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THE SUNSET
* 4 *
As the final orange-red rays of sunlight vanished over the distant silhouetted hilltops, Miriam inched closer to the soothing warmth of the bright fire. Her mid-teenaged twin brother, Aaron, sat beside her, tossing a few more twigs into the flames.
"I'm afraid," Miriam whimpered in the growing evening wind.
Only a few days ago, she and her brother had been the children of protective parents, part of a small but thriving village, preparing for the autumn harvest... But now, they were exiles, banished from their family, their friends, the families of their friends, and the only way of life they knew... never to return...
"I know," Aaron understood. "So am I."
He remembered that last day all too clearly... As they stepped beyond the borders of their rural village, with only the overworn skin wrappings on their feet, the ragged oversized trousers around their waists, and the unwashed shirts and tattered blankets on their backs, hopeless tears streamed down their dirty faces. He turned behind him to steal one last glance at his parents, the unbearable anguish in his mother's sobs and father's eyes, as they stayed behind the border beside the few villagers who cared, and the poorly armored horsemen who didn't... And now, he and her sister were all alone...
"What's going to happen to us?" Miriam softly asked, tucking a few frayed brown curls behind one ear.
"I don't know," Aaron replied. He carefully sprinkled a handful of berries into his sister's cupped hands. "But if we are to survive, we must stay together... always."
"Always," she whispered.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
After their scant firelight meal, Miriam and Aaron crawled into the low grassy burrow that laid between the edge of the woodland shadows and the foot of the gentle ridge...
Dug larger and further into the hillside than when they first found it years ago, this hole was their secret home away from home, where they dug, and hid, and played as adventurous little kids, daydreaming that they were both knights in shining silver armor, riding glowing white steeds, slaying scary black dragons and other horrible creatures...
Once inside their close-fitting lair, yet keeping sight of their flickering fire and the trickling brook further away, they partially blocked the entrance with two large rocks and wrapped themselves in their blankets. The long grass, the solid stones and earth, and the surrounding slopes and trees, provided ample shelter from the autumn gusts...
"The visions..." Miriam whispered, curled face-to-face with her brother on the cool dirt. "Do you think we will see them again?" Several gusts whistled harmlessly and the firelight filtered dimly through the cracks in the stone-blocked entrance.
"I don't know." Her brother closed his dark-brown eyes. "I hope so."
"Really? Why?"
"Maybe the visions can save us."
Aaron suddenly awoke an hour later, eyes wide in the fluttering dimness. "Miriam! Did you feel that?"
"Yes!" she replied, just as awake. "Like last time, it burned along my arm, and then it disappeared."
"Me too. It burned across my chest again."
"Aaron?" Miriam hesitated.
"Yes?"
"I think... I think I want to see the fire."
With barely ten minutes of sleep, Helios suddenly awoke to the piercing signal of his personal workstation -- Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep! -- triple-beeping. Donning his old cap, he climbed down from his bunk to scan the main screen of his monitor array.
"That's odd," the captain murmured to himself, crouching over the screen. "Looks like a localized glitch in the Matrix... but the rift seems to be ripping from the inside out..."
Helios hopped into the chair to get a better look. Fingers flying over the keyboard, he began a systematic analysis of the glitch and its whereabouts on one screen, its possible cause on another screen, and its potential consequences on yet another.
And then he saw it!
On the main screen, he found the unique trailing code of a plugged human mind, fluctuating, flickering amidst the layers of symbols, at the edges of the glitch. 'Maybe that mind is responsible for this,' he wondered.
And then he saw another!
Beside the first one, he discovered the encoded pattern of a SECOND plugged mind, similarly oscillating at the fringes of the rift. 'NOW there's no doubt,' he thought. 'They MUST be responsible for this.'
The captain leaned back in his chair to contemplate. Finally, after more than a year since freeing Crewman Threads, here was the opportunity for a new rescue mission, an extraordinary opportunity to free, not just ONE mind, but TWO minds from the Matrix.
This was what Helios always hoped for, what he was meant to do. This was why he joined the fleet. This was why his wife Aurora and his son Hitchhiker joined the fleet. This was why his hovercraft, the 'Nosferatu,' risked penetrating the broadcast depths each and every day to hack into and search the Matrix.
He leaned forward again to review the analysis. 'Hmmm,' he reflected. 'They may not be twentieth-century hackers... but any plugged mind with the power to do THAT, deserves to be freed...'
Before Captain Helios stood up, swung open, and shut the door to inform the rest of his crew, he readjusted the bill of his orange cap, and smiled.
"The tenth century should be interesting."
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