I was brought into a room that was a kind of a medical bay. It had monitoring devices and feeding tubes, as well as intravenous bags and hookups.
"It might take a while for him to recover from such a long time spent as part of the system." Dozer said as he laid me down on a medical bed beside several monitors. "I'll start working on him to get most of the superfluous connections removed. After that, we can start building his muscle mass and get him acclimated to feeling real gravity and not the artificial crap you guys are used to."
"Do what you can as quickly as you can." Morpheus ordered. "We need him up and running as soon as possible. Now that he's out, the machines are going to freak out about losing one of their best programmers and energy producers."
I pretended to fall asleep, just so they would keep talking about me with me right there.
"Is he really that important?" Dozer asked and hooked me up to the monitors using various ports on my chest and at my neck. They all started beeping loudly and showed off my accelerated metabolism and how much energy I was producing as I let my body start healing itself.
Both of them stared at the monitors for a few seconds before Dozer chuckled.
"Never mind." Dozer said and attached an IV to my arm.
Instead of ejecting the ports right away like my body wanted to do, I slowed the process down to only slightly push the foreign things out. The only one I wanted to leave intact was the one in the back of my head. I needed that one to facilitate a much more stable connection to networks and it would allow me to participate like everyone else in both simulations and jacking back into the Matrix.
*
Over the next few days, my body quickly adapted to the changes my inherent abilities granted me. Dozer was surprised at first when he tried to remove one of the superfluous hose attachments and it was already partially pushed out. When he yanked it out and the flesh and skin slowly filled in the hole left behind, he skipped trying to medically extract any more of them.
His focus changed to concentrate on the machines showing my body's health and output. He recorded it all and shared the details with Trinity when she came around and Morpheus when he stopped by for an update. The both of them were shocked that I was recovering much faster than anyone else they had retrieved from the Matrix.
My muscles were expanding into their full size, without Dozer having to do anything like feed me extra fluids, nutrients, or exercising me. I was healing in days all of the damage my body suffered from not eating proper solid food for decades.
My hair was growing in as well, only it was blond and not black like it was in the Matrix. Trinity was a little spooked by that, for some reason, and had started to avoid coming to the medical bay to check up on me. Surprisingly, it was Switch that seemed to like how much I was changing from who I looked like in the Matrix.
She visited me with Apoc along a few times, as if she was showing me off. Apoc joked that she was treating me like a show horse and should expect a blue ribbon prize when I finally woke up. Switch laughed and hugged him, whispered something in his ear that I didn't catch, and she dragged him off to their room to have some fun.
I stayed there for a week to let myself fully recover from whatever process was done to allow someone to exist inside those bio-pods. I could have been up and around long ago; but, I didn't want to freak everyone out more than they already were.
After one final good night's sleep, I opened my eyes to see Dozer looking down at me with amusement on his face.
"I snored, didn't I?" I asked and he laughed.
"Like a damn chainsaw cutting down a forest!" Dozer said and slapped my shoulder. "I set aside some spare clothes for you over there by the bathroom. You're about my size and they should fit."
"Any spare water to wash up?" I asked and sat up to stretch my muscles.
"Not really. Bio-waste is a huge space constraint on a ship this small." Dozer said. "We reload what little liquids we can carry, along with oils and grease, every trip back to the city. We offload the waste into the reclamation systems there at the same time."
"Every two weeks or so?" I asked and he nodded. "How far away are we from the next one?"
"It's about a day before we're due to head back." Dozer informed me. "We expected you to sleep through the docking procedure this time, actually."
I looked at the tough pillow and back at him. "Do you want me to keep pretending?"
Dozer laughed and grabbed my shoulder to pull me off of the bed. "Get cleaned up as much as you can and get dressed. Morpheus will want to talk to you and introduce you to everyone."
"Like you?" I asked and he guffawed.
"Yes, like me." He said and pushed me over to the pile of clothes. "I think Switch left you some fragrant soap to rub into your pits, too."
That made me laugh and I held a fist up for him to bump. He punched mine with his and I walked over to where he indicated. I grabbed the pile of clothes and there was a small bottle of oil and a cake of something like soap. I sniffed the soap and it smelled like fresh dew and mint, so I'd have to thank her for it when I had the chance.
I stepped into the small cubicle that was the bathroom and there wasn't a smell, to my surprise. It looked like an airplane toilet, so it sucked out what you deposited into it, rather than let it sit out in the open to stink up the place. I was grateful for that and used a few cleaning spells on it and on myself, just in case.
Once I was magically clean, I used a little bit of water from the small sink to dampen a washcloth, used some oil and soap on it, then rubbed it all over. It would let everyone see I had used the same things they did and it would also let Switch know I liked her gift without actually having to point it out to her.
I tucked the soap and oil into my pockets and stepped out wearing the clothing Dozer gave me. He looked happy that they had fit and gave me a thumbs up sign. We left the medical bay to head to the main gathering area in the ship, called the main deck. It was where most of the work and repairs on the equipment happened, too.
"That's the reactor core." Dozer said and pointed to an old and kind of rusted cylinder in the center of the ship. "It powers what the captain uses to broadcast a pirated signal to hack into the Matrix. It lets you guys do all that funky shit you guys do."
The markings on the reactor were odd. Mark III, Ver.11, Nebuchadnezzar, Made in the USA, 2069. It almost made me laugh that it had such a simple designation and markings for a futuristic hovercraft, even if the date was completely wrong. Humanity hadn't surrendered to the machines until 2199, long before hover tech had been put into production.
"Hey, Morpheus! Neo's up and awake!" Dozer shouted and everyone stopped working to look over at us.
"Holy shit." Switch whispered when she saw me.
Morpheus turned away from the console that a skinny man with a hat was working on and he smiled at us. "Welcome to the main deck of my ship, the Nebuchadnezzar." He said as the others gathered around. "Most of my crew you already met." He said and put a hand on Apoc's shoulder. "This is Apoc, Switch, and Cypher." He said, gently patting each shoulder as he walked by them. "Trinity needs no introduction."
I nodded to each of them and Trinity definitely didn't like my larger muscular form.
Morpheus stopped walking and motioned off to the side where Dozer walked to. "The ones you haven't met formally yet are Tank, our ship's operator..."
The short dark curly haired man standing beside Dozer nodded to me.
"...and his big brother Dozer, our resident pilot and medic." Morpheus said and the big guy grinned at me. "The little one behind you is Mouse."
I glanced back and saw the thin guy with a hat that Morpheus had been talking to earlier. I nodded at him and looked back at Morpheus.
"You wanted to know what the Matrix is." Morpheus said and motioned to the side. "Trinity, if you would."
Trinity walked over to me and gave me an odd look, then she took my arm and led me over to a group of barber chairs that looked so ratty that they were going to fall apart any moment. She waved for me to sit, so I sat down and she locked my feet into clamps.
"Lay back and relax." Morpheus said and I did so. He leaned over me and spoke. "This is going to feel a little weird."
I felt him slip the brain spike device into the back of my head and waited for a moment, then he hit the load button and I was suddenly inside a white space with nothing else in it. I was there alone for a few minutes before Morpheus formed and smiled at me.
"This is the Construct. It's our loading program." He said and waved at the whiteness. "We can load anything, from clothing, to equipment, weapons, training simulations, and anything else we need."
Two old leather wingback chairs appeared, that were the same as the ones in the Matrix when I first met him, then the small table formed between them. An old fashioned television appeared as well and the old fashioned remote appeared on the table. I glanced around and there was nothing else.
"We're really inside a computer program." I said as my new connection gave me the details. It was surprisingly similar to a holodeck with similar constraints, yet you could run forever inside it if you wanted to.
"Is that really so hard to believe?" Morpheus asked me. "Your clothes are different, the plugs in your head and arms are gone. Even your hair is different."
I reached up and rubbed my hair, just to confirm it was true. It was also blonde and just as it was when I was in my Atlas persona. I would need a little more time in the real world for it to grow in fully.
"Your appearance is what we call a residual self image. It's the mental projection of your digital self." Morpheus explained.
"If that's true, then..." I waited a moment as I changed the normal clothing the simulation dressed me in and reformed them into my superhero costume. It was mostly white, with gold accents at the cuffs, the neck, shoulders, boots, and belt. The stylized Earth symbol on the center of my chest stood out as well.
Morpheus looked shocked at the change.
"Yeah, that's much better." I said and flexed a little, then walked over to the chairs and sat down in the same one I had in the Matrix. "I feel much more like myself this way."
Morpheus needed a few moments to compose himself. He took a breath and reached for the television remote on the little table as he sat down in the other chair. "This is the world that you know, as it was at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first."
The button was clicked and the television showed the city I lived in.
"It only exists now as a part of a neural interactive simulation we call the Matrix." Morpheus said and looked at me. "You've been living in a dream world, Neo."
I nodded and he motioned to the television.
"This is the world as it exists today." Morpheus said and clicked the button again. It showed a devastated world of city ruins and darkness. The screen flickered and the white space around us changed to mimic the scene on the television. "Welcome, to the desert of the real."
Lightning crackled overhead and thunder boomed across the ruined cityscape.
"We only have bits and pieces of information; but, what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We marvelled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI." Morpheus said. "A single consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines."
I sat back in the chair and let him speak.
"We don't know who struck first, us or them..." Morpheus started to say.
"Definitely us." I interrupted and he looked surprised. "Only humans would be stupid enough to think they could win against a foe that never needs to rest. Or eat."
"I suppose, since we do know that it was us that scorched the sky." Morpheus said and pointed up as the thunder boomed again. "At the time, the machines were dependent on solar power, and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."
"Yeah, right." I whispered. "Necessity is the mother of invention."
Morpheus nodded. "Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems, is not without a sense of irony." He looked up at the sky and it crackled with lightning again. "The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a kind of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need."
"That figures." I said and Morpheus leaned back as well and relaxed in the chair.
"There are fields, Neo. Endless fields where human beings are no longer born. We are grown." Morpheus said with a sigh. "For the longest time, I wouldn't believe it, then I saw the fields with my own eyes. I watched them liquefy the dead so that they could be fed intravenously to the living. As I stood there and faced the pure horrifying precision, I realized the obvious truth."
I watched him stand and he turned off the television, even though the show was a good one. How did he get the images of the fields? The up close shot of the bio-pod as a baby was inserted? Did the people on those missions live or did they sacrifice themselves to get the footage? The cityscape around us disappeared, too.
"The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, designed to keep us under control, in order to change a human being into this." Morpheus said and held up a type C battery with a copper top.
"That makes sense." I said and he looked surprised. "It's just inefficient, is all. Despite humanity itself being a nearly endless renewable resource, the body doesn't produce all of that power and energy all at once. It's only a trickle, barely noteworthy after all of the time and resources needed to keep it alive."
Morpheus was stunned by my words and let the battery go. It disappeared before it hit the floor of the white space.
"I think a potato produces more energy in a single go than a human body produces heat." I commented, then shrugged. "It does get used up a lot faster, so maybe the trickle of energy from millions of humans is more than enough for the machine's needs, specifically because it's constant and renewable."
Morpheus sat down on the chair and looked a little lost.
I reached over and patted his knee. "Is that it? A more elaborate explanation than what you already told me and some added footage?" I asked and he didn't respond. "Okay, thanks for showing me what the Matrix is." I said and stayed sitting in the chair. "Go ahead and jack me out."
The white space faded and returned to the ratty barber's chair as I opened my eyes. Trinity pulled the brain spike out of my head and I sat up as she hung it on the display by the chair.
"Well, Morpheus thinks I'm caught up enough on the important stuff. What am I supposed to do next?" I asked and ignored Morpheus sitting there contemplating the meaning of life after Dozer jacked him out.
"You need to get a good night's sleep and then you can start training, just like the rest of us did when we first came aboard this ship." Switch said as she leaned against the bulkhead across from the chair I was in.
"Training?" I asked and she smirked at me and pointed at Tank.
"I'll be your operator and will run you though everything I can, starting bright and early tomorrow morning." Tank said, his face showing happiness. "If you don't sleep well tonight, you definitely will tomorrow night. I guarantee it."
I nodded and hopped off of the chair and pointedly did not look at Trinity. "Do I have my own quarters or am I bunking with a certain unpaired female someone?"
"Do you have to be so eager to have a warm body to share your bed with?" Cypher asked and no one questioned why he was a little defensive over Trinity's purity. Funnily enough, Trinity looked grateful at him for speaking up in her defense.
I laughed and pointed at Switch and then Apoc. "Ask them why."
Apoc laughed, too. "He ain't wrong. Switch is a cuddler and is really warm."
Switch smacked his arm with her hand and looked smug, then she hissed because it was the one I had broken inside the Matrix.
"Oh, right. Sorry about that." I walked over to her and gently took her hand. "Apoc, don't take this wrong. I'm just kissing her wrist to make it better."
"Oh, please. That old wives tale never works." Switch scoffed. She didn't try to take her hand back, though.
"Hey, all you have to do is believe it'll work." I said and gave her my best Gilderoy Lockhart smile to make her blush, then I gently lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. I used Panacea's power to alter the electrical impulses slightly to stop her brain from thinking it was broken to only making it sprained. The mental injury would go away on its own tomorrow around noon.
Switch looked surprised and stared at her wrist after I let her hand go.
"Thanks for the soap, Switch. It smells really nice." I said and stepped back from her.
"Your cabin is along the back there, next to the hoverpad maintenance junction." Morpheus said, now that he was done with his self-reflection, and he pointed across the main deck. "Mouse can show you where it is."
"It's the smallest one and the hatch is on the other side of the ladder. It's not hard to miss when walking by it." Mouse said and started walking away. "Follow me."
I walked after him and didn't miss Trinity and Morpheus gather around Switch to examine her hand as Apoc whispered a question about what soap I was talking about. Dozer was called over as well and they started whispering about it and how she wasn't as sore after I kissed it to make it better. Was it because it was better or because she actually believed it should be after I kissed it?
"Here it is." Mouse said and gestured grandly at the small hatch door.
I chuckled at the move. "Thank you, good ser. I'd offer you a tip for your service, except I'm a little short on ready cash right now. I'll square you up the next time we're back in the Matrix."
Mouse let out a soft chuckle. "You can keep your toilet stash, man." He said and motioned his hand in the right direction to spin the wheel to open the door of my room. "We're heading back to Zion after tomorrow, so you'll have a chance to get some other clothes and things from the city's supplies."
"How?" I asked and opened the door. The room was barely five feet across and seven feet deep, and most of that was taken up by the bunk bolted to the floor. "This looks homey."
Mouse laughed as he remembered my tiny apartment. "As a member of the crew, you get paid the same wages in rations and amenities as the rest of them." He said and his demeanor suddenly changed as he seemed to get sheepish and acted like the animal he was named after. "As long as you can prove yourself useful in a few things, you'll do okay."
I didn't ask what he was paid, since he didn't say 'us' when he talked about the crew. Was he kept onboard by Morpheus to make sure he was fed and had a job with hacking and coding, since that was all he could do? What kind of life did he have while stuck on the ship all the time? Then again, maybe he chose it to stay near Morpheus.
"Don't worry, I'll make sure people will see how useful I can be." I promised and stepped inside. "Thanks for the words of advice, Mouse. Goodnight."
"Night, Neo." Mouse said and walked away.
I closed the door and set the locking pin, then laid down on the cot. It was as rough as I thought it looked, so I cast a permanent cushioning charm on it and sighed. I closed my eyes and figured I'd try my best to get as much sleep as possible. Tomorrow was going to be a big day for training and I would need to try and keep myself humble as I tore through it like it was nothing.