"The name is Clem Snide, I am a private asshole.

As a private investigator I run into more death than the law allows. I mean the law of averages. Here it is a routine case of industrial sabotage and the factory blows up, killing 23 people. Well these things happen... I am a man of the world, going to and fro and walking up and down in it.

Now death smells. I mean death has a special smell, over and above the smell of cyanide, cordite, carrion, blood, and burnt flesh. It's a grey smell. Stops the heart and cuts off the breath. Smell of the empty vessel. Smell of field hospitals and gangrene. I got a whiff of it when Mr. Green walked into my office..."

At least, that's how it started. This is St. John Morrison, He-Who-Clicks (HWC) Clem Snide, recently of the Megacity. I stopped playing after Sony made their usual bollocks of things in the Matrix Online game, but wrote quite a lot before that happened-- and for some odd reason, continue to write. Maybe I just like the world.

Clem is borrowed liberally from the works of William Burroughs, so he is (a) not politically correct, and not "not politically correct" in the Rush Limbaugh way either; and (b) doubleplus not for kids. But then I have this weird idea that The Matrix is a work of adult fiction and that any game based on it should be too. He's a hard-boiled dick, gay, a junky, and a self-substantiate whose bluepill name was "William Burroughs." The coincidences, once he Awakened and got to read the works of his predecessor, were surprising.

As I said, I got pissed off at Sony, and some of that will come out in the stories. Can't help it. I also wrote some stuff (The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix among other things) that didn't initially hinge on any of my characters in MxO, although I did register the major players in it after the fact to prevent lesser mortals from taking on their personae. SOE cut off my account suddenly during the process of posting the story and I had to post the remainder onto their EverQuest Online Adventures fanfic site during a brief free account restoration, so this will be the first place it's been published in its entirety.

Hope you enjoy it, and remember: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." (Last words of Hassan I Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, master of assassins)

Oh, and say, if anyone still playing The Matrix Online could post to the "Next Renaissance" forum that these stories (The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix, My Education, and Noir As All Hell) are here, I'd appreciate it. Wouldn't mind saying hello to the Moirai crew if they're still jacked in.

Would the last one to leave The Matrix Online please turn out the lights?

A short note to tell anyone who's listening that The Matrix Mania now has more of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Matrix and My Education than Sony's The Matrix Online site! A landmark indeed. Huzzah.

Again, a humble request that people subscribing to the game please point people on the MxO site toward http://www.matrixmania.com/f20-fan-fiction.html and send a letter to snide.clem@gmail.com if you want to reach me.