//Subject Name: Daniel 'Tranta' Young
//Display
One looked like a face.
Another kind of looked like a gun.
But most of them just looked like clouds, and that’s why I spent so much of my time just staring at them; watching them slowly meander across the sky, carefree. I almost envied their disregarding, aloof nature. I suppose you could say I modelled myself on a cloud, and I guess you’d be right in saying so: Back then I didn’t really have any cares. As a boy of seventeen, all I wanted to do was relax and enjoy life.
I was no meteorologist, either; I just liked lying back on the grass and watching the sky. I still do, although there’s never any time for it these days. But back then I loved nothing more than it. The sky, if you’ve ever watched, is totally hypnotising; perhaps it’s one of the Machine’s systems of control. I’ll never know, the real doesn’t offer much in the way of comparison….
My awakening, then, was as shocking to me as it was intrusive.
As usual, it was Zion poking their head in where it was unwanted. They’d selected me because of my distance from the norms of society and my ‘keen sense of observation’. Stupid, really… All because I could see shapes in clouds. I was happy in my blissful alienation from society, but they saw fit to try and ram the truth, along with their damned red pill, down my throat.
Naturally, I told them to get screwed, and took off. I thought the psychopaths would follow me, but for some reason they didn’t. I let my legs do the work, and I ended up, as I always did, on my back watching the sky take course. My mind, by this point, was racing; I didn’t want to know about this world, this ‘Matrix’ they were telling me about. I was fine as I was! It was ironic, really; all I wanted to do was live separate from everybody else, and then another world appears that tries to force me into conformity. I wanted to avoid them both, but it was an unfortunately impossible choice.
For a time, I tried to live as I had; trying to relax, ignoring the world around me and just wanting to switch off. But I couldn’t, as you’d imagine. I always spotted them—Damned Zionites—out of the corner of my bloodshot eyes, only to find nothing there when I looked again. I spent every moment feeling as if I was being watched. Even my most secluded of locations seemed traced; the wind whistling through the grass seemed to whisper the word ‘Matrix’, and clouds almost seemed to form strands of code.
As I felt my sanity begin to slip away from me, the last vestiges of my conscious presented the grim truth to me; The only solace I would find would be in this ‘other’ world I had been told about and so I, weak and defeated, reluctantly sought them out once again…
//End Display
//Standby....