Resonations

The cockpit of the Rocinante was dark, with only two small, dimly glowing lights from the deck to illuminate the way out to the passageway. There was no light coming in through the windscreen because it was pitch black outside, it being the wee hours of the morning. Of course, it didn't help being stuck in a cave a mile below the surface.

Shi Xin enjoyed the third watch. It gave him a chance to collect his thoughts and ruminate in silence about the events unfurling around him. Sitting in the pilot's chair, he was thinking on the old adage someone had written about it being darkest before the dawn. Not that he had ever seen a dawn in the Real, which, by extension, meant he had never really seen a real sunrise at all. Now it looked like he would not see anymore of the really good ones in the Matrix either, thanks to the General. There must be something we can do, he thought. Last night's strike against the General's strongholds were a good start, but there must be more. What is the next step? The General must be. . .

Shi Xin's reverie was interrupted by a soft beep at the panel above him. Soft as it was, the noise had shattered the silence of the ship like a rock through a plate glass window. The captain was not startled, however; he'd been expecting this for a few minutes now. He reached up and flipped a switch. "You're awake already?" he asked the empty cockpit. The ship's PA speaker, next to the switch, answered, "Awake? That feat requires that I actually go to sleep."

Shi Xin smiled at his overzealous friend's tired response. He knew the young hacker had been down at the op station looking at algorithms all night. As ship's Operator, Shi Xin could not ask for a more dedicated soul and accomplished Operator than he had found in Warden.

"I think you should come look at this," Warden continued. "Yeah, I think I can explain it now."

"What is it? Something wrong?" asked Shi Xin.

"Just. . .come look." Click. Warden had shut the PA off.

When he arrived at the main deck of the ship, he found Warden standing next to the Ops station, stretching his stiff muscles. Every monitor was glowing, brightly illuminating the area. There was green code, algorithms, raw data, and Matrix hacks on every one of them. Shi Xin walked over to the Operators chair and said, "Well, what's up Professor?"

Warden was overcome by a jaw-cracking yawn, which left him glassy-eyed but grinning. Shi Xin stifled his own yawn, after watching Warden go through his, and gave a quick thought about the contagiousness of yawning. It disappeared as soon as Warden began speaking.

"Okay. You know Shimada gave us a chunk of data from the CPD that Michael used in the Moriah Projects sector." He began pacing, back and forth on the deck with his chin cupped in his hand. Shi Xin knew his friend well enough to know that he was trying to decide what was important and what was not. "You know that I have been pouring over this data for weeks now, trying to get as much useful information out of it as possible. You also know that I have been pulling out all kinds of stuff that is going to be helpful to the Kid and EPN. What you may not know is where the data came from." He paused and looked at Shi Xin with the question in his eyes, clearly expecting an answer.

"Actually, I do know that. The Code Pulse Devices are virtual representations of hacks on the simulation. Kind of a way to hack the system from the inside out. The device goes off, and the code underneath is opened for extraction." Shi Xin answered.

"Yes!" Warden shouted. "Yeah, that's exactly right, I couldn't have said it better myself." He brushed past his captain and jumped into the Operator's chair, pulling it forward into the locking position. "I've been looking at this particular data set. . ." fingers flying furiously over the keys of his board ". . .here." He pointed to a side screen, which began scrolling thousands and thousands of numbers across it. The entire screen was packed. "I was looking for an alternative way to hack the hack the Machine mainframe, a trapdoor if you will, when I came across something mind-blowing. It was a resonation of the Matrix signal, with something completely different embedded in it."

A hatch at the other end of the main deck swung open with a groan of protesting metal, admitting the two other crew members of the Rocinante; KaseKaizer and LtObrien. Kase was fully dressed and ready to take on the day, while Lt looked as if he had just rolled out of his rack. Shi Xin smiled, thinking of himself at Lt's age. He probably wouldn't have come out at all, back then. Lt yawned and continued on to the head.

"What's up, Skipper?" asked Kase, as he prepared for his morning maintenance routine.

"Well, Warden's been doing some unauthorized information gatheringfrom the Matrix and has found something interesting." Shi Xin chuckled. "Although it's taking him a year and a day to spit it out."

Kase walked over to the ops station, saying, "What'd you break now, Wardster?"

Warden laughed tiredly. "Nothin that the toasters can't fix. Check this out." He pointed at two of the main screens. "Look at these and tell me what's different about them."

Kase just shrugged; he'd never cared much for learning to read code. Shi Xin, being a ship captain, had to know what the little green symbols meant. He stared at the two screens and, after a second, found what he was looking for. The timestamp on each was identical, as were the locations. They were looking at a street corner in downtown. "You hacked the core netw. . ."

"Shhh," Warden interrupted. "Just keep watching"

Shi Xin began to look closer at what was going on. And then he saw it. His eyes widened as they flitted back and forth between the two screens. "Wait. How is that possible? The time stamps are the same."

"What?" asked Kase. "What are you looking at?"

"You see it then?" asked Warden, turning to look at Shi Xin, who nodded slowly, eys still riveted on the screens.

"Both screens are showing an intersection in the Historic District. They are both timestamped identically. And yet, on this one," he pointed to the left screen," there is a red van passing through the light. But over here," indicating the right screen, "it's the same intersection. But no van."

"So what?" asked Lt from behind them, as he shuffled up. "You hacked some archive footage?"

"No," Warden said. "Not possible. Both feeds are of the same location in the Matrix, at the exact same time. And yet each location has something different going on."

Shi Xin looked at his operator. "These are two different iterations of the simulation. Aren't they?"

"Bingo! Tell him what he's won Lt!" Warden laughed at Lt's confused expression.

"Huh? What the hell does that mean?" asked Lt, a little perturbed at Warden's attempt to poke fun.

"It means, that our boy-wonder here has found another, identical simulation running in real time, completely separate from the one we use," said Kase. Seeing that Lt still appeared confused, he smiled and asked, "you slept through Matrix Demography 1, didn't you?"

"There are nine instances of the Matrix, all running in tandem. That is how the Machines were able to populate billions of bluepills into their sleepy slavery. You couldn't have billions of people running around the same city, it would be too big. So, they run simultaneous instances of the Matrix. There are nine that we know about, but not all of them are open to us. It is believed that we operate on three different instances, or rather that is where the Machines allow us to operate."

Shi Xin turned to look at Lt, who was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes trying to get a grasp on what he was being told. "The Machines don't like for us to cross instances. That could result in, among other things, an organization of redpills that would grow beyond the control of the Machines. So, they keep us divided, secured into the instance in which we were Awakened. Even those that are Awakened in the other six instances are whisked away to one of our three sims. Their RSI's are hardcoded to insert into the instance of the Machines choosing. When we broadcast and hack the Matrix, we are hacking into the only instance we are coded for."

"But Warden here has found the codes that allow him to hack into, and look at, one of the other instances, which is a rarity."

"Better than that," Warden spoke up. "Check this out." Hey punched his keyset and stabbed a finger at the monitor in front of him. The readout changed to say:

Matrix OS 7.882.9331B

Instanced offset 3: Recursion

Zion HvCFT Rocinante interfaced at Node2112

>Ready for RSI Insertion_