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 more than passing curious 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 glanced at her
curiously. Her eyes 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. Her face was beginning
to show expression. "It's a worm."
"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 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. A man fell to
the ground.
"Lain!" Chisa cried out. Down on the ground, Lain seemed to be yelling
at the man. She turned away from him and back to the bar. Chisa noticed
the short skirt and racy jacket, so uncharacteristic of the quiet girl
she'd seen only moments before. The young man stumbled out of his seat.
Lain looked directly at Chisa with a smile, and Chisa felt a chill run up
and down her spine. 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 looked back down at Lain. Her
grin had grown wider, almost feral. She realized numbly that Lain saw
her, knew she was there.
"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 thought, forcing 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 falling 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 boy
staggered out of his chair. She flickered and vanished.
"Master," the man in black bowed down before the table.
"Have you found her yet?" The man who called himself God looked up
from the table. His hand rested on the clean-shaven head of an emaciated
man.
"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. "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 says
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. 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 their 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 thought. 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, puzzled.
"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 not even that which I became. 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.
---
Joanne Wojtysiak joanna@cs.ualberta.ca
"The future isn't what it used to be..."