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By Rainbows
Damn it. What did that girl want now. I glowered at the figure of Trinity, a dark silhouette in the doorway to my room. Always coming to talk, always interfering.
‘Feeling better after your fight with Morpheus?’
‘Oh you like rubbing it in don’t you? You like rubbing in the fact that I can’t do jiu jitsu or Tae Kwon Do or combat training. Who cares? I’m a pacifist. You know, stop the wars, save the whales, Greenpeace stuff.’
‘There are no whales, Neemon. There are no trees left. And to fight this war, you need to be able to defend yourself. To stop the war you need to fight’ She had a point there. But I said nothing, it was better not to let Trinity know I actually listened to her at times. Seeing that I wasn’t about to respond Trinity continued. ‘You know Neemon, there was a person on this ship like you once. She didn’t let anybody get close to her. She didn’t talk much, she hid behind an impersonal, cold mask and concentrated on protecting Morpheus and me. She was a warrior Switch was. The best fighter we ever had.’
‘So what happened to her? For all her fighting skills she was still killed off by an agent? I guess not even she could defend herself, hey Trinity.’ I said this with the heaviest sarcasm I could, my voice was dripping with contempt. Then, I noticed Trinity’s face.
‘You know what happened to Switch, Neemon. We have already told you. A betrayer killed her Neemon, for absolutely no reason at all. There was no way Switch could save herself. And you know something else? Sometimes you go too far Neemon. Sure it hurts to be pulled out of a dream but you chose to wake up. So now you have to start sorting out some of your crap before you lose the only friend you have on this ship.’ My eyes followed Trinity’s back as she stormed out of my room. Thank goodness I had gotten rid of her. So why didn’t I feel happier? I hoped she wouldn’t come back. Then with a start I realized I didn’t mean that. I felt awful, she was right. I had no right to say that. I had known about Switch and I had purposely put salt in Trinity’s open, bleeding wound. Damn, I messed up at times.
Tank was uploading a new training program onto the console. He had only a few minutes left to go when Mega approached him.
‘Hey Tank…’ Mega sounded worried, unusual for her.
‘Yeah Mega?’
‘Something’s wrong with Trinity, I don’t know what. Neo and Morpheus are with her, they said for you to come.’
‘Sure. I’ll just finish this program.’
‘No Tank, they said right away.’ Mega now sounded close to tears.
Tank jumped up, something must be wrong if Morpheus didn’t want him to finish the program. There was nothing he hated worse then a job left undone. Tank followed Mega to Trinity’s room where Morpheus and Neo had gathered. On the bed lay Trinity who was shaking. Shaking with noiseless tears Tank realized. Neo sat on the bed next to her, his hand stroking her hair while he murmured low words of comfort to her. Morpheus’ forehead was wrinkled in worry.
‘What’s with Trinity?’ Tank’s voice was full of concern.
‘I don’t know. All we can get out of her is that Neemon said something. We can only guess.’ Morpheus was obviously upset.
‘And I don’t even want to guess. That girl has been nothing but trouble since she was freed. Never said a sincere word.’ Tank was almost yelling, he was starting to get angry. He loved Trinity like a sister and found it hard to believe that some new recruit had put her in this state.
‘But I don’t understand. According to the reports we have of her in the Matrix she was occasionally sarcastic but not like, well like this.’ Neo pointed the sobbing Trinity. ‘What could it be?’
Tank gave a short answer, almost spitting it out. ‘RSI’
Neo didn’t understand but Morpheus did. ‘Do you really think so Tank?’
‘Yes. There’s no other way.’ Tank was sure that was the answer.
‘I don’t understand’ the words came from a perplexed Neo.
‘In the Matrix, Neemon had a RSI, a Residual Self Image. Her own concept of her digital self. And in that image Neemon was not as nearly as cruel and sarcastic as her real self. That is why the reports showed Neemon to have only a slightly sarcastic tendency. In the real world, her real self, her real image has a different concept of that sarcasm and so makes it worse.’ Tank knew a lot about RSI even though he didn’t have one himself.
‘You sure about that?’ Neo could be forgiven for sounding doubtful.
Tank was calming down now. ‘Sure. I’ve seen it happen all the time. Even Trin there had the same thing happen to her. She was much less of a loner on the ship, especially when you came along.’ This went unnoticed by both Neo and Trinity.
‘So you’re saying that Neemon will always be like this?’
‘Not necessarily. All she has to do is control it.’ Tank sounded as if this was an unlikely occurrence. And Neo reflecting on Neemon’s behavior figured it probably was. What Neo didn’t know was that Tank had let out the fact when this RSI/real person problem arose, the case was that the personality trait lessened in the real world if it was an undesirable one or if the trait was good, strengthened in the real world. This was unlike Neemon’s case but Tank, in his anger, had forgotten that.
Morpheus sighed and turned back to where Trinity had fallen asleep on the bed. What next, he wondered. What next?
I ran back to my room, almost feeling as if I was about to start crying. First Trinity, then me…what a weird thing to happen in one day. Trinity never cried, or so everyone said and I certainly didn’t. But this was the real world after all.
I had crept along to Trinity’s room to apologize. When I got there, I had found Trinity was on the bed crying, Neo comforting her, Tank yelling about something, Morpheus looking worried and Mega standing silently in the corner. And a quiet Mega was an unusual site. The whole crew was there except Healer who was no doubt cleaning the infirmary. Man oh man, did Healer have an obsession with the infirmary, and cleaning it. It was almost as big an obsession as the one he had with Morpheus and Neo. Almost. Anyway seeing everyone in Trinity’s room was either angry, crying, quiet or worried should of set off warning bells. I guess the batteries needed to be recharged.
I listened to Tank, his usually friendly voice snarling, ‘That girl has been nothing but trouble since she was freed.’ They were talking about me, I realized. My face flushed with anger. Or was it embarrassment? I hadn’t been that bad had I? I already knew the answer before Tank started talking about RSI and how that had made me a worse person outside of the Matrix. Stifling a sob, I ran. Just before I opened the door to my room I turned and found Mega was watching me.
Healer sat mournfully in the infirmary. Life was messed up, he concluded with a sigh. After cleaning the infirmary he had gone to find Morpheus and Neo, to ask their advice about how to clean the needles used for rebuilding muscles to find that everyone on the ship had seemingly disappeared. Healer had gone off to find them. Sighing again, Healer thought ruefully that he had certainly found them. They were all in Trinity’s room, even Neemon, the ship’s reject had been standing at the doorway listening. They were having a crew meeting and hadn’t invited him. Was he or was he not one of the crew? He had done so much for them, especially Morpheus and Neo. He had idolized them, doing everything, always there for them. And now it seemed, that Neemon was no longer the ship’s reject but he himself was. Healer sighed again.
I stepped into the room, as quietly as possible and crept over to the bed where Trinity lay. ‘Trinity?’ I asked hesitantly. No answer. ‘Trinity, I’m sorry.’
Her eyes didn’t open but her voice came. ‘Neemon. You told me you were a pacifist, that you didn’t like wars. Well you’re fighting your own war Neemon. A war against yourself. And the sarcasm is winning, killing off the real you. I’m tired off watching that war Neemon, being hurt by it. We all are.’
I turned and walked away. I was tired too.
