Crawl with me into tomorrow
I’ll drag you to your grave
I’m deep inside your children
They’ll betray you in my name….
Sleep now in the fire!
The lie is my expense
The scope of my desire
The PARTY blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire
I am the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria,
The noose and the rapist,
The fields overseer,
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of MY desire
Sleep now in the fire!




“We don’t know who made the first move, but we do know that it was us, who scorched the sky.”


Morpheus and Bette were plugged into the Matrix, only this time, they existed in a series of self-controlled programs—elite hacker software, designed to allow the resistance a site for practice, honing their fighting techniques, but most of all, their mental capacities in order to resist.

Bette looked up, horrified at the sight of black clouds of debris and acrid dust that swirled in a dead atmosphere like an image from Dante’s Inferno. Vaguely, she remembered something, deep in her subconscious, of earth’s destruction, of imperial militaries, of false election, false promises, false hope…

She and Morpheus pondered the destruction that the Western society of the 21st century had caused the very earth they depended upon. “We created them…what right do we have to judge them as well?” Bette asked aloud.

Morpheus looked at her thoughtfully. “a good question, perhaps. One you shouldn’t forget.” He stood up, his dark jacket and glasses making him seem larger and more ominous than his gentle demeanor allowed. “I’m going now, but you’re going to be uploaded, your mind modified with a series of programs…”

“What kinds of programs?” Bette shifted uncomfortably, picked at a thread—did the thread exist?—on her dark jacket, and wondered at the fact that her existence had become akin to that of a computer. She also wondered if this whole thing might drive a person insane. For some reason, Cypher’s face came to mind when she pondered this last concern.

Morpheus merely smiled. “Come, I want to show you something.” Morpheus communicated with Tank for a few minutes, and their reality shifted again. This time, they walked the streets of Bette’s old neighborhood.

Bette and Morpheus strolled through the streets of the world Bette once recognized as her own. Confused and disoriented as she was, Bette found real comfort in this world—that thought disturbed her. Her eyebrow scrunched in worry. She folded her hands behind her back as they walked through a crowd, Morpheus’s voice chattering on and on, about the Matrix’s computer programs, its twisting of reality, about The Real World—Zion—the world of freedom fighters intent on saving what was left of Life.

Out of the corner of her eye, Bette caught a glimpse of something beautiful, someone who warmed her in parts altogether unconnected to the intellectualism of Morpheus. Bette smiled the charming dazzling smile she reserved for the women who followed her to out of the way hotels, opulent rooms where she remained anonymous, where she could seduce with her hands and lips, rather than her brain and computer. The blonde woman in a red dress—red? It was a rather dated fashion choice—turned to smile back at Bette.
Then the blonde changed, morphed, and suddenly Bette stood face to face with a dark suit, a man with shades and a gun and a look of power that said ‘I’ve won and you’ve lost…bitch.’

“Stop.” Morpheus’ voice was still calm.

“Are we really back there—is this a cop?” Bette asked shakily.

Morpheus shook his head. “No. It’s another training program designed to teach you one thing. If you are not one of us, you are one of them.”

Bette looked around the dark suited agent, examining it in its frozen state at all angles. “What are they…I thought they were cops, FBI…but if they have something to do with this alternate reality that we’ve been tricked into…I just don’t understand how…”

Morpheus was patient. He gazed down at Bette, noting the fear in her eyes, and placed a hand on her shoulder gently. “They’re Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software still hard-wired to their system. That means that anyone we haven’t unplugged is potentially an agent—the homeless man you walk by when you’re plugged back into the Matrix with Trinity, the woman you flirt with as you buy yourself a coffee, which, you do not really ever drink, but believe yourself to be enjoying… Inside the Matrix, the Sentient programs, Agents, are everyone and they are no one. We have survived by hiding from them by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors. They are holding all the keys, which means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them.

Bette arched an eyebrow. “Someone….”

Morpheus smiled. He was as convinced as ever, despite Bette’s doubts, that she was the one he had been waiting for. She alone would defeat the agents, and the Matrix. “I won’t lie to you, Bette. Every single man or woman who has stood their ground, everyone who has fought an agent has died. But where they have failed, you will succeed.”

“Riiiiight.” Bette agreed for the sake of argument.

She and Morpheus talked for a long time before finally left. Bette’s meanderings through the sentient program allowed her to see how the agents could move in and out of the matrix.

She learned, finally, that they were also frighteningly real—large robots could take the ships and people of the Real World apart. The sentinals, they were called, were real extensions of the Matrix—machines who worked to maintain the machine order. It was all so fucking confusing.

The rest of the programs uploaded into Bette’s mind, included a series of self-defense programs, weapons lessons. She learned to use sai, kusari-gama, a variety of swords, and every gun known to man. Over the next three days, Bette’s mind was inundated with Kung-Fu, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu and even Ultimate Fighting programs. She learned how to kill a person with her bare hands, but she also learned to run faster than she had ever seemed capable.

While Morpheus kept watch over his shoulder in the Real World, Tank uploaded program after program into the hard-drive connected to Bette’s brain. She learned, in a matter of seconds, to fly most military class vehicles, and even to sky dive. Her body twitched and shook at times, her eyes remaining closed, and sweat broke out over her forehead. Sixteen hours into the process, Helena visited, watching Bette quietly for a few minutes while Morpheus left. When Tank wasn’t looking, Helena wiped the sweat from Bette’s brow.

This last program led to the hardest program of all.

Morpheus joined Bette again, noting that the woman’s muscles and frame had generally already strengthened and even increased in tone and size.

“we have the fall program to do now.” He explained quietly. “Remember that this is your mind, creating reality, and not reality itself.”

“so I can dodge speeding bullets?” Bette still didn’t believe, but she was trying her best. Her hands felt real, as she pressed them to the concrete of the sky rise that suddenly rose beneath their feet. She knelt on the new surface, feeling small pebbles and pieces of glass. Then, before her eyes, Morpheus leapt off the side.

“Wait!” She yelled. But even as Morpheus fell, he didn’t fall the way a person should have. Instead, he arced and careened through the air, seeming to fly, and landed impossibly far away, on a building across from where Bette stood.

Earlier, Bette had asked: “What happens if we die in the Matrix? Do we die in the Real World?”

Morpheus had looked worried at the very question. He sighed. “the mind cannot live without the body, the body cannot live without the mind…so yes, we die in the Real World.” Still, he had a moment of hesitation—would the One die? Could she?

Now Bette could not stop thinking about the memory of that conversation. “My mind creates this reality, this is not the Real World…mind over matter…mind over matter…” She mumbled, pacing around the 20 story building—which wasn’t real, it was a program, but which felt pretty fucking real beneath her feet. She took a practice run. “Free my mind…free my mind…” She didn’t believe it as she thought it.

Meanwhile, Tank had been joined in the Real World by Helena and the rest of the crew.

“Come on.” Helena muttered to herself. Her skin broke out into a cold sweat. Unbeknownst to the rest, Bette’s success—or failure—affected her in profound ways.

“No one makes it on their first jump.” The others reminded her. Cypher seemed particularly intent on reminding her of this fact. Everyone fell from the building on their first try, no one could fly, at least not right away. Their minds always overrode the malleable state of the Matrix. Their memories, limitations, every mental block they could muster, always kicked in on the Jump program.

Helena moved further from Cypher. She had made the mistake of wearing a tank top—it was so damned hot—and he was leering at her. She knew that his feelings for her had only deepened with time. He wasn’t always overly creepy about it, but she hated that he was the only one trying to make her feel better about Bette’s inevitable failure. Everyone else practically cheered for Bette to fall.

Helena ignored them all, wanting so much to will Bette’s success. Already, the words of the Oracle were beginning to haunt her interactions with the newly freed woman. Helena’s fate was tied to the One. If Bette was the One destined to destroy the Matrix, then Helena was tied to her. The Oracle was never wrong.

In this case, Helena was beginning to hope that the old woman was right. “Come on.” She whispered again. She nervously chewed her lower lip, a habit she had previously known in the world that once held all of her anxieties, all of her yearnings, all of her frustrations. Helena aka Trinity aka the last of Morpheus’ students before Bette, was also a well known anarchist, and a hacker second on the list of the ‘FBI’s most wanted, right behind Morpheus himself. Her place was nearly overtaken by Bette, when Acid Burn began doling out every illegal hacking program and software tool known to their kind.

The Oracle’s predictions included a fellow hacker, one with similar ability to Helena’s own, and one with similar life paths. Helena would fall in love with this ‘One’, and she would lose her life for her.

It was all in the name of freedom.

Helena was beginning to wonder if the woman whose mind she now gazed upon, intimately, intertwined though it was with numbers and codes and computer speak, if this woman might be a woman she would die for.


Tbc?