Disclaimers: They belong to the Wachowski brothers, Time-Warner and whoever else…
An alternative
ending to the entire Matrix story…
The smell of smoke filled the air,
once tall buildings now crumbling, gutted by fire. What was left of the city now resembled a war zone. Scattered human corpses could be seen if one
choose to look. The few remaining
Agents stood around looking like wounded soldiers, which was more or less what
they were. The final battles for
control of the Matrix had taken their toll on both sides. The Agents loosing the advantage of their
respawn function, now that the entire code of the Matrix had been
corrupted. They were much like the
rebels now, those that were injured, remained injured, those that were dead,
remained so.
Standing in the middle of the
wrecked street Neo surveyed his handiwork.
He regretted the loss of human life but it had been necessary to free
the rest of humanity from the terror of the machines. If a few people died because of him, he could live with it
because the rest would be saved from the Matrix. Behind him he heard Trinity limping as she approached. He turned, trying to smile for her but she
wasn’t looking at him. Trinity didn’t
look at him very much, any more. Her
eyes were moving over the wreckage, resignedly looking for survivors. Of course, there weren’t any.
A crash from a doorway in the
distance drew their attention. Agent
Brown staggered out of the building, still clutching his gun. Neo heard Trinity sigh tiredly as he turned
to confront the Agent. Brown, like
Trinity didn’t even bother looking at Neo.
He knelt beside another fallen Agent, seemingly checking for any life
signs. Finding them negative, he calmly
raised the gun to his temple and fired.
Neo watched the body fall forwards is silent horror. Turning to Trinity he was equally stunned to
find her looking unimpressed.
“They’ve been doing
that a lot lately.” Was all she said before she turned and began to limp
towards the nearest exit.
Of course, Neo had
heard about it, as the war with the machines was obviously coming to its end
the Agents had begun desperate kamikaze missions. Those these were more a case of them fighting till they were
killed, rather than doing too much damage to the enemy. Trinity had acquired her limp as the result
of one such encounter. The Agent had
grabbed her as he had fallen through the plate-glass window of the
skyscraper. She’d been lucky enough to
land half on top of him, when they hit a lower level roof. The impact had shattered both the back of
his cranium and most of his lower dorsal vertebra. Neo had rushed to the scene to find a semi-immobilised Trinity
and the last respawn of Agent Smith looking frighteningly like a human corpse.
Turning towards the exit, Neo found
that he couldn’t make himself leave just yet.
Some part of him demanded that he go take a closer look at the remains
of Agent Brown. Dragging his feet, Neo
picked his way through the debris towards the fallen Agents. As he got closer, he could see that Brown
was splattered with blood, in dispersed with a variety of burns. Neo fought the urge to wretch. These were only AI, he had to remind
himself, they were the enslavers of humanity, why should he care about the
horrific ways in which they died. The
corpse that Brown lay beside was that of what appeared to be an Agent of a
slightly larger build. Neo couldn’t see
the face. Nausea warring with curiosity
he rolled the corpse over, only to fall back and collapse on his side as his
stomach reacted violently. He pressed
his eyes shut tightly, revulsion sweeping over him; the Agent’s face had been
entirely burnt off.
Managing to drag himself to his
feet, Neo made his way to the exit, keeping his eyes fixed firmly in front of
him, desperate to ignore the corpses that littered the streets.
Trinity was waiting for him by the phone. She picked it up when it rang and held the receiver out to
him. He took it gratefully. He had to get out of the Matrix, had to get
free from the horrific prison it had become; a prison now populated by the dead
and the dieing.
Opening his eyes, back on the Neb.
Neo gave a shuddering sigh, knowing that the carnage he had seen would
revisit him in his dreams. Glancing
over at Trinity, Neo was surprised to see that she hadn’t come back yet. Then he realised that Morpheus and their new
operator were hurriedly imputing commands into the ship’s computer. Wary he came to stand beside the operator.
“What-“ Neo stared
at the screen, the encrypted characters were beginning to disappear.
Despite the best efforts of Morpheus and the operator, more and more characters were being erased. Neo grabbed a keyboard, trying to input the commands that were so obviously failing to initiate any response. He was peripherally aware that other crew members were now watching him, the operator and Morpheus having stopped their futile actions, seemingly waiting for ‘the One’ to make a difference.
The screen went blank. Neo stared, still clutching the keyboard. Standard characters began to spell out a message across the screen:
Matrix shutdown
complete.
Critical error:
teraforming 0.02% complete.
Matrix reboot
sequence initiated.
Critical error:
kernal not found.
Matrix reboot
sequence initiated.
Critical error:
kernal not found.
Matrix reboot
sequence initiated.
Critical error:
Smith 01 module not found.
Matrix reboot
sequence terminated.
Teraforming 0.02% complete: Planet status uninhabitable.
On another screen an urgent communication from the Zion mainframe was flashing. Neo didn’t look. Quietly he put down the keyboard and went to stand next to the empty shell that had been Trinity. He reached out and touched the cheek gently, in much the same way that she had done, when she had thought him dead. Neo looked at her closely, she looked so peaceful. He was still looking at her when Morpheus relayed the information from Zion: that everything had been shutdown; the Matrix itself, the power plants, the life support systems…
Hmm, nasty…
Don’t know why Smith is a boot disk though.
Narsus
22:03, 24/04/02