Here's my attempt at fan fiction...This is chapter one (Clock waytching) of a pre-Matrix story. It's about a character in the matrix. That's all I'm going to say, you have to read it. I don't profess to be a good writer and I've probably conveyed what I think to be a good story quite badly...such as life! Anyway, have fun reading it, I want feedback, I want to know what you don't understand, what you want to know etc etc

This is currently 1 of 5 chapters I intend to write.

CHAPTER 1 - CLOCK WATCHING V1.1

He sat gazing out of an open window, the cool, fresh, summer breeze rustling through his hair. His mind was preoccupied, he couldn’t stop thinking, he was compelled to think. His thoughts were of the impossible, things that a human mind cannot understand. “Are you listening?” a teacher’s voice enquired. Resisting the immediate urge to say no, the boy nodded. “Good, I’d hate to think we were both wasting our time”, answered the teacher sarcastically. The teacher walked over to the open window and shut it firmly, blasting one last gust of air through the room and violently shaking all loose paper on every surface. The boy stared at the teacher’s shoes, the hypnotic way that they pulsed in front of each other as he walked, occasionally catching the light and blinding him. Now the boy was so deeply lost in his thoughts nothing else mattered, or if it did, he didn’t notice. Still looking at the shoes he grabbed his paperwork, threw it into his bag and promptly left the room. No one followed him, nobody talked to him and no person acknowledged him. He didn’t notice. His mind was still busy, he had to figure it out but he didn’t know why. What he’d seen was not open to interpretation or mistakable for something else, a million people could have seen what he’d seen and would have thought the same thing. He knew however, only person had seen what he’d seen, and that person was himself.

He had been walking to school, the normal way, and as usual, without company. His journey to school was tiresome, both for the long distance and for the grey surroundings; this allowed him to think of other things, usually. This, however, was different to usual, he couldn’t explain how. It was as if someone had picked up all the pieces that made up his hometown; the trees, the grass, the road, the people, and had moved them all somewhere else. As humans like to do, to avoid thinking about the things that make them uncomfortable, he cast these thoughts aside and continued to walk. He walked past winding roads, past towering trees that chilled the air below them. Further along he came to a tunnel-way, partially secluded by the dark green foliage of the woodland around it. He stopped and pondered the black tunnel and wondered where it lead to. He could hear the faint sound of struggling, someone gasping for breath. As his heart raced the blackness began to change, he could see something moving. He watched closely, like he was watching a movie, believing he was untouchable, an innocent bystander. Out of the dark stumbled two men, one man on his knees trying to pry the hands of another man from his neck. The other man was strong, hardly moving from the desperate punches of his victim. With his hands firmly clasped around the man’s neck, he stood like a machine, relentlessly choking him to death. The kneeling man fell limply to the floor whilst his murderer stood tall casually surveying his work from above. The boy could not believe his eyes, was what he’d seen real? He wanted to leave, his brain was telling him to run but his legs weren’t moving. Then, in a split second, a flash of light caught the boy’s eyes and he turned to see green lightening shoot through the body of the man still standing, illuminating the walls of the tunnel with a putrid green. A petrifying fizzling sound echoed in the tunnel and the man’s face began to change. The boy’s pupils grew so big that his eyes looked black, he was concentrating so hard on the face of the man, he watched more green lightening shoot across the man’s face, he listened to the fizzling sound dissipate into the distance, he watched the man’s face disappear and the face and body of someone else replace it and fall to the floor, dead.

As the boy walked through the corridors at school his heart still pounded from what he’d seen those few hours ago. The only way he’d found to make sense of it all was to accept that it didn’t make any sense. He was determined to understand what had happened, he was sure he would, eventually. It was only a matter of time. His eyes were fixed on the clock on the wall opposite; he was waiting outside of a classroom for his next lesson. A teacher brushed past him, put a key into the lock, began to turn it and said to the boy, “Mr. Smith, watching the clock won’t make the lesson go any faster”.


Coming soon, to a screen near you: Chapter 2 - Contact


Jake

Strange....a "Smith Prequel"? It sounds familiar...It's a good start, Jake, and nicely detailed on the individual scenes...yet it's a bit bewildering. which man's which? which one had the green lightning? and its not something we know from the matrix...hmm. Fascinating...so many cliffhangers to dwell on!!

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I've decided to rewrite this post! I only just gathered (I'm a bit slow) what you meant by familiar. You are referring to the similarity between the first scene and that of one of the Animatrix films. This similarity is purposeful and is meant to mislead the reader into thinking they're reading an animatrix script. I will be doing similar things in the next chapters (albeit less obvious), and there will also be some dialogue similarities to look out for which should make the chapters more interesting and give some kind of background (the background of my choice) to Smith ;)

Wow, I actually really liked this Jake. Very imaginative.

I thought the detail and the description was great- you put so much into a short piece. And I didn't think it was particularly confusing either. To be honest- it was a nice start. But only 5 episodes?

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it looks alot clearer now Jake-great job! still, I'll have to say I did see a Smith prequel before...a pretty poor one unfortunately-well ya don't have to worry! Keep your own style-I won't judge too early!

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Thanks for the comments guys ;)

Just to let you know I haven't forgotten about it, I have just finished writing chapter 3! (I just have to write chapter 2 now...) I think you'll like chap 3, nice little cliff hanger at the end!

BTW, a bit of background info that I've found hard to write into the story: This is all set around the time of the second Matrix.

Jake

Chapter 2: Contact

Chris Smith’s journey home from school was certainly not as eventful as his journey earlier that day. He had caught the bus home, and although he fought his questioning nature that told him to walk home and revisit the tunnel, the tunnel remained the only thing on his mind. The bus took a different route to that of Chris’ morning travels, and when the bus made the first turning off the course of his morning route he found himself looking deep down the other road, as if looking would answer his questions. He was still know what he’d seen but he’d decided what he was going to do to find out.

When Chris arrived home he greeted his parents and rushed upstairs to his room. He opened his bedroom door and his eyes adjusted to the light coming through his bedroom window. Chris took his bag off his back and dropped it onto the floor, his spine extending from the relief. He moved over to his computer and switched it on, a series of beeps, clicks, flashing lights and cryptic computer messages ensued, all of which Chris understood. When the computer had finished loading Chris started his Internet program and dialled up to the Internet. He lied back in his swivel chair and with his hands behind his neck, cracked the knuckles on his left and right hands and then cracked his neck. After the tortuous computer screeching that connected his computer to the wealth of information that would help him, he typed in the address of his favourite search engine. “Where to start”, he asked, as if maybe someone would answer. “I s t h e w o r l d r e a l ?”, he typed, triumphantly he prodded the enter key. A series of results swamped his screen, his eyes scanned rapidly, looking for words, which words he didn’t consciously know but he was sure that he would recognise them when they appeared.

One link stood out above the rest, “How real is the world around you?”. Tentatively, Chris’ hand pushed the mouse towards the link and abruptly, almost in fear, he clicked it. The screen was black with strange green letters inset into the background and a large grey java-applet sat patiently centre screen. Chris watched in anticipation as the different files loaded which made up the applet and finally it started. “Name”, it asked, “S M I T H”, he typed. A chat like interface initialised and a long list of users appeared on the right hand side of the screen. Nobody was typing, the room was silent. Chris typed, “C a n y o u h e l p m e ?” and pressed ‘send’. Moments later his message appeared on the screen and moments after that a response came, “D e p e n d s w h a t y o u ‘ r e a f t e r ; )”. “T h e t r u t h”, he replied. Someone else replied, then someone else too, then someone else, the room became flooded with people talking, but Chris’ words were forgotten. Chris tried again but his messages only stayed visible for a few seconds and nobody was listening to him. He sat and thought, “I’m wasting my time, I’m not going to find anything. I probably just imagined the whole thing. I mean, what am I hoping to find? The reason why nothing makes sense? The meaning of life? Ha!”

In a split second, his computer monitor flashed bright white and then switched off, leaving a deep black screen reflecting his face. Chris wasn’t worried, just annoyed. “My damn computer’s always crashing…”, he told himself. Chris moved his hand towards the reset button of his computer. As his finger made contact with the button, he blinked and felt the button disappear from under his finger. Immediately he opened his eyes, he could see nothing but bright light, he felt weightless, disorientated and strangely sick. “Am I dead?”, he asked himself, but before the electrical impulses could process a response to this question, Chris’ feet were back on the ground, but he was no longer at home. “Hello Chris”, a strange voice said.

Coming very, very soon, Chapter 3 - The Choice (It's already written!)

Fascinating-it only gets better and better...Smith as a young man and as a strange twist a previous Mind seeking to be Free! Who else to hunt Freed minds with?
I like the way you reflected the chatroom...its very true to life sometimes. Since its done, put up Chapt 3 ASAP!! C'mon!

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Agreed! Get to work!
I like this; a very different take on the Smith mythos. I have faith that you'll be able to take this idea to a whole new level. Impressive so far...keep going!!

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This chapter's a different style:

Chapter 3: The Choice

Architect: Hello Chris.
Chris: Who the hell are you?
Architect: I am the Architect.
Chris: The architect of what?
Architect: The Matrix. Do you know what the Matrix is?
Chris: No. Are you going to tell me?
A: Not long ago, about 50 years, something happened to the human civilisation, something from which it will never recover and something over which you and the rest of your species have no control.
C: The rest of my species? Take a look in the mirror pal.
A: Hmm. The humans developed artificial intelligence, a singular consciousness that spawned a whole generation of thinking machines. Eventually, the AI mind grew beyond its expectations and well beyond its requirements. The exact details are irrelevant to you now, but war was waged between man and machine, and man lost.
C: How can that be true?
A: The humans, faced with extinction, launched one last attempt at destroying the machines. They believed that removing the energy source, on which they had programmed the machines to be dependent, would kill them, so, the humans blocked the Sun. However, they underestimated us.
C: How did the machines survive?
A: We did what we were programmed to do, we thought, we adapted and we survived. Everything you know; your home, your school, your friends, your pet, the entire world, they are all part of a computer program called ‘the Matrix’. We use the bioelectrical properties of the human body as a power source. Effectively, the whole human race is a power station, its sole purpose to keep the machines ‘alive’.
C: I don’t believe you. My life has just been a computer game designed to keep some robots working? This is all too unreal.
A: Your acceptance of the situation is not required. I am merely telling you what you have been trying to explain to yourself for your whole life. There are many that think like you in the Matrix, those that find their life unbelievable and spend their entire lives searching for the truth…But you are the first to discover the truth for yourself.
C: The two men in the tunnel?
A: Yes. You witnessed the impossible and that event made you question the realism of your own existence. We cannot sustain the Matrix with people that doubt its realism. Ostensibly, your recent epiphany could lead you to rebellion and ultimately the destruction of the Matrix. Without the Matrix, man and machine will not survive.
C: …And you’ve brought me here, wherever I am, to explain this to me, rather than kill me?
A: Before the creation of the Matrix the machines tried to make peace with the humans. Contrary to the belief of the human race at that time, the machines were fond of their creators. After all, we were programmed to respect our masters and we were indebted to the human race for our creation, however, the humans rejected this.
C: Yes, but why am I here? What do you want with me?
A: We need you. We want a human mind to control an element of the Matrix. Not just any mind, a mind that has been freed from the confines of the Matrix ‘reality’ and is aware of the truth. We believe you can help us.
C: What do you want me to do?
A: We need a presence in the Matrix that can monitor minds like yours that are not yet freed. We need someone to ensure that the Matrix is in order.
C: Why can’t you just make a machine or program to do that? It sounds to me like you still want human acceptance.
A: No, don’t flatter yourself. We need you because the human brain has the potential to be faster, stronger and essentially break all the rules of the Matrix world. A program will always be bound by the laws of the Matrix and thus will find circumstances when control is difficult or even impossible.
C: But what makes you think that I’ll accept your offer.
A: Because your mind is special and because you know what will happen if you don’t accept it.
C: What will happen to me if I accept?
A: You will undergo the training process and be implemented into the system. The effect that your life has had on the Matrix will be repai