The Matrix Online @ rumbaar.net

“Alright, now lie back, this is going to feel… a little strange.”

Fernas helped the bewildered Bluepill into the chair, adjusting the armrests and headrest for comfort.  He then quickly stepped over to the head of the extraction team.

“We can take it from here,” the Zion Operative told him.  “Another successful run.  You should take some time off.  How many have you pulled out this month?”

“Not enough.”  With that Fernas turned and walked out the door, already dialing his handler for another mission.
_________________________________________________________________________

A frustrated man in a brown sweater and slouch hat sat atop a tenement in Richland.  Unfortunately Tyndall had agreed with the extraction specialist and wouldn’t give him another mission.  But he wasn’t ready to jack out just yet.  He took a flying leap from the top of the building and crunched to the ground a few feet from the subway.

The subway cars were crowded on the way downtown, but the riders kept away from the man in the dirty brown sweater.  He smelled of the street and the less pleasant things that live there.  But he paid them no heed.  He was in his own world, remembering a former life, as the train rolled on toward its destination below a high-rise.  The same high-rise the man in the brown sweater used to call home.

When the train stopped he waited for the others to exit and then made his way above ground.  No one noticed him, no one paid any attention, just another street bum.  God knows there were enough of them in the Mega City.  But this bum was a little different.  The man in the brown sweater moved as if he had a purpose, strange for one of his type.  He made his way to a shady corner of the high-rise and found a seat on the ground behind a planter.  The small trees and hibiscus gave scant concealment, but no one paid him much attention anyway.  He was just part of the scenery.

He scanned the crowd with restless eyes, looking for someone or something.  After a few hours he stiffened and sat up a little straighter.  A woman and a teenage girl were exiting a chauffeured car and heading toward the high-rise.  They were holding giant shopping bags and the doorman was carrying several more from the back of the car.  They chatted happily and never noticed the dirty man watching them from behind the planter.  And when they were through the revolving glass doors, he got up and walked to the subway again, riding the trains back to his lonely rooftop in Richland.

one word.. AWESOME

((::Claps then smiles:: Excellent.
::Signature move---->:: /TwoThumbsUp!))

((Very nice Fernas! I'm glad to see the increased activity in the "Journal" section. It inspires me to finish something I started two months ago...))

Thats a great read, it really tells  us what kind of person Fernas is.

Fernas yanked the arm down over his shoulder, bending the elbow back much farther than it was supposed to go.  Then he hauled on the broken arm, yanking the shoulder out of the socket, and spinning the broken body to the ground face first.  He stepped over the bloody mess and took the shocked woman behind it by the hand.

   “We have to go, now.”

   She nodded dumbly, too scared to speak and followed him through the alley and out onto the street.  Two blocks down she was finally able to voice her questions.

   “Why were they trying to kill you?”

   “They weren’t, they were trying to kill you.”

   “What!?!?”

   Fernas stopped, turned to face the woman and took her hands in his.  He stared earnestly into her pale face and said softly, “You know too much.  You could never just go back to the way it was.  They know that, and they can’t have you here.  But they don’t want you joining us either.  So they want you dead.”

   “But who are they!  I don’t understand!  Tell me what’s going on!”  She whispered fiercely.

   Impressed by her strength in the face of a tough situation, Fernas smiled.  “By the time I got started, there’d be more here, maybe more than I could handle.  Trust me, you’ll have all the answers you want soon enough.”  As he turned away he muttered “And some you don’t.”

   He knew she heard him, but she kept silent and followed him to the extraction point with no more questions.  As he settled her into the chair she squeezed his hand and said a simple “Thank you.”

   Fernas looked at the Extraction Team, who gave him a thumbs up, and then he walked out, digging in his dirty jeans pocket for his phone.

_____________________________________________________________________

   The dirty man in the brown sweater was back in front of the high-rise.  Dozens of suits and purses and manicured hands walked past him.  But this time he stiffened when a man with salt and pepper hair walked toward the front door.  The businessman was wearing an immaculate, tailored suit and talking away in a loud voice on his top-of-the-line cell phone.  A team of flunkies followed in his wake shuffling papers and scribbling on date books and PDA’s.  The businessman never saw the man in the dirty brown sweater; he didn’t see much that didn’t relate directly to his business.  He passed through the revolving glass doors trailed by his attendants and into the glass and steel building.

   The street person stood up, brushed himself off, and stalked angrily toward the subway.  He rode the whole way back to Richland in silent solitude, caught up in his own demons.  When he left the subway he pulled a battered cell phone from his pocket and hit the redial.

   “Tyndall, tell me you have something for me.”

   “Dammit Fernas, I told you to take a break.  What are you still doing in there?”

   “Wasting time.  Do you have something or not?"

   “No, I don’t.  Now go home and get some rest.  Or do I have to get Arkiya or Denolus to order you to stand down?”

   “No” he said, suddenly fearful.  “I’ll jack out.  Just have something for me tomorrow.”  With that he hung up and started walking south, even though there was a hardline not a block away to the north.

((Wow, I'm really impressed Fernas.  Great job!  
Cant wait till the next installment.))

He ground the Exile’s face into the concrete.  It was already an empty shell, but he kept beating its face into the ground anyway until it was just a bloody pulp.  Finally satisfied, he went to the body of the young woman.  Kneeling over it he dialed 911 on his cell phone.

   “I’ve just witnessed a murder.  Camon Heights.  Right behind the sign.  They’ve run off, I think it was those thugs.  I’ll wait here for you.”

   He punched the End button, and, for a moment, it looked like he would stay there like he had said.  Time seemed to stop as a single tear fell from his face onto that of the dead woman.  Then he snapped his phone shut and walked away, down an alley and into a phone booth where the phone was ringing hard enough to shake the handset in its cradle.  He picked it up, and then he simply ceased to be.
_______________________________________________________________________

   “You have to stop.  You have to take some time off.  Please don’t make me order you.”  Arkiya stood in the doorway of his small cabin on the ship.  She looked like she was in physical pain because she couldn’t help.  “You’re killing yourself.  And if you don’t tell me why, I can’t help you.”

   “I didn’t ask for your help, not in this.  I want to help you, all of you, but you can’t help me here.  This is personal.”

   “We’ve all been hurt.  We all have scars inside.  I don’t want to, but if keeping you out of the Matrix is what’s best for you, I will do it.”  She turned to leave.

   “Wait.  Wait.  I’m sorry.  I’m just… in a mood.  I have been for a few days.  It happens sometimes.  I was kicked off two barges for this shit.  Just… give me a little more time.  I’ll come clean.  I’ll explain.  Just not right now.  Right now I just need to keep working.  Keep pulling them out.”

   The captain of Calypso’s Dream stared at him for a few moments, saying nothing, but the pain she was feeling was visible on her face.

   “I wish you’d reconsider.  I won’t keep you out.  The only time you seem even a little bit happy is when you’re working.  I won’t deny you that.  But please reconsider.  Think about talking.  I’m here when you need me.”

   With that she shut the hatch and he could hear her steps moving across the metal grating of the deck away from his cabin.

((I think you have a fan Fernas. I'm making my Fernas groupie T-Shirt as I type..not just anyone gets me as as groupie..just the cream of the crop! You should be honored, lol))

The man in the dirty brown sweater stepped out of the phone booth.  According to his instructions, the recruit was just two buildings down.  The streets were strange to him, but it didn’t slow him down much.  He entered the oddly shaped building his orders specified from a rear door and made his way to the service elevator.  The front door was off limits if you look, and smell, like he did.

   The doors of the service elevator slid open onto a bare room.  The only feature was a sliding door in the wall opposite the elevator opening.  He moved toward that door but before he got there bullets tore through the thin paper.  He was hit twice, but not seriously.  He threw himself through the door.

   Two Exiles were inside.  The female was already sending her first program.  It struck as the man in the brown sweater rolled to his feet, slowing him to a crawl.  The male Exile grinned wickedly as he moved toward the human, but paused when he saw the human smile in return.  That pause was costly.  The man in the brown sweater grabbed a handful of the Exile’s shirt and hauled on it, flipping him over his shoulder.  He followed up the attack with a series of open hand chops to the head and body.  A second throw put the Exile down, but the man in the brown sweater wasn’t finished.  He turned a cartwheel, taking the Exile with him as he straightened up, and hurled the body back into the ground with all his strength.  The result wasn’t pretty.

   Bullets and code had been weakening him throughout the battle and he quickly downed a pill as he turned on the female Exile.  She backed away, but he launched himself through the air in a flying tackle.  He leaped back to his feet and downed another pill as the Exile regained her shaky legs.  She tried to hit him with a code blast but it bounced off him.  The man in the brown sweater grabbed her arm and stepped under her armpit.  He then bent her arm over backwards forcing her to follow.  The impact of the back of her head on the floor was enough to finish her, but her body continued to roll until it came to rest against a desk.

The man in the brown sweater searched both their bodies for anything useful, stuffed what he found into his dirty jeans, and headed off to find the recruit.
________________________________________________________________________

   Fernas opened his eyes, expecting to see Cicada’s spiky orange hair, but instead looking into Arkiya’s worried eyes.

   “You should be asleep,” he said as he rolled out of the chair, stretching a stiff back.

   “Have you reconsidered?”  He could tell pushing like this was hard on her, but she wasn’t going to back down either.  It didn’t matter; he’d made up his mind.

   “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

   “Not the response I was expecting,” she said with a smile.  Cicada laughed from the other side of the room.  “Do you want to explain over dinner?”

   “If you have the time, I’ll show you the answers.  That’s all.”  He was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t back down now.

   “I’ll be around.  Just give me a call.”

   He headed to his cabin, still not sure if he was doing the right thing.

His captain stepped out of the phone booth.  He was surprised she’d come this quickly.  He handed her a bundle.

   “What’s this?”  Her eyebrows were ready to climb off her head.  He wasn’t sure if it was the state of the rags he was handing her, or just the smell.

   “Camouflage.”  He took the bundle and untied the bit of rope that would serve as a belt.  “Its big enough you can put it over your real clothes.  Tears off easy if you need to move in a hurry.”

   She pulled on the rags, grimacing at the smell.  “You’ll get used to it,” he told her.  She tied the frayed rope around her waist, cinching the baggy rags into some semblance of order.

   “I take it we’re going somewhere, we wouldn’t need camo here.”

   “Subway.  To downtown.  We’re headed for a particular high-rise.  It’ll make more sense when we’re there.  We may have to wait a bit.  I hope you don’t have anywhere to be.”

   “For this, I cleared my calendar.  Lead on.”

________________________________________________________________________

   Two dirty street people sat behind the planter in front of the steel and glass high-rise.  The man was tense and fidgety.  The woman waited patiently.  They spent the better half of the afternoon sitting there.  A few passers-by even threw some change their way, which the man pocketed out of habit.  Just when he was about to give up, the man spotted what they had been waiting for.  He elbowed the woman and nodded his head toward the steady flow of pedestrians.

   A family was approaching the revolving doors of the steel and glass high-rise.  A man in pressed khakis and a designer polo shirt was talking loudly on his cell phone as a woman and teenage girl followed in his wake, chatting excitedly over the programs they were holding.

   The man with salt and pepper hair stopped suddenly and started shouting into the cell phone.  After a few seconds his shouting came to a crescendo and he snapped the phone shut angrily.  He rounded on the two behind him.

   “Can you believe the nerve!?  They want to raise the rent AGAIN!  How dare they!  Do they know who I am!?  I could buy this whole building if I wanted to!  I just might!”  His face above the collar of his expensive shirt was nearly purple with outrage.

   “Calm down dear,” the older of the two women soothed the purple faced man.  “You know your doctor said not to get so upset.  You can’t let little men on power trips get you so riled up.”

   “Yeah Daddy, he’s a nobody.  He should be happy we’re staying in his building.  We could be living anywhere.  Don’t let a nothing like that get you so upset.”

   “Why don’t we head to the mountains next weekend, Dear?” the older woman asked.  “Just get away…”  Their conversation trailed off as they entered the glass doors.

   The man in the brown sweater motioned to the woman and they set off back toward the subway stairs and a train ride back to Richland.

Part 6

   Cicada pulled the spike from the back of his head, and he sat up, rubbing his neck.

   “So what was that all about?”  The spiky-haired operator asked.

   “Maybe another time, gotta go talk to the captain.”  Fernas got his feet under him and headed off to the captain’s cabin.

   Arkiya heard a knock on the hatch.  “Come on in.”

   “I assume you’d like an explanation.” Fernas ducked through the hatchway.

   “That would be nice, but I don’t want to push you.”

   “Nah, might was well do it now, while I still think this is a good idea.  Can I sit?”

   “Feel free.  I’ll get someone to bring something to drink too, it sounds like we might be here a while.”

   “If this were a movie, it’d be the perfect time for a flashback.”

________________________________________________________________________

   When I was a kid, I had everything.  All the toys, all the bikes and video games, and trips to amusement parks and baseball games and everything else a kid could want.  I had a loving family, with a mother and father that were still together, and a cute little sister.  Dad worked as an executive in a big corporation.  Mom was a socialite and a mover and shaker in Downtown, non-profits, fundraisers, you name it.  I went to the best private schools and had an excellent education.

   So what was the problem?  Well, there wasn’t one until I hit my teens.  Not sure if it was puberty or a wider grasp of the world around me, but fairly quickly things stopped making sense.  Nothing seemed quite right.  All the money and popularity and power, what the hell was it all for?  I tried to talk to mom and dad about it, but they just said I was too young to understand.  I tried to talk to the kids at school, but they all said I was just a bored rich kid.

So I tried to figure it out for myself.  Did a lot of research.  Looked into all kinds of crazy “alternative” magazines and leaflets and such.  When mom and dad found out I got in a lot of trouble.  I started reading the Sentinel because it seemed to always talk about the things that seemed the most “wrong” to me, though I couldn’t figure out why.  I always felt like I was missing something.  Like I couldn’t quite read between the lines.

Eventually I got sick of mom and dad telling me to get over it.  Get a job and join the rest of the “normal” people.  So I left.  For a while, mom and dad had people out looking for me, hunting all over downtown, but they never found me.  I don’t think they ever thought I’d really head down to the Barrens and really give it all up.  I started listening to the crazies and the street preachers.  It all made a lot more sense than what mom and dad were doing.

Then one day one of Morpheus’ code bombs went off right in front of me.  And it all made sense.  My brain shut down and I woke up in the Real.  Zion found me clinging to some rusty metal and brought me in.

________________________________________________________________________

   “Oh no,” Arkiya gasped. “That was your family.  The ones at the high-rise”

   Fernas looked away and nodded, his body shaking with adrenaline.

   “You can’t free them.  They’d never believe you.  You can’t save your own family…”

   He stood up and walked to the door.  “Now you know.  You can do what you want, order me to stand down, keep me in the Real.  But every time I get the chance, I’m going to pull out as many bluepills as I can until you yank me back out again.  I won’t put the ship in danger, never that, but I don’t care what happens to me.  If I can get them out it will.  Its all I have left.”  He turned and ducked back out the hatch.

A year wasn't nearly long enough.

_____________________________________________________________

The man in the dirty brown sweater sweated under the heavy clothing.  He pushed the slouch hat back up and wiped off his sunglasses.  Three exiles were in the next room and they knew he was here.  He went in anyway.

The first moved to quick for him, got in a couple of good body blows before he could recover.  The man in the brown sweater realized he was going to lose if he couldn't focus.

Two minutes later, bleeding and panting, the dirty brown sweater full of holes and tears, the man that looked like a street bum stood over the bodies of the three exiles.

Three more exiles were in the next room, they knew he was there.  He spoke,

"Stop.  End simulation."

____________________________________________________________



It's been more than a year since the wreck of the Caly.  He's looking at the application, wondering if this is really what he wants to do.

A year in the Real.  A year away from his family.  A year to try to get over it.

At first, just recovering from his injuries kept him busy.  Rehab was going well till the pneumonia set in.  Once the fever went down a different kind of fever took over.  Zion only has a small asylum, but he spent a good amount of time there.  Just turned off.  He missed a lot of the things that happened in that year.  Still there are gaps in his understanding.  But after the attack on Zion something snapped back into place.

He got a clean bill of health and got back to rehab and training.  Now, finally, more than a year later, he was cleared to apply for a barge or a crew.  He knew who he wanted to work with, but did they want him back?  Were they willing to put up with his shit?  His personal mission?  His hopeless dreams?

He'd never know if he didn't fill out the damn paperwork.  He pulled the keyboard toward him and started typing.

Leaning back in her chair with a weary sigh, Reikira closed her eyes and started to massage her temples.  The operations console before her glowed faintly, its screen displaying the near current locations of each hovercraft in the fleet.  Since the breakdown of the truce, she'd instilled a policy that had each ship checking in with their coordinates and heading every six hours.    It was her hope that this would prove to be a needless precaution, and luckily so far it had.

She was just contemplating shutting the station down for the night and getting some much needed rest when she received a personnel transfer request from New Zion.  Opening the transmission, she smiled when she saw who it was regarding.

Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while..  She thought to herself as she started typing up the transfer authorization.   Accomodations aboard his old ship weren't possible as the Calypso had departed the fleet little under a year ago, but she hoped he wouldn't mind taking a station aboard one of the other crafts.  Lord knows they could use the extra person, and good people were becoming increasingly harder to find these days.

Finishing her reply, she sent the transmission back to Zion and shut down the ops console before making her way through the dimly lit corridors to her quarters.

Denolus sat in his office and was going over paper work when  message from Reikira came in.  He read it over and blinked a couple of times then sat back... "so he is alive" He quitely said to himself.

"MIRAGE!, Load me up, I'm going in... I need to find someone."

As soon as he ended his words, his office slipped away and was replaced by the park in Murasaki.  As soon as Denolus had the Matrix load around hime he sprung off in the night sky.

(I would normally add in Mibs part but..yeah you'll see why later. But...looks like I'll need something out of my closet. ::Goes and gets his "Fernas" groupie T-Shirt and puts it on:: Oh yeah...still fits. Well..sort of.)

The phone in the pocket of his dirty slacks emitted a soft burr.

"Its been a long time, Fernas."

"That it has, Deno.  Its good to hear your voice."

"You got a moment?"

"Of course, where are you?"

"Magog West."

"Be right there."

The man in the dirty brown sweater let the fingers of his left hand unclench from around the neck of the mech he'd been choking through the conversation while his right hand slipped the phone back into his pocket.  A smile crossed his lips briefly as he walked over to the bulky, black server and uploaded the pre-programmed hack.  He fed the location of his next "recruit" to his operator and told him he'd need a few minutes.  He had something to do.
_____________________________________________________________

Denolus was waiting when the code coalesced into a stained, baggy, brown sweater, tan slacks that had seen better days and a shapless brown hat.  The unkempt appearance of the redpill didn't surprise him, he'd seen it before and knew the reasons.

"You need me to get you a uniform?" He asked, with just a hint of sarcasm.

"No, I think I've still got the old one."  The brown sweater shimmered briefly before being replaced by a clean white shirt and tie, trenchcoat and fedora.  "Better?"

"Much.  So we'll skip the formalities.  You're back in.  Get your stuff off that barge and over to the Resurgo ASAP."

A grin split Fernas' face.  "Thanks Deno, really.  You don't know what that means to me.  I just have one thing I have to finish before I get transferred over.  Got an inquisitive soul who needs to make a choice."

"No problem.  It'll take us a while to get back in your area anyway.  See you on board."

"Not soon enough.  Thanks Deno, really."

"Go, you have work to do."

With a nod and a grin the OS uniform shimmered back into the clothes of a street bum.  A few button pushes later and the man in the dirty brown sweater was running along the streets of Roger's Way.  There were more machine programs and possibly an agent in his very near future.  He needed to get serious.

He couldn't stop smiling.

((that pretty much wraps things up for this storyline.  Fernas has come to grips with the fact that he can't get his family out, so the constant stream of never-ending recruitment missions will come to an end.  i'm sick of them, frankly.  those recruits are dumb as posts and it keeps sending me to westview which just makes things worse.  ugh.

so i'm trying to find a new passion for him.  he's very hard-core.  when he becomes devoted to something, he goes all out.  its part of the reason for his name.  the fire burning inside.  i've got a few ideas, and hopefully i'll have something up here soon to get it started.  i'll try to work the rest of you in.  i know how much *I* like it when you guys include me, so i'll try to return the favor.

uhhh... stay tuned?  :)  ))

god i miss this stuff...