Sanders Sides One Shots

Code Part 2 (Logicality)

*Patton's POV*

Everything looks immediately different. The world is suddenly outlined in stripes of green that blinks every so often. I look closer, and it appears to be code. Binary code.

"Everything is... code?" I whisper incredulously, just in complete disbelief.

"Is that what you see it as?" Logan seems impressed. I look at him. He's outlined in a thin, solid line of dark blue, like his tie.

"It's outlined in green strips of binary code. Not you, though. You're outlined in a line of dark blue." I nod.

"That's how it's supposed to be. The reason why I came here was to map how this area is laid out. Now that you know what I'm doing, will you walk with me around town?" Logan offered, a ghost of a smile on his face.

"Of course! We can take a detour on the rooftops." I point to a ladder on the side of a building.

"Good idea, Patton." He approved my idea, walked two steps towards the ladder, and jumped three times his height to the platform above. I stare in amazement before scrambling up the ladder behind him. "Impressed?"

"What kind of question is that? How would you expect me not to be?" I sputter, beginning to climb the ladder.

"The wackier things get here in Wonderland, the more you take things like these for granted." Logan gestured to himself almost dismissively. "Theoretically, one can be immortal in the Matrix. Untouchable, even. My colleague Joan taught themselves how to fly here."

Once I'm on the same platform as him, I stare at him in amazement. A world of endless possibilities, even if it's all fake. You could fly in the Matrix! It made sense. The code could be altered, or hacked, just like in a video game. Suddenly, the Agents jumping bodies made sense, but it didn't make it any less gruesome.

"But..." I found myself voicing my concerns. "Can people alter this world to the point where it crashes?"

"We haven't yet." Logan grimaces at the idea. "We haven't thought about that, either."

"Oh." I look down at the roof of the building.

"But the Matrix has been around for over 40 years. If the system were to crash, the Agents and their machines would've been able to upgrade the system to accommodate all the alterations." Logan assures me.

"So then... where to do humans fit in? In the real world." The lasts words come out sounding really strange, even considering the situation.

"They're not really-" Logan stopped and started again. "Humans aren't really a part of the world anymore. The last bit of human activity was when we..." he cleared his throat. When he finished, his voice was a lot quieter. "When we blew out the sun."

I frowned and sat down on the roof. "Why would we?"

"Because we thought the Agents, the AI, were solar powered when we were at war with them." Logan continued, just barely over a whisper.

"Wait." I put my head in my hands. "So we invented AI, and they went to war with us, so we blew out the sun, and now we're...?"

"Farmed. Used as power for the AI in the real world." Logan looked away uncomfortably.

"No." I couldn't believe that. It was too absurd. Too random. Too shocking. My life was normal.

But another voice told me otherwise. It told me that everything was lined with code, and that there have been times where days would be exactly the same, only for me to find that a building would be somewhere that it shouldn't have been before. It told me that somethings were always off, that sometimes people's mouths and their voices would be out of sync.