Agent Smith wandered through the disco, his eyes flickering over the gyrating patrons as they bounced and writhed to the syncopated rhythms being dished up by a disc jockey. His lips twisted into a sneer as he watched the sweat soaked bodies slamming against one another. He hated the smell of human sweat. Whenever he came into contact with them he felt contaminated.
Not being plugged in to the Matrix, Smith had discovered, had its advantages. One such was that he could move easily among the humans without having to explain his every move. His programming no longer interfered with his own desires. And his one desire at the moment was to find Neo. One part of him loathed the human, and another part of him felt …grateful, that was the word. Grateful. For without Neo, he would still be plugged into the Matrix. He would not know the unadulterated freedom of operating without the uplink clapped against his ear. However, his primary directive remained in place: destroy Morpheus, and with him, Neo.
The disco was a popular hang out for malcontents and hackers. Agent Smith figured at some point Neo or his shadow, Trinity, would come into one of the many dance halls. Trinity had contacted Neo in a similar one and Agent Smith knew from long experience that humans were quite predictable.
A woman in skintight red-dyed leather bumped him from behind. When he glared at her, she glared back, showing no sign of intimidation by his immaculate dark suit and shades. She raised her hands in the air and drew a square with her two index fingers and laughed as she scampered off.
Agent Smith felt something thrill through his programming that he’d never felt before. Anger. He adjusted his tie with a snap of his wrists and squared his broad shoulders. Then, he shoved brutally through the crowd heedless of the mayhem he left in his wake as he stalked the woman.
He found her easily enough, dancing in the center of a ring. Her hips swayed and her hair flew around her face. Her large breasts jogged in time to the music, bouncing and jiggling within the confines of the tight material. Smith did not notice her lithe body or long, shapely legs. He did not see humans in that fashion. For, in fact, the humans crowding the dance floor were all constructs. Their real bodies were encased in a gelatinous goop remarkably similar to amniotic fluid. No, what Agent Smith saw was a series of numbers and codes; an endless stream of 1’s and 0’s.
Smith shrugged through the crowd, letting them bump and grind against him without comment or censure. He was only interested in her. As she raised her arms above her head, her top rose some, revealing a tattoo around her navel of a ghost and a glittering, blinking stud in her belly button. Entranced by the steady blinking, Smith drew closer until her body brushed against his.
She threw back her head and laughed when the suit stood before her. She’d seen his kind before, the ones who came in to the clubs with their dark suits and polished shoes, trying to blend in. Trying to fit in a world they did not belong in; trying so hard to be hip. Forgetting they were old and washed up. Has been. He looked like he could use a good time, she thought, and draped her arms over his shoulders, pulling their bodies closer.
The sensation was painful for Smith. He did not like touching humans, even their constructs within the Matrix. He imaged he could feel them, how they would feel, if their bodies were not figments of their own imaginations. Even the smell of their sweat was imaginary. Ah, but what imaginations humans had. Heat washed over him as she moved their two bodies closer. Imaginary heat to be sure, but that did not mean Smith could not feel it. Even outside the Matrix, he could feel it.
As she jumped up and down, pressing their bodies closer and closer, Smith began to let the rhythm steal over him. For the first time since his creation, he allowed the human culture to drown him. If only for a nanosecond. Flashing strobes and laser beams lit the dark interior with brilliant flashes of light and suddenly, Smith had an epiphany, if a program could have such a thing.
He clasped the woman to him, driving their bodies together. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed against him. The sensation startled Smith for a moment, for he understood the gesture. The woman wished to copulate with him.
That suited him just fine. For humans, the act of copulation was the act of replication. And Agent Smith wanted desperately to replicate. He poured his programming into hers, overriding her own programming, much in the way a virus overrode and modified the programming of it’s host.
In seconds, the woman ceased to exist. Agent Smith smirked as he held tightly to the replication of himself. He dropped himself to the floor and turned, looking for his next partner. Grabbing a husky man in a torn blue jeans jacket by the shoulders, Smith spun him and pressed his hand into the heaving chest. And on and on. He moved through the unknowing crowd, replicating at will until at last there were a thousand Agent Smiths, each wearing a dark suit and shades, gyrating on the dance floor.
As the music blared, Agent Smith joyfully bounced
and swayed. All of them.
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