Chapter Text
Smith had been assigned to the case of Thomas Anderson. Smith could not explain it, but the name curled on his tongue, distinctively wrong, distasteful, ill. As if that name, Thomas Anderson, was not Mr. Anderson’s name at all. This case, this file, was all familiar in the way every city, every street, and every person was. It was familiar, and yet Smith knew he never knew Mr. Anderson.
It was all so deeply felt by Smith and felt not at all. Feeling, that was the thing so wrong and buried in him, he didn’t know how it arose, only that it crept upon his very being every moment. Moments now so fleeting, he could not remember time ever seeming so lacking, so limiting, now it was so… so… so unsettling.
Smith met the man, Mr. Anderson, when he walked out from the windowsill where he earlier had been hiding. It was such an absurd thing to do; Smith contemplated it as Agent Brown pushed Mr. Anderson into the car. It was such an unreasonable behavior, and yet Smith could only think on it fondly. Fondness, it was something unpurposeful, and yet he felt it, there was no apparent reason as to why. What advantage it gave him, that ever-corrupting feeling? It bloomed in him deep and terribly, too far down to tear out as he watched Mr. Anderson in the rearview mirror.
That was not all that was felt. No, another feeling arose now as Agent Brown and Agent Jones looked at Smith. He supposed… he supposed it was… he did not suppose he knew what the feeling was at all. It was one unsteadying, of irritation, of betrayal, of anger deeper than just words could express, and it lived in Smith unreasonable and constant.
Smith moved forward; he had a purpose, and he delivered on said purpose.
“As you can see, we’ve had our eyes on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson.” Mr. Anderson looked up at him, “it seems that you’ve been living two lives. In one life, you are Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay taxes and you… help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers where you go by the hacker alias ‘Neo’,” and why was that name familiar to Smith at all beyond this file? Why did it curl on his tongue, spill past his lips as if he had spoken it before? Smith supposed there was no reason for feeling. Particularly this familiarity, it was, by all means, a sudden lapse in his otherwise (mostly) perfect coding (unlike the thing before him with such mistakes in its writing).
…
Smith knew there was no reason for any feeling at all, and yet Smith felt, and toward the very thing in front of him, Thomas Anderson, Neo.