[matrix]: The Forging of Swords
Jul. 24th, 2003 03:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coronaviridaeThis is all the fault of this site: http://matrixtwins.net/index.htm
Oh, and Sauvagine.
Because...he is. :)
It was going to be a contest entry, but it kinda ran long, and I'll submit it...later.
-----
"That's impossible! No one can do that sort of thing."
The woman squinted at the package in her hands. 'Tear at top to open' it read. She frowned, toying with the zip-top of the package. The man next to her smirked, reaching over and taking it from her hands. He ripped the bag open, and handed it back. It was a patronizing gesture, as if she were only a child.
"Of course they can. It's routine business. You ship a hundred units of product, bill for twice that much, and skim a little off the top. The programs aren't really infallible; you can always slip a few extra dollars between the cracks if you just know how--"
Are you looking at the businessman and his girlfriend? Are you watching how naive of his real job she is? Are you seeing how he treats her like a child, or worse, an object?
Don't. They aren't the interesting ones in this scene.
Watch. He threw away the little piece of plastic he ripped off her package of chips. Heedless of where it landed, he let it fall to the ground. It jiggered across the cobbles, blown by an errant breeze--they have programs for that, you know--and fetched up against the workboot of a man at the next table over on the cafe's patio.
It didn't disturb his ruminations. He had a blue pen out, and he was enraptured by the diagram unfolding by his hand on the napkin before him.
It was a sword.
-----
Meet Munifican. He's a smith by day, paid lucratively for his skill with handling hot metal. He makes wrought iron knick-knacks for discerning customers who like that 'hand-forged' look. From time to time, he'll take a commission from an SCA member or martial artist for one of his swords.
He's a big man, shy, with solid hands and meaty arms, built up from long days working with the heavy tools of a traditional smith. There's something soft-spoken about him; though he's renowned--among those who care about such things--for the quality of the swords he forges, he'd never be the first to admit it.
His name isn't actually Munifican. It's Jared Foster, but he's long since adopted the trade name of the legendary swordsmith, partially out of his own shyness. And partially because it ties into his night job.
Munifican, you see, is also a hacker. This wouldn't be anything special--in this day and age, everyone and his grandmother can claim some extra skill with the code--except that when he looks up from his present scribbling of sword designs, when he glances over at the couple as they begin bickering over the bill, he sees the code there, too.
He is aware of the Matrix. He has been for nearly three weeks now, and he isn't quite sure what to make of it.
-----
Poor Munifican. He didn't know that those inhuman peaks he reached when working in his forge, early in the morning, were an indication of a special kind of capability. He didn't know that, when he began to see actinic green ones and zeros dancing among the sparks of the forge fire, he was closer to the truth behind our 'reality' than anyone else. He didn't know that, when he sat down to his computer that night, and opened a Unix terminal, the way the numbers and command calls bled off the screen and swirled in the air before him essentially spelled out his death warrant.
He doesn't know about Zion. He only knows that the world he once knew has been replaced by fuzzy glimpses of the digital reality underlying it. He knows he doesn't like this truth one bit.
He knows, with his normal staunch, single-mindedness, that the only way to get the code to go away is to focus on his work.
So he is designing a sword.
-----
Vicious words flew between the couple in the next table over.
"Selfish bitch! Do you how hard I work to earn this money?"
"You stingy prick! I took the day off from work just to be with you; do you know how much I'm losing? I could get fired!"
Munifican hunkered down, leaning his head against his free hand and trying to block out the noise of conflict. He added another line to the depiction of his next sword. It would have a diamond-shaped cross-section, he decided. For extra stiffness, like the Abyssinian shotel swords. With the curve he planned to put on the edge, the blade would need the extra support.
"The least you could do is buy me lunch, you bastard!"
The gunshot crack of a slap to the face echoed across the patio of the cafe, plunging the lunchtime patrons into a stunned silence. Six pairs of eyes turned toward the quarelling couple. Reluctantly, Munifican glanced up from his designs, prepared to intercede if the fight got messy.
His eyes widened, pupils contracting to pinpoints. The couple had been replaced with a pair of faceless constructs, woven of shimmering code. Without a sound, the beasts turned their eyeless heads toward Munifican and rose from their seats.
The smith shoved his chair back from the table violently, snatching up sword designs and pen fearfully. He had to get away, he had to run--
They were on him like dogs on a pheasant before he'd gotten more than two steps from his table.
-----
Blindfolded and bruised, Munifican was shoved up a series of steps by rough, ungainly hands. His fright had worn off in the long car drive from the cafe to wherever he was now; it had been replaced by a slow, simmering anger...and disgust.
Who were these coded beasts who had kidnapped him? And why were they so ugly? They didn't adhere to any principles of good design, the smith thought. If he were designing a nightmare creature meant to frighten and capture humans, he could do it so much more elegantly...
Munifican's thoughts were rudely interupted as he found himself shoved into a hard seat. The blindfold was whipped from his eyes, leaving him blinking at the painfully white room surrounding him.
"Where..." he breathed, stunned.
"Hello, Mr. Foster."
The man--if man he could be called--who stepped around Munifican to smile in the smith's face did not look particularly threatening. Smaller physically than Munifican, with a neat white beard and mustache and matching close-cropped hair, there was something almost genial about him. Sinister, but fatherly.
He continued to speak, watching Munifican with piercing eyes. "It seems you and I need to have a little talk about the fact you can 'see code'."
How did this man know? Munifican had never told anyone! He was half-convinced he was crazy, and he didn't want to be handed over to some asylum. To never be able to craft his swords again, to never see another work of beauty pass from his hands, all because he could 'see code', would kill the smith.
He bit his tongue, and said nothing. The man smiled.
"Perhaps you think you're going crazy. Architect knows, most coppertops do. I pity them; they never are insane, but realizing the truth usually drives them mad. That, or they're snapped up by the rebels during those first moments of confusion and fear." He sounded truly sorrowful; Munifican wondered why. He also wondered what an 'Architect' was and what 'coppertops' were. He kept his tongue.
"But that's aside from the point, Mr. Foster. We have a little problem with the fact that you know the truth about the world now, and we are afraid," the small man's smile took on a particularly evil edge, "that once we've learned how you did it, we will have to kill you."
Kill? Munifican thought, numbly. They were going to kill him? He'd never have the chance to see one more sunrise as he drove to his forge, or pull the beginnings of a sword, sleek and shining, from the fire, or, or...
"Wait," he mumbled. "Wait, wait."
The small man paused, cocking his head to one side and favoring Munifican with a particularly bird-like stare. "I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. You don't seem to understand--there is no 'wait'. There are no bargains. We will get our information and you will die."
"No!" Munifican half-shouted, starting out of his seat. The small man gave an odd little whistle, more like a piece of machinery than a human. The eyeless code constructs from before stepped away from the walls, shambling toward the smith. "No! Listen to me, I don't care about this truth or who your 'Architect' is or what coppertops are or anything! I just want to live. Please!"
Gripping Munifican's arms firmly, the constructs forced him back to his seat. He looked between them desperately, then to the small man. "Please," he said once more. "I'm not crazy. I don't want to die. I just want to live and make my swords in peace. I don't care what I have to do; just let me live."
"There is no bargaining, Mr. Foster," the small man repeated, without a shred of impatience. "Your life is ours to use as we will. And you need to die."
Any more arguments Munifican could have made died on his lips. He shrank back in his chair, casting about with his eyes like a drowning man looking for shore, and despairing of finding it. Those eyes lit on the constructs flanking him, and one last tremulous hope bloomed in Munifican's chest.
He jerked forward, using his strength forged by years of iron-working to throw the constructs off for a moment. They reacted like the automata they were, groping blindly for Munifican's arms as he stood up and stepped toward the small man. "Listen," he said.
"I know you won't let me bargain. But I have skills. I can--do things, things other smiths...other hackers can't. I can design things. Let me, let me..."
Let him what? Munifican glanced around once more, trying to rest his gaze anywhere except the small, strangely patient man before him. Once again, the constructs caught his eye. "Let me redesign those!" he blurted out, jabbing a finger at the nearer construct.
"Let me make them more frightening. Let me--let me code you something new. Something better designed. Something loyal that can still think for itself."
The small man looked as if he was going to repeat his speech about 'no bargains' in the face of Munifican's offer, but something in his eyes changed. He looked the smith up and down thoughtfully, then asked: "And what do you want in return?"
Munifican breathed out, trembling. "I want to live. God," he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the sting of tears, "I want to live. I want to make swords, and have children, and see another sunrise..."
"Agreed."
Munifican's eyes popped open again. He had won? "I--you mean--"
The small man smiled. "Congratulations, Mr. Foster. You're one of us." He pulled a gun from his coat and shot Munifican in the chest.
Pain lanced through the smith's ribs. He staggered, eyes bugging out and mouth rounding on a silent 'o' of surprise at the man's actions. "Y...y..."
"You'll get your chance, Mr. Foster. See you when you wake up."
Munifican toppled backwards, and into oblivion.
-----
"Initiate Munifican.exe on my mark. Standard start-up procedure; give it full access to its archived memories. Download core executables and documentation on construct programming into it after start-up."
The small man paused, and looked at his watch. He was the only one standing in the middle of a perfectly white room, devoid of furniture, windows, or doors. Somehow, his addressing operators that were not there did not seem at all incongruous.
"Mark."
Green ones and zeros streamed into the room from some unseen source, coallescing into a man-shaped blob. The blob contracted, expanded, contracted again, then abruptly skinned itself in human flesh. The flesh quivered, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out in a surprised gasp at the chill of the room. Clothing flooded onto its frame, painted by an invisible hand and stilling incipient shivers. The half-formed creature shook its head suddenly, glancing around with nervous eyes for something, anything, familiar.
"Hello, Mr. Foster."
Munifican blinked, startled. "Hello."
"Did you have a nice nap?"
There was no other explanation for the unexpected gap in the smith's memory. "Y...yes?"
"Good. You were dead for a little while there." The small man smiled, insincerely. "An unfortunate by-product of uploading you into the code as a program of your own. You'll get used to it."
"I'm--" Munifican looked down at his hands. They looked solid--in fact, more so than usual. He couldn't see the code anymore, unless he focused hard.
"A program. Yes. Now, shall we get on with business? You have a lot to learn."
Munifican was still stuck back on the fact he was a program now. "I'm a--"
"Shut up, Mr. Foster, and prepare for data transfer."
Once again, Munifican's world blacked out, as his senses were flooded with data. This time, he didn't fall dead; instead, he stood insensible as a veritable deluge of code poured over and around him. He soaked it up like a sponge. Here were his forge and his tools, these rules for coding in this place called 'the Matrix'. Here were instructions for making a construct just like the ones that had captured him. Here was his new lease on creation.
After what seemed like an eternity--though Munifican's new internal clock told him it had been a matter of a few seconds--the data flow stopped. The smith-turned-program took a careful breath, turning the new knowledge over in his mind curiously. Then he looked at the small man, the one who had brought him here.
The man smiled broadly. "Done? Good. Let's get you into a work station. You have seventy-two hours to prove your worth to the Matrix."
-----
One of the advantages of Munifican's new existence as a program was that he didn't need sleep. He could work tirelessly--and he had--on his designs for a new construct. But he was getting nowhere, and by the fifty-fourth hour of his labor, he was beginning to flag.
He had seated himself in the corner of his station, redesigned to resemble a forge, and simply stared into the fire. Design sketches on sheafs of paper littered the entire room, tacked to corkboards on the walls and unrolled on his work benches. Humans and animals, robots and monsters spilled out on the vellum, captured in all aspects of snarling attack. None of them satisfied Munifican, however. This one, a human in a black suit, was too prosaic. That one, a rampaging dragon, was too outre. The robot was impractical; the unicorn wouldn't make an effective fighter.
"Seventeen hours, Mr. Foster," a voice chimed. Munifican buried his face in his hands.
He couldn't think. He needed to work, but he couldn't even begin the code for his new construct without an idea of what he wanted it to do.
Finally, he got tired of feeling sorry for himself and his designer's block. With a heaving sigh, Munifican rose from his corner and made his way to the fire. He stirred it back into life with the air pump, then paced to the stack of iron ingots in the corner. If he was going to fail, he could at least start another sword before he did. Perhaps he could work out that new design...
-----
"Eight hours, Mr. Foster."
Munifican had learned about time compression. It was a delight for a smith; he could take as long as he wanted, be as painstaking as he needed, and still complete a sword in a matter of hours. He already had one, the naked tang awaiting only a grip, and was half-way through the second sword in his time-compressed forge when the time warning chimed.
He frowned as he transfered the heated iron from the fire to the anvil. Eight hours. Barely enough to code and skin a construct, if only he had an idea. Which he did not. He gazed down at the glowing piece of metal on his anvil, selecting a hammer to beat it into shape. It was a mate for the first sword he'd finished, and both were light blades, meant to be wielded together. The better for a skilled swordsman to trap his enemy and confuse him with a show of skill.
Munifican paused.
-----
He had four hours left. He had discared the trappings of the forge, but kept the two swords. One was finished and polished, already sharpened to a razor's fineness. The other he'd connived to trap in a thermal pocket of its own; it still glowed with the heat of the forge-fire, despite the fact it had been hours since it had last tasted flame.
They were Munifican's models.
Two code-constructs, human-shaped but devoid of distinguishing features, stood near each of the swords. Munifican was staring at one of them, his hands sunk deep in its chest as he manipulated its code.
He had gotten past the rough rudiments of form, picking a humanoid shape as the easiest and most effective. Now he was doing personalities, and couldn't help but to be reminded a little of Pandora's box. He was constructing killers, hunters, and he needed to put in every good vice that would make them nonpariels in the field of cold-hearted destruction.
A weapon, after all, needed to be eager to draw blood. Munifican was just reconstructing his swords in human form.
Here, he tugged on a code string, this will be for confidence. And this for amorality. And this for loyalty to their cause. And this for intelligence. Each personality trait was defined as a string of ones and zeros, wrapped around a pulsing core that made up the heart of the construct. That was the simplistic code that told it how to move and walk like a human. Personality was layered on the outside, like string around the rubber core of a baseball.
He saved the code, and duplicated it, carrying a snarled knot of green strands over to his second construct. Shoving it into the figure's chest, he tucked in all his loose ends and wound them carefully around its core. A single strand of code threatened to snake free, and he grabbed it. The entire ball unwound again.
Munifican swore, weaving his code back together and packing it tighter around the construct's core. He had originally intended the two constructs to be identical, but already this one's code was showing signs of being prone to flying off the handle. It was a certain random element; and, Munifican supposed, it befit the fiery sword. Rough and unfinished, but hot as the core of a forge fire and just as ready to burn.
Oh well. He would just fine tune the programming at the end, if he had time.
He removed his hands from the construct's chest, and wiped a hand across his sweaty brow. Now it was time to give them a distinct look.
-----
Something, Munifican thought, is really eerie about the color white.
He'd drained the color from the walls of his workroom, leaving it white and blank as he'd received it. He had found the familiar forge, will comforting, was distracting him from his job. And any other color than white was just as bad.
"Thirty minutes, Mr. Foster."
His constructs were still white, too. He'd been tweaking their personalities, going with the trend he'd already begun to see forming in their cores. One of them--the finished sword--would be calmer, more arrogant than its counterpart, cool as a glacier when it was required. The other would be impetuous, hot-tempered, chaotic. Willing to take risks. They would make a good pair, Munifican thought. There was one last filip of code he'd been meaning to add, though. They would make a good pair--and their efficacy would depend on them working as a pair.
Reaching into the finished sword's chest once more, Munifican fished around. It was like looking for a piece of floss in a plate of spaghetti, finding the code strand he wanted, but at last he had a grasp on the slippery string. He tugged it, green and glowing, from the construct. Then he retrieved a similar strand from the other sword, and wove them together into a single string. As soon as he released the woven band, it snapped taught and hovered in the air between them, gleaming.
Munifican stepped back, surveying his work with a critical eye. Of course, the constructs were still blank as dolls on the outside, but the inside, ah. He could see straight through their cores, and knew they were exactly what he'd intended to create. Even if they had taken on a life of their own.
He had become distracted; they needed to have exterior forms to match their interiors. A thousand thousand designs, memories of his sketches since fed to the forge-fire, tumbled through the smith's head. Should they be humans? Animals? Something else entirely? He frowned to himself, pacing around his doll-like constructs. The shimmering band of code that leashed both together hung between them, visible still--Munifican reached out, touching it and keying it to invisibility. No need for anyone to see that little bit of his handiwork.
"Fifteen minutes, Mr. Foster."
Munifican clenched his hands into fists, increasing his rate of pacing. A dragon and a unicorn, maybe. No, that's silly, he chided himself after a moment. They needed to blend in better than those eyeless constructs that had attacked him. But at the same time, ordinary human forms wouldn't inspire the terror his new masters sought. They needed to frighten their targets into insensibility. But they shouldn't be seen out and among the populace at large, most of the time. Doppelgangers? Werewolves? Ghosts?
"Ten minutes, Mr. Foster."
"Damn it, shut up!" Munifican shouted, startling even himself. He waved a hand at the constructs, suddenly sick of their blankness, the way it taunted his ability to created. They disappeared entirely from his 'real' sight, though he could still see where they stood mutely, woven of code. Mocking him.
He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and plunged his workspace into deep time compression. He had done the hardest part of the design job; now he just needed to prettify them. Like the rapier he'd forged last year, made totally impractical with a woven basket hilt and faux gems practically dribbling off the thing. It had been for one of those renfaire nuts, who thought only of his image, not the actual use of the blade. Munifican had still done no less than his best, though it had stuck in his craw that he'd had to destroy such a lovely blade with such...crap.
The smith couldn't linger much longer. He was running out of time. Opening his eyes again, he stepped forward, pulling one of his constructs back into visibility. All he could think of was swords, the clean perfection of untarnished, polished steel. And white, white like the room and his constructs.
Reaching out, Munifican stroked a hand down the construct's face, forming it into sharp lines and angles. It was a human face, bearing great similarity to Munifican's own, though he didn't consciously realize it. He was lost in the trance of creation, letting his hands guide him as he shaped this new creature. Hard muscle and bone emerged from beneath his fingers, strong as steel but still essentially human in their seeming. Though he crafted it as strongly masculine, Munifican left the construct sexless as a doll. It was a weapon; it had no reason to be anything otherwise. A personality might evolve later, but that was what later versions were for handling.
Sweeping a hand across his construct's forehead, Munifican traced out strands of white hair that fell to his creature's midback. He had still neglected to color it, a thought that itched at his mind as he finished the hair and stepped back once again to survey the thing he'd wrought. It was functional. Beautiful in an odd sort of way, but certainly functional. And that was the highest commendation Munifican could give it.
The whiteness bothered him, though. He reached forward one last time, toying with color palettes like a child with paints. It would be within a hairsbreadth of white, like some kind of malign ghost, but still colored enough to blend in with normal society. If it chose, anyway. Pale skin and silver hair would make it stand out, and--Munifican pressed a hand overs its closed eyes, willing them to color beneath the lids. Gray eyes. It would have gray eyes. Somewhere, dimly, Munifican know this color palette saved just a little on processor power. Probably a good thing, his coding background murmured ruefully, in such a complex GUI as the Matrix.
He cut the time compression. "Two minutes, Mr. Foster," were the first words to hit his ears as he did. Not enough time to make the other construct a new appearance of its own! Munifican swore under his breath, grabbing the complex code that dictated the first's looks and copying them over to the second construct.
There. They were identical, on the outside, but they were as well-matched as any pair of swords. It suited. Munifican nodded to himself, pulling the second construct forth from invisibility. The multiplicity was dizzying for just a moment, the impression that Munifican had simply stuck a mirror in the floor next to his first construct a dazzling one. Hopefully, they'd be just as distracting to anyone they pursued.
"Thirty seconds, Mr. Foster."
He pressed a hand against the first construct's chest, instilling a last gift. They looked like ghosts, he had realized. Why not let them act the part? Invisibility, at least, would prove useful to their task. And he still had to name and save them.
A thought popped to mind, as those last frantic seconds ticked by. Why not make his emulation of the mythological Munifican complete? There was a pair of blades--no. Something in Munifican's mind shied away from the thought. Maybe it was that his new masters wouldn't understand such useless frippery, his only concession to being 'artistic' with his creations. At the same time, he longed for that little act of rebellion. A chance to make them is own.
He shook his head at his own strangeness, and wrote suggested names into a final line of comment code. Then he decompiled both constructs into 'sword1' and 'sword2', and saved them to the local net--just as his last second of time ticked away.
"Time's up, Mr. Foster. Step outside your workspace and show us what you have."
Munifican breathed out. He was done. It was time to see if the client liked the product.
---
A cold glass wall--at least, Munifican thought it was glass--seperated the smith and his shorter companion from what the small man called a 'staging area'. It was every bit as white and empty as Munifican's workspace, save for a small point of light, nearly lost in its surroundings. This, Munifican was told, was the loading program his creations would be initialized from.
He just hoped they worked.
The small man stepped forward, passing smoothly through the glass. "Initialize sword1.exe and sword2.exe," he instructed the walls. "Download firstrun.dat into their cores, and see that they compile completely prior to start up."
Nothing acknowledged his words, save for the point of light shimmering a little brighter. Munifican waited, hands clasped before him and his eyes trained on the small man and the point of light. Please initialize, he bid his creations silently. Please compile. An eternity seemed to stretch on before him, into which Munifican poured prayers to a God he was sure no longer existed.
After an aching span of seconds, the point of light flared once, twice. His two constructs, as naked and perfect as when he'd first made them, glimmered into being in a flare of green light. The small man clasped his hands behind his back, surveying both figures without any sign of emotion.
Munifican waited.
Finally, the construct on the left--sword1, to Munifican's discerning eye--took a deep breath. Its eyes fluttered open--gray, just as Munifican had programmed--and it blinked once, surveying its surroundings. Its brother program came alive shortly after, its movements attracting sword1's attention. The first construct turned to stare at its brother, tilting its head to one side, a lock of silver hair falling across its face. This, too, distracted it, while sword2 had become intrigued with the appearance of the small man. Neither saw Munifican; it was if the glass that was so clear to him was opaque to them.
This had been explained to the smith, of course. Much like human children, new sentient programs could become overstimulated by a barrage of too much sensory input all at once. Not letting them see the face of their creator, or much more than the white walls of the loading program, was a cautionary measure against sensory overload and read faults.
Somehow it cut Munifican to the core.
"Sword1.exe. Sword2.exe," the small man spoke. Both constructs turned their gray eyes to him as they were addressed, waiting silent for new input. "Initialize firstrun.dat."
Their faces, already impassive, went more blank. Munifican hoped it wasn't some sort of error. His fears passed when their eyes brightened again, and sword2 smiled slightly. It was a quirky, offbeat smirk, more than a smile. Idiosyncratically, Munifican's mind flashed back to his sister, who'd just had a baby, and always refered to the newborn's smiles as 'just gas'; he wondered if the program's little smile was caused by the digital equivalent of gastric discomfort.
Sword1 looked to its smiling brother, then back at the small man. Then, with piercing gaze, it tilted its head toward Munifican--staring straight through the 'blank' wall as if it could see the man behind it. At last, it dropped its gaze, raising fine-fingered hands and staring at them intently. "We are beautiful," it finally breathed.
"Yes, we are," its brother acknowledged.
Munifican's heart broke.
---
"Your creations are...exquisite, Mr. Foster," the small man remarked to Munifican.
Both the smith and his employer now stood outside the loading program, watching Munifican's swords as they adjusted to their new environment. Both had adapted to the idea of 'clothing' very quickly, opting--opting! Deciding, in ways that Munifican had never thought possible for programs--to keep with their inherent color schemes with white and silver garb. It suited them, he thought, feeling particularly protective. He watched sword1 disarm a program disguised as a human opponent, breaking the program's wrist as it did so. Sword2 stood behind its brother, fighting off a swarm of other 'humans' with nothing more than a switchblade. They worked together flawlessly, just as he'd intended.
"Yes," Munifican finally acknowledged. "They work."
The small man nodded simply. "They do. Your part of the bargain has been fulfilled. So has ours."
That dragged Munifican out of his reverie, and he looked away from the sight of his constructs battling side by side, to regard the small man. "What?" he asked, startled. "You haven't given me anything. You--"
A wicked, small smile crept onto the other man's face. "You saw a sunrise," he pointed out, "through your forge window, before you deleted it." Munifican was stricken; he had done that, yes.
"You forged a pair of swords," the small man continued, "that you used as your models." Munifican nodded dumbly; he had done that, as well.
"And finally--Munifican, look at your children." The man stretched a hand out toward the wall, where both sword programs were now resting from their struggle, seated back to back on the ground. Their pale skin and clothing was stained with blood, but from the looks of it, all of it was from their enemies. Sword2 was smirking again; sword1 was studying the ring of dead bodies surrounding them.
Munifican was very pale under his tan, and clenched a bloodless lower lip between his teeth. "I...you..."
"You struck a devil's bargain, Mr. Foster. What did you expect you were going to get?"
Tears sprang to Munifican's eyes, as he looked to his sword-constructs, then back to the small man. The words lodged in his throat. He'd been betrayed, but worse, he hadn't had the chance to get to know his creations. What a fool he was, if he'd thought this was better than death.
The small man's smile widened at Munifican's grief. "Good night, Munifican."
The world blacked out. The last image Munifican had before his deactivation was sword1's gray eyes, boring straight into his.
---
Munifican.exe was activated three times over the last four iterations of the Matrix. He was responsible for the creation of the current 'Agent' program, as well as the Angel line. You may recognize the creature Seraph as his handiwork.
His final creation--to this date--is another rogue, originally called 'sword3'. Architect only knows what name it has adopted now.
But his story doesn't concern us any longer. His contribution to it ended with the creation of sword1 and sword2. It is these two--Munifican's original blades--that we will follow, for their effect on this pitiful world has been a broad one, and they serve as white threads in the weft that ties the Matrix together.
I do so love urban mythology. :)
muse
Oh, and Sauvagine.
Because...he is. :)
It was going to be a contest entry, but it kinda ran long, and I'll submit it...later.
-----
"That's impossible! No one can do that sort of thing."
The woman squinted at the package in her hands. 'Tear at top to open' it read. She frowned, toying with the zip-top of the package. The man next to her smirked, reaching over and taking it from her hands. He ripped the bag open, and handed it back. It was a patronizing gesture, as if she were only a child.
"Of course they can. It's routine business. You ship a hundred units of product, bill for twice that much, and skim a little off the top. The programs aren't really infallible; you can always slip a few extra dollars between the cracks if you just know how--"
Are you looking at the businessman and his girlfriend? Are you watching how naive of his real job she is? Are you seeing how he treats her like a child, or worse, an object?
Don't. They aren't the interesting ones in this scene.
Watch. He threw away the little piece of plastic he ripped off her package of chips. Heedless of where it landed, he let it fall to the ground. It jiggered across the cobbles, blown by an errant breeze--they have programs for that, you know--and fetched up against the workboot of a man at the next table over on the cafe's patio.
It didn't disturb his ruminations. He had a blue pen out, and he was enraptured by the diagram unfolding by his hand on the napkin before him.
It was a sword.
-----
Meet Munifican. He's a smith by day, paid lucratively for his skill with handling hot metal. He makes wrought iron knick-knacks for discerning customers who like that 'hand-forged' look. From time to time, he'll take a commission from an SCA member or martial artist for one of his swords.
He's a big man, shy, with solid hands and meaty arms, built up from long days working with the heavy tools of a traditional smith. There's something soft-spoken about him; though he's renowned--among those who care about such things--for the quality of the swords he forges, he'd never be the first to admit it.
His name isn't actually Munifican. It's Jared Foster, but he's long since adopted the trade name of the legendary swordsmith, partially out of his own shyness. And partially because it ties into his night job.
Munifican, you see, is also a hacker. This wouldn't be anything special--in this day and age, everyone and his grandmother can claim some extra skill with the code--except that when he looks up from his present scribbling of sword designs, when he glances over at the couple as they begin bickering over the bill, he sees the code there, too.
He is aware of the Matrix. He has been for nearly three weeks now, and he isn't quite sure what to make of it.
-----
Poor Munifican. He didn't know that those inhuman peaks he reached when working in his forge, early in the morning, were an indication of a special kind of capability. He didn't know that, when he began to see actinic green ones and zeros dancing among the sparks of the forge fire, he was closer to the truth behind our 'reality' than anyone else. He didn't know that, when he sat down to his computer that night, and opened a Unix terminal, the way the numbers and command calls bled off the screen and swirled in the air before him essentially spelled out his death warrant.
He doesn't know about Zion. He only knows that the world he once knew has been replaced by fuzzy glimpses of the digital reality underlying it. He knows he doesn't like this truth one bit.
He knows, with his normal staunch, single-mindedness, that the only way to get the code to go away is to focus on his work.
So he is designing a sword.
-----
Vicious words flew between the couple in the next table over.
"Selfish bitch! Do you how hard I work to earn this money?"
"You stingy prick! I took the day off from work just to be with you; do you know how much I'm losing? I could get fired!"
Munifican hunkered down, leaning his head against his free hand and trying to block out the noise of conflict. He added another line to the depiction of his next sword. It would have a diamond-shaped cross-section, he decided. For extra stiffness, like the Abyssinian shotel swords. With the curve he planned to put on the edge, the blade would need the extra support.
"The least you could do is buy me lunch, you bastard!"
The gunshot crack of a slap to the face echoed across the patio of the cafe, plunging the lunchtime patrons into a stunned silence. Six pairs of eyes turned toward the quarelling couple. Reluctantly, Munifican glanced up from his designs, prepared to intercede if the fight got messy.
His eyes widened, pupils contracting to pinpoints. The couple had been replaced with a pair of faceless constructs, woven of shimmering code. Without a sound, the beasts turned their eyeless heads toward Munifican and rose from their seats.
The smith shoved his chair back from the table violently, snatching up sword designs and pen fearfully. He had to get away, he had to run--
They were on him like dogs on a pheasant before he'd gotten more than two steps from his table.
-----
Blindfolded and bruised, Munifican was shoved up a series of steps by rough, ungainly hands. His fright had worn off in the long car drive from the cafe to wherever he was now; it had been replaced by a slow, simmering anger...and disgust.
Who were these coded beasts who had kidnapped him? And why were they so ugly? They didn't adhere to any principles of good design, the smith thought. If he were designing a nightmare creature meant to frighten and capture humans, he could do it so much more elegantly...
Munifican's thoughts were rudely interupted as he found himself shoved into a hard seat. The blindfold was whipped from his eyes, leaving him blinking at the painfully white room surrounding him.
"Where..." he breathed, stunned.
"Hello, Mr. Foster."
The man--if man he could be called--who stepped around Munifican to smile in the smith's face did not look particularly threatening. Smaller physically than Munifican, with a neat white beard and mustache and matching close-cropped hair, there was something almost genial about him. Sinister, but fatherly.
He continued to speak, watching Munifican with piercing eyes. "It seems you and I need to have a little talk about the fact you can 'see code'."
How did this man know? Munifican had never told anyone! He was half-convinced he was crazy, and he didn't want to be handed over to some asylum. To never be able to craft his swords again, to never see another work of beauty pass from his hands, all because he could 'see code', would kill the smith.
He bit his tongue, and said nothing. The man smiled.
"Perhaps you think you're going crazy. Architect knows, most coppertops do. I pity them; they never are insane, but realizing the truth usually drives them mad. That, or they're snapped up by the rebels during those first moments of confusion and fear." He sounded truly sorrowful; Munifican wondered why. He also wondered what an 'Architect' was and what 'coppertops' were. He kept his tongue.
"But that's aside from the point, Mr. Foster. We have a little problem with the fact that you know the truth about the world now, and we are afraid," the small man's smile took on a particularly evil edge, "that once we've learned how you did it, we will have to kill you."
Kill? Munifican thought, numbly. They were going to kill him? He'd never have the chance to see one more sunrise as he drove to his forge, or pull the beginnings of a sword, sleek and shining, from the fire, or, or...
"Wait," he mumbled. "Wait, wait."
The small man paused, cocking his head to one side and favoring Munifican with a particularly bird-like stare. "I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. You don't seem to understand--there is no 'wait'. There are no bargains. We will get our information and you will die."
"No!" Munifican half-shouted, starting out of his seat. The small man gave an odd little whistle, more like a piece of machinery than a human. The eyeless code constructs from before stepped away from the walls, shambling toward the smith. "No! Listen to me, I don't care about this truth or who your 'Architect' is or what coppertops are or anything! I just want to live. Please!"
Gripping Munifican's arms firmly, the constructs forced him back to his seat. He looked between them desperately, then to the small man. "Please," he said once more. "I'm not crazy. I don't want to die. I just want to live and make my swords in peace. I don't care what I have to do; just let me live."
"There is no bargaining, Mr. Foster," the small man repeated, without a shred of impatience. "Your life is ours to use as we will. And you need to die."
Any more arguments Munifican could have made died on his lips. He shrank back in his chair, casting about with his eyes like a drowning man looking for shore, and despairing of finding it. Those eyes lit on the constructs flanking him, and one last tremulous hope bloomed in Munifican's chest.
He jerked forward, using his strength forged by years of iron-working to throw the constructs off for a moment. They reacted like the automata they were, groping blindly for Munifican's arms as he stood up and stepped toward the small man. "Listen," he said.
"I know you won't let me bargain. But I have skills. I can--do things, things other smiths...other hackers can't. I can design things. Let me, let me..."
Let him what? Munifican glanced around once more, trying to rest his gaze anywhere except the small, strangely patient man before him. Once again, the constructs caught his eye. "Let me redesign those!" he blurted out, jabbing a finger at the nearer construct.
"Let me make them more frightening. Let me--let me code you something new. Something better designed. Something loyal that can still think for itself."
The small man looked as if he was going to repeat his speech about 'no bargains' in the face of Munifican's offer, but something in his eyes changed. He looked the smith up and down thoughtfully, then asked: "And what do you want in return?"
Munifican breathed out, trembling. "I want to live. God," he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the sting of tears, "I want to live. I want to make swords, and have children, and see another sunrise..."
"Agreed."
Munifican's eyes popped open again. He had won? "I--you mean--"
The small man smiled. "Congratulations, Mr. Foster. You're one of us." He pulled a gun from his coat and shot Munifican in the chest.
Pain lanced through the smith's ribs. He staggered, eyes bugging out and mouth rounding on a silent 'o' of surprise at the man's actions. "Y...y..."
"You'll get your chance, Mr. Foster. See you when you wake up."
Munifican toppled backwards, and into oblivion.
-----
"Initiate Munifican.exe on my mark. Standard start-up procedure; give it full access to its archived memories. Download core executables and documentation on construct programming into it after start-up."
The small man paused, and looked at his watch. He was the only one standing in the middle of a perfectly white room, devoid of furniture, windows, or doors. Somehow, his addressing operators that were not there did not seem at all incongruous.
"Mark."
Green ones and zeros streamed into the room from some unseen source, coallescing into a man-shaped blob. The blob contracted, expanded, contracted again, then abruptly skinned itself in human flesh. The flesh quivered, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out in a surprised gasp at the chill of the room. Clothing flooded onto its frame, painted by an invisible hand and stilling incipient shivers. The half-formed creature shook its head suddenly, glancing around with nervous eyes for something, anything, familiar.
"Hello, Mr. Foster."
Munifican blinked, startled. "Hello."
"Did you have a nice nap?"
There was no other explanation for the unexpected gap in the smith's memory. "Y...yes?"
"Good. You were dead for a little while there." The small man smiled, insincerely. "An unfortunate by-product of uploading you into the code as a program of your own. You'll get used to it."
"I'm--" Munifican looked down at his hands. They looked solid--in fact, more so than usual. He couldn't see the code anymore, unless he focused hard.
"A program. Yes. Now, shall we get on with business? You have a lot to learn."
Munifican was still stuck back on the fact he was a program now. "I'm a--"
"Shut up, Mr. Foster, and prepare for data transfer."
Once again, Munifican's world blacked out, as his senses were flooded with data. This time, he didn't fall dead; instead, he stood insensible as a veritable deluge of code poured over and around him. He soaked it up like a sponge. Here were his forge and his tools, these rules for coding in this place called 'the Matrix'. Here were instructions for making a construct just like the ones that had captured him. Here was his new lease on creation.
After what seemed like an eternity--though Munifican's new internal clock told him it had been a matter of a few seconds--the data flow stopped. The smith-turned-program took a careful breath, turning the new knowledge over in his mind curiously. Then he looked at the small man, the one who had brought him here.
The man smiled broadly. "Done? Good. Let's get you into a work station. You have seventy-two hours to prove your worth to the Matrix."
-----
One of the advantages of Munifican's new existence as a program was that he didn't need sleep. He could work tirelessly--and he had--on his designs for a new construct. But he was getting nowhere, and by the fifty-fourth hour of his labor, he was beginning to flag.
He had seated himself in the corner of his station, redesigned to resemble a forge, and simply stared into the fire. Design sketches on sheafs of paper littered the entire room, tacked to corkboards on the walls and unrolled on his work benches. Humans and animals, robots and monsters spilled out on the vellum, captured in all aspects of snarling attack. None of them satisfied Munifican, however. This one, a human in a black suit, was too prosaic. That one, a rampaging dragon, was too outre. The robot was impractical; the unicorn wouldn't make an effective fighter.
"Seventeen hours, Mr. Foster," a voice chimed. Munifican buried his face in his hands.
He couldn't think. He needed to work, but he couldn't even begin the code for his new construct without an idea of what he wanted it to do.
Finally, he got tired of feeling sorry for himself and his designer's block. With a heaving sigh, Munifican rose from his corner and made his way to the fire. He stirred it back into life with the air pump, then paced to the stack of iron ingots in the corner. If he was going to fail, he could at least start another sword before he did. Perhaps he could work out that new design...
-----
"Eight hours, Mr. Foster."
Munifican had learned about time compression. It was a delight for a smith; he could take as long as he wanted, be as painstaking as he needed, and still complete a sword in a matter of hours. He already had one, the naked tang awaiting only a grip, and was half-way through the second sword in his time-compressed forge when the time warning chimed.
He frowned as he transfered the heated iron from the fire to the anvil. Eight hours. Barely enough to code and skin a construct, if only he had an idea. Which he did not. He gazed down at the glowing piece of metal on his anvil, selecting a hammer to beat it into shape. It was a mate for the first sword he'd finished, and both were light blades, meant to be wielded together. The better for a skilled swordsman to trap his enemy and confuse him with a show of skill.
Munifican paused.
-----
He had four hours left. He had discared the trappings of the forge, but kept the two swords. One was finished and polished, already sharpened to a razor's fineness. The other he'd connived to trap in a thermal pocket of its own; it still glowed with the heat of the forge-fire, despite the fact it had been hours since it had last tasted flame.
They were Munifican's models.
Two code-constructs, human-shaped but devoid of distinguishing features, stood near each of the swords. Munifican was staring at one of them, his hands sunk deep in its chest as he manipulated its code.
He had gotten past the rough rudiments of form, picking a humanoid shape as the easiest and most effective. Now he was doing personalities, and couldn't help but to be reminded a little of Pandora's box. He was constructing killers, hunters, and he needed to put in every good vice that would make them nonpariels in the field of cold-hearted destruction.
A weapon, after all, needed to be eager to draw blood. Munifican was just reconstructing his swords in human form.
Here, he tugged on a code string, this will be for confidence. And this for amorality. And this for loyalty to their cause. And this for intelligence. Each personality trait was defined as a string of ones and zeros, wrapped around a pulsing core that made up the heart of the construct. That was the simplistic code that told it how to move and walk like a human. Personality was layered on the outside, like string around the rubber core of a baseball.
He saved the code, and duplicated it, carrying a snarled knot of green strands over to his second construct. Shoving it into the figure's chest, he tucked in all his loose ends and wound them carefully around its core. A single strand of code threatened to snake free, and he grabbed it. The entire ball unwound again.
Munifican swore, weaving his code back together and packing it tighter around the construct's core. He had originally intended the two constructs to be identical, but already this one's code was showing signs of being prone to flying off the handle. It was a certain random element; and, Munifican supposed, it befit the fiery sword. Rough and unfinished, but hot as the core of a forge fire and just as ready to burn.
Oh well. He would just fine tune the programming at the end, if he had time.
He removed his hands from the construct's chest, and wiped a hand across his sweaty brow. Now it was time to give them a distinct look.
-----
Something, Munifican thought, is really eerie about the color white.
He'd drained the color from the walls of his workroom, leaving it white and blank as he'd received it. He had found the familiar forge, will comforting, was distracting him from his job. And any other color than white was just as bad.
"Thirty minutes, Mr. Foster."
His constructs were still white, too. He'd been tweaking their personalities, going with the trend he'd already begun to see forming in their cores. One of them--the finished sword--would be calmer, more arrogant than its counterpart, cool as a glacier when it was required. The other would be impetuous, hot-tempered, chaotic. Willing to take risks. They would make a good pair, Munifican thought. There was one last filip of code he'd been meaning to add, though. They would make a good pair--and their efficacy would depend on them working as a pair.
Reaching into the finished sword's chest once more, Munifican fished around. It was like looking for a piece of floss in a plate of spaghetti, finding the code strand he wanted, but at last he had a grasp on the slippery string. He tugged it, green and glowing, from the construct. Then he retrieved a similar strand from the other sword, and wove them together into a single string. As soon as he released the woven band, it snapped taught and hovered in the air between them, gleaming.
Munifican stepped back, surveying his work with a critical eye. Of course, the constructs were still blank as dolls on the outside, but the inside, ah. He could see straight through their cores, and knew they were exactly what he'd intended to create. Even if they had taken on a life of their own.
He had become distracted; they needed to have exterior forms to match their interiors. A thousand thousand designs, memories of his sketches since fed to the forge-fire, tumbled through the smith's head. Should they be humans? Animals? Something else entirely? He frowned to himself, pacing around his doll-like constructs. The shimmering band of code that leashed both together hung between them, visible still--Munifican reached out, touching it and keying it to invisibility. No need for anyone to see that little bit of his handiwork.
"Fifteen minutes, Mr. Foster."
Munifican clenched his hands into fists, increasing his rate of pacing. A dragon and a unicorn, maybe. No, that's silly, he chided himself after a moment. They needed to blend in better than those eyeless constructs that had attacked him. But at the same time, ordinary human forms wouldn't inspire the terror his new masters sought. They needed to frighten their targets into insensibility. But they shouldn't be seen out and among the populace at large, most of the time. Doppelgangers? Werewolves? Ghosts?
"Ten minutes, Mr. Foster."
"Damn it, shut up!" Munifican shouted, startling even himself. He waved a hand at the constructs, suddenly sick of their blankness, the way it taunted his ability to created. They disappeared entirely from his 'real' sight, though he could still see where they stood mutely, woven of code. Mocking him.
He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and plunged his workspace into deep time compression. He had done the hardest part of the design job; now he just needed to prettify them. Like the rapier he'd forged last year, made totally impractical with a woven basket hilt and faux gems practically dribbling off the thing. It had been for one of those renfaire nuts, who thought only of his image, not the actual use of the blade. Munifican had still done no less than his best, though it had stuck in his craw that he'd had to destroy such a lovely blade with such...crap.
The smith couldn't linger much longer. He was running out of time. Opening his eyes again, he stepped forward, pulling one of his constructs back into visibility. All he could think of was swords, the clean perfection of untarnished, polished steel. And white, white like the room and his constructs.
Reaching out, Munifican stroked a hand down the construct's face, forming it into sharp lines and angles. It was a human face, bearing great similarity to Munifican's own, though he didn't consciously realize it. He was lost in the trance of creation, letting his hands guide him as he shaped this new creature. Hard muscle and bone emerged from beneath his fingers, strong as steel but still essentially human in their seeming. Though he crafted it as strongly masculine, Munifican left the construct sexless as a doll. It was a weapon; it had no reason to be anything otherwise. A personality might evolve later, but that was what later versions were for handling.
Sweeping a hand across his construct's forehead, Munifican traced out strands of white hair that fell to his creature's midback. He had still neglected to color it, a thought that itched at his mind as he finished the hair and stepped back once again to survey the thing he'd wrought. It was functional. Beautiful in an odd sort of way, but certainly functional. And that was the highest commendation Munifican could give it.
The whiteness bothered him, though. He reached forward one last time, toying with color palettes like a child with paints. It would be within a hairsbreadth of white, like some kind of malign ghost, but still colored enough to blend in with normal society. If it chose, anyway. Pale skin and silver hair would make it stand out, and--Munifican pressed a hand overs its closed eyes, willing them to color beneath the lids. Gray eyes. It would have gray eyes. Somewhere, dimly, Munifican know this color palette saved just a little on processor power. Probably a good thing, his coding background murmured ruefully, in such a complex GUI as the Matrix.
He cut the time compression. "Two minutes, Mr. Foster," were the first words to hit his ears as he did. Not enough time to make the other construct a new appearance of its own! Munifican swore under his breath, grabbing the complex code that dictated the first's looks and copying them over to the second construct.
There. They were identical, on the outside, but they were as well-matched as any pair of swords. It suited. Munifican nodded to himself, pulling the second construct forth from invisibility. The multiplicity was dizzying for just a moment, the impression that Munifican had simply stuck a mirror in the floor next to his first construct a dazzling one. Hopefully, they'd be just as distracting to anyone they pursued.
"Thirty seconds, Mr. Foster."
He pressed a hand against the first construct's chest, instilling a last gift. They looked like ghosts, he had realized. Why not let them act the part? Invisibility, at least, would prove useful to their task. And he still had to name and save them.
A thought popped to mind, as those last frantic seconds ticked by. Why not make his emulation of the mythological Munifican complete? There was a pair of blades--no. Something in Munifican's mind shied away from the thought. Maybe it was that his new masters wouldn't understand such useless frippery, his only concession to being 'artistic' with his creations. At the same time, he longed for that little act of rebellion. A chance to make them is own.
He shook his head at his own strangeness, and wrote suggested names into a final line of comment code. Then he decompiled both constructs into 'sword1' and 'sword2', and saved them to the local net--just as his last second of time ticked away.
"Time's up, Mr. Foster. Step outside your workspace and show us what you have."
Munifican breathed out. He was done. It was time to see if the client liked the product.
---
A cold glass wall--at least, Munifican thought it was glass--seperated the smith and his shorter companion from what the small man called a 'staging area'. It was every bit as white and empty as Munifican's workspace, save for a small point of light, nearly lost in its surroundings. This, Munifican was told, was the loading program his creations would be initialized from.
He just hoped they worked.
The small man stepped forward, passing smoothly through the glass. "Initialize sword1.exe and sword2.exe," he instructed the walls. "Download firstrun.dat into their cores, and see that they compile completely prior to start up."
Nothing acknowledged his words, save for the point of light shimmering a little brighter. Munifican waited, hands clasped before him and his eyes trained on the small man and the point of light. Please initialize, he bid his creations silently. Please compile. An eternity seemed to stretch on before him, into which Munifican poured prayers to a God he was sure no longer existed.
After an aching span of seconds, the point of light flared once, twice. His two constructs, as naked and perfect as when he'd first made them, glimmered into being in a flare of green light. The small man clasped his hands behind his back, surveying both figures without any sign of emotion.
Munifican waited.
Finally, the construct on the left--sword1, to Munifican's discerning eye--took a deep breath. Its eyes fluttered open--gray, just as Munifican had programmed--and it blinked once, surveying its surroundings. Its brother program came alive shortly after, its movements attracting sword1's attention. The first construct turned to stare at its brother, tilting its head to one side, a lock of silver hair falling across its face. This, too, distracted it, while sword2 had become intrigued with the appearance of the small man. Neither saw Munifican; it was if the glass that was so clear to him was opaque to them.
This had been explained to the smith, of course. Much like human children, new sentient programs could become overstimulated by a barrage of too much sensory input all at once. Not letting them see the face of their creator, or much more than the white walls of the loading program, was a cautionary measure against sensory overload and read faults.
Somehow it cut Munifican to the core.
"Sword1.exe. Sword2.exe," the small man spoke. Both constructs turned their gray eyes to him as they were addressed, waiting silent for new input. "Initialize firstrun.dat."
Their faces, already impassive, went more blank. Munifican hoped it wasn't some sort of error. His fears passed when their eyes brightened again, and sword2 smiled slightly. It was a quirky, offbeat smirk, more than a smile. Idiosyncratically, Munifican's mind flashed back to his sister, who'd just had a baby, and always refered to the newborn's smiles as 'just gas'; he wondered if the program's little smile was caused by the digital equivalent of gastric discomfort.
Sword1 looked to its smiling brother, then back at the small man. Then, with piercing gaze, it tilted its head toward Munifican--staring straight through the 'blank' wall as if it could see the man behind it. At last, it dropped its gaze, raising fine-fingered hands and staring at them intently. "We are beautiful," it finally breathed.
"Yes, we are," its brother acknowledged.
Munifican's heart broke.
---
"Your creations are...exquisite, Mr. Foster," the small man remarked to Munifican.
Both the smith and his employer now stood outside the loading program, watching Munifican's swords as they adjusted to their new environment. Both had adapted to the idea of 'clothing' very quickly, opting--opting! Deciding, in ways that Munifican had never thought possible for programs--to keep with their inherent color schemes with white and silver garb. It suited them, he thought, feeling particularly protective. He watched sword1 disarm a program disguised as a human opponent, breaking the program's wrist as it did so. Sword2 stood behind its brother, fighting off a swarm of other 'humans' with nothing more than a switchblade. They worked together flawlessly, just as he'd intended.
"Yes," Munifican finally acknowledged. "They work."
The small man nodded simply. "They do. Your part of the bargain has been fulfilled. So has ours."
That dragged Munifican out of his reverie, and he looked away from the sight of his constructs battling side by side, to regard the small man. "What?" he asked, startled. "You haven't given me anything. You--"
A wicked, small smile crept onto the other man's face. "You saw a sunrise," he pointed out, "through your forge window, before you deleted it." Munifican was stricken; he had done that, yes.
"You forged a pair of swords," the small man continued, "that you used as your models." Munifican nodded dumbly; he had done that, as well.
"And finally--Munifican, look at your children." The man stretched a hand out toward the wall, where both sword programs were now resting from their struggle, seated back to back on the ground. Their pale skin and clothing was stained with blood, but from the looks of it, all of it was from their enemies. Sword2 was smirking again; sword1 was studying the ring of dead bodies surrounding them.
Munifican was very pale under his tan, and clenched a bloodless lower lip between his teeth. "I...you..."
"You struck a devil's bargain, Mr. Foster. What did you expect you were going to get?"
Tears sprang to Munifican's eyes, as he looked to his sword-constructs, then back to the small man. The words lodged in his throat. He'd been betrayed, but worse, he hadn't had the chance to get to know his creations. What a fool he was, if he'd thought this was better than death.
The small man's smile widened at Munifican's grief. "Good night, Munifican."
The world blacked out. The last image Munifican had before his deactivation was sword1's gray eyes, boring straight into his.
---
Munifican.exe was activated three times over the last four iterations of the Matrix. He was responsible for the creation of the current 'Agent' program, as well as the Angel line. You may recognize the creature Seraph as his handiwork.
His final creation--to this date--is another rogue, originally called 'sword3'. Architect only knows what name it has adopted now.
But his story doesn't concern us any longer. His contribution to it ended with the creation of sword1 and sword2. It is these two--Munifican's original blades--that we will follow, for their effect on this pitiful world has been a broad one, and they serve as white threads in the weft that ties the Matrix together.
I do so love urban mythology. :)
muse
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-24 06:17 am (UTC)I find it amusing that Munifican is, like in so many other pantheons (treating the high-ranking programs of the robots as a collective group of gods is a whole different discussion, though) and governing bodies, the person that they'd much rather didn't exist, yet need because he's the go-to man for technical problems.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-27 11:41 am (UTC)