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 most sincere 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
---------
07
Lain sat down before her new Navi and logged in. No mail again.
She sighed and cradled her face in her hands. It had finally arrived,
and it was still useless. She didn't know how to use it to reach Chisa.
She wished she hadn't told Alice that she couldn't go to Cyberia with
the girls. Alice had looked so positive when she'd sent Lain that note in
class. Lain had felt badly about disappointing her.
At first, she hadn't realized that the boxes the young man was removing
from of the van were the pieces of her Navi. She'd signed the form he'd
given her, half-listening to him expound on how much he'd always wanted
one.
"But what is it?" she had asked, handing him his clipboard. He'd
looked at her incredulously.
"It's the latest Navi model -- fully loaded!" he'd exclaimed. "I built
one for myself, but it's not nearly as powerful as yours. With this much
processing power, you should have no troubles at all. Surfing the Wired
will seem just as natural as walking around your own home."
"I don't know anything about this."
"You will," he'd smiled and left.
She'd sat in her room until she'd heard her father arrive. Her mind
skirted around the passionate kiss she'd seen her parents sharing to
linger on her father setting up her Navi for her. Her mother had vanished
into the kitchen as usual.
She could still see her father looking at her from behind his thick
glasses, explaining how she shouldn't use it as the sole means of
communication with people.
But what about people like Chisa? Had she really been standing out on
the street or was it just another hallucination? Just how much of what
Lain saw was real, anyway?
Lain suddenly realized her jacket was beeping. It was the little
hand-held Navi she used in school.
*We're waiting for you at Cyberia, Lain. Where are you?* Alice wrote.
Lain smiled. Alice never gave up. She rose from her desk. The evening
was a waste anyway. She resolved to try and have fun for Alice's sake.
Myu-Myu 'stepped' into the Wired, shifting from the shadow-striped
silence of her own room to the virtual darkness of the dungeon. She
adjusted the brightness level on her goggles until she could see the
tunnel stretching out before her in its rendered glory.
*Nice textures,* she looked around her with a practiced eye. She
adjusted the volume on her earphones and the dungeon was suddenly filled
with far-away footsteps, trickling water and a sound which might have been
breathing.
*I'd like to see how this would look through a Psyche processor...* she
wondered as she equipped her force shield and gun. *Now... where did those
two jokers get to?*
She padded carefully down the tunnel, following the sound of footsteps.
Soon, she could hear someone moving around just ahead. They seemed to be
around the right corner of a T intersection and moving towards her. She
grinned and held her weapon ready. *Come on... come closer... Now!*
The look on Masayuki's face was priceless.
"You're dead, Masayuki," she crowed.
"Well, so are you." Taro's voice came from behind her. Masayuki
touched the tip of her nose with a grin.
"You set it up!" Myu-myu's gun vanished. She crossed her now-free arms
with a sulky frown.
"No, you're just easy to hit," Taro shrugged.
"Anyway," Myu-myu changed the subject with what she thought was tact,
"you promised we'd go to Cyberia today. And here you are playing games --
if I hadn't come to get you, you'd have been here all night."
"Not all night," Masayuki said defensively.
"I don't want to go to Cyberia today. I'm having good luck playing,"
Taro stretched his arms. Myu-myu decided that the move looked pretty
funny coming from an avatar.
"We can go to the Gaming Center afterwards," she said. "Come on.
It'll be fun. Something's *always* happening at Cyberia."
"I don't want to play anymore anyway," Masayuki let his shield and
weapons dissolve.
"All right, all right," Taro threw his hands up in the air. "I'll meet
you two at the usual place. Don't be late."
His avatar generated a brightly-lit doorway and stepped through it.
"See you there!" Myu-myu waved at Masayuki and took a step backwards
through her own exit. She took her visor off and put her Navi into
power-save mode. The house was silent. It looked like her father was
going to be working late again.
Oh, well. At least this wasn't going to be a boring night.
The boy walked along the neon-lit streets, cradling the gun within his
jacket, close to his chest.
"You must go to Cyberia," she had said. Thus, to Cyberia he went.
Chisa sat at the terminal, rebelliously looking at the empty space
where the keypad had sat. Quantum had ripped it from its jack that
morning. The representation of the Matrix flowed across the screen.
What galled her the most was that she couldn't even control what part
of the Matrix she watched. She wanted to get on with her work -- the
Goddess had given her so many clues, and without access to the Matrix
there was no way for Chisa to decipher them.
Of course, she admitted to herself, everything had become somewhat more
urgent now that she knew there was another Lain out there. She shivered
involuntarily. The contact with the second Lain had scared her more than
a little.
*I wish there was some way of warning you, Lain,* she sighed to herself,
reaching out her hand to touch the screen.
"Don't let Quantum catch you leaving big, smudgy fingerprints all over
his nice shiny terminal." Beta's voice rang out from just behind her
shoulder. Chisa jumped.
"Don't scare me like that!" She pulled back her hand as though it were
on fire.
"Why don't you come and help me fly the 'Iroul'? It's a lot more
exciting than staring at the Matrix," Beta suggested with a grin.
"No thanks. Quantum would probably want to stand behind me the whole
time to make sure I didn't knock you over the head and fly us into a herd
of sentinels."
"Do they come in herds?" Beta asked with mock seriousness. "Come on,
Chisa. You know we don't think you're some sort of traitor. Quantum's
just nervous because we're going back into AI territory soon, and he
doesn't want anything to go wrong."
"I know," Chisa sighed. "It's not like this sort of thing has happened
before, either. I can see why he would want to be cautious. But I still
have friends back in the Matrix, and I believe they may be in danger. I'm
worried about them, Beta. I can't help it."
"Sitting here isn't going to help them," Beta said gently. Chisa was
struck by how much his manner resembled that of Cat and Chiron. *He's
going to make a fine officer someday.* She thought about Lain, still
stuck in the Matrix with a possibly-malevolent copy of herself.
"Neither will forgetting about them and going to off to do other things.
Please -- I won't do anything that will endanger us..."
"I won't go against Quantum," Beta said stiffly. He straightened and
began to turn away.
"That's not what I'm asking. I won't go back in, not if it's dangerous.
I... just need all of you to understand that I still need to help my
friends."
Beta thought for a moment.
"So you just want me to stop distracting you and go back to what I was
doing and you'll sit here?"
"Essentially, yes."
"Why didn't you just say so?" he grumbled and walked out. Chisa turned
her attention back to the screen. That hadn't gone very well at all. She
wished she knew what Lain was doing.
The code began to change, pan out from the nondescript street Quantum
had randomly set.
"What?" Chisa peered closely at it. Even as she watched, the code
resolved itself. It took her a moment to realize that she was now looking
at Cyberia Cafe. Juri, Reika and Alice already sat there, watching the
dance floor.
The other terminals around her began to flicker as well. They showed
various people converging on Cyberia. Chisa didn't recognize any of them
except for Lain.
The last terminal finally clicked into focus. When Chisa translated the
code, she was shocked to find Lain's face staring out at her. It was
grinning.
*I finally found you. It wasn't very nice of you to try to escape from
me,* the message came up beneath Lain's face. *I decided that since you
seem to be hiding, that I should seek you out. You really shouldn't miss
this.*
Chisa stumbled backwards off her chair. She glanced at the other
monitors. They still seemed to be displaying different people, going
about their business, all apparently heading to Cyberia.
"What's going to happen there?" Chisa demanded of Lain's picture.
*Boom!* Lain laughed. *The body can't live without the mind!*
"You'll kill them all!" Chisa whispered, horrified. Her knees gave out
and she slid to the floor. "Why do you wear Lain's face? Answer me!"
*I _am_ Lain,* the face said coldly. *Watch.*
*There's nothing I can do...* Chisa thought. She felt completely numb.
*Does she have a software bomb written in?*
On screen, everyone calmly proceeded towards their fate.
Lain peered dubiously at the building Alice had directed her to. It
seemed old and dingy, but it did have a large, garish neon sign
proclaiming it to be the Cyberia Cafe. She glanced down at her little
Navi. Alice claimed the club was located in the basement of the buliding.
She looked up again. Several people were in the process of walking
through the door. She crossed the street to Cyberia and followed them
inside.
Just within, she heard faint music playing and the voices of the people
fading as they descended to the club itself. She hesitated on the
staircase.
"Hey, you're in our way!" Three children pushed past her. Lain
apologized, but it was obvious even to her that they were too absorbed in
their own concerns to hear her. She followed them, listening to their
conversation. They seemed to be talking about breaking in to some
computer system.
*Must be nice to know so much about computers...* she thought sadly,
too well aware of her own ignorance. She stepped through the door and
into Cyberia.
The first thing she noticed was the noise, the sheer booming volume of
the music. It was so terribly loud that she was unable to breathe for a
moment. She could have sworn that her blood pounded in her veins to the
overwhelming beat and the rhythm vibrated in her bones. The flashing,
many-coloured lights, the ever-shifting bodies... she had never seen such
a sight. She felt small and timid.
Someone grabbed her wrist and pulled her aside to a marginally more
quiet corner. After a moment, she recognized Juri. She looked very
different from the sometimes-juvenile girl she knew from school. Her hair
was piled atop her head, and she was wearing make-up and a stylish red
dress. Lain was suddenly all too aware of her own plain clothes.
*How out of place I must look...*
"You're late!" Juri scolded her.
"No wonder -- it's already past her bedtime," Reika looked Lain over.
"Couldn't you have worn something more appropriate, Lain?" Juri sighed.
"Don't worry. Next time, we'll pick out something really nice for you
to wear," Alice said, wrapping her arm around Lain in a protective manner.
"A waste of time if you ask me," Reika sniffed. "Adult clothes won't
suit her anyway."
"I suppose the girl we saw last night wasn't Lain after all..." Juri
said with a note of disappointment.
"I told you," Reika leaned against the wall. Alice and Lain followed
suit.
"Did she really look like me?" Lain found her voice.
"Oh, yes. She could have been your twin!" Juri asserted. The other
girls nodded in agreement.
Somewhere in the crowd, a gunshot went off.
"What was that?" Reika asked. The crowd suddenly began to scatter and
a wave of people broke over the girls. Juri vanished in a sea of bodies
as a second shot rang across the dance floor.
"Juri!" Alice cried out. As the rush of people thinned, they were able
to see Juri lying motionless on the floor.
"Oh, no!" Alice and Reika moved with a single will. Between them, they
dragged Juri to her feet.
"I'm okay," Lain heard Juri reassure them. The three girls took a step
together, but Juri was clearly limping.
She looked past them, to the nearly-empty dance floor. Her gaze took
it all in, a single, static image. Two bodies. One pool of blood. The
shadowed, indistinct figure of a man standing there.
Silence. The music had stopped dead.
She thought for a moment that Alice and Reika hadn't seen him. They
were helping Juri walk from the dance floor. Then Alice turned back to
face her.
"Lain!" she said, and her voice was pleading. She held out her hand.
Lain turned her attention back to the man, examining him in minute
detail. Had she seen this before? Had she met him somewhere? She heard
Reika's voice in the background, speaking in outrage.
"What is that girl doing?" Reika's voice said.
She suddenly felt arms around her and Alice's voice was speaking into
her ear, sounding so very, very urgent. What was Alice trying to say?
The man was looking straight at Lain.
"What are you looking at?" he cried out, and Lain realized that he was
just a boy, not so very much older than she was herself.
"Run away, Lain!" Alice's voice finally penetrated her reverie.
"I said go away!" the boy snapped. He moved closer. Then the menacing
look on his face was suddenly wiped blank with shock.
"Why did you make me do this?" he whispered, his eyes filling with
tears. To Lain, he and she abruptly became the only people on earth. She
heard him as clearly as though they were standing cheek to cheek.
"What right do you have to make me do this!" he screamed, and waved the
gun like he was taking in the carnage for the first time. His eyes
pleaded with her.
"I just wanted to clear my mind... I don't... I have nothing to do
with you." *You were so beautiful... like an angel come down to earth...*
He squeezed his eyes shut. "I had nothing to do with it! The Wired must
not interfere with the real world! I had nothing to do with it!" *Lain.*
"Who are you, anyway?" he whispered and the tears ran down his face.
Lain walked towards him, the sadness in her heart threatening to
overwhelm her. She saw herself in his mind.
He brought the gun up with a jerky motion. Its laser sight moved up
her body and came to a rest between her eyes.
"I don't understand," he moaned. "I don't know anything..."
*I thought you loved me.*
"We are all connected," Lain heard herself say. The red spot of the
laser sight jerked away from her face. *No!* she yelled somewhere inside
as the boy placed the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
He fell for such a long time.
She could only stand there, frozen, even after he fell and Alice rushed
up to hold her, sobbing against the back of her head. The droplets of
his blood flowed down her face, eventually to dry and tighten around her
skin.
*Did I do this?* she wondered briefly, and she wanted to walk forward
and touch the boy's face, make sure he wasn't just another phantom inside
her waking dream. But she couldn't. It was as though she had turned to
stone.
---
Joanne Wojtysiak joanna@cs.ualberta.ca
"You sound reasonable... Time to up my medication."