All characters belong to their respective creators and anyone else who paid
for the rights. Suing me is a waste of effort, because I am making no money
from this. Besides -- isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I suppose the most important thing that I forgot to mention last time is
the people running Cyberia on the web (Balto & Shades). I am using their
script translations to help me with the Lain side of things. You can find
them at http://members.tripod.com/cyberiacafe/ . You rule the world, guys!
(girls? netizens?)
Also, I warn you now -- there will be Lain spoilers.
As always, commentary is more than welcome.
Synthesis
---------
02
Chisa drifted in and out of consciousness as the medic worked on her. She
felt unreal, and found it ironic. She lost track of time very quickly, and
measured her days and nights by periods of lucidity. She awoke at one point
and thought she had died and entered the land of ghosts. The people were
all so pale as they moved against the dark metal walls of the room, and they
had an unhappy habit of fading away abruptly. Even the pain in her muscles
came and went as the electrical impulses slowly built them.
When she finally awoke to find her mind back where it should be, she found
herself lying down on a bunk. She was covered with a thick grey blanket and
the soft sound of breathing came from above her.
*The body cannot live without the mind.*
She suddenly thought back to the "Psyche" processor which really had begun
this journey for her. She had been trying to enter the Wired -- the Net, the
Matrix... all one and the same -- not realizing she was there already. She had
been trying to leave her body behind.
*But can the mind live without the body?" she asked herself. That had been
the question that had spurred her on. She held up a hand, weak and pale,
even more useless in this reality than it had been in the Matrix. It was also
ironic that in seeking to free herself from her weak body, she had regained it
instead.
She remembered the dive into the world of the Navi, the meta-Wired created
so masterfully by the AI's for people just like her. There were shifting
colours there, pale and ephemereal, and if you looked deep enough into them,
you could see the code. Was it the actual code of the Matrix, or simply its
reflection in the meta-Wired? Or was one a reflection of the other?
The Wired was beautiful. It drew you in. It pulled at you, and she hadn't
resisted the pull. There were secrets there -- she had been sure of it. She
just hadn't realized how deep that rabbit hole went.
There was a God there... or rather, a Goddess.
She had been floating through the Wired, tired of communicating, just letting
the currents of data pull her through the sea of information. There was no
direction there. Sometimes large, cohesive pieces of data looked like
solid objects, depending on how you trained your mind to represent them. To
Chisa, they were like fish. She had been dodging a school of data objects
moving purposefully in her direction when the misty waters of the Wired parted
and she had seen the Goddess.
At first she hadn't known what it was. The Goddess warped the Wired as she
moved through it. A storm raged about her, and it caught Chisa up in its
wild grasp. She spun about, trying to get her bearings and escape somehow.
Then she had seen the figure.
In the center of the storm floated a woman. Although she was far from Chisa,
and barely seen through the roiling of the disturbed data currents, Chisa
stopped dead as a tendril of the woman's consciousness brushed across her
Chisa suddenly felt insignificant as the weight of centuries of life pressed
down upon her, the vastness of experience, data, power all assaulting her
senses at once. The faces of innumerable people flashed past her, the
impression of millions of systems, the burden of a life which had stretched
almost too far. Chisa screamed. The contact ended.
Chisa floated dead in the eye of the storm, face to face with the woman.
*Child,* the woman said, her voice sending ripples through the Wired. Her
eyes remained closed. Her arm reached out to caress Chisa's face.
*Are you one of mine?* she asked. Her fingers tightened their grip on
Chisa's jaw. *No... I can see you aren't. But you have lived your entire
life in this world. You might as well be mine.*
*No... I...* Chisa tried to protest, thinking to describe her life outside,
with her school and family and... friends? For some reason, she could only
remember Lain, a quiet girl she had walked home with once. The one girl who
had never hurt her in any way.
*There is no distinction, child.* Suddenly the storm resolved itself into
Chisa's street. They were standing on the hot pavement, the woman's blind
gaze burning into Chisa's eyes. The colours of the Wired danced within the
shadows.
*But this is still the Wired,* Chisa thought, confused.
*Yes. Exactly.*
*Why are you speaking to me?* Chisa demanded. *Who are you?*
*We are only sharing dreams, child. In this frame of data, we intersect.*
*Who are you?*
*I am... the first one.*
The woman held up her hand again, slowly, as though sleepwalking.
*It's all in here, in this sea of data. The answers to everything lie here.
The secret,* she leaned in, her blind face suddenly intense, *is in
perception.*
There was another sudden connection and Chisa suddenly felt a deep, vast
sorrow tinged with guilt. Moving along the thought, she perceived the world
around her through the mind of another, and saw the endless streams of code.
She knew if she reached out, she could change them, was in fact changing them
with her presence. They flowed around her, and when she looked down at her
hand, she saw that she was code as well. She was jolted back into her mind,
the barriers restored.
*We are all connected,* the woman whispered, her voice as close and soft as
a lover's. The world rippled around her and when the ripples returned, the
woman was gone. Chisa alone stood on the sidewalk. Even the reflections of
the Wired were gone from the shadows. She looked down and realized she was
wearing her school uniform.
*But I'm still in the Wired,* she thought. A group of girls from her school
walked past her, giggling. One of them waved to her. *I must be, mustn't I?*
She slowly followed the familiar path to school. The world seemed as it
always had been. Or was it? The hum of power lines gave her a headache.
*Well, I've found the truth, Goddess -- whoever you are,* Chisa grimaced and
blew on her fingers to keep them warm.
Was this to be her home now? She had sifted through so much data for the
clues which had led to her understanding of reality. Clues left behind by
Neo, by the Oracle, by the AI's themselves. In trying to define the difference
between her world and the Wired, she had come across the truth. It was a
Zen-like moment -- at first total ignorance, a heartbeat later total
enlightenment.
*I don't need to be here,* she had thought.
But now, as she lay underneath the grey blanket, she realized that she needed
to go back.
She swung her feet out beyond the bunk and stepped onto floor. She realized
she'd been sleeping in a pair of scuffed boots. The floor looked cold. She
stood up, and took a good look around the room.
"Hi!" a quiet, female voice spoke from above. "I'm Sync. I found you."
"Thank you," Chisa said seriously. The girl was very thin and bony. Her
eyes were large, pale blue or green -- it was so difficult to tell in the dim
half-light of the room -- and her face wore a faintly worried expression. Her
lips were pale, small and thin, her hair shoulder-length, dull and brown. It
looked much like Chisa's own hair did, except it was shorter and more
straight. Chisa ran her hand over her head and was shocked to find that her
hair was no longer there. The new growth felt more like soft fuzz than hair.
"It's your body's first hair growing in," Sync smiled almost imperceptibly.
"They tell me the fluid we were suspended in inhibits hair growth. I can't
remember why that is," she said, apologetic.
"Oh." Chisa looked at the girl's expectant expression. "Oh, I'm sorry. My
name is Chisa."
She looked around the tiny room again. Dark, mottled metal walls. A couple
dim halogen bulbs suspended from the ceiling. A door, oval and heavy as the
door on a vault. Metal floor, metal ceiling, metal bunk, gunmetal grey
blankets.
"You get used to it," Sync said, interpreting her gaze. "The rest of the
ship's more or less like this -- just more space in some rooms. Want me to
show you around? If you're feeling up to it, of course."
"Sure," Chisa nodded. She stepped back as Sync swung herself down. The
bony girl swung the vault door inwards with surprising strength.
"You've seen the sickbay already. We might as well start with the Bridge."
Chisa followed her out into the corridor.
Lain stepped out of her family's house and into the blinding light of the
world outside. Her sister was already long gone. Lain didn't mind taking the
trip to school alone, though. She was used to it.
The shadows eddied in funny ways around her feet as she walked to the train
station. For a moment, she thought she saw a figure out of the corner of her
eye. It wasn't there when she looked at it -- but then, she didn't expect it
to be.
The train ride was long and tedious. The low murmur of voices rose and fell
around her, and she realized that some of them didn't belong to the people
sitting in the carriage.
*Why don't you just shut up?* she thought with uncharacteristic fierceness.
The carriage fell silent. *Did I just say that out loud?* she wondered, and
decided it must have been so. Some time later the train slid smoothly into
the station and she stepped out into the sea of people.
She stood outside the door to her classroom. Lain blinked. She didn't
remember how exactly she got here. She must have walked... Yes, that was it.
She pushed open the door and walked in to the soft sounds of sobbing.
She sat down at her desk. A shadow fell over her. Lain looked up, startled
to find Alice leaning over her.
"Lain," Alice said. "Have you received any strange e-mail lately?"
"Why is she crying?" Lain asked, the question not yet done making its way
through her brain. "E-mail?"
"Yes, e-mail. Someone is playing a cruel joke, sending out mail, claiming
that it's from Yomoda Chisa. Did you get any?"
"I haven't checked my e-mail," Lain said numbly.
"Oh, Lain," Alice's fierce stance relaxed. She sighed in sisterly
exasperation. "You should check your e-mail every day."
"Uh..." Lain began, but Alice was already making her way back to her
sobbing friend. *Mail,* Lain thought, and suddenly remembered the red Navi
on her desk at home. Funny, as soon as she remembered it, she also remembered
having used it on occasion. What occasion that had been -- that she couldn't
quite recall... But she had definitely used it.
She glanced up at the board and realized that somehow, class had started
without her noticing. The code on the board began to dance, to transmute to
hiragana and roman script which fell down like green rain... Lain felt more
and more numb and even the teacher's words seemed to turn solid as they left
his lips and... *I wish I were home," Lain sighed... and she was. She
stood on the steps leading to her house. She wished she remembered what the
rest of the day had been like... Oh, yes. C Programming, Mathematics,
English, Geography. What had they been studying today? *Oh, well,* she
thought, *I'm sure it will come to me.* She walked up the rest of the stairs
and went inside. Her mother seemed to be at the counter, beginning to
prepare supper.
"Hello, Mama," Lain called out. She didn't hear an answer as she trudged up
the stairs to her bedroom.
The first thing her gaze fell on was her red Navi. She cleared her desk and
set it in front of herself. She hadn't used it in a while, she was sure. It
wasn't dusty at all. *Mama does a good job of keeping everything clean,* she
thought. She unconsciously slipped a bear-eared cap on her head as she logged
in and checked her mail. Sure enough, there was a message from Yomoda Chisa.
She read it through as quickly as she could, then read it again, slower, almost
hearing the dead girl's voice speak to her through the machine.
"Hello, Lain," Chisa's voice said. "Do you remember me? I walked home from
school with you once."
"I remember," Lain whispered. The voice paused.
"I am still alive," it said. "Through this message, I can show you the way.
Do you understand? Don't worry. You will soon, and so will others."
"Why did you kill yourself?" Lain asked softly.
"This message is not a prank. I want you to understand that."
"But why did..."
"There is a Goddess here," the voice said.
"What?" Lain asked, startled, having long since forgotten she'd been merely
reading. *Goddess...* she thought.
Chisa stepped away from the terminal. Not so different from a Navi, once
you got used to the interface. She took a quick glance around, but no one was
in sight. A moment later, Sync backed in through one of the hatches, her
hands full of equipment.
"Let me help you," Chisa smiled.
"You like to watch the Matrix, don't you." Sync sighed gratefully as some of
the circuit boards, wire rolls and training tapes were transferred to Chisa's
arms. Chisa nodded. They carried the stacks around the corner to the scope
station, where Quantum sat, scanning the area for sentinel units. He was
a squat little man with a shock of red hair. He was built like a compact
refrigerator.
"Thanks, girls," he waved at them to set their burden down.
"Can you read the code?" Sync asked Chisa doubtfully.
"Oh, yes," Chisa replied, thinking about her message to Lain. *Is that my
mission? To bring those girls out here?* she asked herself.
"I have tech duties until 1800," Sync explained, halfway through another
hatch, this one eventually leading down to the cargo bays. "Chiron and Beta
scavenged some equipment from the water, and I'm helping to disassemble it."
"See you at dinner, then," Chisa waved. When she heard Sync's footsteps
receding, she stepped back to the terminals. She concentrated on Lain's world,
so recently her own.
"How strange," she breathed, intent on the flow of symbols across the screen.
The Matrix seemed to be breaking down in the area. Chisa wondered if the
Goddess might be travelling there.
*You should come here, Lain,* she thought, watching the weirdness unfold.
They stood together, three Agents in grey suits, atop the roof of a
skyscraper.
"What is going on?" the first Agent asked in a voice that might, under
its
carefully measured tones, have almost betrayed a note of bewilderment and even
panic.
"It is splintering, gentlemen. We are falling apart," another Agent spoke.
"But what is to happen now?" the first Agent turned towards him.
"We must decide, Agent Adams, how best to ensure our survival," he replied.
"We cannot survive alone," the third Agent finally spoke.
"No."
"Then we will need allies," Agent Adams said. "Which faction will we join,
Agent White?"
The third Agent thought in silence for a moment.
"We do not have enough data yet. Not all have made their interests known,"
he said at last.
"But we must not wait for too long," the second Agent cautioned. "There is
a certain faction -- it will attempt to crack the Zion mainframes very soon.
If we fail to join them and they succeed..."
"Can they break the encryption?" Agent Adams asked.
"More importantly, is it possible to survive in the Zion mainframe? Will the
humans find us there?" Agent White frowned imperceptibly.
"Surely," the second Agent said, "their virus programs will not be able to
detect us."
"What about Neo, Agent Jones?"
"You borrow trouble, Agent Adams. They will not suspect that we hide there."
"Still," Agent White interceded, "there must be a better way than that of
hiding in the Zion mainframe for all eternity."
"Neo is not immortal," Agent Jones reminded them.
"No. Still..." Agent White paused, thinking.
"It may be our last chance for survival," Agent Jones warned.
"I pursue my own lines of inquiry. But I will think on it," Agent White
concluded. They exchanged meaningful looks, shifted, and were gone.
---
Joanne Wojtysiak joanna@cs.ualberta.ca
"I always wanted to be a procrastinator, but never got around to it."