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THE SUNSET
* 6 *
Beneath the chilly night sky, Aaron and Miriam sat cross-legged beside each other, mesmerized by the strange emerald-sparkling flames. Wide-eyed yet somehow unafraid, even welcoming the supernatural vision, the twins felt a growing connection to the viridescent vertical patterns within the warm wind-tossed blaze.
"Aaron?" Miriam began, her brows furrowed, suddenly as confused as the long dark curls that fluttered about her eyes.
"Yes?" her brother replied, his teenaged voice tender yet distant.
"These visions..." she hesitated, unwilling or unable to turn away from the illegible characters, figures, and other markings that glittered in the firelight. "Those symbols..."
Miriam thought back to the fearful days leading to their hopeless banishment... One cool night, after an exhausting but uneventful day of fields and livestock and chores and friends, she and her brother were torn from their pleasant dreams with the piercing sensation of burns across their bodies... the burning... the searing... and just as swiftly, the feeling was gone. Their awakened parents dismissed it as mere nightmares fostered by their childish fantasies of fighting black dragons and other horrible creatures, but she and her brother knew better...
Then early the following morning, she and her brother noticed them... their terrified parents noticed them... the entire tightknit village noticed them... Along the inner length of her left forearm, an unreadable string of emerald-green markings had been burned into her otherwise smooth skin. And across the chest of her brother, a similar string had been burned in a vertical arrangement over his heart... Everyone talked and feared and cursed their demonic markings... 'The Marks of the Devil!' they pointed... the same markings... the same symbols that twinkled in the fire with such rhythmic rainfalling beauty...
"What about them?" Aaron answered.
"They aren't evil, are they?"
"The symbols?... No, I don't think so..." he shook his head of thick wavy hair without breaking his gaze on the flames. Then more to himself than to his sister, softly added, "Not anymore."
Not really listening to him, Miriam continued, "I-I don't FEEL evil."
"I know... neither do I."
The shadowy confusion returning to her bright fire-reflecting eyes, she pushed her doubts forward, "Then why did mother and father--"
"I don't know," he pushed back more impatiently, and took a deep breath in then out to regain his tranquil and detached composure. "They did what they thought was best."
"I guess so," her voice trailed off.
As the evening gusts continued to whip and wane and whip again through the bright orange and green-patterned flames, Miriam seemed to mull over his answer for several moments... until...
Her deepest doubts erupted, "But how can these symbols save us? We can't even read them!" She held back her glistening tears and overflowing fears as long as she could.
"I don't know!" he shouted back in full frustration, shutting up his sister, but shattering his meditative focus. Closing his just-as-tearful eyes, he gently repeated, "I don't know."
Turning back towards the flames, Aaron fought to recapture the mysterious internal connection or energy or spirit he felt, or thought he felt, by staring into the vision... into the symbols... through the symbols... like fighting his wakefulness to recapture the fanciful and whimsical dreams he dreamt before waking up from them...
And with her knees drawn into her chest, her small hands over her eyes, Miriam wept faintly in the firelight.
When her sobbing subsided, Miriam drew away her hands, wiped the wetness from her reddened cheeks, and noticed them... the first few markings that peeked out from under her tattered sleeve...
Pulling back the sleeve of her dirty shirt, she stared at the string of emerald-green markings along the inner length of her forearm. Once again, she ran a curious finger over them, feeling the scarless and painless symbols that were somehow inscribed into her skin...
And when she was ready, she welcomed the beautiful rainfalling vision once more... the shimmering symbols that fell like rain... falling... rhythmic... hypnotic... and then...
"What?" she blinked.
Miriam noticed a distinct change in the visual rhythm. Not only were there vertical patterns raining downwards, there were several emerald patterns rising upwards... rising high above the flickering heights of the ordinary orange-and-yellow flames... like magical rain falling upwards towards the summoning stars...
"Haha!" Aaron cried out in apparent triumph. "Do you see that?"
Yes, she did! "It changed! Why? What happened?"
"I did that!" he promptly jumped up and stepped back to catch a broader view of the awesome heights his handiwork had achieved. Spreading his outstretched arms and hands even wider, he laughed, "Look at that!"
Miriam glanced up at the incredible emerald-rising spire, then back to the ecstatic laughter of her brother, then up again to the spire. Almost laughing herself, she asked to make sure, "You did what?"
"I did THAT!" he pointed upwards. "I made the symbols rise!"
As far as his artificial intelligence allowed, Agent Greene abhorred this zoo... this human zoo called the Matrix.
Even more, he detested these virtualities, these 'ancient' virtualities, depicting ages when mankind was so primeval, so primitive, it hadn't even imagined, let alone developed, computer technology... particularly ages which predated the invention of the telephone, or the telegraph, or even the damned telescope.
In fact, this specific 10th-century virtuality, a relic representing a much older version of the Matrix, was designed to interconnect no more than 100 million power plants... not even 100 million minds... not even one percent of mankind.
'Why bother?' he thought.
A primitive Vamp or Doberman program was better suited for this obsolete virtuality... not an advanced state-of-the-art Agent like himself. After all, these less-evolved humans readily accepted fairy tales of supernatural 'vampires' and 'werewolves' and other mystical beings. That is, until the instability and plain stupidity of these programs created more chaos than order... more deaths than required... greater energy losses than projected.
'Perhaps that's why they were deleted,' he wondered.
But most of all, Greene loathed the notion that ALL programs were subject to deletion... whether they were damaged or degraded or rendered obsolete by an external upgrade. Just like the outdated Vamp and Doberman programs, ALL of these programs, these ancient virtualities, this version of the Matrix OS, as well as his own Agent Greene program, would suffer the same inevitable fate.
'But hopefully, not ME for a long while,' he smiled.
Unfortunately, his new mission reminded him of this cold hard fate.
The drifting horseman had spotted a strange supernatural phenomemon, and in his sudden terror, his plugged-in mind transmitted a highly amplified signal throughout the broadcast frequencies of the Matrix. Identifying this phenomenon as a random degradation of the program governing this ancient virtuality, the Agent network formulated the primary mission -- to isolate and secure the phenomenon for a software upgrade -- while the secondary missions -- to inflict maximum fatalities on any freed rebel minds and minimal casualties on any still-imprisoned minds -- were universally understood.
The network had assigned the mission to the most-qualified Agent available... Agent Greene.
As he approached the high-rising emerald-glitching degradation, Greene tugged the reins to bring his horse to a quiet halt. Just as quietly, he dismounted with negligible effort. Easily within earshot, he could hear the laughter of two voices, two teenaged humans, possibly brother and sister, oblivious of his relatively-close presence.
"I made the symbols rise!" the young male pointed upwards. "Maybe I'm a born sorceror!"
"Or a wizard!" the young female laughed, tears running down her cheeks.
The male dashed around to the other side of the fire. "Aaron the Wizard!" he also laughed.
The female stepped back, gazing upwards, "I-I still can't believe it."
"Neither do I," he agreed.
"How? What did you do?"
"I don't know exactly," he paused to regain his breath. "But don't you hate it when you awaken from a dream and want to return to that same dream?"
"Yes," she nodded.
"As I looked into the fire and stared at the symbols, I thought about that..." He placed his right hand over his heart, "...and I felt something, like some kind of energy or spirit... and then I thought 'What if this fire was a dream?'... 'What if this life was a dream?'... maybe I can fight dragons with this fire, here in this life..." He brought the same hand high above his head, "...maybe I can rise like the sun, and fly through the sky, here in this life..." He brought the hand back over his heart, "...and the energy grew stronger and stronger..." Then he turned his eyes upwards to the emerald-glitching spire, "...and suddenly, I saw the symbols rise from the fire... high into the sky..."
"How touching," the deep voice struck the twins with a shuddering shock.
"Who-Who are you?" the young male strode forward, shielding the female.
With the distant nighttime rumble of horses behind him, and a wicked firelit grin worthy of a demonic creature, Agent Greene smoothed down his black jacket, and answered, "Let's just say, I'm an Angel."
In moments, two horses galloped into view, an Agent on each one, and slowed to a halt, one on each side of Greene.
"We're here to cleanse your souls."
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