He jacked in. It hit him every time differently. The swirls of colourful
geometric shapes that were the matrix. Massive lines of data, flying
past him as fast as his deck could handle. The vast non-space that was
cyber-space. The infinite void that was oozing information, yet in
reality was nothing more than electrons being switched on and off. He
was one with the matrix. The world-wide network of computers which
everyone and everything depended on. For years he had been jacking in,
looking for something, looking for his silicon pipe-dream. She had
haunted him ever since he had cracked the ICE(Intrusion Counter-measure
Electro-magnetics) of one of the largest corporations on the planet. The
run looked like cake. Hired to infiltrate the company's mainframe and
retrieve its most guarded secrets. He really didn't know what they were,
nor did he care, but it was a job. A job that was the pivot point in his
life. Getting past the perimeter ICE wasn't difficult at all. He used
a few scripts that identified him as a court order and dove into the
mainframes core data. Surrounding the core was black ICE. Not usual type
of ICE which just detects intruders and alerts the authorites, but the
deadly type. He had only encountered black ICE twice before, and both
times he was lucky to get out alive. He had approached cautiously,
trying to find a weak point. Moving in to get a closer look he could see
his reflection. The shifting surface of the ICE made the image of his
digitally-generated self look distorted and abnormal. Then his life
changed. His reflection slowly began to morph into that face. The face
that had been haunting him ever since that day. The pale blue eyes that
looked like the first ICE he had ever encountered and hair as black as
the ICE that he was looking into now. The lips were slightly pursed,
giving the impression of an old china doll. Skin pale and smooth. She
stared back at him. Those eyes, piercing his mind like that of liquid
chrome falling into water. Those eyes. He could never forget them. What
was behind them, looking into them bridged their separate conciousnous
and joined them into one. There was no spoken thought, just the essence
of their link. He didn't know how long they had stayed like that.
Minutes, hours, maybe even weeks. Then it changed. Their perfect
connection was severed. He knew he must touch her, feel that skin that
looked so pure. Reaching up to her perfect beauty he realized his
mistake the microsecond after he made it. He had touched the black ICE,
the ICE that kills. Instantly he was thrown wildly into the non-space.
His virtual self being bounced back and forth between systems, nodes,
data. The rush of information blurred his mind, not knowing where he was
going, the dis-orientation finally got to him. He had woke up on the
floor of his apartment. Lying in a dried pool of his vomit. Later, after
his confusion had cleared and he remember who he was, he looked at his
cyber-space deck. It was fried beyond repair. Circuits fused and
plastics melted into a hulk of useless silicon. The only data he was
able to recover was his medical status during the run. He had stared at
the ICE, at her, for almost two days. He was surprised that no one had
done anything about it sooner, but he knew why. The face that he saw was
the face of death. A measure implemented by the ICE to entice and trap
any unlucky intruder. The deck showed that he had flat-lined. He was
clinically dead for almost three minutes. Ever since that day his life
was changed. In his sleep he dreamed, dreamed of that face. It was
always the same, her, looking at him through those eyes. The eyes were
what made him never forget. Those eyes had haunted his every waking
moment. There, looking at him from his reflection in the mirror. In the
bar as he tried to drink them away. Everywhere. The only place that he
didn't see them was in the cyber-space. He was almost always constantly
jacked in. Only emerging to eat and sleep. Sometimes he went out to pick
up supplies or to try and drink them away again. Aside from that, his
life was the the quest for her. Through lines of data and millions of
nodes he searched throughout the meshed one day into the next. He was
convinced that he would find her again. He knew that those eyes must
belong to someone, something. He went back to the mainframe that he had
first seem them, but it was long gone. Not unlikely with the
ever-changing technoscape that was the matrix. He had tried everything;
exhaustive searches, used all his favours, but no luck. Now he was just
canvassing the entire net. He didn't know what he would do when he found
her, but that wasn't important at the moment, the search is what
mattered. He must find her, it was as if he whole existence was based on
it. Months he spent looking through archives of faces, querying the
matrix on everything he could. Finally, he had found her. Nestled in an
old crime archive between a convicted rapist and a kid-napper. She was
a criminal, convicted of a massive fraud operation against the same
corporation he had been trying to crack. Her call sign was Jezebel, but
that's as far as he got. Jezebel's fraud scheme had damaged the
companies core data so much that they made provisions that it would
never happen again. They had taken her and turned her into silicon,
stripping away all that was human expect the deceit that she was
designed to display. She was a lure, a part of their security that would
act much like the sirens that were written about in the Odyssey so many
centuries before. Normally her victims, whether they be male or female.
would fall for her trap and die when they tried to establish physical
contact. He was different, he had survived, if you could call it
surviving. His finding her wasn't accidental, but rather planned by the
corporation. They knew that he had survived, so they laid a trap for
him, using her once again for bait. Now he sees her everyday, staring at
back at him with those eyes that brought him to his demise. Trapped
together for eternity in the matrix, linked through a gaze that never
wavers, Jezebel, his silicon pipe dream.
