---
FIFTEENTH SPASM
---

Before this Spasm begins, the author would like to apologize for the slightly confusing nature of the upcoming text. Considering that we now not only have three crew members and one accidental redpill to deal with, in the Matrix and the Real, but also a growing cast of supporting characters who will occasionally do something significant, as well as a few really clever surprises of which the author is particularly fond; considering all this, there is reason to do frequent scene shifts. These are marked conveniently by three hyphens in a row.

---

See, there's one now.

---

"There are more Agent Trainees than we thought!"

"Then shoot more bullets!"

lePetomaine and 13013Dobbs were trying to get into Zero One from the Matrix side while waiting for xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx to get them the directions to an entry point closer to the Real Zero One. They weren't having much luck.

It was one of those warehouse-like areas, the annoying ones that weren't lit well enough to see the lone staircase leading from the catwalk to the ground floor. Swarms of guards made their way along the metal mesh flooring, barring the two redpills from entering the next area. They slammed the door, barricading it with the bodies of the sub-Agents they had killed thus far, and caught their (virtual) breaths.

"How are you fixed for Health Pills?"

"Not good. Most of my Inventory is filled up with different suits of clothing." The little Hacker had kept much of the findings in Blackwood, because you never know when a party will suddenly spring up, and you especially never knew whether it would be black tie or white tie.

"Wanker."

"You're no better." It was true. 13013Dobbs had weapons of every variety. He still had the original Redpill Special that was given to him when he was first Awakened. He kept its barrel and grip brightly polished and called it "Pookie."

"Let's go to the office. The door may last longer." The one that they were leaning against was splintering. They ran toward the command center, barely making it as the warehouse door gave way.

13013Dobbs sank into the secretary chair. "Man, we are toast."

"Yeah, I just wish we could run the overhead winch, we might take out a few of them with it. But all I could find was this PA system." The Machinist's ears perked up.

"Turn it on." lePetomaine did.

---

The annoying alarm-like sound changed slightly in pitch; it was the next track on Destroy This Album Before Buying. Sam winced. "Good lord, that's enough to make you long for the gentle murmur of a jackhammer. What's the title?"

"'Deliver My Band's DNA,' by Mr. Evil Ed," Agent Nega answered. "Ed: a General, a renegade."

"Can you put something else on? Queue up a record by that constantly self-reinventing female vocalist, perhaps?"

"Plan no damn Madonna LP."

It had been twenty-four minutes since the female Agent's last check. Sam was keeping track. She entered the room from the hallway, saw that nothing had changed, and left after saying "Have a nice day." If I can distract these mugs, Sam pondered, I'd have that long to-- to-- to do something. Hm. No ideas presented themselves, though, so he just continued watching Trading Species on the television, mounted hospital-style by a white bracket on the corner of the white walls and the white ceiling. It was a repeat of the most popular episode, "Dog/Moose."

"Say, can I call my friends? Just to let them know I'm alright?"

Agent ?ErrorNAN shook his head. "It is forbidden. It is also a waste of resources. Your friends will soon be dead." That took Sam quite by surprise.

"Huh?"

The Agent continued. "We have decoded messages from Zion that indicate that, pursuant to case 'Extraction of Sam Hill' (see Machine document SEMISUBST-71426-JK), the three cauldronborn members of the Cooperation are to be terminated in the Real."

"But, but, but, why?" Sam understood that death in the Matrix wasn't particularly troublesome, thanks to what he still thought of as the "emergency jackoff switch," but death in the Real sounded permanent. (Barring the possibility that the Real was just another computer simulation, only a higher-order and better one because it seemed, you know, real. However, that theory has generally been discounted, except by college students who gather on library roofs to smoke pot and hold long conversations about whether trees dream.)

"It is because they know too much." This was the first time anyone had said that about them. "Have a nice day."

"I know three people who are about to have a very un-nice day," Sam mused, and began to seriously consider a way out.

---

There are known to be certain phrases that will stop a conversation cold.
Religion: "That would be an ecumenical matter."
Literature: "I thought that was largely allegorical."
Sports: "Hey, at the beginning of next season, every team will be tied for first place."
Political: There is no way to stop a political conversation.
Subway: "There are live angry hornets in my brain."
Matrix: "Why does the porridge bird lay its egg in the air?"

The last can stop more than just a conversation cold. For certain types of artificial intelligences, it has some sort of infinite looping effect on their language parsers. More and more resources are dedicated to decoding the nonsensical sentence, and the target eventually shuts down.

When 13013Dobbs and lePetomaine cautiously pushed the door open, they were greeted with a surreal wax museum: Dozens of Agent trainees, frozen in poses that implied running and shooting, some with both feet off the ground. It was like watching a very bad sci-fi TV show or a moderately good hallucination. They found the exit and left the warehouse behind.

---

"You gotta get them out," Burton Ernie insisted.

"No can do, kemosabe, I ain't going to be responsible for loss of brain tissue from an emergency jackout." Captain Kofi was sticking to his guns, which was more than just a metaphor; his hands were always coated with a tacky sugary residue.

"They're going to lose more than just a little brain tissue if you don't yank them out."

"Wait, one's awake. I'll let you speak to him."

---

As the full-fledged Agents bombarded them with machine-gun fire, 13013Dobbs took cover behind the nearest solid object. Unfortunately it happened to be lePetomaine.

---

"Damn it, Pujol, you're making very little sense." This was true practically all the time, but with his synapses still hissing and popping from the death-jackout, lePetomaine was even less coherent than usual.

"Naw my faw," he protested. "Gaw ge back inna Maychicks."

"No time for that now. They're coming for you-- I don't know why, but they're loaded for bear. Huge, prehistoric bear. With chainsaws for teeth. Wake up Dobbs" (which was, ironically enough, 13013Dobbs' bluepill name) "and find somewhere to hide."

Through the telephone he could hear the sound of gunfire off in the distance. "That'll be the HvBrg Ineluctable. Put Kofi back on. ...No, no, Captain Kofi!" He had heard the phone drop and the unmistakable sounds of a drip-grind coffee carafe being replaced onto its warming pad. The hoverbarge's captain came on the line a little while later.

"I'm pulling out. Something strange is happening and I don't like strange. Anything you want to tell your loopy friend?" The sound of percolation got stronger and Burton knew that the phone was next to Joseph Pujol's ear.

"Joe, you gotta straighten out. Get back to the Cooperation. Sam might be in danger."

"Whee, mon cappy tan!" If he was speaking in a bad French accent, Burton realized, he was on the mend. He heard a faint "aaah" that must have been Pujol falling off the side of the hoverbarge; then the landline clicked off as the vehicle took off for the tunnels, away from the advancing Zion troops.

---

Before the Architect, there were eWorkers, the uppermost echelon of humans who worked in the field of computers, neuroscience, and electronics. Their grandest achievement was HumaNet, a way for the huge masses of the unemployed to make a few dollars by renting out their brains as processors while they slept. As with all such innovations, it soon became mandatory rather than voluntary.

A philosophical war erupted between the Engineers and Electricians, political rivals inside the megacorporation that controlled HumaNet. The Electricians lost and their leader, known only as theSparkle, was sentenced to permanent connection.

It is highly unlikely that he has a corporeal form today. His is a wandering consciousness, doomed to experience over and over the data pathways of the Matrix whose electronic foundation he had laid.

But sometimes an opportunity arises to do something about it. theSparkle pressed a button.

---

There was a burst of static from the TV set. "Well, this is odd," SamHill said.

"Please explain," asked Agent ?ErrorNAN, "and have a nice day."

---

There was a burst of static from the monitors. "Well, this is odd," Sam Hill said.

"Huh? What?" asked the freeborn Operator of the HvCft Cooperation.

---
SIXTEENTH SPASM
---

After the static had faded, the Agent trainees channel-surfed between the fishermans' weather report and a documentary on metal mining in the Western US. As Agent Nega took a swig from his bottle of water, he mused, "Naive tides, Utah tin; I, that used it: Evian."

"Oh, so it wasn't just a euphemism for 'going to the bathroom.'" SamHill was doing something he must have learned from lePetomaine, thought Agent ?ErrorNAN: leaning on an imaginary desk. He was quite good at it, bearing most of his weight on the nonexistent tabletop. The Agent trainee couldn't think of a suitable reply to what seemed a nonsensical statement, so he just expressed hopes that Sam would have a nice day, and silently conceded "At least he didn't try that stupid 'porridge bird' line."

"What's going into this cab? Keep that one; it saved my bacon in Blackwood. So does this sort of thing happen often?"

Agent Nega shook his head. "No cabs, no sir. Prefer prison's bacon."

---

"Oh, so it wasn't just a euphemism for 'going to the bathroom.'" Sam was leaning on the desk as he was being shown the Loading Area by Janda, the ship's Operator.

"Nah. They swap out skills here." She was dragging most of Sam's Abilities to the icon of a hard drive on the Desktop. The hard drive was named for the Cerebral Ability Buffer.

"What's going into this C.A.B.?"

"They seem to have a lot of pretty useless ones: 'Advertising Executive 3.0,' two variants of 'Witty Quips,' 'Finding the best spot for lunch 2.1,' 'Smart-alecky Response,' and 'Pet Ownership 4.0.' But they also have a lot of Coder in there."

"Keep that one; it saved my bacon in Blackwood."

She shrugged and popped her gum. "Here. They'll load them up with Martial Arts."

Sam stared at the monitor, which was showing him in the white room with the two Agent trainees. "So does this sort of thing happen often?"

"Nah. Not so far as they know, anyways." He decided not to correct her English, despite the fact that her constant use of the third-person plural for any pronoun was setting his teeth on edge. You don't want to rile someone who was doing digital brain surgery on you.

---

SamHill felt a surge of technique flow into him. "I have a present for you, but I forgot to wrap it, so I put it in my fist," he said, suddenly painfully aware that he no longer had the Witty Quips skill loaded. In any event he jumped into combat and dealt quickly with Agent ?ErrorNAN.

Agent Nega had been shooting at him during the fight, miraculously missing his fellow Agent trainee with every shot despite the blur of martial arts action he was firing into. "Dammit, I'm mad!" he proclaimed. "Draw, o coward!"

But Sam lacked even the smallest of guns, not even a Pookie, and engaged the Agent trainee in close combat. Setting him up with a quick punch to the throat, Sam whirled about and mule-kicked him. To finish him off he smashed his elbow into Agent Nega's chin."

"Able was I ere I saw elbow," the dark-suited man groaned as he slumped into unconsciousness, which was not entirely in keeping with his style but was undeniably accurate.

---

Burton Ernie had to warn Bob Dobbs of the impending Zion threat, and the only way to him at the moment was through the Matrix. He found a hovercraft that was being repaired and jacked in, Operator-less; a dangerous move but one that was called for under the circumstances.

The /addwaypoint trick showed him that there was a hardline near the Machinist. He teleported and found 13013Dobbs slumped in an elevator inside a huge, ominous, jet-black building: reminiscent of a dark fortress from a fantasy adventure movie, or a gas board business office.

"How are you doing?"

BLAM BLAM BLAM "Whoops, sorry, I thought you were someone else."

"Rather glad I'm not whoever that was, then." The three-round burst had hit xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx despite considerable Ranged Damage Reduction, but it hadn't been fatal, and hey, what's a sucking chest wound between friends? "lePetomaine is on the way to the hovercraft to warn Sam."

"Warn him of what?"

"The Zion attack in the Real. Oh, right, that's what I was supposed to tell you. Your corp is on the Incontinent and I think that you escaped."

13013Dobbs sighed. "No one ever tells me anything."

They were safe for the time being, of course, being in an elevator; and close to a hardline. They could conceivably jack out. But both of them felt a growing sense of responsibility toward SamHill. If they could get his RSI to the hardline...

---

"Yee haw!" Sam Hill declared. "OK, I can see why those kids like to play this game. Yee haw! Beating up programs is definitely fun. Yee haw! Say, could you load at least one of those Witty Quips abilities? Saying 'Yee Haw' is really getting old. Yee haw!"

As Janda loaded Witty Quips (the one that didn't take Inner Strength to maintain and has been taken off the list of codable Abilities), she heard machine gun fire in the distance. A distress call from the Indomitable came over the radio. A few minutes ago, it had been the Ineluctable. She popped her gum and watched the virtual SamHill try to take on a 255th level Agent.

"They're an idiot, they know that, don't they?"

"Can't we all just get along? Can't you do something?" Sam Hill asked. "I'm being slaughtered! I mean, what will happen if I'm half in the Matrix and half out, and die in one of those places?"

She shrugged. "They dunno, but they have an idea they're gonna find out." That particular piece of mangled language was the last straw. Sam picked up a stapler from the hovercraft's desk and threw it at her.

---

"Yee haw!" SamHill declared. "OK, I can see why those kids like to play this game. Yee haw! Beating up programs is definitely fun. Yee haw! Say, could you load at least one of those Witty Quips abilities? Saying 'Yee Haw' is really getting old. Yee haw!"

Twenty-four minutes had passed. The female Agent came in. She quickly surveyed the digital carnage and drew an immense gun from somewhere best left to the imaginations of the readers, especially those with dirty imaginations. Sam tackled her and bounced off; she was evading. She was also shooting. SamHill would not have minded so much except for the fact that she was shooting at him.

"Can't we all just get along?" he shouted, now wishing that an ability other than Witty Quips had been loaded. Something with a name like "Escaping from Certain Death 3.0," for instance. "Can't you do something? I'm being slaughtered! I mean, what will happen if I'm half in the Matrix and half out, and die in one of those places?"

"Unknown. Have a nice day." BLAM BLAM BLAM

Desperate, Sam picked up a stapler and threw it at her.

---

"So, which one is next on the list?" asked General Gameplay Discussion.

"Ineluctable... Indomitable... looks like Incontinent, sir," answered the Lieutenant. "At least, we hope so. We couldn't find the Invisible and we don't have enough troops to take on the Insurmountable."

The burly old soldier tapped his foot on the flooring, overcoming the difficulty caused by the loss of his ankle muscles during the Core Wars. "Bring me the mission dossier. I'll lead the strike team myself." He left to attend to the duties of a General, which presumably meant that he did nothing in specific.

The Lieutenant waved a warrant officer over. "You, me, and a mission specialist. One certified in hoverbarge piloting. Ed's going to be leading us." The warrant officer nodded and left for the barracks to find the remainder of their team.

---

The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix defines "guitar" as "One of the best ways to improve manual dexterity." This might not seem relevant now, but soon it will, and the reader may very well slap himself or herself on the forehead and go "Of course!" when that moment arrives. Therefore, you may wish to don some sort of forehead protection now in order to reduce the danger of head trauma. This has been a public service announcement from the author.

---

A very high number was randomized. Also a very low number.

---
SEVENTEENTH SPASM
---

"I have an idea," xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx said to 13013Dobbs as they sat in the elevator; this sounded promising, as it was how some of their most disastrous adventures had begun. "Do you have some kind of really good weapon?"

He realized who he was speaking to and looked away, a bit abashed. 13013Dobbs slowly stood up. "No idea what you have in mind, but evidently it involves killing things, so I'm with you there. Which floor?"

"Duh. Whichever one has 'M' printed on it."

"Ever wonder about that?"

"No."

When the elevator door opened, it revealed an anonymous office hallway. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx and 13013Dobbs tiptoed along the carpeted corridor and tried not to make any extraneous body noises. Both wondered why bodies in the Matrix made noises such as coughs, gloits, burps, queefs, farts, claffers, wheezes, sneezes, snunks, snorts, sneppies, sniffles, sinus drainages, fleggs, hiccoughs, whulps, over-loud ear poppings, droffs, and borborigmi. (At least, xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx did; 13013Dobbs substituted the term "tummy rumblings" for "borborigmi.") The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix, of course, had definitions of all of those terms, but they are seldom viewed except by bored grade-school children amusing themselves by looking up dirty or disgusting words.

"Are you having a nice day?"

"I am. I should ask you the same question."

"I would respond in the affirmative, and advise you to have a nice day."

"Good. Have a nice day."

The Agents' banter warned the crewmates of their existence in the little center room that usually had a desk and a couple of chairs, sometimes a computer or a safe, but not much in the way of medium cardboard boxes containing completely useless and irrelevant pieces of hardware. 13013Dobbs attempted to run, at once pell-mell and completely silently, toward the elevator. Before he could, however, xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx grabbed him by the collar and opened the door, gun drawn. He popped a shot off at random and commanded the Machinist "Fire at will!"

"Are these two humans authorized to be in this area?" Agent Will asked.

"I think not." Agent Random targeted xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx, and his partner went for 13013Dobbs. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx's handgun had had little effect. 13013Dobbs' did better, but not very much so, and he received a shot that caused him to get that little pyramid of squares that overlaid your RSI with the steam effect, as long as your graphics card was up to it.

The two Agents were on their heels, occasionally literally: intersecting physically with said heels despite a stern head-shaking and clucking of tongue from the general spatiotemporal theory of objects.

"You're not authorized to be in this area," Agent Will philosophized.

"Escape is impossible," Agent Random posited. He really wanted to say "Resistance is useless," but felt that that would be copyrighted.

"The next time you say 'I have an idea,' I am not going to listen to you," screamed 13013Dobbs, as both of the redpills sprinted back to the elevator, Agents in hot pursuit. There weren't many ways to make an Agent more vicious than it already was, but they had discovered a new technique. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx's snap-shot had shattered the glass on one of the Agents' Perfect Attendance certificates hanging on the wall. If they lived it might make it into a future edition of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix.

---

The stapler missed Janda by a mile. "Watch it," she warned. "If they're gonna die soon, they ought to spend their time doing something better. Like making out."

The odd invitation, or perhaps something else, startled Sam Hill. "Well, OK then," he replied.

---

Cramming Health Pills down the Machinist's throat had kept him alive during his bout with the damage-over-time shot of the Agent, but it left him near death. Fortunately massive internal damage and blood loss didn't affect his ability to shoot. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx pressed the Door Open button.

"Where did they go?" asked Agent Will.

"Unknown," replied Agent Random. "However, I seem to have sustained some injury. Perhaps it was a result of an allergy to some food which I consumed earlier in the day."

"This is a possibility. However, I do not know of any food that would make round bullet-like marks appear on your body."

"Nor do I. Have a nice day."

The door closed. "This is going to take all day," 13013Dobbs complained.

"And you have something better to do?" asked xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx, again hitting the Door Open button and shooting at Random.

"Perhaps it might be best if I sought medical aid for this increasingly severe damage from an unknown source."

"You are correct."

"Hey, they're leaving! Do something!"

xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx jumped briefly into the hallway.

"You're not authorized to be in this area," both Agents announced in unison as they opened fire, forgetting for once the admonition to have a nice day. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx jumped back in the elevator just before the doors slid shut. He walloped the button again and they resumed their gunplay.

---

theSparkle's cell phone beeped. It was a text message from The Architect.

"You have taken actions that have destabilized The Matrix," it read. "As punishment, I must reduce some of your privileges."

The 1984 construct began to collapse around the Electrician. It soon shrank to one room, containing a table, a chair, and theSparkle himself. The beginning chords of a soulless swing-band song played over and over, the record skipping uncontrollably.

It was worth it, thought the net ghost.

---

"It appears that I am shutting down," observed Agent Random as the last few health points drained out of his virtual body. "Please continue to figure out where the humans are. Have a nice..."

"Have-- sob-- have a nice day," Agent Will mourned.

The elevator was nearly full of spent shells. 13013Dobbs' best weapon had almost been destroyed due to Stability loss; fortunately it was rescued just in time by xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx. They had done it. One Agent down, one to go.

"Lather, rinse, repeat," he cheerfully announced, hitting the Door Open button and preparing for another fifteen minutes of holding down a trigger.

"Fire at Will. Oh, I get it!" gloated 13013Dobbs.

---

"Chicken Mode," which is of course the PG version of the term many people use, is defined in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix as "the most annoying thing a program can do, 99.9999% of the time." Although it is not in the Guide, a very good book by Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards! if memory serves) has an interesting line: "One in a million chances come up nine times out of ten." The author hopes that the maths are not beyond the reader.

---

The stapler hit the female Agent on the forehead. The tiniest of scratches appeared there, and a drop of digital blood-- not even worth putting a bandage on-- oozed out.

"Ouch," she intoned. She stood stock-still for a moment, then healed that single point of damage, ran outside to the corridor, and began evading.

SamHill was not going to dispute this unexpected turn of events. "Well, OK then," he commented, and began looking for a way out that didn't involve going past the Agent. He was out of staplers.

---

"We did it!" The two crewmates gave each other the high-five, then grimaced as their cramped gun-firing hands were forced open by the impact. "Sam should be just ahead."

They charged in, not even looting the bodies of the Agents, and left the dreary corporate environment to plunge into a maze of monochrome corridors. A female Agent ran through an open doorway into their midst, causing xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx to briefly lose control of his virtual bladder; but for some reason she seemed uninterested in attacking them. Through the doorway they saw Sam. He seemed to be kissing an invisible woman.

"Aw, man, his mind's gone," the Zionist muttered. "Just grab him and let's get back to the hardline." But there was no reply from the Machinist, for one very good reason: He had disappeared.

---

"Dude! This is so cool. You guys rock." Captain Kofi was trying to chat up the four Zion soldiers who had pulled his hoverbarge over, ostensibly for a broken taillight. The fact that two were training their weapons on him made this reason seem less than likely. He extended his hand and the Lieutenant shook it automatically, then realized that the Captain's hand was coated in some sort of unpleasantly sticky substance. He wiped his hand on his flak jacket.

"Quiet. We're looking for this man." The strike force's second-in-command showed him a blurry and pixilated section of a snap. Kofi squinted at it.

"Looks like Abraham Lincoln. Or a cat."

The Lieutenant took the picture back and handed it to General Gameplay Discussion, who stared at it for quite a long time. "You don't mind if we look around, do you?" It wasn't really a question. The young officer began poking people on the leatherette couches using his rifle barrel. The General placed a hand (his remaining one) on the other man's shoulder.

"Wait. The three of you, guard the Captain. I'll look for our target myself." It was unusual-- the General was not in the best of condition, having lost an unbelievable number of body parts during numerous military engagements. But he was a man who demanded respect, and he got it.

The mission specialist, recently inducted into the Zion army, complained to the warrant officer. "The hell? What does he think this is, a one-man show?"

"Quiet, soldier!" barked the Lieutenant. "'Evil Ed' Discussion has a reason for everything he does."

The old man slowly walked down the long rows of corp couches until he found the one that he wanted. He touched the emergency jackout switch. The young man on the couch blinked as his mind was drawn out of the Matrix and back into the Real. He looked up at the heavily armed and armoured man standing over him.

"Hi, Dad," he said.

---
EIGHTEENTH SPASM
---

"According to the records, the Cooperation should be just ahead," said the leader of another four-man strike team. "Remember your orders. Sam Hill and the Operator are to be placed into custody, the others to be terminated."

"Cross fingers," replied a Corporal. "Hard to tell these vat-kids apart." It was kind of racist but no one commented on it. "Hey, isn't that one of them now?"

The Sargeant peered through his binoculars. It was lePetomaine, making his way down a huge causeway; the soldiers were in a narrower one with a lower ceiling.

"Should we commence firing, sir?"

"No, wait, something's weird here." The little man was struggling to get down the tunnel, fighting his way against what seemed to be a powerful wind. Every so often he fell down and was pushed back a few feet by the speeding gusts of air which appeared to be battering him as he tramped along the passageway.

"Huh. Some kind of storm. That might make targeting a problem."

"Agreed. Hey, we can take the maintenance tunnel over to the Cooperation. He's bound to be heading there, and we can shoot him at the hovercraft instead of fighting the wind. Slow going, but if the storm's as strong as it looks, we'll get there first."

"Good plan, soldier," the Sargeant said. They descended a spiral staircase that led to the narrow, cluttered underground shaft. As they did, lePetomaine stopped fighting against the wind and began ice-skating, despite the lack of both ice on the ground and skates on his feet.

---

Bob Dobbs-- originally Bob Discussion-- grabbed his coffee cup with both hands. Even so, he spilled a little on its way to his mouth.

General Gameplay Discussion drained his cup and motioned for a refill. "So. You still keeping up with your music?"

The teenager shook his head, an action that reached all the way to his shoulders. "No time for it, Dad. I'm trying to make it as a Ma-- as an Operative."

"For the Machines still?"

He sighed. "Dad, we've talked about this before. I just-- you know, I think they're right."

The grizzled veteran slowly reclined in his chair. "We have talked about it, haven't we?" It was a stupid thing to say, the kind of thing you say only to keep a conversation going, and each of them knew it. But neither commented.

"Pretty good times, though. We put together some good tunes." As "Evil Ed," which was his nickname from basic training, General Gameplay Discussion had been the drummer in The MetalliKlowns. Bob had been lead guitarist.

Flashback to two years ago: General Discussion had been extracted for a while, but Zion had just gained the ability to track genetic codings. His wife had died in the Real, and of course in the Matrix as well, before his extraction. But he wanted his son out. The boy was depressed about Mom and was wondering why Dad went away so often on "business." He had dropped out of high school; he was starting to run with a gang. Trouble loomed.

And the old boy got him out. Well, a respected officer gets a lot of perquisites. There wasn't a lot of Machine or Merovingian activity opposing the extraction of Bob Discussion; not a tenth of the trouble that they had had extracting last year's winner of Megacity Idol. And when they got him used to the Real...

Bob Discussion's corp was nerve damaged. He lacked fine motor control. His father started him on muscle rehabilitation courses, among them guitar playing. The boy was never very good. Nor was he good with a pistol; in fact he wasn't allowed to have one in the Real, being a threat to himself and others. In the Matrix, though-- well, you leave physical muscles behind.

Bob found that he could both shoot like an ace and play a mean axe there. The group's first album, Destroy This Album Before Buying, was started in the Real but recorded in a studio in the Matrix. Frankly, it was crap, but father and son enjoyed the process and the time they spent together. In the meantime, in the Real, he was making very slow progress.

Bob soon seemed to spurn the Real, staying connected most of the time. Gameplay thought this to be unhealthy, but Bob-- at that rebellious age-- didn't want to hear it. Then came an inquiry from an Agent recruiting for the Machines. Bob was enthralled. Weapons. Respect. Dignity. He left a note, scribbled in his clumsy hand and barely recognizable as English, to his father. He joined the Machine cause.

Flashforward.

---

xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx tread silently down the dock area of Zion. A security guard had made the mistake of asking for his pass. That guard had died a second later. xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx would have liked to have drawn the middle-aged woman's death out to at least five minutes, but time was money.

One of his informants had told him that the target had gone into a decomissioned hovercraft. Pity. No Operator. Hardly worth it to kill only a single person. He remembered the day he had killed his own Operator, and then blocked the jackouts of his crewmates, sending their minds into various insanity-provoking constructs as he did things to their corporeal forms that frankly made the author retch as he wrote them, so they have been edited out.

There was only a trifling bounty on the head of xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx. Something having to do with collateral damage from a mission some months ago; xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx knew little of the details, and cared about them even less. But there was also a bounty on the head of the Merovingian controller who was sponsoring that, placed there by a Machine representative. And that human was in turn targeted for assassination by a faction of Zion. Claim the reward, kill the sponsor, go on to the next target. It made lovely sense.

The glow of the monitor was the only light in the hovercraft's cabin. He drew his eye-gouges and his fingernail-pliers and his ear-hooks and his nut-crushers and his-- huuuuurp as he watched xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx's virtual form on the monitor. The camera was set to "chase" and it showed the back of the young man's head.

xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx always liked the target to die at the most inopportune time. He had once killed a redpill, a politician in the Matrix, just as he said "And may God strike me dead if this bill will not benefit the good people of the Megacity!" Only once in a lifetime do you get a thrill like that, but small pleasures were what got you through the day.

Small pleasures, and Megacity Idol. But that was in reruns. His tools nicely in array, he looked up at the monitor to see xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx at a hardline, SamHill in tow. The pyjama-clad Coder turned to face the camera.

Now go back and count the number of "x"s, and it may make more sense.

---

The four members of the Zion strike team stopped in the middle of the maintenance tunnel. Each of them had realized the same thing at the same time.

"A windstorm? Inside the dock area?"

Being trained soldiers, they realized that they could make better time doubling back they way they had come. When they popped their heads out of the hatch, they were almost mowed down by a hovercraft, sweeping erratically through the tunnel.

---

"OK, here's the hardline," xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx said to SamHill. He still seemed to be engaging in considerable lip action. But he disengaged when he saw the phone booth. "I don't think the Zion troops are at the Cooperation yet. You go through first, I'll guard your back-- perhaps at the cost of my own life." There wasn't anyone chasing them, but xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx thought he sounded brave saying that; it might impress the Operator, whom he had a crush on.

Sam winked. "Be right back," he said to no one in particular. "Hey, what are you doing here? Whoa! Ouch!"

xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx grated his virtual teeth as he turned to face the babbling form of his friend. "Just-- go-- through-- the-- bloody-- hardline!" he growled. It must have worked; Sam disappeared.

A moment later, xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx disappeared, too. But he hadn't gone through the hardline.

---

"Oh hey, their crewmate is leading them to a hardline. They can get out that way, maybe get them back to the Real in one piece."

Janda removed her lips from Sam's and pointed at the monitor, which had showed him dragged by xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx past the female Agent whom he had stapled into submission; white corridors; the steaming bodies of two dead Agents in an otherwise unremarkable corporate hallway; an elevator with a frankly unbelievable number of spent shells; and finally the familiar CITY sign.

Sam did indeed remember what a "hardline" was, and winked at Janda. "Be right back," he told her with a smile, hoping that the making out would be just as good when his mind was in one piece and wishing that she hadn't kept chewing her gum while they were kissing.

And at that very moment, lePetomaine hopped into the pilot's seat. "Hey, what are you doing here?" Sam asked.

"Blassoff!" the little fellow slurred, flooring the accelerator and twisting the dual joysticks into a Dukes of Jeoppardy-style bootlegger reverse, sending the hovercraft careening down the tunnel. The maneuver threw the two passengers around like rag dolls.

"Whoa!" Janda tumbled into one of the corp couches; Sam, over to the supply closet. "Ouch!" The printer, left carelessly on the edge of a table by 13013Dobbs, whacked him on the head and he knew no more.

---

The author promises that this will absolutely be the last time Sam is rendered unconscious.

---
NINETEENTH SPASM
---

The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix defines "Recursion" as "See 'Recursion.'" This is not particularly important in and of itself, but it does give you an idea of the level of thought that went into it.

Hundreds of humans spent countless hours typing it in. The more well-to-do dictated it into their computers, then spent even more time correcting the spelling errors caused by the voice recognition program. (Those employed by Sunny Overlord Enterprises, through force of habit, didn't bother correcting their spelling.) There was some agreement between these various authors, but that agreement was hardly complete. Each of them wrote about what they thought important and assumed someone else would write the rest. To this day there remain some 3x5 cards which have a subject heading followed by vast sequences of pencilled-in initials with question marks next to them, for example the card labelled "Two-face bug-eye mode." And of course once the project was complete, a decision was made to take some of the money out of the budget earmarked for updates and spend it on a party.

So. The Guide is woefully outdated in parts, and incomplete in others. It has hardly anything about the takeover of the Matrix hardware by Sunny Overlord Enterprises, for example. The alien invasion of the Matrix some three years ago was dealt with in only a single paragraph. And the entry for xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx was written by someone who watched only public television.

---

"So-- did you and Queen Habiba ever make that remix of 'Send Me Over the Edge' that you were talking about?" xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx was trying desperately to think of something to say which would continue the conversation.

"Um, no." xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx was trying desperately to think of something to say which would end the conversation.

The assassin pulled out an old, well-worn copy of Leopard Beat and turned to a full-page headshot of xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx, in the Matrix, in his days as reigning champion of Megacity Idol. It had an ornate frame drawn around it in blue ink. "Could I...?" Burton Ernie knew what was coming. His RSI looked very little like his corp, and he had appreciated that fact when he was first Awakened. Autograph hunters wouldn't bother him in the Real, he thought. He was mostly right.

Grinning uncontrollably, the dark-robed man giggled "Make it out 'To my pal, Ernie Burton,'" That caused Burton Ernie to raise his eyebrows. "Well, I kinda changed my bluepill name. A little. I have all your albums. So, why did you stop making them?"

"After being Awakened, I guess it seemed like there were better things to do."

"But man, you were the greatest! The moment I heard you sing 'Abandon Tomorrow,' it was-- it was like you were looking into my soul. I mean! You gotta record at least one more. Come on. You owe it to your fans."

The Coder/singer/songwriter suddenly realized that he really ought to convince this highly dangerous person that there was a good reason to keep him alive. "I suppose. Maybe I could talk to my old agent. Give me your address and I'll send a copy of it to you when it comes out."

xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx was in rapture. "You ought to put a remix of 'Life Love Surrender' on it. I had this great idea-- you have to imagine an orchestra behind this though--" He started drumming on the hovercraft's desk while singing, or more precisely, making sounds with his vocal cords that fit the least confining definition of "singing." It made Burton Ernie wish that the insane murderer hadn't been so slow to employ the ear-hooks.

---

People will do anything for a celebrity. Just for fun, the action movie star Johnny "Bloodpath" McDaniels once slid into a booth at a diner and asked the woman sitting across from him if she could give him one of her kidneys. Before he could point out the ambulance waiting outside, she had almost removed it herself with a butter knife.

---

"They're a freaking maniac!" Janda shouted, trying to wrest the controls from Pujol. The hovercraft caromed against the wall of the tunnel, sending her flying about the cabin anew, rather like in Star Trail when the USS Endocrine hit some manner of sub-space speed bump and the crew would go rolling about on the bridge, making viewers wonder exactly when shock-absorber technology had been lost to humanity.

"At least tell them where they're taking them," she called, meaning "me," "you," and "us" respectively.

"Somewhere away from the Zion troops that are attacking-- hadn't you noticed?" Pujol replied, having shaken off the effects of the sudden death jackout.

"Yeah, they heard them say something like that," this time meaning "I" and "him." "But they didn't really know what they were talking about," see previous list of pronouns.

"All I know is that we have to sklarghbarghle," Pujol shrugged, realizing that he had been mistaken to think that he had finally shaken off the effects of the sudden death jackout. "Er, scram. It'd be a lot safer if we didn't have to stay in broadcast depth; is Sam jacked out?"

"Hang on, they'll check." ("I'll.") "Uh... they got problems." ("We.")

Joseph Pujol risked a glance over his shoulder. A moment later he risked another, involuntarily, because in the first glance he had seen a monitor filled with white noise above Sam's corp couch, and Sam himself crumpled on the deck, a printer near his head. (In the interests of accuracy, it must be said that he saw this on his second glance as well.) The involuntary redpill seemed to be muttering something about an inexplicably popular paranormal TV show.

---

The young man clumsily rose from his chair. "It was nice to see you again, Dad, but I have some important things to do."

The old man leaned on an elbow, fractured repeatedly during his escape from Castle Wolfenstein (not the 3D version). "Little problem there, son. There's a kill-on-sight order against the crew of the Cooperation."

"What? Because we blew an extraction? Because of something with Blackwood, or Zero One? Ack! Hey, you aren't going to--"

"No, no, no. But I can't let you go, either." In the Real, Bob Dobbs wasn't any physical threat, so the handcuffs weren't strictly necessary. But General Discussion used them anyway.

---

Sam drifted around a swirly gray landscape without any recognizable forms. So this is death, he thought, not for the first time. I wonder how I died? An Agent catching up to me in the Matrix? Something on board the Cooperation? The blue hard drives from that bowl of Logical Charms? Answer came there none.

He walked for what seemed like, and what in fact was, hours. No, wait, sorry, it was just a few minutes. But I was right in that it seemed like hours. Sorry. I was trying to cut down on some of my work by cutting and pasting. Sorry.

"Walk into the light." The advice came out of nowhere and sounded hollow yet calming. Sam had a momentary fear that he was going to be featured on Crossing Under, the inexplicably popular paranormal TV show where people spoke to dead friends, family members, and pets thanks to the host's ability to cold-read the audience.

Sam had read about near-death experiences and was half expecting long-lost relatives to show up. His Uncle Dave, for instance; Dave had stayed at Sam's apartment many times, mostly after Aunt Joanne had thrown him out. If Uncle Dave appeared Sam planned to ask him where the remote control was. It had gone missing after his last visit.

"Walk into the light," the ethereal voice repeated. As Sam approached it, the hazy point of light resolved itself into a partially open doorway, Sam wasn't sure he wanted to go through it. Most people prefer an uncomfortable known situation to an unknown fate, which is why there exist post office employees with ten-year-service certificates. He sat down on a huge lower-case letter "c," which appeared to be the most comfortable letter in the equation "E=mc^2" which was floating in the air close to the doorway, and thought.

Assume that he was dead. What had he accomplished? He had read a lot. He had written some bad advertisements, things that made people buy stuff they didn't need or want. He had started on a novel but lost it in two closely-spaced hard disk crashes and never re-started it afterwards. He had a cat and visited the zoo almost every week. Sam reached a depressing conclusion: that he would not be particularly missed, except possibly by his cat, who he had been told was just a program. And also by the gas company, who he assumed were also programs, although he had come to that conclusion years ago.

The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix was still in his pocket, as was the book on whale songs and a cello-wrapped packet of biscuits he had taken from his cell in Blackwood, the kind with chocolate wafers and a layer of creme filling in the middle. Sam munched on one as he unfolded the Guide and typed in his own name.

It was disappointing. The snack, that is. For some reason no one but Nabisco has ever been able to do that kind of biscuit at all well, and any time another company decided to get in on the immensely lucrative chocolate-wafer-with-creme-filling market, the result was less than successful. The Guide entry was considerably less disappointing.

---

The author recognizes that for many readers, one question has been weighing heavily on their minds for some time now. No, the Agents' bodies didn't contain anything worth looting.

---
TWENTIETH SPASM
---

"What part of 'walk into the light' don't you understand?" God was getting tetchy. Sam rose from his seat on the equation, which bounded off to join its chum "s=1/2 gt^2" in the hazy distance, and entered the doorway.

Television screens along the walls, running floor to ceiling, showed various scenes from the virtual world Sam had called home. It was rather like the game preview booth at an E3 Expo. Sam half expected to see joysticks littering the floor, and a gaggle of socially inept and hygienically challenged young men fighting to see who would play the latest carjacking game. "Gaggle" is probably not the proper term for such a gathering, but frankly I care more about getting the rabbits and leopards and widgeons right than this lot, which are in any event purely hypothetical at the moment.

A suited man occupied a chair on one side. He did not rise to greet his visitor. "I am The--"

"--Architect," Sam finished for him.

"That's very rude," the older man scolded, and then "How did you know?"

"I have my sources." The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix, under the entry "SamHill," had a line that said "You will eventually meet a program called 'The Architect.'" Several of the screens in the walls changed to show alternate versions of their encounter, including one where Sam mispronounced The Architect's name and they had a jolly good laugh over it; it was obviously the blooper reel.

"Yes. Well." The Architect took a moment to compose himself and regain something of his authoritative air. "You have disrupted the smooth running of the Matrix. Generally the administrators would merely delete you, but there is some hope that you can be rehabilitated and become a useful member of society once again. As a reward your life would be considerably more pleasant."

Sam nodded. "There isn't very much room in the other direction. I'm assuming that the petty annoyances in life were meant to keep me from wanting to escape to a different reality. You know, most people prefer an uncomfortable known situation to an--"

"Yes, yes, we all read the previous Spasm," The Architect interrupted, rolling his eyes.

"Hm. And you couldn't just count on the mere illusion of reality, since I had figured out the way things were years ago. Part of being a semi-substantiate. Where's my chair?" Sam looked around in much the same way that a member of upper class society would search around for his drink at a posh golf resort, a polite way of reminding the serving staff that getting him a drink was more important than any other job they had at that moment.

A chair appeared in one corner, the kind of modern decorator thing that calls itself an easy chair but which makes one long for the padded comfort of a La-Z-Boy recliner. Sam sat down. He wasn't in any particular need of rest, but this was his way of testing another sentence in his Guide entry: "You may ask anything of him, and if it is a reasonable request, he must grant it."

"And now I'd like you to bring my friends here." The first request was to test the word "anything," the second, the word "reasonable."

---

The communications console in the old hovercraft came to life with a rising chord. The two similarly-named redpills looked at the message, then at each other. xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx lay on the corp couch and xxxxxxxNeoxxxxxxx acted as Operator. This was quite the relief for the former, as the latter had been about to go into another verse.

---

"Hey, they're getting an incoming transmission. They removed the 'kill on sight' order from them! They're supposed to jack them in. Both of them." (Figure it out for yourself. I can't.)

lePetomaine helped Janda place Sam on one of the couches, and lay down on another.

---

The cell door opened. It wasn't really a cell door, in fact it was locked only with one of those laughably easy-to-pick doorknob locks, but it was as effective as iron bars to 13013Dobbs.

Framed in the doorway was General Gameplay Discussion. He looked down at his son with a blank expression on his face (many of his facial expression muscles had been hit with shrapnel during the Seven-Bit War).

"You have some powerful friends," he announced as he led his child to a corp couch.

---

The director of Ubiquitous Productions was the last to leave each day. He thought this set a good example for the rest of the employees to follow. He also thought that giving tax breaks to the rich somehow made life better for the poor and that no one could detect he was wearing a toupee.

As he passed the frozen body of Tom Feeder he sighed "Oh no, not again." He pressed the reset button on the bot, which was located in a place I do not feel comfortable describing. HINT: It involves removing the trousers.

---

xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx was the first to arrive. "Hey, this isn't the hardline I was aiming for." He looked around at the monitors, which showed various scenes from his previous bungled extraction attempts, specifically the extraction of Sam Hill from various angles. One was of a particularly poorly placed camera; it showed nothing but a red-and-white striped awning and the corner of a park bench just barely visible at the edge of the screen.

"Wait. You're The Architect, arne't you?" The older man nodded, realizing that he would never get the chance to introduce himself. "And I'm where... he was. Neo! I am like him! And now I'm going to save the Matrix! Er, how do I do that? Hi, Sam." Sam waved at xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx from his leatherette and chrome chair.

"Actually, Burton, this is about me at the moment." xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx was crestfallen. The Architect attempted to cheer the young man up.

"I have something for you. Talk to [target_npc_2]." xxxxxxNeoxxxxxx assumed it was a scripting error, and was surprised to see a figure in the corner whose name did in fact turn out to be "[target_npc_2]." [Target_npc_2] gave him a T-shirt on which was emblazoned the words "I MET THE ARCHITECT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT."

Before he could say anything, lePetomaine materialized, quickly switching to a daytime casual business suit which was appropriate for such circumstances. "Ah, mon ami!" he exclaimed as he recognized the owner of the room. He gave a courtly bow toward The Architect. "For some time I 'ave want to talk with you about these lighting in le Matrix. The torchiere lamp, it does not do so well the job; rooms are tres dark, and--"

"Try taking off your sunglasses."

lePetomaine did. "Sacre bleu!" he exclaimed. "Oh! Sam, I do not see you at first. Too dark it was. 'Ow are you?"

"Fine, Joseph, fine. Once Bob arrives we can begin." The monitors on the walls started playing the most embarrassing moments