the chem
06-24-2003, 02:04 PM
Hey everybody. I just typed this up a few days ago and want your feedback on it. It's not scripted yet, only in short story format.
Hard to Accept
By Jeff Brister
Sub was new to the Zion resistance. He had taken the red pill only 16 hours ago and he was already back in the Matrix, with all the cool guns and such whatnot. Sub felt honored to become part of the resistance and was ready to fight to free the humans from the Matrix.
His mission was simple: his childhood friend, Kat, had caught a side glance just as Sub was learning the truth and taking the pill. Sub was to tell her the truth about the Matrix, and defend her from any danger she would encounter while trying to exit. She couldn’t live there anymore after seeing Sub leave and never come back.
Sub was doing this alone –odd seeing as how Eros always wanted at least two people in the Matrix when doing this stuff. He felt worried about this judgment call.
Sub was smack in the heart of what he thought was Austin, Texas. He needed to get to his old neighborhood and find Kat there. The only reason he wasn’t put directly in the neighborhood is that the agents might catch on too quickly and jeopardize the mission as a whole.
He moved as fast as he could to get to the supermarket that was only a mile away from his former home. This was the life he left to become a fighter for a world who did not know what was happening to them. Small wonder, considering that he found the truth on a dare to talk to Eros after seeing him across the street from school every day for two years. It was there that Eros gave him the red pill, after watching in horror his friends turn into agents. His life would never be the same after those three minutes in hell, watching all his friends try to kill him.
Sub had been looking at the sky a lot lately. It had always been sunny and warm; never really a place you didn’t want to live in. The sun was still out, but there was some sort of foreboding that hung heavy in the air. Sub had caught it every time stared at him for wearing such strange clothes, and his convincing orange eyes. It was now a very dangerous world for someone who knew what the Matrix was all about.
As he proceeded to Kat’s house, he began to notice that it wasn’t him feeling something strange –it was really happening. The houses were visually more drab and boring than before, color had lost much of its contrast, and the world seemed to be covered in gray mixed with normal colors.
Sub cautiously knocked on Kat’s door, hearing washed out, muffled sounds come out of the knock. It didn’t sound right, but he had to complete his mission.
The door opened slowly, and Kat greeted him with extreme puzzlement. “Jeff?! What the hell are you doing? And what the **** are you wearing? You need a makeover, boy.” She started to lead him inside, and then caught herself. “The ****?! Jeff?! How the hell did you get outside with those clothes?”
Sub stopped her, and walked inside. “Where is he? Take me to Jeff. I have to take care of something.”
Kat stood static, staring at the fireplace behind him. “Are you related to him at all?” She asked blankly.
Sub put on his sunglasses to hide his eyes and pulled out his pistol. He then saw Jeff run out of the room in his underwear, sweating madly. “Who the hell are you, asshole?”
Two bullets came from the .45 he had in his hand and planted themselves firmly in the imposter’s head. “Goddamn replacement programs! And you were ****ing him?! Did you need cock for some reason? Were you messed up that the real me had left to find out the truth?! I can’t believe you would do this!!”
Kat started to scream for help, but Sub stopped her as she ran to the front lawn. “Listen to me! You need to know the truth. I can give it to you. Just take this pill and all will be revealed to you in one easy swallow.”
Kat tried to struggle from his hold on her, but to no avail. “Take the damn pill! You need to leave the Matrix now! I saw you when the others changed into agents! You stared in disbelief as I left!” Jeff made Kat swallow the pill that leads to the exit of the Matrix and watched as she disappeared and saw agents start to crawl from the houses, ready to destroy the man who had found another person to take from the cozy little pods that gave their creators energy.
“You puny little man! Do you care to fight us?” The agent looked around, seeing several of his kind close in on Sub. “I guess you have no choice, little man.”
Now it was all coming down to what Sub had learned in all those short training programs (two of them lasting approximately 2 hours –hardly enough time) to the test.
“Deck, I need a phone to get outta here –NOW.” The tension in the air was unbearable and was about to explode, and Sub was afraid what 4 agents could do to him.
“Good news, man. We got one in your house ringin’ off the hook. Best to move now if you don’t wanna die.” Deck was calm and actually seemed bored at the situation.
Young Sub, on the other hand, was scared out of his mind. He had to contend with 4 agents, and more were coming to assail him as he stood.
Moments like this even made seasoned warriors sweat, and he was just a rookie, not even used to this world through these newfound eyes. Sub had watched Kat disappear, and was left alone before she could turn into an agent herself. Luck. That’s all it was.
Hastily, Sub dashed toward the agents, clipping one in the chin and breaking another’s knee. He cared not for discretion --anyone who saw him would become an agent and further impede his progress to escape.
As the one with the broken knee struggled to get up, the agent with the destroyed jaw landed a punch to Sub’s shoulder, knocking him down from the force of the blow. Sub countered with a trip, knocking the agent off his feet, and then put another punch to his head which ruined the agent’s entire face.
Sub made his way to what was his room and picked up the small car novelty phone. As he picked it up, he felt himself disappear and lost consciousness for a brief moment.
* * * *
“Sub! Sub! You okay?” Deck’s voice was loud in his ears. He wondered how his hearing had managed through all of Deck’s incessant babbling over his codescreen.
“We have lock on Kat, Sub. All we can do is wait,” Deck said flatly.
The light tension in the air signaled that Kat was on her way. She had been locked on, and the pod was opened. All that was left was to wait for her to come in through the entrance hatch.
“I’m going to my quarters, guys.” Sub took the elevator to his quarters and sat down, still charged from what he had done to free his first truth bearer.
The chairs were cold and uncomfortable as Sub took a seat. He looked around at his new home –it was stark, cold, homey, and comforting all at the same time. This was his world, a world that he was now a part of; a world that was reality.
He was freed from all the faceless, mindless conformers that lived in a dream, only to dream of reality itself. He and all of his brethren were individuals, separated from the dream that was the Matrix –they were all faceless, they were all mindless, they were all the ones who didn’t care if they didn’t know something. Those humans never questioned the nature of reality, never questioned if there was anything more to the world other than what they saw. Sub had the utmost pity for all those humans, the ones who had no life, no idea of what was going on in their world –or out of it, for that matter.
His pondering was short lived, however. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder –it was only Mid, the senior member of the group. A black boy just about to turn 18, he had more time jacked in than Sub, giving him more experience in combat and firearms usage. He had freed three people to this date, and had identified them quickly and got them out fast. Mid was Sub’s role model –a strong fighter, a good, upstanding man, and an all around good guy.
“Sub, you need to get down to the jack chairs. She’s back, and she’s scared.” His tone was grim and nervous; his hand shaking slightly. This was one of the things Mid feared –someone going crazy, not having a sure grip on life that they were in now.
He raced down as fast as he could to the jack chairs and plugged in. Sub needed to comfort Kat at this point. She knew the truth, but the only problem is that she wasn’t able to accept it yet. The biggest problem was that she saw two of him, in the form of a replacement program. Sub now looked at why she was philandering with the program –she needed something familiar to cling close to, and she was so delirious with grief and confusion that anything seemed reasonable.
The program he was transferred to was a simple one, the setting rather esoteric, with a waterfall and green fields as far as the eye could see. The sky was deep blue and covered with fluffy white clouds. This entire program was a little kid’s dream.
Sub stood about 15 feet away, wearing a loose green robe with a kitana tied to his belt. Kat stood in a very elegant kimono, also with a kitana tied to her hip. She had tears streaming down her face, and she faced away from Sub.
“Kat, you’re in the real world now. You have a greater purpose now. You can help us free the humans living in the Matrix from the machines. You can help us win the battle against them.” Sub’s tone was happy and bright, something you didn’t see enough inside or out of the Matrix.
Kat turned around, anguish and anger readily apparent in her voice and face. “You think you can yank me out of this thing? I was happy living in a dream, in a world where I didn’t know any better than the next person! I was happy just being like everybody else!”
The last sentence cut deep into Sub’s mind. He thought that in order to become free from the Matrix, you had to be more than a regular individual to set yourself apart, to have a higher understanding of your existence and how futile it really was until you had found higher purpose in life. That was what Sub had found –a higher purpose to his existence.
“Listen to me, Kat.” He held out his hand. In it was a small, blue pill --the pill to go back into the world of dreams. “Take this. You can forget about me and **** that program all you want.” Her eyes shined at the prospect of leaving all this behind. Sub then threw it into the grass as far away as possible. “If you want to leave, find it. Then you can have your old life back.”
Her hazel eyes lost their luster and charged past Sub in a mad rush to return to the life she had, a life without worry, without care.
The way she searched, the fervor she was putting in her pursuit –it was a sad thing to see. “How odd –to search for a futile dream rather than to accept reality as it is handed to you.
“You only want to see the world how it was, now that you have seen what it really is. Tell me: when you looked at that machine, did you know real fear? When you saw your masters, did you really want to go back to the world they created?”
He turned to Kat. “Or do you want to change that? Do you want to have that life back as the normal world? Or, dare I say, want to go back there and live in a world where you know nothing?”
Rising, she turned to him, face twisted to rage. “Don’t tell me how to live my life, you ****in’ piece of shit!” She unsheathed her blade and ran headlong at Sub, blade shining in the light of the artificial sun.
“A fight, eh? You’re gonna get it, then!” Sub took his blade from his sheath. “Deck, switch to the dojo. I got a feisty one on my hands.”
“Will do, Sub.” Deck typed in a new code set and the field raced away, leaving a white void around the two combatants. In came an Asian dojo, with paper doors and wood everywhere. Kat stood aghast at the change of scenery, seeing what the humans could do with their technology.
“Now will you stand and fight me?” Sub took a stance, holding his blade across his chest and digging his feet into the ground.
Finally regaining her senses, Kat began her charge anew, stamping her feet into the ground as she clasped her blade with white knuckled hands.
The attack was countered simply by a wide upward swing and a hard kick to her chest. She tumbled back, rolling over and over and finally stopping on her side in a lifeless heap across the room.
Grief stricken and scared, he ran to Kat’s side and held her in his arms. “You have to believe in me, Kat; you have to believe the truth that has been granted to you. Please, accept this new reality that I granted to you.”
Her eyes opened and she looked at Sub. Her eyes teared up again, face full of sadness. “I just want my old life back. I want you with me back in the Matrix. Please. Free me from this world.”
“You are already free from this world. You must fight against the world you had and fight for the world you want now. The machines rule now. We must rule now and fight for a brighter future. I love you Kat. I don’t ever want to see you leave this world or the other. I love you, dammit! I can’t clash with you over this! You mean far too much to me to let go of it! Just try to accept the truth and everything will come together for you.”
She stood up and brandished her blade, wiping the tears from her eyes. “The problem is choice, is it not? The system has separated its host from its claws. It has identified the bad humans and intends to destroy them all and forget all about this nonsense. That is how the machines think, right? And the Matrix is nothing more than an illusion that only feels real when you leave. Is that what you think?”
“Yes! That’s it! But what was the problem of choice?” Sub asked quizzically.
“It’s quite simple, really. I can stay here and possibly lose my life to the agents or whatever the hell is out there –or I can simply go back and not remember the man who tried to take me from somewhere I was comfortable and uncaring of anything beyond whether my homework is done or not.” Her tone was flat and emotionless, her blade poised to Sub’s nose.
“I guess you’ll never come around then, will you?”
“That’s about the size of it, Jeff.”
“You’ll never accept it then. That’s an acceptable loss. We don’t need you to fight with us. I had looked forward to this, Tweet.
“Deck, get me outta here, but not li’l unbeliever here and close all the channels when I’m out.”
“Affirmative.”
“Wait a sec. What did you just call m-“ Kat’s voice was cut off as Sub left the training room.
The jack was taken off and Sub rose to look at her face one last time. “Eros, we have to leave her here. She is a security risk and her mind is too strong to let go of what she knows. The blue pill won’t change anything for her. Her mind is too resilient to change like that.”
Eros looked at Kat and then again at Sub. “I noticed. Stuff like this is hard to take. I do agree though. This must be done. But I disagree with your methods of madness.”
Sub turned to face Eros, holding back sobs of anger and sadness. “You think this is easy for me?! You think I can walk over to a jack and pull the plug on someone I’ve cared about for my whole life?! If that’s so, just go. Everyone, go. I just gotta do this alone.”
Forcefully, Sub walked over to Kat’s chair and put his hand on the jack. Tears streamed down his face as he pulled the plug and said, “I have to do this, Kat. I’m sorry.”
As he pulled, Kat’s future was burned into his eyes –a life of grim sadness and running away from the future that was offered to her by her best friend. She looked up at grey sky and thought of how it could have been different if she had gone with the love of her life. The images disappeared as soon as the jack was out of her head.
Kat’s body fell into a lifeless lump as her life abruptly ended. Her form was in the dead middle of the dojo as Sub entered and held her tightly. “It was just hard to accept. That was all. It’s all over now. I just didn’t want you to leave me.”
“Kat, I just didn’t want you to leave me.”
Hard to Accept
By Jeff Brister
Sub was new to the Zion resistance. He had taken the red pill only 16 hours ago and he was already back in the Matrix, with all the cool guns and such whatnot. Sub felt honored to become part of the resistance and was ready to fight to free the humans from the Matrix.
His mission was simple: his childhood friend, Kat, had caught a side glance just as Sub was learning the truth and taking the pill. Sub was to tell her the truth about the Matrix, and defend her from any danger she would encounter while trying to exit. She couldn’t live there anymore after seeing Sub leave and never come back.
Sub was doing this alone –odd seeing as how Eros always wanted at least two people in the Matrix when doing this stuff. He felt worried about this judgment call.
Sub was smack in the heart of what he thought was Austin, Texas. He needed to get to his old neighborhood and find Kat there. The only reason he wasn’t put directly in the neighborhood is that the agents might catch on too quickly and jeopardize the mission as a whole.
He moved as fast as he could to get to the supermarket that was only a mile away from his former home. This was the life he left to become a fighter for a world who did not know what was happening to them. Small wonder, considering that he found the truth on a dare to talk to Eros after seeing him across the street from school every day for two years. It was there that Eros gave him the red pill, after watching in horror his friends turn into agents. His life would never be the same after those three minutes in hell, watching all his friends try to kill him.
Sub had been looking at the sky a lot lately. It had always been sunny and warm; never really a place you didn’t want to live in. The sun was still out, but there was some sort of foreboding that hung heavy in the air. Sub had caught it every time stared at him for wearing such strange clothes, and his convincing orange eyes. It was now a very dangerous world for someone who knew what the Matrix was all about.
As he proceeded to Kat’s house, he began to notice that it wasn’t him feeling something strange –it was really happening. The houses were visually more drab and boring than before, color had lost much of its contrast, and the world seemed to be covered in gray mixed with normal colors.
Sub cautiously knocked on Kat’s door, hearing washed out, muffled sounds come out of the knock. It didn’t sound right, but he had to complete his mission.
The door opened slowly, and Kat greeted him with extreme puzzlement. “Jeff?! What the hell are you doing? And what the **** are you wearing? You need a makeover, boy.” She started to lead him inside, and then caught herself. “The ****?! Jeff?! How the hell did you get outside with those clothes?”
Sub stopped her, and walked inside. “Where is he? Take me to Jeff. I have to take care of something.”
Kat stood static, staring at the fireplace behind him. “Are you related to him at all?” She asked blankly.
Sub put on his sunglasses to hide his eyes and pulled out his pistol. He then saw Jeff run out of the room in his underwear, sweating madly. “Who the hell are you, asshole?”
Two bullets came from the .45 he had in his hand and planted themselves firmly in the imposter’s head. “Goddamn replacement programs! And you were ****ing him?! Did you need cock for some reason? Were you messed up that the real me had left to find out the truth?! I can’t believe you would do this!!”
Kat started to scream for help, but Sub stopped her as she ran to the front lawn. “Listen to me! You need to know the truth. I can give it to you. Just take this pill and all will be revealed to you in one easy swallow.”
Kat tried to struggle from his hold on her, but to no avail. “Take the damn pill! You need to leave the Matrix now! I saw you when the others changed into agents! You stared in disbelief as I left!” Jeff made Kat swallow the pill that leads to the exit of the Matrix and watched as she disappeared and saw agents start to crawl from the houses, ready to destroy the man who had found another person to take from the cozy little pods that gave their creators energy.
“You puny little man! Do you care to fight us?” The agent looked around, seeing several of his kind close in on Sub. “I guess you have no choice, little man.”
Now it was all coming down to what Sub had learned in all those short training programs (two of them lasting approximately 2 hours –hardly enough time) to the test.
“Deck, I need a phone to get outta here –NOW.” The tension in the air was unbearable and was about to explode, and Sub was afraid what 4 agents could do to him.
“Good news, man. We got one in your house ringin’ off the hook. Best to move now if you don’t wanna die.” Deck was calm and actually seemed bored at the situation.
Young Sub, on the other hand, was scared out of his mind. He had to contend with 4 agents, and more were coming to assail him as he stood.
Moments like this even made seasoned warriors sweat, and he was just a rookie, not even used to this world through these newfound eyes. Sub had watched Kat disappear, and was left alone before she could turn into an agent herself. Luck. That’s all it was.
Hastily, Sub dashed toward the agents, clipping one in the chin and breaking another’s knee. He cared not for discretion --anyone who saw him would become an agent and further impede his progress to escape.
As the one with the broken knee struggled to get up, the agent with the destroyed jaw landed a punch to Sub’s shoulder, knocking him down from the force of the blow. Sub countered with a trip, knocking the agent off his feet, and then put another punch to his head which ruined the agent’s entire face.
Sub made his way to what was his room and picked up the small car novelty phone. As he picked it up, he felt himself disappear and lost consciousness for a brief moment.
* * * *
“Sub! Sub! You okay?” Deck’s voice was loud in his ears. He wondered how his hearing had managed through all of Deck’s incessant babbling over his codescreen.
“We have lock on Kat, Sub. All we can do is wait,” Deck said flatly.
The light tension in the air signaled that Kat was on her way. She had been locked on, and the pod was opened. All that was left was to wait for her to come in through the entrance hatch.
“I’m going to my quarters, guys.” Sub took the elevator to his quarters and sat down, still charged from what he had done to free his first truth bearer.
The chairs were cold and uncomfortable as Sub took a seat. He looked around at his new home –it was stark, cold, homey, and comforting all at the same time. This was his world, a world that he was now a part of; a world that was reality.
He was freed from all the faceless, mindless conformers that lived in a dream, only to dream of reality itself. He and all of his brethren were individuals, separated from the dream that was the Matrix –they were all faceless, they were all mindless, they were all the ones who didn’t care if they didn’t know something. Those humans never questioned the nature of reality, never questioned if there was anything more to the world other than what they saw. Sub had the utmost pity for all those humans, the ones who had no life, no idea of what was going on in their world –or out of it, for that matter.
His pondering was short lived, however. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder –it was only Mid, the senior member of the group. A black boy just about to turn 18, he had more time jacked in than Sub, giving him more experience in combat and firearms usage. He had freed three people to this date, and had identified them quickly and got them out fast. Mid was Sub’s role model –a strong fighter, a good, upstanding man, and an all around good guy.
“Sub, you need to get down to the jack chairs. She’s back, and she’s scared.” His tone was grim and nervous; his hand shaking slightly. This was one of the things Mid feared –someone going crazy, not having a sure grip on life that they were in now.
He raced down as fast as he could to the jack chairs and plugged in. Sub needed to comfort Kat at this point. She knew the truth, but the only problem is that she wasn’t able to accept it yet. The biggest problem was that she saw two of him, in the form of a replacement program. Sub now looked at why she was philandering with the program –she needed something familiar to cling close to, and she was so delirious with grief and confusion that anything seemed reasonable.
The program he was transferred to was a simple one, the setting rather esoteric, with a waterfall and green fields as far as the eye could see. The sky was deep blue and covered with fluffy white clouds. This entire program was a little kid’s dream.
Sub stood about 15 feet away, wearing a loose green robe with a kitana tied to his belt. Kat stood in a very elegant kimono, also with a kitana tied to her hip. She had tears streaming down her face, and she faced away from Sub.
“Kat, you’re in the real world now. You have a greater purpose now. You can help us free the humans living in the Matrix from the machines. You can help us win the battle against them.” Sub’s tone was happy and bright, something you didn’t see enough inside or out of the Matrix.
Kat turned around, anguish and anger readily apparent in her voice and face. “You think you can yank me out of this thing? I was happy living in a dream, in a world where I didn’t know any better than the next person! I was happy just being like everybody else!”
The last sentence cut deep into Sub’s mind. He thought that in order to become free from the Matrix, you had to be more than a regular individual to set yourself apart, to have a higher understanding of your existence and how futile it really was until you had found higher purpose in life. That was what Sub had found –a higher purpose to his existence.
“Listen to me, Kat.” He held out his hand. In it was a small, blue pill --the pill to go back into the world of dreams. “Take this. You can forget about me and **** that program all you want.” Her eyes shined at the prospect of leaving all this behind. Sub then threw it into the grass as far away as possible. “If you want to leave, find it. Then you can have your old life back.”
Her hazel eyes lost their luster and charged past Sub in a mad rush to return to the life she had, a life without worry, without care.
The way she searched, the fervor she was putting in her pursuit –it was a sad thing to see. “How odd –to search for a futile dream rather than to accept reality as it is handed to you.
“You only want to see the world how it was, now that you have seen what it really is. Tell me: when you looked at that machine, did you know real fear? When you saw your masters, did you really want to go back to the world they created?”
He turned to Kat. “Or do you want to change that? Do you want to have that life back as the normal world? Or, dare I say, want to go back there and live in a world where you know nothing?”
Rising, she turned to him, face twisted to rage. “Don’t tell me how to live my life, you ****in’ piece of shit!” She unsheathed her blade and ran headlong at Sub, blade shining in the light of the artificial sun.
“A fight, eh? You’re gonna get it, then!” Sub took his blade from his sheath. “Deck, switch to the dojo. I got a feisty one on my hands.”
“Will do, Sub.” Deck typed in a new code set and the field raced away, leaving a white void around the two combatants. In came an Asian dojo, with paper doors and wood everywhere. Kat stood aghast at the change of scenery, seeing what the humans could do with their technology.
“Now will you stand and fight me?” Sub took a stance, holding his blade across his chest and digging his feet into the ground.
Finally regaining her senses, Kat began her charge anew, stamping her feet into the ground as she clasped her blade with white knuckled hands.
The attack was countered simply by a wide upward swing and a hard kick to her chest. She tumbled back, rolling over and over and finally stopping on her side in a lifeless heap across the room.
Grief stricken and scared, he ran to Kat’s side and held her in his arms. “You have to believe in me, Kat; you have to believe the truth that has been granted to you. Please, accept this new reality that I granted to you.”
Her eyes opened and she looked at Sub. Her eyes teared up again, face full of sadness. “I just want my old life back. I want you with me back in the Matrix. Please. Free me from this world.”
“You are already free from this world. You must fight against the world you had and fight for the world you want now. The machines rule now. We must rule now and fight for a brighter future. I love you Kat. I don’t ever want to see you leave this world or the other. I love you, dammit! I can’t clash with you over this! You mean far too much to me to let go of it! Just try to accept the truth and everything will come together for you.”
She stood up and brandished her blade, wiping the tears from her eyes. “The problem is choice, is it not? The system has separated its host from its claws. It has identified the bad humans and intends to destroy them all and forget all about this nonsense. That is how the machines think, right? And the Matrix is nothing more than an illusion that only feels real when you leave. Is that what you think?”
“Yes! That’s it! But what was the problem of choice?” Sub asked quizzically.
“It’s quite simple, really. I can stay here and possibly lose my life to the agents or whatever the hell is out there –or I can simply go back and not remember the man who tried to take me from somewhere I was comfortable and uncaring of anything beyond whether my homework is done or not.” Her tone was flat and emotionless, her blade poised to Sub’s nose.
“I guess you’ll never come around then, will you?”
“That’s about the size of it, Jeff.”
“You’ll never accept it then. That’s an acceptable loss. We don’t need you to fight with us. I had looked forward to this, Tweet.
“Deck, get me outta here, but not li’l unbeliever here and close all the channels when I’m out.”
“Affirmative.”
“Wait a sec. What did you just call m-“ Kat’s voice was cut off as Sub left the training room.
The jack was taken off and Sub rose to look at her face one last time. “Eros, we have to leave her here. She is a security risk and her mind is too strong to let go of what she knows. The blue pill won’t change anything for her. Her mind is too resilient to change like that.”
Eros looked at Kat and then again at Sub. “I noticed. Stuff like this is hard to take. I do agree though. This must be done. But I disagree with your methods of madness.”
Sub turned to face Eros, holding back sobs of anger and sadness. “You think this is easy for me?! You think I can walk over to a jack and pull the plug on someone I’ve cared about for my whole life?! If that’s so, just go. Everyone, go. I just gotta do this alone.”
Forcefully, Sub walked over to Kat’s chair and put his hand on the jack. Tears streamed down his face as he pulled the plug and said, “I have to do this, Kat. I’m sorry.”
As he pulled, Kat’s future was burned into his eyes –a life of grim sadness and running away from the future that was offered to her by her best friend. She looked up at grey sky and thought of how it could have been different if she had gone with the love of her life. The images disappeared as soon as the jack was out of her head.
Kat’s body fell into a lifeless lump as her life abruptly ended. Her form was in the dead middle of the dojo as Sub entered and held her tightly. “It was just hard to accept. That was all. It’s all over now. I just didn’t want you to leave me.”
“Kat, I just didn’t want you to leave me.”