Day 1:
Doctor Parker wants me to keep a “journal”. She thinks it will help me cope. The thing is, I don’t really like the idea of talking... to myself. That sounds more like a step in the opposite direction to me.
Day 13:
Insomnia. Is a b*tch. The old life: you go to any doctor and you get a light paper bag and a colorful bottle with colorful pills. Out here: you pace the deck and make the crew uncomfortable as all hell. Score one for the old life. The coldness of the ship didn’t used to bother me. The unfamiliarity of it all. Sometimes when I lay in my bunk, I think I smell her scent. I imagine her there with me. It still doesn’t help me sleep though.
Day 24:
I never wanted to see her hurt. If I could have had my way, she would have stayed in Zion. As safe as any of us could be. But she could never sit and wait in the background, and that was why I loved her. I loved her so much. I tried so hard to protect her. It killed me inside every time she jacked in and I stayed behind. But I could do so much more for her as operator than I could by her side. That’s the way I saw it. Now, I don’t know. If I could go back and change things and die by her side instead of living and living and not dying, would I? I spent so long hating myself. Over and over I could see it in my head, the code on the displays. The crucial moment where I saw what was wrong and knew they were dead, but I tried so hard to get them out of there. Dig dig dig as the walls go up. Could I have seen it sooner? Would just a single second more have saved her? I would have sacrificed them all just to get her out alive. Doctor Parker tells me that it’s not good to dwell on the details of the “incident.” I’m done writing for tonight.
Day 31:
The dead lie in piles. I see it when I’m awake now too. Sometimes they all have her face. But always in the shadows he is there. The laughing muse, pulling my strings. After spending a few sleepless weeks, the nightmares have begun to port themselves into my waking consciousness. They’re calling to me. Beckoning for me to come to them so that the rest might be spared. I am the coffin’s nail. A symbol for death that cannot die. I spent two hours in my cabin with a utility knife. I couldn’t do it. I punched the deck until the skin was stripped from my knuckles but I couldn’t do it. Maybe a knife isn’t the right way to do it.
36:
I found out it helps if I focus on their names. Channel the... whatever it is. I remember every single name. Each command etches more into the surface of my mind. I will not forget what I’ve done to them. The thing that I can’t do myself.
39:
Imagination is a cheap substitute. Imagination is a whore that offers insubstantial thrills. What’s better, imagination or virtual reality? I would never dare recreate a virtual shell of her. I desperately hope It never uses her face. It terrifies me every time I imagine turning a street corner and seeing her staring me in the face. It would do it to me. Just to see what I do. Rats in a maze. We’re all just rats in a maze. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Zion.
41:
Doctor Parker was talking to me today about my “survivability”, for lack of a better word. I think she was trying to boost my spirits. She was trying to show me that I’m a valuable asset to humanity. She was trying to show me that I was worth saving. I only wish I could tell her that I couldn’t take any of the credit. I had no business surviving any of those missions. It was Muse, has to be, whatever he has become. He is a vampire feeding on my continued suffering. I’ve seen bullets which had no business missing that instead punched holes in the wall inches from my head. Sure, I’ve taken bullets, quite a few, but they’ve never hit the right spots. I’ve had to spend time in rehab for system shock, but I never actually got THE bullet. And that’s not the only strange thing I’ve seen. I’ve seen tires blow out, knife blades break, doors... doors that didn’t belong.
42:
Doctor Parker had me talk to a program today as part of my therapy session. I think she knows that I don’t like non-humans. Can’t possibly trust them. 991 wears many masks. There’s no way you can trust anyone. Even a program that’s kept in Zion’s own mainframes. She forced me to talk to it. There was no way I was going to agree to it without her bringing up suspension. They can’t take the Matrix away from me. I don’t know what would happen to me if they trapped me out here in the cold. The Matrix is all I have left. The Matrix is my only chance for freedom.
The program is so simple and poorly coded. It doesn’t seem to have any sort of AI whatsoever. At first it was annoying to try to get any decent responses out of it, but then I started taking liberties with abusing its stupid programmed response tree. I’m supposed to have “regular sessions” with the thing, but I don’t know how often that’s supposed to be. I think it’s a waste of time really, but what else is there for me to do when I’m not cleared to jack-in.
47:
ZAITSO made me think of Doctor Rajlich today. It wasn’t what he said, but how he said it. The backwards, broken syntax. If Rajlich really was the man he claimed to be, he helped to show Muse for what it really is. A desperate, grasping child, starved for new toys and new information. 5.991... I knew where it came from, the dumpsters of program runtimes, but Rajlich showed me what it had become. It was thanks to him that I became aware of the true nature of the divine intervention on my behalf. I have become invincible. I am untouchable. I am Achilles emerged from the river of death. Immortality bestowed as a joke by a dead god. It’s a d*mn game to him. An experiment. It’s my life he’s toying with. That sick bastard. The last couple days, I’ve loaded a private construct where I can scream and yell and swear and curse fate and destiny. I can’t remember if it was my idea or Parker’s.
The Octagon. This will have been my last command. One way or the other, I’ll make sure of that. We were on a simple recruitment op. Nothing as dangerous as usual. But then Chatter called in a proximity alert. We had sentinels incoming. We scrapped the mission and split for the designated hardlines. They must have traced our broadcast signal because my group got hit by Agents and hit hard. I ducked out through a garbage chute and somehow ended up a block away. After dropping off the radar like that, I had no problem grabbing a bike and hauling it. I was the first one to make it to the hardline. I jacked out to a world of proximity alarms. The sentinels were tearing through the hull. Everybody from my evac group was dead except for Rerun. He was just a kid. Newly awakened. Probably barely out of high school. What I should have done right then was punched the EMP. But I didn’t. I saw the kid lying there, heart rate racing, and I was convinced that Muse would save him. If he could save me, he could save this kid. And I hesitated. Scorch and Failover got shredded by sentinels. Rerun redlined... Agent. That snapped me out of... I guess it was hope. I was lost in hope. I blew the EMP but it was too late, the dead were dead. And it made me realize, I shouldn’t be here. I don’t deserve to be here.
I can’t do this anymore. Tonight I walked down to the lower levels and climbed up on the top railing. I looked down into the eyes of Death and I was the one who blinked. If a turbine had fired up just then and shaken the causeway, things would have been a lot simpler. No such luck. I climbed back down to the platform and walked back to my bunk. I didn’t run into anybody I knew.
I have my answer. The Kestrel. It’s a small, old ship that’s going to be in drydock tomorrow for retrofitting. Before they install new systems, they’ll strip down all its systems. That means no Chairs, no weapons, no EMP. No distractions, no excuses. I’m going to take it and leave Zion forever. I know they call me cursed and it’s true. After tomorrow, I’ll trouble them no more. The plan? Get the ship through the gates and keep going in a straight line away from this place until the sentinels tear me apart. I talked Captain Trace into taking me out to broadcast depth so I could jack-in one last time. I sent an open broadcast to Muse telling him game over. No way to tell if he got it, but he must have some way of monitoring me when I’m jacked in so my guess is he got it. That’s it. Game over.
