Locations and Longings
Morpheus doesn’t know. I think if he did, he’d stop it. Neither does Neo. Some things are just between a woman and her Operator.
If anyone asks, it’s just a training program. Practice, I say. And they know it isn’t, but they also don’t ask too many questions, and so that’s fine.
The white light fades to show me a room that has a poster of a waterfall on one wall and a calendar with cartoon characters on another. I’d forgotten how much I loved that show. The calendar’s years old, but I never got around to changing it, and they’ve left it up.
Everything here’s years old but has been left up. I’m not sure why they bother. I’m glad they do.
It hurts a little each time, as I go down the stairs and into the living-family-shut-the-hell-up-please-Trinity-(except-the-name-they-use-is-one-I-haven’t-been-called-in-a-lifetime)-your-father’s-using-the-computer-for-now-go-watch-tv-room. They can’t see me sitting next to them. That’s part of the program. I wrote it this way. I’m not part of their lives anymore and they’re not part of mine, but I can’t quite let go, either. Can’t just show up. Certainly can’t call and chat.
It’s a reflection, a mirror site, of a sort. What happens in the Matrix is shown here, but it is only shown here. I can’t touch them or speak to them. I notice that Mom’s hair’s a little grayer, Daddy’s face a little more wrinkled. Josh’s wife had a baby girl and they’re naming her-and his voice catches and I wonder if he remembers the time when I was seven that he threw my stuffed turtle out the window. There’s talk of the baptism and godparents and then my mother starts to talk about her garden and Dad rolls his eyes and it’s all okay again until the next time someone mentions my name.
It’s too much to stay for long. I go up the stairs and back to the room that’s exactly as it was when I left, even down to the light blue phone. I wonder what Neo would think of this room. I don’t wonder what he’d think about this program. I don’t know that I’d want to know.
I sit for a moment, looking at the same stuffed turtle Josh threw out the window and wondering when Mom got around to fixing the tear in his shell, and then I’m gone.