Through The Iris (Iconic Backstory) Act I, Part I

iconic13 · 02/07/2006 22:21:04

Written during Beta Test, as a backstory for the current character "Iconic" on 'Recursion' server.

Act I, Part I:
(Written by Iconic & T9Sniper)

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He blinked. The harsh wind whipping at his face, sweat beading at his brow. This was not in the brochure.
Iconic had made his living through the Art of Photography, and taken some notable shots in his day. Mount Rushmore, edited in the darkroom to look like a graveyard. The Grand Canyon, made to look like a tomb. The Sphinx, graphically enhanced on a computer to look like a circus clown, complete with entourage. He had even taken a shot of the Mona Lisa, edited it, through only darkroom tricks, and melded and meshed it with some machine graphics to make the true "Mona Lisa Overdrive" shot, getting him fame and prestige all over the papers for a while. But now, things seemed different. The boat trip he'd taken was all wrong, things seemed out of place. It was as if the world itself had become one of his edited shots. The trees were meshing into the sky, swirling and growing, everything a dizzying vertigo of movement. The birds were swimming in the air, not even flying, their wings mixing with fish scales and gills. The fish had turned into rodent-like creatures, all circling the boat, snapping and screaming as they did. Iconic felt as if he had fallen into hell, and then..... Blink. Everything was normal. He stood, on the warm summer day, on the boat front, Model posing before him, staring at him with an angry look, as if she'd been sitting there for hours, waiting for him to take the shots he'd been hired to do. He looked around, circling himself as he did, at everything he had thought he saw. Everything he had daydreamed. But it had seemed so real....
He pulled up his camera, looking through the Iris, and saw that hell-world again, all spinning and circling around, and Blink. Everything was normal, but fluttering. He saw the deck glimmering, flowing, moving. As if it was slithering with a life all it's own. The girl he had been centering in on seemed to flicker, to change before him. One moment she was sitting right there, arms outstretched on the deck, looking as if she was basking in the sun's rays, and Flash, she was curled up in a fetal position about ten feet to the left, rocking ever so gently. He took the camera away from his face, and the girl lay, arms still outstretched as before. In the original place.
Was he losing it? Iconic had never seen anything like this before, and this was surely more than just a dream. The girl looked up at him, yawning as she did, and said in a very impatient tone: "Can we hurry this up? I have another gig in a half-an-hour!" Iconic looked at her, his mouth very dry, his brow beaded with sweat, and replied in a horse voice: "Uh, yeah. I think we should call it a day. We can set up another meeting later in the month, do some more shots before the weather starts getting colder. Okay?" He tried as hard as he could to sound normal, sane. It seemed to work, because she got up, put her shirt back on over the bathing suit, and replied in a vacantly teenage voice: "Yeah sure, hon. Whatever you say. I'll see you later then." She turned on her heel, and stalked off, obviously angered by the waste of her time. But Iconic could care less at what she thought right now. What the hell did he just see? What had he witnessed? Was he losing it? Or was it just an avid daydream, brought on by the boredom of dealing with prissy airheads like this latest model? He thought for a bit, glancing at the deck as he did, and saw it shimmer once more, sliding as it did, just a little. Just enough for him to see. This freaked him out a little again. Okay, so he might just be crazy.
The next few days, he had spent thinking and wondering about what happened that day. Everything after seemed normal and mundane. Cars passed, people walked by, TVs droned, all as anticlimactic as the next. He decided to log on his computer, get onto the Internet, and do some searching. He looked for the phrase "Visual Anomalies", and blinked, at finding so many links with the word "Morpheus" in them. Morpheus? Wasn't that the criminal on the most wanted list? He remembered, that he had ended up copying a bunch of pictures for the local police to post up around the neighborhood. HE looked up the name, and ended up finding a link that caught his eye. "What is the Matrix?" The Matrix? Why did what sound so familiar? For some reason, after he heard that word, he felt like nothing was real. The past day only proved that. Everything melding together into a nightmarish hell. Things changing right before his eyes. That just wasn't possible. He started searching for information on the "Matrix", and found very few and far-between answers, all eluding to each other link. Iconic found himself very frustrated, yet at the same time, very intrigued.

Four years later, after searching high and low, He seemed to find a connection to what he saw and the world that he lived in. While sitting at his computer, as he so frequently did now, there was a loud knock at his door. He jumped at the noise, and then, calming himself, opened the door, answering the call. A beautiful woman stood outside the door, all clad in vinal and metal-mesh, looking like one of those girls from the club he sometimes went to. But she was wearing sunglasses. And it was 3 A.M., overcast, and raining. She looked at him, and said in the most angelic tone: "Are you Iconic?"
His mouth was parched, his lips unable to even form a word. No one had known him as Iconic in the outside world. That was his alias, when he played around with hacking. Hell, he hadn't even done it in the past six months, what with being so obsessed with the answers he so desperately sought. But this woman, beautiful and potentially dangerous, had known who he was. He decided to play it a little cool, not being sure about anything he was about to answer. "Who wants to know?"
She looked at him for a moment, and then without a word, took off her sunglasses, and entered the room, pushing right past him as if he were a piece of cloth. He hadn't even gotten the words out, when she replied back to him: "You are Iconic. You have seen something that you cannot explain. The world has become something of an illusion to you as of late, my friend. My name is Koda. I have come here to offer you the truth. The reason that you now use most of your time searching for that hidden and ever-elusive truth. I offer you a choice."
He had heard about Koda before. She had been an elite hacker, even hired by the government for some of her jobs. At least, before she had disappeared. He knew her reputation, and he even thought he had met her once. BUt he had always known that whatever she had gotten herself into, she meant business. And she had also never lied.

Koda held out her hands, both balled up into fists, upright. She opened up her right hand, showing a single Red pill.
"In this hand, I hold the answers you seek, the answers that will change your life as you know it. If you choose this hand, know that you will never be able to return to what you know."
Koda then opened up her left hand, exposing a single Blue pill.
"In this hand, I hold the comfort of dismissal. If you Choose this hand, you will wake up, realizing that our meeting was a dream. The choice to believe that as a fact will be up to you. Know also, that if you choose this, you will never be given this choice again, nor that you will ever see me, or anything pertaining to your answers again. I leave this choice to you."

Iconic stared at Koda for a moment, confused at what she offered. Not being able to return? What the hell did that mean? Did she plan to kidnap him? Bring him to a new life? Or did she simply plan to kill him? But the choice had already been made in his mind. He wanted the truth, whatever the cost. As he reached for the Red pill, she piped up again, a hint of warning in her voice, as she said: "Remember, I only offer you an answer. I cannot offer you the path following that answer, nor can I guide you what you seek, once that answer has been realized."

He took the Red pill, walked over to the sink, drank a little water, and swallowed the pill. Koda smiled at him, clearly glad that he had chosen the Red pill, and said to him: "Well then, I'm glad to see that you still want to see what I offer to show you. Welcome to the truth. Follow me."
Koda walked out the door, Iconic following closely, grabbing his coat as he walked out, and locking the door behind him. They walked to a building about a half-block down the street from his Apartment building, and went to a hovel of a place on the fifth floor. Iconic had started to feel a little tired, when Koda beckoned him to sit down in a weird dentistry-looking chair, and said: "You'll need to sit here, we need to pinpoint your location. He looked around, not aware of anyone else, and started noticing others walking in from the other rooms. One of which happened to be Morpheus. Koda walked over to Morpheus, smiling, and said: "You were right, he's just as bright as you said. I could already see it when I met him, but the monitor over there is showing his neural kinetics to be far above normal... Thanks for coming to help us..... He'll be fine...." Morpheus replied something back to her, but Iconic was unable to hear it, as the noise of the room had been swelling into an ungodly ear-piercing swoon. And right as the noise had come to a head, it had stopped, only to be replaced by a fluidly sound. And his eyes flittered, the room changing, moving, swirling again, as he was unable to stop it. The room swirled, and swirled, until everything changed into a pinkish tinge, black tubes and wires surrounding him. He pushed and pulled, and then, he felt a pop on his arm. And another. And quickly, there were a series of pops, all over his body, which was feeling pretty weak. He had no idea where he was, he was surrounded by a weird fluid, and there were all these tubes popping around him, and his body felt like a pincushion. Then, a giant swirling around the back of his head, and he felt like a drill was working at the back of his skull.

Then silence.

Then, a flushing sound, swirling again, and a loud "Swish", and he felt like he was being shot out of a giant water slide. He flew down, and around, and sideways, and left, right, up, down, until his disorientation was so bad that he thought he was about to explode, and then, he flew out into the open air for a brief moment. Then, Crash, into a body of water. He struggled, fought, to swim, to stay afloat. He saw lights above him, bright; blinding. He felt something grab onto him, but he was too weak to fight it, so he ceased to struggle, and tried to gather any strength he had. But the thing that caught him seemed to not be hurting him, just lifting him... closer to the lights....
What the hell is this?
As another lighted area opened up, looking like a box... He passed out.

When he came to, there was an angelic voice, the same one he had heard just a short while ago. Koda.
She was talking to someone, but he could barely make out the words...
"...looks like he's coming around. We've freed another one. We've brought another to our cause. Jaru, bring the water. He's gonna need some."
Iconic looked up, painfully opening up his eyes. He saw three people, two men, and one woman, who he knew to be Koda. She was dressed different now, though, in worn out clothes. She looked at him, smiling, and said: "Welcome Iconic. Welcome to the Real World. I know this must seem a little scary, but the answers will come. I must ask you to rest for now. I will explain everything, as best I can to you. I owe you that much." She placed a hand on Iconic's forehead, as he closed his eyes, confused by everything he had just witnessed. But at least now, he would finally find out the truth.
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## Broadcast depth
## Incoming Transmission...
## Iconic // HvCFT Thanaker -
## RELAY Initialized

:Log started. Begginging recording, text version.

So.... Ok. Koda told me I should make a report to Zion before we dropped out of broadcast level, so here goes. A few days ago, Koda and the crew of the Thanaker extracted me out of the Matrix. After which, they patched me up, explained the situation, and gave me a choice. I could either join up with the crew, and become a member of the Thanaker team, or leave once we reached Zion. She says we'll be reaching Zion in a couple of hours, so I should make this report as quickly as possible, to any operatives still in the field.

I'm thinking about joining the crew, but I'm still unsure about all of this. I knew that the world I was in wasn't real, but I feel completely lost in this one. Yet, I feel like there is a place for me here. But what I do know, is that I cannot go back, nor do I want to.

So that's about it, I guess. Nothing else really happening, except for doing a couple of missions for Tyndell. She's the contact from Zion, that's been showing me the ropes, explaining how to do things.

Okay, looks like we're reaching maximum broadcast depth, so we're going to touch down, and jack back in now, to retrieve a package from the Odepus crew. They've been waiting for a little while, so we shouldn't take too much time reaching them. Signing off.

## End Transmission...
//carrier signal dropped, Disconnecting...
________________________
To Be Continued...

Message Edited by iconic13 on 02-08-200612:21 AM