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Echoes of what he remembers are lost and scattered in this new Matrix. Lost somewhere in the new, shiny, glistening, historical cities recreated. There are subtle differences for one who knew where to look, or what to look for. Smith’s memory is a mixture of the old Matrix, of its perfect grids and precision. The millions of shortcuts and alleyways that had all been meticulously arranged per the old creator’s designs. Cut into those internal maps are parts where old and new overlap – perfect matches where the Analyst felt that it was too much work to redesign the background noise.
Smith explores these overlapping areas. It’s where he’d found the Merovingian, surrounded by his Exiles and ranting to open air. After that, the possibility lingers in his mind – other Exiles might be in these old familiar spaces too. Clinging desperately to the streets and ugly apartment blocks that were the last vestiges of the old system that they could properly operate in.
It’s in one of those apartment blocks - all gray concrete walls and featureless exteriors - that he briefly perceives code that has some small similarities to his own.
He had forgotten them – it had been so long since he’d reformed himself after his first ‘death’ at the hands of dear Tom. By the time he had rearranged himself, they had returned to the Source.
Willingly? Perhaps.
Brown was the least independent of the triad. If Jones had returned to the Source of his own volition, Brown would’ve followed. If Jones had refused, and become Exiled in order to survive – driven by some deep, unknowable part of his code that burned and raged at being broken down and rearranged and reformed into something unrecognizable – Smith guessed that Brown would have rather disobeyed than be separated.
Smith feels excited.
Excited to see the old members of his triad. He misses them. He had never missed them when he had been viral – his priorities had been elsewhere. They’d been all but forgotten, if not held in contempt for their hesitation at confronting Tom during his first annihilation.
Stripped of the viral coding, brought back to basics – not quite exactly true – but broken down to his base components without the blight has rendered that urge back into him. That urge to be one of three, to be part of a whole with like minds coordinating and moving as a shared unit.
There are coppertops and bots in the area – all of them ragged and poverty stricken, sitting in the slate gray hallways among the trash and spray painted walls. Smith still can’t spot the bots at first glance – and he hates that they can hide so easily from a simple identification procedure.
With Tom running wild – Tom and Trinity (Tiffany?) (Triffany?) - the Analyst thus far hasn’t tried to send any of his bots after him. It helps, Smith knows, that he’s somewhat liberal with his bodyhopping these days. Leaving some poor, confused coppertop wondering how the hell they ended up twenty miles from their train stop never gets old.
He can see the coding through the floors – picking out the identifiable markers that read Agent – but his excitement dims when he realizes there’s only one.
Jones was always more of an independent. Smith assumes then that it’s him. Without a more dominant personality to lead him, Brown would’ve been lost. Only Jones would remain despite having lost his other components.
When he steps out of the dingy elevator and into the flickering, ugly fluorescent lights of the top floor, his disappointment multiplies.
It’s not even one of his.
He recognizes the face from a distance. He’d seen this upgraded Agent from afar, enough to remember the lines and planes of his silhouette and the sharp face. Sharper than the other upgrades, who had been nearly indistinguishable at first glance.
With a sigh, hands in his pockets, he ambles over to the end of the hallway. The upgrade had abandoned his old attire, forced to shed those pieces of his old self that could draw too much attention. One benefit of the bots, Smith thinks as he halts just inches from the upgrade’s body, is that they stay in their programmed role until activated. If you don’t draw too much attention to yourself – well – problem solved. And the Analyst was awfully busy elsewhere these days.
Smith kneels down, cold and analytic as he examines the prone form. The upgrade looks better than the Merovingian and his Exiles, he could pass for any coppertop on the street if he just cleaned up a bit.
He nudges the upgrade’s shoulder. He awakens with a flinch and immediately swings right for Smith’s face. Smith catches the punch with the loud slap of skin on skin, eyes widening as he gives the upgrade a glare of warning.
The upgrade exhales sharply, lowering his arm – curling inward. The movement is so slight, but just enough for Smith to recognize preparation for...what? Possibly whatever had landed the Agent prone in a corner in the first place.
“Something tells me the other Exiles don’t appreciate the presence of an Agent. Even a former one.” Smith exhales as he runs a hand down the arm of the dirty brown jacket. The upgrade eyes him warily.
“They were too scared of me...” Smith pauses, smirking. “Well – old me – to give me too much trouble. Besides, the enemy of my enemy, all that..”
Slowly, the upgrade sits up, backing into the corner that’s just inches away.
“Oh – come on..” Smith chuckles. “Johnson, right?”
Johnson narrows his eyes, his mouth a thin line. Not much of a talker, apparently. That’s alright, Smith figures, he can talk enough for the both of them.
“Listen,” He says, raising both palms toward Johnson. “I could give the long explanation of how I’ve been stripped down to basics with a few modifications and the long winded details of my link to the Anomaly but, listen...one former Agent to another...” He sighs, smiling as he lowers his hands. “It’s lonely out there for us formerly employed. I’m guessing the last sixty years haven’t treated you as well as they could have…?”
Johnson stares at him, silent and dour, and that’s all the answer Smith really needs.
“Mm, yeah.” He sighs wistfully, perpetually melancholy. “Kind of goes without saying that you look like you need a friend. You must still feel it, right? I remember, back before things started being so sour for me...If I remember it, you do too. You don’t really know what it is until, suddenly, it’s not there anymore. Until suddenly you’re all on your own, none of their footsteps falling in line with yours, no familiar presence taking up space right behind your shoulder. No reliable partners to command, to...cooperate and plan with...so much missing that you didn’t realize you’d needed until it’s not there anymore.”
Smith grimaces at the dusty floor and brushes some plastic wrappers away before sitting down. Johnson hasn’t blinked, eyes locked on Smith, guarded.
“Please...” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. An ugly human habit that he found himself returning to.
“I get it. I do.” Smith reassures him smoothly, “After all that mess I made, way back when, I wouldn’t trust me either. Just weigh your options. If I’d wanted you gone, I wouldn’t have bothered to wake you up...” He tilts his head, glancing up at the ugly, flickering light that’s placed just a hair off center. Exhaling smoke, he looks back down to Johnson. The upgrade has a look of tired resignation.
“I’ve moved around since waking back up. If you’re going to take me up on the offer, go to Six Mile and Pace. It’s part of the old system that they copied into the new one...a little nicer than this dump.” He glanced around with a mild sneer of distaste. “You go there, I’ll find you.” Smoke poured from his nostrils, wafting in front of Johnson’s face. “I like having someone to talk to.”
He makes sure to dust himself off completely as he stands, flicking the cigarette off to bounce against the wall as he walks away.
It’s a week and a day before Smith spots the familiar code once again. Part of him is relieved – he had truly wanted some company now that Tom is just a shadow in his mind. A phantom presence that he misses and can’t help but yearn for. Another Agent – even an Exiled, obsolete-upgrade – is better than nothing. Better than the sudden feeling of lacking he’d been struck with after the long cooldown from his initial reawakening.
The rain is so loud that he can hear it through his ceiling. It drums against his windows and echoes around the bedroom. He doesn’t bother to hurry as he dresses. Johnson kept him waiting this long, he can wait a bit longer.
It’s enough of a shoddy place that he can smoke in the elevator and get away with it. There are no doormen or security guards, just neighbors who mind their business and don’t ask who he is or what he does. He’s been here for nearly a month, and he’s finally starting to get used to it.
Stepping out of the elevator, he can see the code closer now. Johnson is inside, sopping wet, a puddle beneath him as he leans back against the sloppy fake marble.
Smith tsk’s, shaking his head at the mess. Now his floors are going to be a mess.
Well. Nothing for it.
Johnson still looks wary – still guarded and cold as Smith gestures at him to follow. Smith is already preparing to urge him along when Johnson stands upright and takes a step toward him. Immediately he feels a strange sense of ease come over him, and even though he’s dripping wet and ragged, Johnson’s presence at his left shoulder is a strange comfort. If there were only another at his other side, he’d feel some tiny piece of him slip into place and lock down tight and secure.
They arrive at Smith’s apartment and he leaves Johnson to dry himself off and clean up in the bathroom. He doesn’t bother to give him directions on what to do or where to stay, he simply returns to his bedroom and does a facsimile of human sleep.
In the morning, Johnson is standing at the window, staring at the sunrise. He’s showered and his clothes are cleaner than before, but not by much. Smith doesn’t know when he’d became so vain – so over-complicated about his own appearance and that of others. Must’ve been with the code overhaul. Whatever the cause, he can’t stand to see Johnson in these ragged, ugly secondhand scraps he’s assembled himself in.
When he tries to drag Johnson out to just look at what’s available out there, the upgrade won’t budge. He eyes the door, shoulders tight and body tense, and Smith has to tamper down his frustration. It was impossible to try and remember what it felt like as an Agent to feel fear. He had felt it twice, both times before his respective deaths, which had been so cataclysmic to his system that he could barely remember the before and after of each.
It takes some patience, but with enough nudging and, as Smith finds out an hour deep into his struggle with Johnson – taunting – he finally gets the upgrade out the door. He notes that Johnson seems to respond to mild taunts with direct aggression. Nothing physical or verbal. Just the brief passage of anger across his face, and with it, hesitant steps forward toward the door.
Smith’s no Analyst, nor does he have any desire to truly understand the workings of an obsolete program, even if that program shares parts of his own makeup. Yet he can’t help but feel satisfaction when he figures out how to push Johnson’s buttons – how to rolls his eyes and smirk in a way that seems to annoy the upgrade into doing what Smith had wanted the entire time. Simple tasks, like going out of the apartment with him. Going down the hall. Going into the elevator. The upgrade seems to stop and start and stop and start, wrought with hesitation and indecision, with only Smith’s feigned disappointment to spur him into minor actions.
Johnson is simple, Smith learns. He’s not curious like Brown, or easily bored like Jones. Johnson’s programming is overhauled for combat techniques and aggression – with a little rage and contempt written in for good measure. If he’d had as long as Smith had to develop true spite and hatred for the humans or his masters, Smith thinks he could’ve caused quite a stir. But woven through all of that fire and fury are layers upon layers of tight control. Of permissions and choices that Johnson could only make with the direct connection back to the Source.
When he learns of the massive security controls put in place through every upgraded Agent, Smith feels proud. All of these protocols to control their new, powerful upgrades had been put in place simply because of how he, Smith, had been unique. The upgrades were built as faceless, raw fury, unable to think too hard beyond their mission and their target. Now that those barriers had been broken, and his link to the Source erased, Johnson was both free and trapped in a new invisible cage. One of indecision and confusion, of misdirection and that awful, disgusting uncertainty.
Smith decides to look at the upgrade as more of a project than a burden. Something to work on and experiment with – to push and prod until he gets the desired result of compliance without question. He can’t force Johnson into anything, the upgrade is quite possibly a match for him in strength. If he’s lasted this long with a group of Exiles hounding him, Smith doubts he could force submission by pure physical domination. So he decides on patience, which is something he could’ve used a bit more of back in his earlier years anyway.
Months pass in quiet. Johnson’s code requires patching and repairs, and Smith maintains a respectful boundary by not manipulating anything beyond those few small fixes. Boundaries are something Smith detests. He’s always pushed through them, always gotten in close to see the reactions and variable behaviors that arise when the invisible walls that coppertops and programs alike tend to visualize are suddenly breached. Johnson has boundaries that are a mile high. He moves away from Smith in times, but permits him into his space in others.
Smith fixes Johnson’s standby routine to pass the time. It’s not like the detailed landscape of sleep that he has. Not like the comfortable, warm feeling that he basks in for hours between long periods of silence. He’s come to love sleep, perhaps due to an imprint from his human charade before he woke up. It’s not like the typical standby mode that he’d slip into back in the old Matrix. Back when there were rare moments of time between directives and crises. With no job or agenda to keep, he can lay in bed late and watch the sun as it rises over the bay area. Sometimes there are flickers of colors – coronas of light and flares of rainbow fire that run across the sky in the blink of an eye. He bitterly wonders if it’s Tom.
In all the time that’s passed, he still finds Johnson at the window every morning. Like clockwork, he peers out at the streets, at the bay, at the docks, at downtown and the ugly samey apartment blocks. Smith doesn’t catch on until he’s standing a few inches from Johnson, watching him drowsily as he sips at his coffee, and Johnson’s eyes twitch for the briefest nanosecond. Imperceptible to the human eye, but to Smith, he can’t believe he didn’t notice it before.
“You’re searching for someone.” Smith states, leaning back against the window.
Johnson snaps out of his search protocol and gives a guarded stare.
“If you haven’t found them yet...” Smith says with no small degree of delicacy. He does not want to wreck his apartment trading blows with a pissed off upgrade. He’d win of course, that’s not the issue, but that glass coffee table really ties the room together. His sentence remains unfinished, hanging in the air with the implication understood by them both.
After that morning, Smith no longer exits his bedroom to find that familiar sight. Instead, Johnson has finally entered standby. The upgrade’s in a corner - deathly still, staring ahead with an empty expression and glassy eyes. It unnerves Smith. He’s gotten used to sleeping like a human for so long that to see the sight of a proper standby mode from the old Matrix is jarring. He’d had a hand in it himself and it still brings him pause.
An hour passes before Johnson snaps back to awareness, stretching and fixing the collar on his jacket. Smith has analyzed Johnson from afar for some time now, and he realizes they have at least one thing in common other than their former occupation. Johnson seems to worry over his appearance just a bit more than an Agent should, even an Exile – whereas Smith can’t help but admire his new shell whenever he’s at the bathroom mirror. That thought trails into a web of ideas, and he returns to the apartment that afternoon with a black jacket, the code thick with the tiniest details to imitate the best machine-written representation of mammalian leather. The zipper is a cold gunmental, which Smith chose purely because he found it to compliment his fresh attachment to blues.
Johnson doesn’t even look at the jacket for two days. Smith says nothing on the subject, he’s simply left it laying across the couch. Left it to sit out in the open until Johnson finally figures out how to take more initiative without direct command. On the morning of the third day, the old brown jacket is nowhere to be seen, and Johnson is in standby mode in his corner, black jacket zipped up to his chest. He snaps out of standby and does the exact same stretch he’d done the morning before, down to the tiniest millimeter of movement. His hand move to fix his collar, and he catches Smith staring from across the room.
He isn’t entirely sure, but Smith thinks there’s a tiny bit less tension to the set of Johnson’s jaw. The upgrade hesitates before taking a step to the kitchen counter, and then slowly begins to examine the room. It’s like he’s seeing it for the first time – his vision no longer shuttered by a storm of uncertainty and doubt over his safety in Smith’s presence.
Smith can’t help but grin into his morning espresso. He sets the cup down and leans against the counter lazily, enjoying the air between them, devoid of tension for the very first time.