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REALLY GOOD NOODLES
* 5B *
Spearing another plump orange-tinged shrimp with his spork, Tom watched as a young Asian couple passed by, lost in their conversation, oblivious to his presence behind the glass. For an instant, he could see the girl's face, her cheeks, her eyes. Eyes that painfully reminded him of the slender eyes he first saw years ago.
Oh God. Did it really happen?
Back then, even in his wildest dreams, Tom never imagined anything like this could happen.
Oh God. Is this really happening?
He gasped, his hands grasping her tiny waist.
"Ahhh... Ahhh..." The demon moaned, rising and falling upon him.
He gasped, his excitement sliding in and out of her.
"Ahhh... Ahhh..." She moaned, rising and falling upon him once more.
He gasped, his eyes glancing at her perfect form, then away at the dim ceiling.
"Ahhh... Ahhh..."
He closed his dark eyes, too unsure to gaze into hers, too afraid to see hers gaze back into his.
"Ahhh... Ahhh..." As if reading his mind, she closed her eyes, and tilted her head back in absolute and infinite surrender. "Oh God..."
In seeming slow motion, her horns tumbled down her long velvet hair onto the covers.
"Ahhh... My God, Tom... Oh Tom..."
His eyes snapped open. Oh God.
Rising and falling, her slender eyes smoldered with soaring pleasure. Tossing him another seductive smile, she tightened her hidden muscles and observed his reaction.
"Uhhh," he shuddered.
Oh God.
"Do you believe in fate?"
Lost in the shock and awe and disbelief of the moment, he finally turned from the blank ceiling to the ageless face gazing curiously at him. "What?"
Katie rolled to her side and propped herself up on her elbow. "Do you believe in fate?"
"I... I don't know," he stumbled. "I've never thought about it before."
"Let me put it this way..." She traced a delicate finger over his bare chest. "Have you ever asked yourself, 'Why me?' "
He had to admit he did, and chuckled softly, "Yeah."
She smiled knowingly, "Then you believe in fate."
He returned to the blank ceiling above him. "Really?"
"Yup," she giggled briefly before growing more serious again. "Personally, I don't."
"Why not?" Staring at the ceiling, he began to stroke her forearm.
"Well..." Katie scanned around her, behind her, below her, and beneath the crinkled covers. Finally, she found them, snatched them, and squeezed the bright-red foam. "You see these horns?"
He focussed on her devilish headband and nodded.
"As I look at this two-dollar piece of plastic..." She turned it over in her hand. "I'd hate to think that 'fate' chose to buy it for me, that I didn't choose to buy it myself."
Tom began to wonder. Or tried to. It was one of those things too philosophical to think about.
She rested the plastic headband on his chest. "I'd hate to think that 'fate' can tell me what to do or what to think. You know?"
"Yeah. I think so." For now, he agreed just to agree.
"Forget it. I'm not making any sense."
"No, it's not you," he shook his head apologetically. "I... I'm still new to all this. Me, a hacker? It'll take me some time to get used to."
She giggled, "It didn't take you much time to get used to my... ummm..." She laughed out loud.
"Well," he began, then joined her adorable laughter.
For a few frozen moments, Katie studied his expression thoughtfully. His eyes. His nose. His lips. Definitely, his lips. Staring at his lips, she suddenly kissed him, and whispered into his ear, "Happy birthday, my neophyte."
"How'd you know it was my--"
"I'm Chevalier Premier of the Knights Technoir. Don't you remember, Thomas A. Anderson?"
As if the timeless light of the smiling sun rained down and warmed his uncertain soul, he smiled widely.
"My name is Tom."
With about half of his delicious shrimp and noodles left in his styrofoam cup, Tom still felt as empty and lost as ever. Three years ago, not only did Katie DeVille take him into her knightly underworld, she took him into her willing arms and passionate heart. She let him explore, not only the unlimited depths of electronic information, but the hidden heights of physical pleasure. A wondrous night. A magical night. Or so he thought back then.
Now he wasn't so sure.
Why me? Is it fate?
But one thing was certain. That night changed his life.
Over the next several days and nights, Tom learned all he could from Levi and Katie, sometimes Melissa and the other knights. He absorbed all he could about hacking and its history, its technologies and techniques, its terminologies and tendencies, its tricks and temptations. He studied the fascinating and illuminating posts across dozens of electronic bulletin board systems, or BBSs, including those put up by Levi. Posts about redirection trails, attack relays, dormant bots, and security sniffers. Posts about traffic flow, network firewalls, database portals, and decryption algorithms. Everything he needed to know. Everything. Even posts by followers worshipping the Knights Technoir, their chapters, their members, and their conquests. Conquests including Mulpha, PrizNet Pro, and most recently, MetaCortex.
But he learned something else. Something quite curious.
Morpheus. His name conjured the most-sophisticated conquests in hacking history. Government complexes. Military installations. Financial institutions. Even intelligence headquarters. His name was legendary. Even mythical. Some believed he was just that, a myth. Others believed he was a fictional character played by several real hackers. Then there were those who believed he was the greatest hacker who ever lived. After all, there was still an ongoing debate on whether he was still alive on the run, or perhaps dead while copycats carried his name. Curious. Mysterious. But that wasn't all. For many of his followers, two other mysterious names seemed to be closely linked to Morpheus.
The first link was Trinity. Some believed he was a disciple of Morpheus. Others believed he and Morpheus were one and the same person. But while a few crackpots dissented, the overwhelming majority in the BBS community seemed to agree that more than ten years ago, either Trinity or Morpheus as Trinity was responsible for the penetration of the IRS database. And responsible for the monumental deletion of over 250,000 taxpayer records. A quarter of a million government records! Back then, a feat of such an enormous magnitude was inconceivable. Even now, just cracking the IRS network, let alone the database, would require a typical team of no less than three or four hackers. Amazing. Definitely amazing.
But shortly following that feat, Trinity disappeared. Without a trace. As if he vanished into thin air. A mystery.
The second link was even more mysterious. It was called Matrix. Or, The Matrix. Even before Trinity emerged, a long-time hacker noticed a strange seemingly-misplaced line inserted into one of his older posts: "The Matrix is all around us." Soon, others noticed similar lines in other BBSs. In the middle of one post discussing hacking strategies, a line read: "The Matrix is everywhere." At the bottom of another post welcoming new BBS members, a line read: "The Matrix has you." Eventually, news of the unidentified Matrix phenomena spread throughout the BBS community like wildfire. As best as the community could figure, someone was randomly hacking their own boards, dozens of them, scattering and planting these tiny seeds like needles in electronic haystacks. Terrifying. Yet somehow comforting.
Only one name came to mind. The only one who could've done this. Morpheus.
Then the unthinkable happened.
The week following her MetaCortex triumph, Katie vanished. As mysteriously as Trinity had vanished.
Why?
The Knights Technoir were shattered. The East City chapter was shattered. Levi and Melissa were devastated.
Why did you do it?
Without their First Knight, their Chevalier Premier, their heart and soul, the knights were lost.
Why did you leave us?
But most of all, Tom. Tom had been abandoned.
Why did you leave me?
As the weeks and months passed, the East City knights grew less interested, less intrigued, less involved. They faded away, one by one. Fearing for their own lives, and paying their respect for hers.
Where did you go?
To make matters worse, both PrizNet Pro and MetaCortex were downsizing in a brutal software market.
I need to know.
Yet Tom persisted and pursued in the electronic underworld. After all these years, he finally found something to pursue. While the others grew up, dropped out, moved away, and moved on.
I need to know the truth.
Within six months, not only did Melissa quit her lead position at MetaCortex, she officially quit the East City chapter, leaving Levi and Tom as its last remaining members. Meanwhile, Levi and Tom began to split in their own way. While Levi followed the path of a true hacker devoted to the old-school principles of free information and free technology, Tom was willing to pursue and explore and stray from that limited path. To risk the path of a cracker, a criminal hacker. As Trinity had done before him. As Morpheus had done before them.
Does it have to do with Morpheus?
Within twelve months, Tom was let go from PrizNet Pro. Then in a stunning response to his old colleague's dismissal, Levi tearfully dissolved the East City chapter of the Knights Technoir. As their final acts as knights, they posted their official dissolution throughout the BBS community and took down their BBSs. The East City knights had officially faded away. But by this time, while Levi stood on the sidelines, Tom single-handedly maintained the embedded bots at Owen Patterson High, Mulpha, PrizNet Pro, MetaCortex, as well as a half dozen other relay bases. Not to mention another half dozen of his own.
Does it have to do with the Matrix?
Within eighteen months, Tom was caught. Caught off guard. That is, pleasantly surprised by MetaCortex and their offer to hire him as their newest programmer in a slowly rebounding software market. But despite that surprise, he never wavered in his underground exploration or his electronic pursuit. Always asking. Mastering. Hacking. Cracking. Selling his advanced hacking utilities that he designed and developed for himself. Selling his unique hacking services to steal secret technologies and techniques from corporate competitors. Selling. Stealing. Breaking any and every computer law as he saw fit.
That's the question, isn't it?
Whatever it took, wherever it took him, Tom needed to know. It didn't feel like a high-level government conspiracy. Or a top-secret military project. It felt bigger. Deeper. More profound. More pervasive. He needed to know the truth. He needed to know what the Matrix was. Every mystery pointed to it. Morpheus' whereabouts. Trinity's disappearance. Katie's disappearance. As well as the mystery surrounding the Matrix itself.
What is the Matrix?
Two years passed. Then a third. And Tom was still no closer to uncovering the truth. No closer. No clearer. But he had no choice. To find the answer, he needed to find Morpheus. And to find Morpheus, he needed to scour the unscourable depths of the electronic underground. He needed to. He had to. For himself. And for Katie. He could barely remember her eyes. Her lips. Her voice.
"Happy birthday, my neophyte."
But he was no longer a neophyte. He was a master hacker. And his alias was Neo.
Yeah. Happy birthday, Neo.
As he sat at the shelf table, facing out to the urban street, he drank the remaining bits of his lukewarm soup.
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