him to love it, but I did not reveal my plan. I had to wait. I had to make sure that he would not reveal me to Zion. Every day I searched his eyes for traces of the hope that destroyed so many good people. I crushed every small glimmer I found. I would not let him be corrupted. Soon, I stopped seeing it. His eyes grew cold and bitter.

He grew sarcastic. He did not respect Morpheus. He was angry with him. He hated that Morpheus told him what to do, but what he hated more was that he listened to him.

Years passed. Members of our crew died. We replaced them one by one. And so it came to be that one of the greatest crews of the Resistance came into existence. Morpheus, Trinity, Cypher, Apoc, Swith, Dozer, Tank, Mouse and I were the best killers the Resistance had. They cherished us. All except for Cypher and myself were blind assassins. I grew to hate them. Trinity too. After she went to the Oracle, all traces of the girl I had trained disappeared. She almost overflowed with traitorous hope.

Cypher�s temper was getting worse. The bitterness in his eyes turned to hatred and malice. He was a ruthless killer. Unlike me, he did not feel for the people he killed. He did not see himself as a killer. He saw it as looking out for himself. �Kill them before they kill you,� he used to say. He frightened me. But he was the only person I knew that understood my hatred of Zion. He was the only person I could talk to. We agreed on most things. After all, I had created him.

Finally, it was time to put my plan into action. I had waited long enough. I had nurtured his mind. He had remained unspoiled, like me, I true child of the System. He understood it. He could see its beauty. He could Control it. He would never be as good as Trinity. I doubted that anybody would. She had a calm discipline that Cypher would never master. As I had predicted, anger was his weapon.

He hated the Real. I thought that he would jump at the chance of a way out. He didn�t. When I approached, in the quiet of the night, and told him of my plan, my perfect plan, he laughed. He laughed at me!! I had been waiting most of my unplugged life to put this plan into action, and that laughter was the last thing I had expected. As I had vowed, I had not hoped, but I had let a different evil in. Love. Over the years, I had grown to love him. He was my creation. If not for me he would have been another unknowing pawn of Zion. I told him as much. Hearing this he uttered three words that nearly slew me. �Ignorance is bliss,� he hissed. Now, as he looked at me, I could see another hatred in his eyes. It was a hatred for me. His creator. He hated me for teaching him. He hated me for keeping his mind pure. He hated me for keeping him free of Zion. He just hated me.

It could not be. He wanted to be a pawn. Was that why he had been so keen to love the System?

Then I saw my next Truth. He was a monster. I had created a monster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I thought I�d go mad then, and I probably would have had I stayed. Every attempt I had ever made to help those around me left them worse off. First, Trinity had become a Believer, what�s more, she didn�t jus believe in Zion, she believed in Morpheus! Now, Cypher, my Cypher, had turned from a slave, into a volunteer. As much as I loved the System, I had never considered sacrificing the memories of years of my life. Cypher seemed eager to do so. He wanted to forget, and all of it was my fault! I taught him to hate the Real, and hate it he did. He hated it too much. I had never thought that that was possible, but obviously, it was.

I couldn�t look at him, and so I left the Nebuchadnezzar. I requested a transfer to Zion. Normally, I couldn�t stand that pit in the ground, but now I saw that it was better than living with my biggest failure yet, and also the reminder of my next Truth. You cannot choose who you love. I still loved Cypher, but hurt to see him. So, I left.

I descended into my own personal hell. Everything in Zion was used, recycled, even the air. I didn�t want to breathe it, but what could I do? I needed it. Down in the Earth, Zion�s walls were all that protected me. It�s reused air and water were all that kept me alive. I hated Zion, and even more, I hated needing Zion. I hated that when I was there, I had to rely on Zion to survive.

I plunged into every meaningless piece of labour assigned to me. I didn�t think. I didn�t want to. Thought would mean emotion, and emotion would mean pain. And, so my body became a vessel, filled with one emotion that I let in, and one that I was not able to keep out. Hatred and fear were all that lived inside of me then.

They sent me down to the engineering level to work on those goddamned water filtration systems. It was ironic. I was helping to maintain the very systems that I hated so much. As I worked on them, I was surprised to see that it brought me a sort of comfort. I was in control. I depended on the systems of Zion, yes, but they in turn depended on me. Once again, I had found a System to Control. I saw it. Zion, it a way, was not unlike the Matrix. It was a System, but it too was a System that I could Control. I smiled. I clearly remember that I smiled. How? Easily. It was the first time I had smiled since Cypher betrayed me, since he broke my heart.

And so it was that in Zion, the one place that I loathed above all others, I found peace. Sadly, that peace was not meant to last.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slowly the pain Cypher had caused me began to fade.

I had been so close with him. So close!! I was so sure that I had done it. My failure with Cypher, taught me my next Truth. My mistakes could never be undone. Trying to undo errors only resulted in ones that were even more horrific than the first had been. It was best to forget about my errors. I tried, but I could not. No matter how hardI triedI kept thinking about the Neb, my errors aboard that ship.

I never talked to the crew when they came to Zion. They usually came for about two days, and when they did, I just watched. I watched Cypher. He had wounded me, but unfortunately, I still loved him. I couldn�t help it, but I still had my pride. I would never talk to him again. The others? I had absolutely no desire to ever speak to them. I didn�t regret it. I hated them all. They were all murderers. I was not one of them anymore, and I wanted nothing to do with them, either. I still needed to see Cypher though.

I just looked at him. There was no harm in that. My silent love could not bring him any more harm. Then one day, as the Neb docked, something odd happened. Out of the ship stepped only four people, Morpheus, Trinity, Tank and some new guy. Cypher wasn�t there. I started to worry, then panic, as he didn�t appear. Soldiers went in, and soon came out, holding stretchers, covered in white sheets. I counted the stretchers as the soldiers passed. There were four. One was missing! Mouse, Apoc, Switch, Dozer and Cypher were missing. That was five people, but there were only four stretchers! The devil hope flared up in me. Maybe there was hope for Cypher yet. There was a chance that he was not on a stretcher. There was a chance that he was not among the dead.

Then, just as quickly as hope came, it left me. Out of the Neb came another soldier. On his face was a look of loathing and disgust as before him, he kicked the limp body of Cypher. The stench was disgusting. Cypher�s arm caught on a protruding nail in the floor. The soldier leaned down, and quickly unhooked him. He wiped his hand on his pants, spit in Cypher�s face, and continued to kick him along. I knew where he was taking him. All the hated dead of Zion were dumped into an open pit at the back of the city and burned.

I couldn�t move from my hiding place. I couldn�t blink. I couldn�t breathe. A could only stare as his dirty body disappeared around a corner. I don�t know how long I just sat there. Finally, in a daze I got up, a made my way to my room. I tried to sleep, but I couldn�t rest. I tried to work, but I couldn�t concentrate. I hurt too much. I needed to know what had happened. I didn�t have to go far to learn the story. All of Zion was talking about it. They called him a traitor. They said he had killed the crew, that he had tried to return the Matrix. I heard all I could, and returned to my room before I collapsed. He had tried to go home to the System. He had tried and he had failed. But he hadn�t died in vain. Yes, he had died, but he had taken four of Morpheus� murderers with him. I had never been more proud of him.

My heard ached though. I couldn�t let him go. I�d thought that I�d pretty much left him behind when I left the Neb, but I hadn�t. I had to see him one last time. I had to say goodbye. I hadn�t been able to save him. I had failed him in his teachings, and I had also failed to protect him. By leaving I had given up on him. I had given up on my love. I had to beg for forgiveness.

Hours after the lights had been turned out; I crept out of my room, and snuck across the city to that dark, dirty forbidden pit.

I looked down, into it. They hadn't burned him yet. There was his body, lying face down in the mud of the pit. Slowly, I climbed the ladder down, and approached him. The stench of rotten, burned flesh bombarded my nostrils, making my eyes water. The air was heavy, thick with it. I kneeled by him in the mud, and turned him over onto his back. His front was burned, and scratched. His face was worst of all, but still recognizable. He wore and expression of rage and pain. But no fear. Even in his dying moment, as he SAW his death approaching, he felt nothing but rage. His anger had stayed with him till the very end.

Gently, I touched his face, ran my fingers over his cheeks, lips, and his eyes. �I�m sorry,� I whispered, my voice choked.

I pulled his limp body out of the mud, close to me, and I hugged him. I sat in Zion, in the dark, in a muddy stinking pit, hugging a dead man, clutching him close to my body. I was covered in grime. The dirt of the hated dead was all over me, my legs, my arms, my hands, my body, my face. It didn�t matter. Nothing mattered. I pulled him closer, and almost inaudibly, I uttered the words that I thought I would never say in this cold, dead world of the Real. �I love you.�

A single tear streaked down my grimy cheek, then another, and another. In all my years in the real world, not once had I shed a tear. Not once. But I did then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay. If you've gotten this far, thank you very much.

[sabertooth1217]

Loved it.

[guesser]

Thank you.

[sabertooth1217]

though i only skimed it.

[guesser]

Whatever.

At least you read it.

[janewaykat]

It's great!

[guesser]

Yay! Thank you!

[janewaykat]

Np, I speak only the truth

[guesser]

Nice to hear.

[Tech]

I think I should thank you, guesser. I haven't read a good Matrix fan fic in so long a time already... but this was really, really good.

[Voy_Girl]

Good job,

[guesser]

[PicardsTrueLove]

Intriguing, very intriguing....I like th eidea of presenting it from another perspective because I have become a little tired of the constant "good vs. evil" fanfics. Very impressive.

[guesser]

Thank you.

I'm glad my attempt worked. I was trying to work it from a different angle. I like to read fanfics, and I was getting tired of reading black and white, good vs. evil, myself.

[Ziona]

Very very nice... hey Guesser... do you happen to be on the Last Free City.com... cause I know a guy on that Matrix forum that's named Guesser.

[Tech]

Hey, I used to be there, when it was called The Matrix Online, I think... well, it was a long time ago. I was Agent_Smith2.0 and I think I've seen you and guesser there too.

[miss7]

cool story you should be a writer

[Ziona]

Lt. Tech... that's cool... Like finding out who is from different forums on forums like this Yea... I've been there since the beginning ^.^

[guesser]

Yeah, I'm guesser from TLFC. ..only, I'm not a guy.

Lieutenant_Tech, I remember you.

[Ziona]

*embarassed*

Sorry Guesser... I syhould have remembered that you were a female... oye... I feel stupid... ^.^

Good work on the story

[guesser]

Hehe...its okay.

Thanks for the compliment.

[Ziona]

No problem... keep up your great work.