Memories and Nightmares

**TheEx** · 03/13/2007 23:21:06

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## Ex // HvCFT Argus

## RELAY Initialized - Zion Mainframe // Journal Entry ID: 64-2

I woke up in the middle of the night again, cold sweat running down my face, my hands clenching the sheets of my cot as I sat up and peered into the darkness of my solitary room. The same dream, it just keeps playing over in my head like a skipping record, I can't wash the images away. It has only been a few days since I got my letter of release, ever since I received the news the dreams have started up again, maybe my subconscious is reminding me of why I hate them all so much. Making sure I don't forget what I'm still alive for, what my purpose is. Whatever the reason, they keep getting more intense too.

I see it as clearly as if it had happened just the day before and not a year ago: The fire, burning hot, hotter than anything I've ever felt, burning me as I try to find anyone still alive from the initial explosion. Wandering around in the acrid smoke calling out to anyone who may still be there but knowing full well no one could have survived the blast, I didn't have time to think about why I had. Then I heard it a screaming woman, crying out for help as I made my way through the wreckage towards the voice, eventually I saw it and it still haunts me to this day. There was a single hand, reaching out from the dense smoke, a coughing voice crying for help, I reach for the hand and in my dream I almost touch it, in reality I did touch it. Just as my hand comes close enough to reach the I-beam overhead breaks free and comes down presumably right on top of the unknown lady, the hand goes limp as a small splatter of blood hits my face. I start screaming, in my dream this is the part where I wake up. In reality, it was so much more horrifying. After the beam fell I tried to find my own way out, but I couldn't see through the smoke of the wreckage and it was beginning to fills my lungs, I thought to myself at the time, how cruel fate could be, letting me survive the blast only to be suffocated by the toxic smoke of the aftermath. As I resigned myself to death the second blast came, the fire probably spread to the core, or maybe it was another bomb, I never knew and had no time to care. The force of it knocked me out, so everything that happened afterwards is a mystery to myself and everyone else.

I woke up several days later in the med bay at Zion, seems a passing hover barge spotted the wreckage and stopped to look for survivors, I was outside of the crash on the rock floor, the first person they found apparently, and the only one still alive. Looking back on it I can understand the military's suspicions, the only person to walk away from a hover barge explosion, found unconscious outside of the wreckage, it doesn't paint a pretty picture for my defense. It also helps that I have no idea what happened either, or how I got out of the crash. They keep asking me who I was working for, and why I'd do such a thing. I can hear it in their voices though; they don't even believe a word their saying. The funny thing about politics is that, for every bad thing that happens someone has to be to blame, and if the ones in charge don't know who really did it, or are trying to save face with some higher entity a scapegoat must be found, someone to take the fall. Though I couldn't prove my innocence they had no way to truthfully connect me to the explosion either, so I was shown leniency, but that didn't keep them from tearing into me. Words like Mentally Unstable, Paranoid, and Obsessive Compulsive became my new best friends as they handed down my sentence. That pretty much brings us all up to speed doesn't it, I've been down here ever since, left to rot and let my hatred brew, a big mistake if you ask me.

Before this all happened I remember people used to ask me all the time why I had such a grudge against the machines, I was never able to explain myself to them, because honestly I couldn't understand how anyone could not have a grudge against them. For me though, it was so much more than a grudge, it was pure simple hate. You know, I've always found it funny that the same people who stood there in the mouth of the cave ready to die protecting the freedom of Zion, the same people who had the same hate in their eyes as I did, staring down the swarm of squiddies there, were the ones who welcomed the Truce with open arms. End the violence; build a world we can all live peacefully in. I never bought into that propaganda. What I think people always fail to realize is that as long as the machines exist man will be subservient to them. I for one would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. I cannot simply overlook the fact that I was the only survivor of a Cypherite bombing, there has to be a reason for my existence, a method to this madness, everything has a purpose. Morpheus understood this, even when all of Zion turned their back on him, he still carried out his purpose only to be cut short by another rogue program of the system. I won't let the same happen to me, I will see the machine city fall, and I will see it burn at my feet. If people have to die in order for me to achieve this goal then so be it, after all you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs right? I'll kill untold numbers, I'll spill rivers of blood if I must, to achieve my goal, and it is that blood that will wash away the weakness that has crept into the hearts of every man, woman, and child in Zion. Perhaps I am insane...but then it isn't really as if I've got anything left to lose either, they already took it all away from me. In this terrible world we live in: I’m mad, You're mad, Here We Are All Mad!

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