Wraith [The Matrix Fanfiction]
This story is The Matrix fan fiction. If you are unfamiliar with the movies, comics, and/or games, I recommend checking them out before reading this, but I’ll try not to make it too dependent on them.
This chapter takes place about 2 years before the first movie. Wraith is the protagonist of a short series I plan to write. The format of this story will be meant to fit a single season for a TV series, but it isn’t written like a screenplay for the purposes of being entertaining in its current form. Enjoy.
Wraith
“Have you ever suddenly become aware you were dreaming?” he asked the beautiful brunette sitting next to him at the bar. “You’re sleeping soundly — completely into this dream — but then suddenly something makes you look around and realize you’re dreaming. Usually this causes you to wake up, but sometimes…” He paused to take a sip of his beer, doing his best to stall for suspense while she stared at him. She hadn’t taken a sip of her favorite drink for several minutes now, and her eyes were fixated on him as he spoke.
This is too easy.
Wraith
“Sometimes you can keep it going. You accept your dream world and move within it freely. Of course it’s hard to keep it going for long,” he looked up from the slowly descending foam of his beer glass and gazed into her eyes dramatically, “but some dreams are worth the effort.”
Her flattered smile broke through some mild resistance. She did her best to play coy, “What kind of dreams are those?”
Wraith smiled devilishly. He lowered the volume of his voice gradually as he answered “Only the very best ones,” and then in a whisper, “like this one.”
As the words fell from his lips, she suddenly realized how quiet the bar was. There were hundreds of people crowding the dance floor, high-topped tables and bar stools of the high-end club, but none of them spoke beyond an unintelligible murmur. Neither her nor her handsome stranger were ever bumped or interrupted. Her mind began to shape the idea that this was in fact a dream.
But she fought it. She closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh, feeling tiny tingles of electricity radiate over the surface of her skin from the tips of her toes and fingers into her chest and up her spine.
Full of incandescent hope, she opened her eyes again and her handsome stranger was still staring back at her. Her magnificent legs slowly uncrossed and he heard one of her high-heeled shoes hit the floor. Clearly pleased by what she felt, she practically purred “Then we don’t have much time, do we?”
She leapt onto Wraith and pushed her tongue between his lips, nearly knocking him off of his bar stool. He was eager to reciprocate, but her aggression took him off guard for a moment. They didn’t make it back to either of their rooms that night, instead choosing the fine polished cherry wood bar as their venue. The crowd around them continued to drink, dance, and socialize as if nothing was going on, while the rhythmic music perfectly aligned with their lovemaking.
Daybreak
Soon she’ll wake up in her bedroom, warm and cozy. She’ll give out a satisfied sigh of a good night’s rest while her mind does its very best to remember as much of her amazing dream as it could.
Wraith chuckled to himself as he held onto the rail to steady himself. The train to the suburbs was practically empty this early in the morning, but he preferred standing. His legs and glutes were sore from the activities of the evening.
Sometimes he didn’t know which turned him on more: the sex itself or how well he’d come to master his ability to make these dreams come true. He learned how to mask the field of vision for entire crowds of people. He mastered designing scenes to guide his audience’s senses to focus on exactly what he wanted them to. In only a few months, he taught himself how to write viruses to extract only the details of the previous night, leaving behind just enough memory that they’d think it was all a dream.
And Wraith wasn’t even a programmer. He could just feel the software of the world and manipulate it with his will. Not entirely sure how, he just focused his mind on imagining exactly how he wanted things to appear to others around him. Like a magician, he did his best impression of the role he played in that illusion. It was as if an actor could simultaneously control and change all of the make-up, special effects, and direction of a movie he was starring in. Except Wraith’s movie was the entire virtual world.
Disassociated
Wraith always had a vivid and powerful imagination. It allowed him to play the pretend game very well. He was never male model material, average height and soft around the waist, but charisma got him places his appearance couldn’t. While he never dated the 10’s of the world, he snagged a few 8’s when he was on his game.
That was before he learned how to stay asleep.
Morpheus had contacted him several times since he took the Blue Pill. His crew made the mistake of telling him everything before he committed to their suicidal revolution. At the time, Wraith refused out of fear. He didn’t want to be a hero just so he could live — or more likely, be buried — in some post-apocalyptic shithole. When he woke up the next morning, he realized how wise his decision was.
His neural link into The Matrix was direct. The super-cool awake kids only use the brain stem connection, while he had all his original ports working at full potential for all his data transfer, stabilization, and survival needs.
Over time, he grew confident in his theory that if his digital body died, his mind might survive. He was already completely dissociated from that digital body. The world he lived in now may as well be one of the online games he used to play with his friends. And he wasn’t causing problems for the bots, so if he died in The Matrix, they’d probably just reboot him to keep his flesh and blood productive.
He’d wake up the next day as if it was all a dream, just like his recent lovers.
A Fresh Start
Wraith’s phone rang, as it did too often. Sometimes his parents called trying to find where he was. This time it was Morpheus no-doubt begging him to reconsider again. Sometimes he picked up the calls out of curiosity or boredom, but never gave them much heed. He decided he was bored enough to answer this one.
“Hello Wraith”
“Hello Morpheus” he replied, mocking the condescending and absurd mystical tone of his aspiring mentor.
After a short pause, “You know why I called. What made you decide to pick up this time?”
“I wanted to remind you how awesome make-up, Brazilian bikini waxes, and plastic surgery are. How’s Niobe doing? Her furry thighs keeping you warm at night?”
Morpheus seethed. “Perhaps someday you’ll appreciate a real relationship.”
“Don’t worry. Most of her was real. Just some truly spectacular medically-enhanced breasts.” Wraith reveled in Morpheus’s frustration. That high and mighty preacher attitude was one of many things that turned Wraith off to the real world. It felt good to take the prophet down a peg.
“I’m not into ones and zeros that way, but to each their own.” Morpheus was eager to change the subject. “I thought you might have given my proposal more thought since we last spoke. Your recent exploits at the banks downtown have garnered you some… unsavory attention. I’m sure you know Agents don’t need to chase you when you’re plugged in.”
Wraith was ready for this. Morpheus only called when he had a new angle. “They also don’t want to catch me. I’m not interfering with their operation. I’m just stealing some Monopoly money.”
“I hope, for your sake, that you are right. Keep in mind, we are willing to welcome you any time, should you change your mind.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to tell me I’m The One again? What about how the whole human race is counting on me to save them? Or how selfish I am to abandon them for the sake of a little hedonism?”
“Apparently,” Morpheus spoke quietly “I don’t need to.” and the call ended with a soft click.
Click
Wraith was a little disappointed by how easily Morpheus gave up. He put his phone back into his pocket and looked out the sooty subway car window. The train had finally left the underground portion of his route and came out into the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city.
The pale grey sky of early spring lay behind pale white smoke stacks and silos of unmarked factories and warehouses. Down past the tall, yellow grass that bordered the tracks, he watched cracked black soil race by beneath him. Everywhere he looked he saw an extreme contrast of garbage and sterility.
We decided to organize the world into neat packages for ourselves, segregating the pleasure of our lifestyles from their consequences with fences, distance, borders, and oceans.
Even before we invented AI, we found ways to isolate and destroy ourselves.
Maybe the machines did us a favor.
Considering how much longer he had left on the train ride and how heavy his duffle bag was, he decided to sit. Wraith was heading out to the country; ready to be a nomad. His phone was top of the line for 1998, almost able to act as a mini computer. His laptop did everything his phone didn’t. Both linked up to the private satellite internet connection he quietly leased from some Russians. He was connected, untraceable by human law enforcement, and carrying just over a million bucks in funny money.
Wraith would make the most of his time on this planet. He’d been pushing the limits of his abilities for months, and had yet to hear The Matrix tell him “No, you can’t.” Not bad for a 19 year old kid.