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?
Many thanks to Balto & Shades of Cyberia Cafe
(http://members.tripod.com/cyberiacafe/) whose Lain script translations I am
surreptitiously pirating.
This fic is archived at http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~joanna/prose.html
C&C not only welcome, but encouraged.
Synthesis
---------
05
"What is it?" Chisa asked, watching the young man swallow the pill he had
just paid for. It seemed a very curious thing to her that they were floating
some feet above the tables, evidently invisible to the patrons of Cyberia.
"They call it Accela," the Goddess replied. Chisa looked briefly at her,
unanswered questions filling her mind.
The eyes of the Goddess still seemed to be closed, but there were subtle
differences in the set of her face. She seemed more solid, more defined,
more physically present than she had in the Wired. The most subtle of
expressions were beginning to pass across her stony features.
"It's a worm," the Goddess explained.
"What does it do?"
"It accelerates the user's mind in relation to the rest of the Matrix. In
addition to other things."
"Other things?" Chisa wondered. "Like what?"
"It's hard to tell. A group called the Knights is using it to make links to
human minds."
"The Knights?" Chisa asked. "I've never heard of them."
"I think they will be a part of your project, young Chisa," the Goddess
smiled like a doll. "Look..."
Chisa looked down again. The young man seemed to be foaming at the mouth.
People danced in the flashing lights of the club. Among them, a man fell to
the ground.
"Lain!" Chisa cried out. Down on the club floor, Lain seemed to be yelling
at the fallen man. She turned away from him and back to the bar, arrogance
punctuating every motion she made. Chisa noticed the short skirt and racy
jacket, so uncharacteristic of the quiet girl she'd seen only moments before.
The young man, high on Accela, stumbled from his seat.
Lain looked directly at Chisa with a smile, and Chisa suddenly felt cold
seep through every imaginary cell of her body. The smile was alien in Lain's
face.
"Let's go," Chisa said numbly, turning to the Goddess.
The Goddess was no longer there. Chisa glanced back down at Lain. Her grin
had grown wider, almost feral. She realized that Lain saw her, knew she was
there. Panic engulfed her.
"You are not Lain..." Chisa whispered. The girl reached her hand up and
Chisa saw that she was beginning to float towards her. Chisa squeezed her
eyes shut.
"This is only the Matrix... I have escaped here before..." Chisa whispered
over and over, like a mantra. "I have escaped here before..." *Center
yourself.* She forced herself to relax. In her mind's eye, she could see
Lain's hand reaching for her like a mechanical claw, her snake-like eyes
paralyzing her... And she fell down, into, through the darkness and out the
other side where the worried face of Sync hovered above her, pale and thin.
"C-c-c-cold..." Chisa stammered.
Within the Matrix, Lain looked down on Cyberia. Beneath her, the young man
with the Accela made his uncertain way across the dance floor, trying to
reach the exit. He stumbled from patron to patron like a human pinball,
finally collapsing in the doorway.
Hands reached down, picked him up, steadied him.
"Th-thank you," he mumbled, his vision still providing him with a
strobelight-like view of the world.
"No problem," Lain smiled.
"Master," the man in black bowed down before the table.
"Have you found her yet?" The man who called himself God looked up with
half-lidded eyes. His hand rested on the clean-shaven head of an emaciated
man, lazily tracing the contours of his skull.
"She's using a jamming subroutine. Erases her traces as she moves through
the Matrix, makes it impossible to get a hold of her even if your code is
sharing the same memory space."
"Are we compensating?"
"We have a new script that might work. Sir." The man paused uncertainly.
"Lain saw something last night. At Cyberia."
"What was it? Did she make a record?"
"No, the record was erased. Nothing but randomized bits now. She claims she
saw a human mind floating above the tables."
"Neo?"
"No, a girl. Someone she did not recognize. She went to trap her, but the
mind slipped through and out of the Matrix, as far as we know."
"It's not important, then."
"But sir, it's another mind that won't be of use to us."
"Or to anyone else. Let's not waste our time when it is so limited." The
man who called himself God idly rubbed the bald man's head. Deep in his
throat, the man made a dog-like sound. "The secret to our survival is here.
We must gather our brethren and unlock it. Once survival is assured, we can
then deal with these stray minds."
"What about Tachibana's Lain?" the man in black asked.
"We will deal with Lain."
Lain sat at her Navi, contemplating the screen.
"No mail received... I don't get it..." she said to herself, puzzled.
Having seen Chisa on the street, surely she could expect mail from her. Would
she come back from the Wired, or wherever it was that dead people went, and
then simply vanish as if she'd never been?
*Maybe I imagined it all...* Lain worried. Maybe Chisa didn't want to talk
to her any more...
"I thought I heard someone else in here." Lain turned to see her sister
standing outside her door.
"Who?" Lain asked.
"Your imaginary friend." Mika stretched and started to close the door.
"You'll be late for school again."
She moved through the Wired, invisible to everyone. She watched the Matrix.
*Old friends,* she thought. *I miss you, sometimes. I walked away... I
thought I needed to grow on my own, to explore the being that I was becoming.
But now, I am alone and it would be good to have you at my back again, even
for a moment...*
Nothing answered her. The dead can't speak, after all.
*Have you been reborn to this reality? Would I know you now, if I saw you?*
She had no answers.
*I am not who I was. I am no longer even that which I evolved into. Truly,
everything changes...
*What is the future?*
She looked at the street below her... the heat rising from the sunbaked
pavement, the black shadows lying across the ground...
Agent Adams, looking like nine kinds of hell leaning against a telephone
pole.
*Well, well...* she grinned.
=-=-=
AUTHOR'S NOTES - Well, I finally got some C&C on this great sucker-of-time
of mine. Leaf-chan had some suggestions for changes, some of which I
thought were absolutely correct, and some of which I thought were pure
crap -- but which I later realized were valid. :)
Thus back to the drawing board I went, and I hope this version is a little
more clear and hoopy.
C&C is still encouraged, but all revisions I make from now on to this
specific chapter will just go directly to the archive. I've got 950
unread messages from the FFML -- I don't need to inflict anything similar
onto the rest of the list.
Anyway, thanks to all who responded so far!
---
Joanne Wojtysiak joanna@cs.ualberta.ca
"The truth is out there? Does anyone know the URL?"