(( The first three parts of this story were posted elsewhere around the start of October, so as to explain my absence from MxO while I’m at university, stuck behind their firewall. All posts after the first three are new. ))

‘This is a most… unusual request.’

Procurator straightened his jacket and began playing with the sunglasses in his hands.

‘Yes, I know. We’ve already discussed the nature of my request. Has it been approved?’

Agent Gray stared at Procurator, unblinking.

‘I have spoken to my superiors, and your suggested plan shall go ahead. Please remember that we are placing considerable trust in your ability to see this through.’

‘Good. You’ll not find it misplaced,’ said Procurator. ‘When can I expect the access codes?’

‘They will be forwarded to you within the day. Intricate scheduling is required for this exchange to go unnoticed by your fellow operatives – the timing must be precise.

‘I have been reminded to ask of you the status of your new program.’

Procurator rummaged around in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a PDA, on which he began to tap away.

‘It’s very nearly complete. This will work, you know. I’ve honed my skills to perfection, if I do say so myself. Even your programmers would be hard pressed to come up with something like this little beauty anytime soon.’

‘I am not at liberty to discuss our resources Mister Tonks,’ Agent Gray responded, raising an eyebrow. ‘Just as long as we get the program.’

‘You’ll get it, have no fear of that. But only when I’m finished with it. I told you I don’t know how long this will take. It could be days, it could be months.’

The two stood in silence for a moment. Bluepills walked around them on their way to whatever meaningless jobs they had. When busy, Center Park was perfect for meetings like this.

Procurator put his sunglasses on.

‘You’ll hear from me when it’s all over. T’ra.’

‘Good afternoon, Mister Tonks.’

Message Edited by [TGS]Procurator on 12-05-2005 10:10 AM
Message edited by Procurator on 12/05/2005 02:10:35.

Procurator started to pick up the pace. The powers that be in the Machine hierarchy had obviously put a great deal of effort into keeping the lesser robots out of his way as he navigated the maze of corridors in the outskirts of Zero-One. He’d counted about two robots in the last ten minutes, and they were both occupied with more important matters than watching humans walking around. Although humans were allowed in these halls – at least humans who’d sworn allegiance to the Machine Civilisation – there wasn’t much cause for anyone to be here. Even with Agent Gray’s and the more important Machines’ promised protection, had any robot caught sight of him, rumours of Procurator’s presence here would spread to his fellow operatives in no time.

He reached another turn in the corridor and peered around it. Empty, as predicted. This should be the last stretch, he thought. Indeed, ahead of him the corridor came to an end in the form of a large double panelled door. Procurator glanced behind him and typed the access code into the panel to the right of the doors, which promptly slid open with the slightest hiss. Picking up the rucksack he’d dropped in his fervor to get the code keyed in, he skipped lightly through the doors as they slid shut behind him.

Upon entering the room he was greeted by a vast array of shelves, stretching away in all directions from the entrance. The doors’ final click as they locked was the last noise he heard for a while. This room would normally be teeming with robots collecting the items on the shelves and dragging them off to various other sections of the City, but now there was just silence, and an eery glow from the ceiling that kept the room lit and left no shadows. On these shelves lay some of the untold number of components that went into constructing the Machines’ advanced hovercraft. Consoles, fat cables, screens… even seats; all the things one would usually find in the broadcast bay.

After staring at the spectacle for few moments, eyes wide like those of child walking into a fully stocked sweet shop, Procurator headed for the third aisle of shelves from the left. He couldn’t imagine how complex it had been to orchestrate the schedule to keep the room empty, but he didn’t think it would last long: he had to hurry.

It took him a whole twenty minutes to run from shelf to shelf, grabbing things from their recesses and stuffing them into his oversized rucksack. Sometimes he’d miss something, causing him to curse under his breath in ever more flagrant ways and run back to pick it up. When at last he was satisfied, he legged it to the doors and made quick his exit.

Turning the first corner on his way back to the docking bays, he almost collided with a robot marching in the opposite direction.

‘My apologies, sir,’ remarked the machine, who bowed stiffly before going on its way.

Procurator wasn’t worried. By this stage no amount of wireless Machine gossip would reach the ears of any of his crew members before the Aggregator left Zero-One – it was already primed for departure, and the crew would be assuming their flight stations. He hoisted the rucksack higher onto his shoulders, and hurried along the hallway.

Flare walked into the broadcast bay just as Procurator was getting out of his seat, obviously having just come out of a construct – he’d never enter the Matrix without her at the controls. Procurator looked a little pleased with himself.

‘What’re you so happy about?’ she asked.

‘H’mm?’ murmured the captain, seeming to only just notice the ship’s operator. ‘It’s done! The program’s done!’

Flare looked confused and tilted her head to one side, inquiringly.

Procurator laughed. ‘Uh, never mind. How close are we to the rendez-vous point?’

‘Fro says we’ll be there in ten minutes.’ She tilted her head to one side again, and asked: ‘Are you going to tell me why we’re meeting this hovercraft crew? I’ve never heard of the HvCFT Clearsight before; they can’t be important.’

‘Oh, ah, you’ll soon see.’

Procurator left the bay and walked over to the ramp leading down into the storage area. Flare watched him, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

***

‘We’re there, Pro.’

Frotee swung around in his pilot’s seat and looked at Procurator, whose mood had sobered somewhat since a few minutes ago.

‘Nice going, dude.’ Procurator turned back to face the rest of the crew who had gathered themselves in the Aggregator’s entry bay, ready for action. ‘Right,’ he started, looking from one member to the next, ‘The Clearsight might not be here for a few minutes yet. I’m going to head out there and wander over to the place I said I’d meet them – just around the corner, behind that outcropping. You lot can stay here until I call for you.’

There was a little shuffling of feet amongst the crew, and Campusanis spoke up: ‘Pro, I think as first mate I should accompany you, just until—’

‘Sorry Camp,’ interrupted the captain, raising his palm, ‘I mean you too. Me appearing outside the ship on my own is part of the arrangement… yes.’

He smiled weakly, and bent over to pick up the large, bulky rucksack at his feet. Heaving it over his shoulder he stood by the ramp controls, hit the button and marched down the ramp. Mist swamped into the hovercraft, enveloping the crew as the ramp began to ascend again.

Procurator stood for a moment in the bitter cold, gazing at the barren wasteland before and around him. Quickly discarding the thought of going back into the ship for a hat, he turned towards a large outcropping and started to walk towards it, shoulders sagging under the weight of the rucksack. He reached the rock wall and started to walk around it as it curved away to the left, an elbow of stone carved by God knew what fierce winds pervaded the area. After walking a few more meters beyond the point at which the Aggregator vanished from sight, Procurator faced the stone and started to stare it up and down. Eventually he spied what he was looking for: a narrow crack in the wall, barely discernible from a shadow. He put down the rucksack and took from it a pickaxe. With one blow part of the wall shattered, but the fragments that fell to the floor were rusted metal.

He entered the rectangular opening that had formed, dragging the rucksack in with him. He swept a torch he was holding from side to side, and attempted to navigate his way through the hallway. This small building had once been an underground reservoir, built into the side of a mountain. In the many years since the start of the War the landscape had changed considerably, but the manmade structure, fortified as it was against the machinations of nature, remained. The Machines had kept track of facilities like these, and had suggested this as being the perfect place for the plan to take place.

A rumbling shook the floor and Procurator almost lost his footing. A gust of wind flew through the doorway behind him as the image of a hovercraft flying low swooshed past it. Moments later the sound of distant gunfire echoed down the hall. As loyal as his crew were, Procurator knew they wouldn’t hang around to get attacked by the Merovingian ship he had summoned to drive them away from his location. The Clearsight was a ridiculous name he’d made up on the spot, but it had served to at least ferry him to this location. As extra insurance that he would remain lost, Procurator had cleared the co-ordinate buffer on the Aggregator – it would take them weeks to find this place again. He started moving down the hallway as the sound of his ship’s engines faded into the eternal night, the Aggregator going on the defensive and making its way to the sewers.

After a while he entered the control room of the facility, and started emptying the bag. It took him hours to construct the device out of its constituent components, but eventually it was ready. As tough and as thick as the reservoir’s walls were, they couldn’t block the signal this baby would generate. He pulled up the least decrepit looking seat from the room’s control panels and sat himself within it, making sure he got as comfortable as he could. He leant back, closed his eyes, and pressed the largest button on the device he had constructed.

Flare was sat in front of the broadcast bay console with her head in her arms on the desk. The scrolling code on the screens around her tinted the whole area and made her usual silver hair look bright green. She’d fallen asleep at the console for the tenth night running.

‘You’re not doing yourself any favours,’ Campusanis would say every morning after he’d found her slumped in her chair, snoring at the ceiling and about to fall over the armrest onto the floor.

Indeed, she had very rarely left her station since starting the search for Procurator all those weeks ago. After the Aggregator had evaded the hostile Merovingian hovercraft and returned to Zero-One, Flare wasted no time in running a search. Her fellow crew members had their misgivings, of course: why would his captors allow Procurator to jack into the Matrix at all? They had in turn started investigating other avenues, with Doomicon following leads in the Real through The Glitch Society’s amassed contacts, and Campusanis and Frotee delving into the Matrix’s myriad of rumours and gossip, searching for anything they could.

Through all this, Agent Gray was still tasking the crew and the rest of the faction with the usual missions to kill Exiles and retrieve seemingly unimportant data. In fact, a number of people had remarked on how little the Machines seemed to care about the disappearance of a captain of one of their most dedicated factions. Not that the Machines would show any emotional concern anyway, but under normal circumstances surely they would have given the crew more time to look for him? d4sh and RockyB had agreed to transfer new recruit Gookin over to the Aggregator to help, but even with his efforts the search proceeded distressingly slowly.

There were murmurs among the faction of officially naming Campusanis the new captain, but Flare would never allow it. The first mate himself had doubts over the idea, and said he’d much rather wait a while longer before giving up all hope. It was never discovered who did it, but someone must actually have recommended his promotion to the Machines, as one morning a message arrived in the faction leader’s inbox ordering him not to permit such an action. A message of reassurance from their masters, or another display of their oftentimes bizarre logic?

The broadcast bay was cast in a red light, and began alternating between red and white illumination. Flare shifted slightly in her seat and moaned, lifting her head up slightly to see what the problem was. Suddenly she snapped upright and started typing furiously at the keyboard. One of the screens had the words ‘Partial Match’ flashing across it, with a small table of co-ordinates listed underneath.

Not daring to think what it meant by ‘partial’, Flare narrowed the code windows down to examine the area the search had specified. She recognised the place at once. A series of large steps rising from the ground, metres high, topped by a lone door leading to nowhere: the Ascension Monument in Westview. She looked from one screen to another, staring at the code, trying to find just a tiny sequence of familiar characters. There seemed to be a very few disparate fragments that looked like they could be part of Procurator’s RSI, but they were scattered all over, almost like a cloud of code over the monument, interspersed with totally unrecognisable code that Flare couldn’t make any sense of.

She was squinting so closely at the screens now that it took her a while to register that there were a number of people standing at the base of the giant steps. She looked at them in turn, the descending code becoming shapes and colours in her mind, coalescing into distinct forms. There was one man standing apart from the others. For a brief moment, the operator was sure she had found Procurator, but almost as soon as she thought it, she realised she was wrong. He didn’t look that much like him, and none of the underlying code was anything resembling his. No. No, it couldn’t be him: her captain never wore red.

Turning her attention away from the lone man, she tried to work out who the other people were. They were standing around him, some pointing at him, talking to him, though Flare couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their posture was obviously aggressive – the man was in trouble, whoever he was. Examining the faces of the aggressors, she was suddenly struck by the fact that they were all wearing masks.

The man didn’t turn as he ran across the bridge leading from Stamos to Magog. Already practically out of breath – whatever that meant in a virtual construct with disturbingly flexible rules – he tried pushing himself harder, which only resulted in him losing his co-ordination and falling to the ground with a thump. He grasped at his red-tinted glasses which had been knocked off, and pushed them back onto his nose as he got up and started running again.

He couldn’t remember how he’d escaped, couldn’t remember what had happened to him after being knocked out. One moment he was defending himself against a pack of Cypherites, and the next he was... Cypherites! Yes, there’d been Masked Men there, by the giant stairs. As he reached the end of the bridge and turned northwards he tried to recall what had been said during that exchange. How much of the plan had he divulged to them? He wasn’t even sure what the plan was anymore. Something had gone horribly wrong in the first stages, but he couldn’t think that far back, like there was a wall to his memory beyond which he could not probe – a point where his memory started. There were bits and pieces: a name here, a vague idea there, but nothing coherent.

The faction! He must contact the faction. They could help. He ducked into an alley and crouched, huddled between some bins and tried desperately not to pant so much for the fumes were revolting. He reached into the inside pocket of his rust coloured jacket and dug out his mobile phone. He hurriedly tapped a number on the keypad, but before putting the device to his ear suddenly shut the phone again.

‘Won’t work. No, it’s not the right way. Need to play it cool, Pro, real cool. How much do they know? How much are they supposed to know?’

The man shook his head and thought for a moment, his breathing getting calmer by the second. After a few minutes he opened his mobile and tapped out the number again, connecting his phone to the private communications channel of the Glitch Society. He knew what had happened, he knew who he was and what he was meant to do, remembered just what the others were permitted to know and what they could be allowed to think. He waited a few more seconds, then spoke:

‘Can anyone hear me?’

The alleyway echoed with the sound of voices screaming out of the phone.

‘Proc!’

‘The Procurator has returned!’

‘Dude, you’re alright!’

‘Hello all!’ said the missing captain in return, ‘Good to hear your voices. Where are you?’

The faction leader replied: ‘Sanguine Room. How are you, man? Did those Mervs let you go or what?’

‘To cut a long story short, I managed to get away from them and radio for help. I’m on a Machinist hoverbarge right now, bound for Zero-One. I can’t tell you how lo-’

Suddenly he keeled over to one side, tipping a bin which made a harsh noise as it hit the ground and emptied its contents across the narrow path. Procurator brought his left hand up to his throat and tried to scream, but no sound would emerge. As he thought he was about to choke to death, his eyes opened wide and he sat bolt upright in an instant.

‘Stability error. Recovered.’

The man blinked and shook his head. He looked down at his chest, just in time to see a few green code sprites sink into the floor as his body seemed to reintegrate. Stability error? Had he just said that?

‘What was that?’ came the faction leader, sounding not a little concerned.

‘Uh, oh, nothing. Connexion problems. The operator I got lumped with on this hoverbarge isn’t too bright.’ Procurator coughed and stood up. ‘Sanguine Room, you say? I’m on my way.’

***

Flare had overheard the faction chatter and was overjoyed, even taking the liberty of leaving her station for a few seconds to do a little victory jig amongst the jack-in seats. She calmed down and got back to staring at the code on the screens, a live feed from the club where she was monitoring the rest of the jacked-in faction members as they waited for Procurator to make an appearance. She watched the code describing the entrance to the main room with anticipation, so relieved she would finally be able to catch a glimpse of her ship’s missing captain after all these months.

As the cheers rose in the room, fellow Glitch Society members greeting their comrade, Flare raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t actually come into the room – Procurator wasn’t there. She looked away from the entrance and swept the code analysers across the entire room, hunting for Procurator, but unable to find him anywhere. After a while she stopped, and realised she was staring at some code she’d seen before somewhere. Code depicting a familiar form, but donning red clothes. He’d left the throng of the party and had moved over to the bar.

As if able to sense the scrutiny, the man narrowed his eyes and stared at the drink he’d just ordered, frowning. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

The Aggregator’s operator gave a little yelp as a line of typical Matrix code fragments on one of her screens resolved into alphanumeric characters:

’Don’t you dare say a blasted thing.’

Message Edited by [TGS] Procurator on 01-07-200611:33 PM

(( Finally time to end this story! The events depicted in the following two posts (second one will be here in a few minutes) happened ages ago, just before Christmas. Sorry I haven’t posted them before now, but I’m kinda forgetful like that. ))

’Everyone. I need you to meet me by the Tabor Park Central hardline.’

Procurator took the cell phone away from his ear and let his arm hang to his side as he paced to and fro between the benches by the hardline. He’d decided he ought to tell them what was going on – or at least everything he could tell them. He knew something had gone wrong because he didn’t feel… normal. Not agitated or some ill emotion, but somehow physically wrong. Then there were the strange stability issues he’d been experiencing over the past couple of days…

‘You heard the man. Let’s get to it,’ ordered d4sh.

Within a few moments all members of the Glitch Society who were jacked into the Matrix were assembled in Tabor Park. They stood behind the subway entrance while Procurator continued to pace in front of them all. As he began to sense the tension mounting among the group, he began.

‘Dudes, there’s something I have to confess. To use a horrid cliché, not all is as it seems. For starters, I’m not on a hoverbarge bound for Zero-One. Heck, I wasn’t even kidnapped.’

This revelation was immediately followed by murmurs among the assembled faction members, punctuated by a few shouts of confused anger from the Aggregator’s crew.

‘What the hell are you talking about, Proc?’ demanded Campusanis, stepping forward looking both angry and worried.

‘That’s just it, Camp: I’m not–’

Before he could finish the sentence he doubled up in pain, doing all he could to maintain his balance. A couple of the crowd rushed forward to help him, but he looked up and waved them back.

‘Don’t bother! It’ll pass. I just need to–’

Green code spiralled around him and his figure almost seemed to melt into the air. Suddenly he fully materialised and stood bolt upright just as he’d done several times before – though never with any witnesses around him.

‘Stability error. Recovered.’

‘What… in God’s name… was that?’ asked d4sh, staring at Procurator in disbelief.

‘I–, I can’t really explain it,’ he replied. He put his hand to his head and sighed. ‘You guys are going to have to follow me. I think I know who might be able to explain it far better than I. Call them an outside observer, if you like. But you’re gonna have to be prepared.’

d4sh ordered everyone to load up their abilities at the hardline, then asked Procurator where they were headed.

‘Roger’s Way. No, we have to walk,’ he said as Gookin picked up the receiver from the hardline. ‘I, uh, can’t take hardlines in my state.’

The walk to Stamos was done almost in silence. Procurator led the pack through the south of the Mega City as the rest stayed together, talking in hushed voices. Occasionally they would glance at Procurator but would look away again whenever he turned around. After what seemed like an uncomfortable two hours, they rounded the corner where the road continued past Club Kaos. The Ascension Monument towered before them.

Standing in front of the giant steps was a group of about a dozen people. As the Glitch Society approached them, following Procurator’s lead, it became all too obvious that this was who they were meant to meet.

‘See everyone? I told you he’d show up.’

A woman stepped in front of the others in the group. As she got closer, everyone realised with disgust that she was wearing a bandana over her face. Yet the clothes and the figure were all too familiar.

‘Aiyalla,’ said d4sh, quietly. ‘Everyone fan out. I don’t like where this is going. Proc, you better know what you’re doing!’

The woman pulled a rifle out from behind her and pointed it at Procurator, and the people behind her all raised their weapons as well, each one aiming at a member of the Machine faction.

‘So good to see you again… Procurator.’

The others in Aiyalla’s entourage laughed loudly.

She turned to face d4sh. ‘You may have noticed, my dear captain, that your friend here hasn’t quite been himself as of late. Funnily enough, it’s because he isn’t himself.

‘This guy here is a program.’ She stepped closer to the simulacrum, who continued to stare straight at her. ‘A beautifully crafted effigy of his creator. From what my technicians and I have been able to work out, he’s some sort of advanced trace program built into an RSI. He’s supposed to be controlled by a real person. But something went wrong, didn’t it sweety?’ Aiyalla grinned at Procurator’s bizarre creation.

Gookin did as the rest of the Glitch Society did and peered at the simulacrum, but directed his words to the Cypherite. ‘And how exactly do you know all this?’

‘Why, we found him. Wandering aimlessly through the Barrens. It was plainly obvious that he wasn’t who he claimed to be – in fact, I’m surprised you didn’t suspect him to begin with. He put up quite a fight when we took him to be analysed. We couldn’t figure out what his mission was, but we know he’s a very powerful program.’

As the discourse ran on, the counterfeit Procurator had narrowed his eyes and started trembling silently, clenching his fists. With a burst of energy he pointed his finger at Aiyalla.

‘She worked with the people who attacked the Mainframe!’ he shouted, startling the already tense gathering. ‘Captain Solarcode was uncovered as a spy and reported by a friend of this Masked abomination. Before Veil was imprisoned she ordered the destruction of the Mainframe in retribution. The informant never survived, and Aiyalla is the closest link remaining.’

‘Oh, so that’s what this was all about?’ asked Aiyalla, a look of feigned relief on her face. ‘I did wonder. I never met Solarcode personally, but I gather he had it coming. As did your crew. A pity the assassination wasn’t entirely successful.’

The Machinists behind the simulacrum raised their weapons and pointed them at the assembled Cypherites, who didn’t flinch.

‘And now you’re looking for a little revenge, is that it? In the absence of the actual saboteurs, you want to take your issues out on us? Well, we have a different reason for being here.

‘d4sh, honey, we want this program. In exchange for your beloved captain, of course.’

d4sh looked away from Jamicus, who was aiming his rifle at him, almost daring him to make a wrong move.

‘You had the program before. Why did you let it go?’

‘So he’d go and fetch you lot. It’s no use us having the simulacrum like this. It’s broken. We want the source code, which is no doubt kept on one of your ships.’

‘And you propose to give us back the real Procurator. You know where he is?’

‘Not his location in the Real, no. We know where he is in the Matrix.’ She raised her arms, lifting the rifle above her head and pointed to the sky around the Ascension Monument behind her. ‘He seems to be in a bit of a pickle. His consciousness isn’t manifested in an RSI, so he’s just floating around, stuck in the Matrix. The only way he can jack out is if he merges with his counterpart here, like he was supposed to in the first place. Thing is, we have the reintegration code.’

She smirked and the rest of The Masked Agenda laughed behind her. Aiyalla pointed her rifle at d4sh.

‘Best get your operator to hunt for the program source code. We aren’t going to give you very long.’

The Cypherites began to advance on the simulacrum and the Glitch Society. They, in turn, stepped forward as well. Before d4sh or anyone could answer Aiyalla’s demands, the simulacrum leapt forward and snatched the rifle from Aiyalla’s grip, tossing it behind him. Aiyalla swore and tried to tackle Procurator’s double.

That was all the others needed to see. Within an instant, the street in front of the Monument was filled with the sound of grunts and gunfire, as the two factions battled. The simulacrum had engaged Aiyalla in close combat, and was fighting furiously, faster than any operative ever could. He had been no match against a gang of Cypherites when they had captured him, but as they were all distracted by the rest of the Glitch Society, he was able to concentrate on the one combatant.

After a time, both sides began to lose members, as individual fights were won and operatives were jacked out to prevent total death. They would not return for some time, as the emergency jack-out procedure would leave them dazed and confused in their hovercraft, and so the people remaining intensified their strikes against the opposing sides.

There was a scream from Aiyalla, and everyone glanced around briefly to look. She was still standing, but hunched slightly, clutching her side. The simulacrum on the other hand was standing straight upright, his face emotionless. Green sparks could briefly be seen shimmering around his form.

‘RSI integration module loaded successfully. Rebooting.’

The battle had brought the simulacrum in close contact with the code Aiyalla carried, and had drawn it in, to the dismay of the remaining Cypherites.

Seeing the program looming over their leader, seemingly having lost no energy in its struggle, the Cypherites broke out of their combat with the Machinist faction and ran to Aiyalla, helping her up and escaping into the night, heading down a darkened alleyway, no doubt to the nearest hardline.

‘Let them go,’ said d4sh, as some of his faction started to move after them. ‘They can’t do anything now. We’ll find them again later.’

He ordered Bittype to start healing the surviving members of the Glitch Society, and went over to the simulacrum, who glanced briefly at him and turned towards the Ascension Monument. d4sh stood there, watching the strange creation climb the slope between the enormous steps until he stood at the top and looked out over the towering apartment buildings surrounding the park.

As he’d done before, the simulacrum doubled up in pain and almost fell to the floor. Yet, instead of the code fragments appearing around him, there was a flash of green light accompanied by a large shock wave that deafened the operatives below.

‘Stability error. Abort, retry, failure?’ he said, almost in a whisper.

‘Failure.’

Everyone turned to look at the speaker. He stood before the simulacrum, his face suffused with rage, seeming to tower over his creation as it trembled and shook. The program looked at Procurator in despair, and suddenly disintegrated into green code sprites, which sank slowly through the air and into the ground.

Procurator, his true form restored, started to descend the slope at a slow pace. d4sh and all those who had been healed ran up to greet him.

‘Is it really you, Proc?’ asked Frotee.

‘I’m back baby!’ replied the Captain, a nervous smile appearing on his lips. He coughed harshly.

‘We’d best get you seen to.’

Bittype came over and cast her healing abilities, allowing Procurator to speak more easily.

‘Dudes, I’m so very, very sorry.’ He looked crestfallen at his friends around him, friends he had kept in the dark and who no doubt felt betrayed. ‘It was a plan I’d formulated after I became first mate of the Mainframe. A program that could infiltrate the depths of the Matrix, hidden like so many programs, but still controlled by a real person. Agent Gray decided I had to arrange my disappearance – the program would only be successful if the one controlling it were to ‘vanish’. The kidnapping scenario seemed like the best way.’

The captain proceeded to describe how he had arranged for the relatively harmless Merovingian hovercraft to intercept the Aggregator so he could hide away in the reservoir facility and jack into the Matrix through his program: the Refined Interfacing Trace Algorithm Simulacrum, or RITA. The interface algorithms hadn’t worked as intended, however, and while his memory and personality were copied into the hollow simulacrum, he was without any control over it. Attempting to jack out, he only got as far as abandoning the program’s RSI (which itself had corrupted, changing the colour of its clothing from cyan to red), which left him a formless consciousness drifting through the Mega City.

Someone asked why he was able to integrate with the simulacrum again at this particular place, the Ascension Monument.

‘Well, I think it–’ he started, but hesitated. Procurator looked away and at the ground, as if in thought. He couldn’t give them the whole truth. Not yet. ‘I, uh, no, I’ve got no idea. Must just be how the simulation handles errors like this.’

That seemed to satisfy his audience, and d4sh suggested they leave any more questions for later, after they’d regrouped at Zero-One for the first time in weeks. Procurator told Frotee the co-ordinates for the reservoir facility where his equipment was set up and ordered him to jack out and get the ship there to pick him up.

Yes, there’d be time for more questions later. There’d be reports to write and some serious explaining to do.

Message Edited by [TGS] Procurator on 04-21-2006 04:13 PM
Message edited by Procurator on 04/21/2006 07:13:50.

It seemed to Procurator as if the night had taken an inordinate amount of time to descend. He’d been waiting at the arranged meeting place in Chelsea for over half an hour. Not that he was getting impatient or anything, but it troubled him that an Agent – known for their efficiency and punctuality – would be late. Were the Machines’ resources being stretched at the moment? Were they testing him for his failure? Maybe they just wanted to make him feel uncomfortable. That thought alone troubled him more than anything.

The sound of footsteps made him turn. An Agent had just entered the enclosure and was rounding the fountain to meet him.

‘Good evening, Mister Tonks.’

‘Ah, yes, hello there,’ Procurator replied, peering through the shadows at the Agent’s partially hidden features. ‘I was rather hoping Agent Gray would–’

‘Agent Gray is currently unavailable to deal with your case personally. I have been dispatched in his stead.’

This worried Procurator. He’d always dealt with Gray when it came to the RITA project. Agent Gray was a busy man, certainly, but he’d always found time in the past. His absense was a statement that the Machines had lost confidence in the captain of the Aggregator.

‘I see.’

Procurator said nothing more. The Agent just stood there, unblinking, staring at the operative with uncaring eyes. The silence was intolerable.

‘Look, I messed up, okay?’ Procurator blurted out, looking exhasperated. He wasn’t going to take this lying down. ‘The supersim went wrong. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that the wireless access station I built would subject the signal to that much disruption. The interface collapsed and–’

‘We are aware of the fault in your program. It has been uploaded to our systems as per the arrangement and we are analaysing it now. I have been asked to inform you that its completion is a low priority for us at the moment.’

‘What? Are you kidding? The supersim is just what you need right now for tracking Cypherites and all those dangerous new Exiles that have been cropping up. If you’ll look at my report, you’ll see it managed to track down some Cypherites even without my help.’

‘We have taken everything in your report into account, Mister Tonks. We have other, more pressing projects that require our resources at this time.’

Procurator turned on his heel. It was tempting to storm off in a huff – that’d make a statement. A bad statement. He took his glasses off and turned around again to face the Agent.

‘I can finish the program myself. I know what went wrong. All I need is more access to the Machine mainframe. If I can work using that thing’s processing capabilities, I’d have the program repaired in no time.’

The Agent looked at him for a moment, then placed a hand to the earpiece in his right ear.

‘That is not a viable option, Mister Tonks.’

‘Oh, come on! You’ve given other people access to work on less important projects! And you know mine’s–’

‘This meeting is concluded, Mister Tonks. We will contact you if we require your assistance in the future.’

With that the Agent turned and left the enclosure. Procurator sat heavily on the bench behind him.

He’d stuffed up the RITA project, and now he was facing the Machines’ collective contempt for inefficiency and failure. What could he do but leave the project standing and continue with his usual faction work? He’d already been given a severe grilling by d4sh for not telling him about the project, so even the Glitch Society wouldn’t offer him the best assignments anymore.

Standing up, he put his glasses back on and started walking towards the hardline. No, he wasn’t going to take this sitting down. He would do anything and everything in his power to win back the respect of his superiors, even if it meant bending the rules yet further.