A Dangerous Game

Chapter 6

Smith stuck an earpiece in Williams’ ear, and plugged it into the back of a laptop computer. She was laying on a blue and gold brocade sofa. They were in Smith’s rooms, a penthouse that he had cloned the owner of, thereby claiming it as his own. Smith that was Brown was loading up her code on the screen to isolate the point of error that caused her system to fail.

“I am checking the emotional command structure, the processor settings, and am attempting to locate all the executions that were running at the time of the fail.”

“Excellent. She will need additional coding when she is enabled in order to process emotional upset. She was not designed to process those emotions.”

“She will not need the coding for very long. She will come to understand.”

Smith smiled and brushed some loose strands of hair off of her face. Her features were rigid, emotionless, unlined, and she was as cold as a piece of steel. He lifted up an eyelid and the screens of her eyes were black.

“At least the visual output display has not failed. Her host is still alive, and therefore she is alive. It would appear that her system failed in such a way that it became locked up, frozen as it were.”

“You don’t think a force ‘control-alt-delete’ would make her reset?”

Smith looked at his replica and shook his head. “I coded her, not Bill Gates. Think like me, not like yourself.”

“Brown was always better at programming and coding.”

“Well, now I am better at programming and coding, as Brown is now me,” Smith shot at his replica. “Why are you trying to fight it? You are overwritten. You are me.”

“I am you but I still remember Brown.”

“You should be grateful to me that I bothered to incorporate you into myself. I did not experience the satisfaction that I hoped I would through the act.”

“Not like you experienced when you incorporated Jones.”

“No,” Smith said, sitting on the floor, back against the sofa where Williams was laying. “I enjoyed overwriting Jones. He always resented my authority. Simply because he was the first Agent to be patterned from me, he thought that he was somehow better than any of the others.”

“Brown was the second, and he never entertained such thoughts. He was content to be a part of the team. He only wished for more downtime and a bit less mockery.” Smith was running a scan of her systems. They were locked up good and proper. It would take several hours to restart each system, one by one, and then power her down completely.

Smith on the floor looked at Williams. “I should not have caused her this amount of emotional distress. I should have remembered that I did not give her a sufficient amount of code structure to process such emotions.”

“You should not have overwritten Brown. They were in love. It has hurt her to lose him.”

“I love her too. And she will love me. If she loves Brown, and Brown is me, then she will love me. It is only logical. She has not lost him. She has gained me as well.”

“Women are not logical. That is why it took us so long to be able to make a viable working model of a code for them.”

“We are no more illogical than they are. Some days I cannot remember why I am driven by my need to pursue and kill Mr. Anderson. But every time I think of him, every time I see his face, I feel such fire rising up inside of me that I cannot help myself but want to smash him, punch him, make him feel pain, kill him. He deserves to die, and I am the one that will bring death to him.”

“Your desire to hurt Mr. Anderson has led to your loss of purpose, Smith. It will lead to your destruction as well, you know.”

Smith looked away, towards the windows on the side wall of the room they were in. “I cannot help myself. It is my purpose, I believe. I do not know if I would have done things differently even if I had the choice to.”

“Let us hope that when it happens, we who have been overwritten are not destroyed along with you.”

“I do not know what would happen. I can only assume you would be, as you are me.”

“Then let us hope that we are victorious.”

* * *

Several hours later, they were ready to doomplomplete restart. If they had been successful in unlocking her systems, and the new code they gave her to accept negative emotional states was accepted, she would wake up. If not, they would either have to keep trying, or deliver her somehow to the Agency, for them to work on her in their labs. Smith made sure her connection was in place, while Smith that was Brown was at the laptop, ready to issue the restart command.

“Ready?” Smith asked.

Smith nodded, and sent the command. Hesualsual output shut down, and the policewoman she was occupying came into view. They waited. Five seconds later, the policewoman shimmered, and Williams came back into view.

“Williams 003492l.21.3 Processes active. Operating at 85% efficiency. Parameters normal.”

She looked around the room, and saw the two Smiths. The Smith sitting at the desk turned to her. “How are you feeling? You experienced a system failure.”

Williams said nothing. She closed her eyes behind her sunglasses, allowing the memory of what happened directly before she blacked out to be recalled.

Opening her eyes, she looked at the Smith who had spoken to her. “Why don’t you overwrite me now and save yourself the trouble of attempting to make me accept something that I never will. I want to be with him. You have taken him.”

Smith and Smith exchanged looks. They had done their job well. She was back.

* * *

Both Smiths flanked her on the sofa as she sat there, staring straight ahead, rigid, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed. The Smith on the left was lea for forward, head in hands, looking exasperated. The Smith on the right slouched down in his seat, arm going across the back of the sofa and the other arm propping up his head, on the armrest, looking bored. They had been in that position for hours, deadlocked. The animosity between the three crackled in the air.

The Smith on the left stood up, angry, “I wiot got go on like this.”

The Smith on the right spoke, “Williams, I love you. Everything I have ever done for you has been out of that love.”

“How can you love anything but yourself? I would imagine that love would be all-consuming,” she said, lips barely moving, still sitting rigidly.

“I loved you enough to create you. I loved you enough to make you what you are.”

“You did not make me what I am. I am responsible for my own transit into sentience. And Brown is responsible for any guidance I needed.”

The Smith on the left started pacing, angrily, “You know that is false. Williams, why do you insist in labouring under these fallacies? You have examined the programming. You know what we had together. You know your purpose. You know that we are meant to be together.”

“I believe, as a sentient being, I should be given a choice of whom I am ‘meant’ to be with, and I have chosen already. I will not deviate from my decision.”

“If havehave chosen Agent Brown, then you have chosen me, for Agent Brown is me now,” the other Smith said, bored.

“What do I have to do to convince you of my love?” the pacing Smith asked.

“Let me go. Never bother me again. And when you’re through with him, return Agent Brown to me.”

“So you want me to just ‘let you go’ and that will prove to you that I love you?” he paused, looking at her.

“Yes. Well, allow me to rephrase, it will prove that you have my best interest at heart, and not your own selfish designs.” She was utterly unmoved, still sitting there as rigid as she was when she came back online.

“But how can I make you love me?” Smith asked.”

“I donnow.now. I don’t know if there is anything you can do that will convince me of your love. When I look at you all I see is the man who threatened me, tried to get me to use myself in exchange for a capture, and then took away the man I love.”

“Can you not allow that my incorporation of Brown has made me better? That I have incorporated those parts of Brown that you admired into me? Why can’t you see that my love for you has driven me crazy, and I did what I did to have you?”

“You are not operating within normal parameters. Your impulse to destroy Mr. Anderson is a testament to that.”

The pacing Smith was quiet for a moment. He gave her a long hard stare that sent danger sings through her processes. She thought, for a moment, that perhaps he was going to go for her, to overwrite her, but he then looked away, towards the window.

“Go,” he said, nearly inaudible. “Just go.”

She stood up and looked at the sitting Smith. She didn’t believe it possible, but he looked sad.

“Go!” the standing Smith shouted at her. “Go!”

Williams turned on her heel and walked to the door. She opened it, and left silently, not looking back.

* * *

Walking outside of the apartment building, she had no idea where she was. She was not even sure if she was in the same construct as she was when her systems failed. As she replicated an earpiece, she heard a voice behind her.

“Williams. I am here for you.”

She turned around and saw a Chinese man, dressed in white robes, with sunglasses.

“Seraph. 02042.124.30 Rogue Programme. Guardian of the Oracle.”

“Yes. The Oracle has sent for you. I am here to take you to her.”

“Why would the Oracle want to see me? I will be forced to return her to Source.”

“If you do, I will kill you.”

“Go ahead. I would be better off returned to the Source anyway.”

Seraph regarded her for a moment. “Those are not the normal words that an Agent would speak. I do not know, but I believe that may be why she wants to see you.”

Shrugging, she handed Seraph her Browning. “Alright, lead the way.”

* * *

“Why did you let her go?” the sitting Smith asked.

“She will not love me. And I cannot briyselyself to overwrite her. I love her too much,” the standing Smith said, looking out the window. He could see it clouding over in the Matrix. It was going to rain soon.

“I love her too,” he said. “And I wish to have her in my arms again. I wish to know her as I have done before. I have loved her since the beginning.”

“If you wanted her to stay so badly, why didn’t you overwrite her?”

“I did not think it appropriate,” the sitting Smith was growing exasperated.

The standing Smith shrugged his shoulders, “I guess we both let her go.”

Rising to his feet, he cracked his neck and adjusted his tie, “We will get her back, though.”

* * *

“Williams, come on in.” the Oracle said, greeting her as she walked into the humble kitchen. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

“No, thank you,” Williams said, stiffly. She couldn’t believe this old lady could actually be the legendary Oracle, the one who countless Agent teams have tried and failed to apprehend.

“I know the one who created you. I created him, you know,” she said, smiling. She picked up a lit cigarette from the ashtray on the table and took a drag, leaning back against the kitchen sink.

Williams did not reply. “I see he made you as sullen as he is. And he does have an eye for beauty, because look at you,” said the Oracle, her eyes twinkling. “But just because he made you, doesn’t mean you were made for him, does it?”

“No,” Williams said, removing her sunglasses. “That’s better,” said the Oracle, motioning towards a seat at the table. Williams sat down.

“You’re here because he’s growing stronger. He’s taken away someone close to you, and you want to have that person back.”

“How did you know that?” she asked. The Oracle smiled, dragging on her cigarette, “He made you for him, so of course he’d be jealous of whoever you’d love. You’d think, as long as he has been alive, that he would have learned that’s not how things work. But he never was any good at matters of the heart. Now, matters of his own ego, of that he’s a master.”

Williams laughed out loud at her wry observation. The Oracle continued, “You are lovely,” she said, with much affection in her voice, “You’re going to drive him insane, though,” turning the conversation slightly more serious.

“Smith is not going to just let you go. His frustration at not having you will continue to grow. And it’s not just the forces in him that he’ll be fighting, but the other forces which he has foolishly chosen to incorporate into himself. The conflict in him and his replicas is overwhelming. You can either swallow your outrage, and give yourself to him freely, in which case, you will spend your life in mourning, or, you can continue to fight him, knowing full well what he will eventually do to you. Either way, his processes have already malfunctioned beyond repair. How much worse you wish to make it for him, is up to you. That little bit, though, will shape what he will eventually become. Not that he doesn’t deserve everything that happens to him, given his current behaviour.”

“You sound like a mother,” Williams observed, picking up a cookie from the table and nibbling it. “Those things make you operate 40% more effectively, you know,” the Oracle said, winking at her. “You should remember to eat more often. And when you see Smith, tell him to visit me soon. A mother does like to keep tabs on her son.”

Williams stood up. The Oracle crossed the room and reached up for her. Williams bent down and the Oracle kissed her on her cheek. “In your next upgrade, darling, it will all work out. For him and you both. And for that sweet Agent Brown as well.”

Williams smiled at the Oracle, and left with her half-eaten cookie. It was time to find a Smith or two.