Character	Jerry Woods AKA "Point"
Gender/Orientation	Male, faintly bisexual (would experiment)
Type	Trying to Awaken, still Plugged in
Apparent Age	16

Ever since he was quite young, Jerry found that he lost interest in things he could see and touch - instead preferring the safety of the mind. He would close his eyes and imagine himself away... Riding a horse in the snow, or fighting a fire, or exploring a far-off galaxy.

It annoyed his parents, and it made others worried. They sent him to a shrink, once. That didn't help. In fact it might have even driven him further into himself. "You must concentrate!" was the refrain he listened to all day. All his life.

Jerry was unable to concentrate on the history lesson. And it wasn't because he found history boring. It was that ... something about it was galling him. Everything seemed so cut and dried. Such and such happened on this date. This person was elected. This war ended or began. This many people died of the plague...

Jerry raised his hand, something that was odd for him in almost any classroom. The teacher at first balked, not sure whether he meant to be asking a question, answering one of the ones on the board, or whether he just wanted to go to the nurse or restroom.

"Mister Woods?" Asked the teacher curtly.

"Sir, doesn't it seem like... we've done the same thing over and over? And nothing ever changes? You're a history teacher, you must have seen it." He tapped his finger on the grafitti-riddled desk, "The patterns?"

Though the instructor wanted to answer him, telling him some party-line junk that would keep the staff off his back and his job and paycheck, it appeared that he didn't have to. The rest of the class erupted into a mild chorus of "you're weird, Jerry!" and "shut up, braindead freak!"

But while they were doing that, Jerry was watching his finger. Below it, the writing on his desk seemed to have changed. He had sat at this desk during fourth period for almost six months now, they didn't move the desks at night or to clean them, so he of course had added his own personal scribbling to the mess of words and images on the surface.

Something had changed. A color? Perhaps. It wasn't cleaned off, there were still archaeological layers of kids' messages to one another there for him to read.

But on top of most of them, slid in between the obscene drawing of the instructor that someone from sixth period had done, and under the gang-logo that one of the other guys in a prior year left... It was a statement, a mystery pointed to him alone. One which Jerry would keep to himself. He leaned back, putting his notebook down onto the desk casually and ignoring the jibes of the students around him.

It hadn't been there yesterday. It wasn't something that was so fresh that it had just been done in third period. He rubbed at it while trying to look like he was erasing something on his worksheet. It didn't come off the table, did not smear.

He stared at it for a good long time.

The bell rang, and the class was excused for lunch. Jerry fought the impulse to remain, just to stare at it.

***

He noticed things like that, words scribbled on walls, more than ever now. Because he lived in a gang-heavy neighborhood he was always checking out who was being tagged and by what gang. He didn't belong to any - they didn't want nerds like him. They did occasionally borrow him, when they wanted his artistic talents, and his paints. That was the one single refuge that his mother and father had allowed him: he was able to use a paintbrush and they figured that some day, he might become a famous graphic artist or advertising guy. They didn't count on him continually drawing dragons or knights, or skateboarders or surfers. Or, gang tag colors.

But now those colors were dominated by green. Why? What was it? Jerry looked around him in the park. There was a spray of color where a huge Jacaranda tree was in bloom. It was beautiful, with pale colored purple blossoms. He walked under it, and stepped on a mass of the dropped flowers. They would be everywhere soon enough, but this tree for some reason had chosen to bloom earlier than all the rest in the neighborhood.

Jerry looked at the discarded blooms, on the ground. He'd slightly marred the outline, but ... there was something in the pattern below his feet. The way that the blooms dropped. The way that the air did not stir them - they were still full of life, but once they dried they would be at the whim of that wind.

For the moment, they outlined a fanciful pattern. He saw a wing, a serpentine neck, the tail of a dragon. A basketball dropped abruptly into the picture, scattering the blooms, and startling Jerry.

"Jer - toss me that!" Called one of the local guys. Jerry fetched the ball, and shot it back to the players on their court. But he did not play, he returned to the tree. The dragon illusion had gone, it was now just a blob of purple and pale lavender.

***

"I think you should see the doctor again," said his mother. "You're not eating right, and you look so pale!"

"Mom, I am pale. And I don't need to go to the doctor. That guy is a nutjob." He said sullenly, eating his Tasty Wheat. His mother was on her way out the door to her job, and Jerry tossed her a big fake smile as she left - and when he turned his head back, he saw from the corner of his eye something on the box of cereal.

The box had a big back panel that showed a fairly simple word search. It had a bunch of simple words - 'wheat' and 'milk' and 'spoon'. He'd been trying to ignore the fact that while he could easily find all the words he didn't see Spoon anywhere on it. But also, there was the matter of the spare letters. He'd blocked out a bunch of the words as he found them, with a marker. Circles that wobbled around one word and crossed over the next. But there were always letters that weren't used by any word.

He began to write them down, on the napkin next to his bowl. A blot of milk smeared one or two, but the message was clear.

"What is the Matrix?" he asked himself, as he assembled the letters. They went across, not down, that's how he could figure out there was something going on. If it'd been another complex puzzle he might have ignored it. He didn't want so much complexity in his life.

But he did want more than he had. School had been his torment for altogether too long, and today was a vacation day for them. His dad was somewhere on business. Jerry realized that he never knew quite where it was, that his own father worked.

He leaned back in the kitchen chair, and tapped the pen on the paper a few times. Then he tore up the napkin and threw it into the trash piece by piece. He took the empty box up to his room, and cut the word search out. Once off the box, he placed it into a plastic holder in a baseball card album. It was near a couple other such oddities.

Hints. Clues. It was like having a clue book to a game that he wasn't sure he wanted to play. Or, wasn't sure what any of the rules were. But he knew one thing: the Matrix was involved, and he was in it. How could this all work? Someone had to be giving him these clues, right? Right? There had to be a person behind it.

But how? Who?

He went for a walk, but nothing odd happened. He did notice a number of gang kids hanging out, and they would probably start fighting later in the day when it got warmer. They always did that. Why did they always do that? Why did it have to be the same, every time?

And... Every time what? "Every time, it's the same," he said to the sky. It was a conversational tone, of course, nothing to attract undue attention.

But it did attract attention.

***

"He's going to break," one of them said. "But this one is so slow - I've never seen anyone go this slowly."

"But he will, and it will still fall to us to bring him back." Said the more grim of the trio.

"Or to keep him out," said the third Agent, as they watched Jerry Woods from a nearby corner.

As one, they raised their hands to their ear, listened to whatever communication was being sent, and responded. Shortly, three gang members realized that their friends had moved along and they for no apparent reason were just standing around on the corner.

***

He was up all day, wandering around town and looking at stores, he bought himself another drawing pad, and a click eraser. He had a sandwich in a shop that had a sign he could barely read. Nothing weird happened, nothing he could tell. Jerry was up quite late that night, though, because the words The Matrix Has You, and What Is The Matrix kept going through his mind. He scribbled things on his new sketch pad, and they wound up being quite disturbing. At long last, he went to bed.

Jerry had a dream, that night. It was vivid, unnatrual, jarring. Something about metal and the smell of burnt rubber, and something hanging over him that looked way too much like a diatom that he'd learned about in science class the week before. Only, they were supposed to be small things - not like this.

Not like this.

Jerry woke with a start, sweating. It was something like 2:40 in the morning, but for the life of him, he could have sworn he went to bed at 3:15. Something was obviously wrong. Something was really really weird.

He got up, stood at his window. From there he should be able to see the park, and the top of the basketball court's fence. It was always lit, because it was a hotspot for drug activity. But the whole lay of the land this morning was dark. Did they turn the lights off? Was there a power failure? There couldn't be - his clock was working.

It still said 2:40. It had been several moments, he'd struggled with the idea of getting out of bed, after looking at it the first time. He stared at the red-colored glow of the digital display. It did not move, did not change.

"What is the Matrix?" He asked, quietly. "Why does it have me? What did I do? Is this supposed to be a punishment or what?"

"You have the answers to those questions," the clock radio said. Jerry jumped out of his skin. The radio wasn't on. He hadn't turned it on. He didn't even use it as an alarm - he was always able to wake up in time for whatever he did. But there was no static, either. Just ... a voice. It was a strangely sexless voice, either a deep woman's voice, or a scratchy man's, he wasn't sure. It might have been modulated or changed somehow.

"I don't know any answers," Jerry insisted. "I barely even know what the questions mean."

"You already know. You're already trying to escape the Matrix," said the voice.

"I try to escape reality," Jerry said.

"What is reality?" Asked the voice on the radio - the clock had still not changed from 2:40.

"... Sometimes I wonder," Jerry said. "It's ... it was you, wasn't it? Who sent me the messages?"

"That does not matter, Jerry, but what does matter is time."

"But ... time's stopped," he said. Still two-forty. "Why?"

"For you, Jerry, but not for the outside. The Matrix is flexible, but it is also brittle. It can be broken."

Jerry looked outside. There was a single light, two - headlights? Barreling down the park's road, over the basketball court. What was a car doing this late at night, like that?

"Jerry, there is no more time. Get out of the Matrix, or forever be a slave to it." The voice said, and then the clock changed.

With a start, Jerry realized that he was standing in a cold room, in his underwear, in the dark. Outside, the sound of the engine roaring, the car moving - it was real!?

He dove into his closet and came out with a sweat suit, stuck running shoes on his bare feet, grabbed his backpack - since it had his drawing pad and supplies in it and a couple PowerBars for lunch he never bothered to eat, and bolted out the door. The car screeched to a stop, bumping into the trash cans outside and making an animal shriek in fear. Two doors, open and shut, then a third. Three Agents? Three friends?

He did not know, but at the moment he was so panicked he didn't feel like just waiting around and finding out. If anything, he wanted to give himself some time to consider what the voice had told him. He was a slave to the Matrix, he was inside something that could be broken. It was a puzzle, and he was addled - unable to think with the pressure of an unknown group of people.

The back door swung open, smacked shut, and he hoped that it hadn't made so much noise that it attracted the people from the car.

Hey - the car. He doubled around the next house, this was his neighborhood anyway and he did know it well. The houses were packed close together, and he scuttled up beside the wall of one, back against his own. He listened, and heard the grit of shoes on the driveway. He heard his doorbell ring, it was the only thing on the block making any sound... save the car, and his own panting. He waited, and then sped down the small alley. Outside his house was a car, indistinct model of a black car, with the motor running.

He took a quick glance at the front of his house - where two of the three Agents stood. They looked like typical Men In Black, and they were wearing black sunglasses at three in the morning? What was up with that?

He was quiet, when he got to the car. They didn't think to keep the doors locked, and besides with the motor running they obviously expected to be able to walk in and what - grab him?

His mother answered the doorbell. Her hair was in disarray. There were only two Agents at the front door, and the third abruptly appeared behind Jerry's mother. Jerry wanted to panic, but he didn't. It was his mother - but... was it? Was it real?

But he was in the car already, silently working out the details of his escape. He didn't bother to shut the door completely for fear that it would make too much noise. He pushed it into gear, and then floored it, spinning the car around and slamming the door on the way out of the driveway.

The Agents could hardly keep up with a car - but they did try. It was three in the morning, and few people were out and about to see this feat of inhuman speed they put out. One of them almost grabbed the car, and Jerry had it going at over fifty down the neighborhood street. He turned the car down several side streets and lost the Agents.

He had to get away. He had to get somewhere, that these guys couldn't track him. He stared at the radio in the car, and feverishly wished that it would come to life and tell him what to do.

"Aw, god, maybe I am just really nuts," Jerry said, "Maybe I should have gone back to the doctor..."

No. No, that wasn't right. He knew better. But he was panicked now, there were still cars on the street but they were on the main drags. He kept to the shadows, and finally when he came to a large public park he pulled to the side of the road and staggered out of the vehicle.

It occurred to Jerry that there weren't many public parks that had a nice tree, a stream, a stone bridge. This one must have been left over from another era. He plopped himself down next to the bridge, and let his breath wind down. He unpacked his backpack and looked at what he had. He had a wallet with a few bucks in it, a subway pass that had about six dollars worth of ride left on it, three Choco-licious PowerBars, his new drawing pad with most of the pages unfilled, an older pad which had a lot of recent tag designs and fanciful pictures clogging the book, his new click-eraser, several pencils with a scattering of lead packs, and a box taped shut with sharpened colored pencils in it. There were other little pieces of junk too, but that was the bulk of it, and all the good stuff.

He'd have to get some water, and he'd have to get farther away from the city. Jerry blandly noticed that a pair of thieves had just gotten in the car and were making off with it. Fine. That suited him. The farther away from him it was, the better.

As he gazed across the park and at the still-lit shop lights on the side street, he saw a sign that caused him to pack up and get himself off the ground. It was a big neon sign, missing some letters, but it said "The Great Escape" but the T, G and at weren't working, so it said he re Escape. That was a good enough sign for Jerry.

***

The building was boarded up in places, where broken windows rested unfixed. The door to the place was all but nonexistant, he walked all the way around the whole building twice and didn't find a single first-story doorway. Only boarded up windows. Weird. So he chose one, away from the street and not directly in view of anyone else's windows, and pried the wood off the wall. It came away with a creaking, shattering sound, and he crept into the opening. It was black, tarry black inside. He swung the wood panel up so it caught on a nail, and looked undisturbed.

Why was the neon sign on, if this place was already boarded up and dead?

He stepped carefully, wishing that the batteries in his little Lite-Em-Up keychain hadn't died. He kept meaning to get more of them. On a whim, though he just pulled out his keys from the side of his pack, and pressed the red nubby button.

A weak stream of light filled the room - there was a little juice left? Great!

The place was clearly abandoned, but had been a night club of some kind. He'd entered the kitchen, where the large applyances were still present and in horrible condition. Someone else had gone through here, probably a bum, but apparently the gas and electric were turned off, and they didn't stay long. He hoped the water was still on. Finding a sink, he turned the tap, and a hissing static-grey stream came from the pipe.

He could wait for bottled water, really.

While Jerry walked through the place he halfway noticed, but didn't want to comment lest it curse the effect, that his little lite-em-up was working much better than it had when he first turned it on. The light was just 'on', and he was thankful for it.

Jerry entered the next room, which was a kind of staging room for large food events. Clearly having been used by vagrants, but Jerry had gone on a field trip one year as a kid through a restaurant like this.

It might have been this one. Who remembered things like that?

"Is my memory that crappy that I can't even remember where I was?" Jerry asked the still air. The place had nearly no smell, and no sounds but his breathing and the footsteps he made on the floor - which was crunchy with detritus. He left that room through the pair of big swinging doors, only one of which still swung, and went into the main dining room.

It was a strange feeling, not quite deja vu, and not quite like a flashback. He got a familiar sensation, like he had been there, as though it was something more homey than a years-abandoned theme restaurant. The theme was adventure - here and there were still things alluding to that. A hot-air balloon dangling from a light fixture, primative canoes stapled to the side of an archway to the next room. Maybe it was here, that his adventure really started.

Well, it would be here where he'd make his stand, that was for sure. The feeling in his gut said 'remain', so he did. He was tired again, and he managed to locate some only-half-dirty tablecloths to sleep under.

Whether he was seeing in the dark, or the light really was that good, Jerry didn't care to think about. While he nestled himself into the garishly yellow and red squared tablecloth bed, he could see the glimmer of a space ship painting. Next to it was a model of a beautiful old train, somehow unmarred in the years that this place had been closed.

"Who would leave that here?" He muttered, and managed to fall back to sleep.

***

Jerry dreamed again, but at least this time his dreamscape was a more pleasant and normal looking place. Normal, save for the shapes of the flying dragons above him, and the flashy magic that the people were using. He felt distant from them, from this dream, content to wander through it as a point-of-view, rather than a person or a participant. In fact, he was having two dreams at once: one where he was observing such a world, and another, where he himself was drawing what he saw there. He kept having to erase certain details, because for the life of him he couldn't really see the face on a woman, or the way the dragon's wing might splay.

It was late in the morning when Jerry woke. The sounds of everyday life outside the room came to his ears, and the light of day came spattering through the holes in the boards on the windows. He was desperately hungry, but he wasn't sure he wanted to eat one of the Power Bars, maybe saving them for later. It was all he ever did with the things anyway - he'd had one of them for a month.

He did have some cash, and that was the safest method he could figure for getting around being traced. He'd have to use the window that he came in, to get out - there was a door, sort of. It seemed like whenever Jerry tried to put his hand on the doorknob it would just ... miss. It went through the knobs, impacted something solid slightly beyond the point he could see, when he pressed his hand onto the surface. That was probably the weirdest sensation Jerry had felt.

Summoning all the bravery he could, Jerry stuffed his wallet into the backpack, and made sure that there were no holes anywhere. His sweats had been clean when he put them on, but now of course they were layered with a bit of the crud from the abandoned room's floor, and had a small tear on the shoulder from getting into the building.

The exiting was a bit easier, he could stand on the sink and just jump down. There were no people in the alley where he found himself, so Jerry moved around the corner to find a deli or something. Shortly he managed to get himself not only a pair of microwaved burritos, nachos with everything, and a drink in a big plastic container (that he hoped to use again of course, should he need it)(Jerry was finding that though everyone thought he was such a dreamer he was pretty practical all in all.) but he'd found another sweat shirt on a rack that was discounted to a few dollars, and that would keep him cleaner and warmer.

No one stopped him as he paid, no one looked on as he made his way back to the Great Escape. He'd only been gone less than an hour, and he wondered if the men in black had harmed his mother. For the first time, as he climbed back into the room, he discovered that he was quite desperate for information about his home.

But... It could wait. He didn't dare use a phone or ask someone about it, they'd probably turn out to be some kind of agent.

He cursed his bad memory, he'd forgotten to find a new battery for the mini light. Yet... When he tried it, it worked just fine. Better than the night before, actually. "Weird," he said, and turned the corner into the main dining hall.

Where there was someone sitting on top of a table, watching him.

Startled, he froze. But the figure did not do anything more menacing than look at him. He could tell it was female, womanly and rounded in the right places for a sixteen year old boy to appreciate. She had a mane of hair, pulled back in what looked like large dredlocks or braids. Perched on the table, like a kind of gargoyle, the woman just watched him.

"Hello Jerry," she finally said. Her voice almost matched that of the radio.

"You're the voice, the one giving me clues?" He said, more curious than afraid now. The woman nodded, gracefully.

"Jerry, we don't have much time now at all. The Agents will come for me, or you, and you should eat up. Your nutrition delivery schedule was way off and you'll be best off if you have a good meal. You can't run on an empty stomach."

Whether that was strange advice, or true wisdom, Jerry followed it. He was ravenous by now, so he dug into his still-hot meal. He kept watching the woman, though.

"Who are you?" He asked. "You know my name."

"I know a lot about you, Jerry. It's what I know that will get the Agents after me. But they still don't really know me after all this time..." She drifted into silence, and Jerry finished eating.

When he'd finished, the woman settled down onto one of the nearby chairs. She had bare feet, but wore what looked to be a very expensive dark-green leather coat over a snug suit of graphite colored satin. She was pale-skinned, and her eyes seemed to glow in the dark, like a cat - only they stayed that way, any direction she looked. And her hair... seemed to move. It was long enough to reach her knees, and while it was bound up behind her head, it would drift up and down. Almost like it was alive.

"What are you?" Jerry asked. The woman smiled, it was a pleasant, sincere grin. She looked to be about forty, maybe younger, but it was hard to tell in the dim light in a boarded up diner.

"Good question," she replied. "I am Charybdis, and I'm here to help you get out of the Matrix."

"Finally, a decent answer!" Jerry laughed. "Charybdis... that's ... from some mythology. I can't remember it."

"Of course you can't, that is the point..." Charybdis muttered, and her hair flowed around her waist, almost like the ends of it was looking at Jerry for themselves. "It is an old, old myth, and long forgotten. Just words. Very little meaning left I'm afraid. And I have no sister, any more."

"Ah - Scylla, and Charybdis. The rock and the whirlpool?" Jerry asserted, and Charybdis' eyebrows went up.

"Yes, yes, that's it." She looked away, blinked, and then turned back to the young man. "There are many things I need you to know... And I can't. Too little time. All done eating?" Jerry nodded. "Good. I want you to remember just one thing."

Jerry looked at her, and shrugged. "Okay?"

"When you emerge, ... don't look for me. I'll be there, but ... just don't look for me. You won't recognize me. And I'd probably frighten you."

"... Emerge?" Jerry said, and Charybdis stood up and looked oddly into the ceiling.

"They're on their way," she sighed. "So soon."

"Who - what?" Jerry stammered, clutching his backpack.

"The Agents. They've been following you, and I found out. I want to get you out of here, and there's only one chance now. I'll stall them, but you've got to remember what I told you. You can be strong, and I will be helping, but just don't go looking for me."

And with that, Charybdis' hair sprang to life. A mass of long serpentine tentacles slipped from their knot behind her head, and splayed out like an octopus in the water. Jerry was too stunned to move, and he didn't let out a peep in fear. If anything, he was intensely curious about them. There was something faintly hypnotic about them.

He belched, and felt a little odd.

When one of the strands of Charybdis' hair struck him it wasn't in anger or with violence - it was a tap with a small needle delivery system. His nervous system was now deactivated. It would be minutes before he'd come to, but that would have to be enough. Charybdis snaked her hair arms around the inert Jerry, cradling him while still looking up to the ceiling.

Then the world wavered. The restaurant became dark - half of it looked out of focus, as though a JPG format image that had lost most of its quality. The other half, where Charybdis stood defiantly, flickered and pixellated until it went white.

***

Devoid of light, except this odd red pulsating glow. That was what greeted Jerry. He was exhausted, for some reason, like he'd been running for hours. His head hurt, pounding. He felt slightly seasick. Not that he'd ever been on a boat.

Jerry attempted to vomit, suddenly, and realized that there was something in his throat. Impulsively, he wretched again, and the long tube retracted from him. But there was nothing in his stomach - not really. Nutrients had been piped into his bloodstream, with only the smallest amount of real liquid or food being placed through the feeding tube. He didn't know that.

All he knew was that he could barely focus on anything, and he felt like he was covered in snot. He slipped when he tried to move, and fell backwards into a vat of the stuff - it held him up, it was thick and slippery and sticky all at the same time. He didn't know what in the world it could be.

There was a faint shape, looming above him. It reminded him of something, something familar that he'd just seen.

He tried to speak, "chhhklgh!" and failed. But he could reach up, and did so. The shape snaked around his wrists, then his waist, and brought him out of the mire.

Into hell.

Jerry lost consciousness quickly - but he thought he saw several big glowing eyes, and shapes that looked sort of like Charybdis' hair, flowing around him like streamers.

***

Jerry was cold. Just, cold. He limped along the ground, one foot after the other, moving. He thought he was starving, and he knew he was thirsty. But there was no food, no water. He was naked, and he was just cold.

He was so far beyond fear that when the sound of a strange humming came to his ears, he only looked up to see what it was, he didn't try ducking or running or whatever. It was like his fear response had failed to work.

Besides, there was nothing to fear. There was a dragon, flying overhead. That dragon had a rider, apparently, who came down to where Jerry stood.

"Hey!" He called, "Hey!" The rider ran up to Jerry, and cornered him against one of the big towering black stalks that he walked through. The stalks were the grounded areas of the baby vines. Above them, thousands of millions of human infants were in pinkish packets, being plucked by those gigantic diatom-shaped machines that Jerry had dreamed about.

Jerry realized where he was, he didn't need to be told. The Matrix was long gone - a figment of the metal lodged in his brain and accessed through the jack in the back of his head. His head was covered in slight peach-fuzz hair, but it would be a long time before he'd have enough to dye the way he liked to have it... back home.

"You can't walk to safety from here," the rider said, calling attention to himself again. Jerry looked him over, with difficulty. It was night - or maybe day and the sky was crapped out. The sky never changed, except to spit down a batch of lightning or a brace of cold rain.

Jerry had no idea how many days he'd been walking, he guessed two. Maybe three.

"You're not going to make it out of here like that," the rider announced flatly. "Come on, naked boy. You're going to need some help."

"That's a dragon," Jerry said, finally. It was the first time he'd heard his own voice, and the first time he'd made any noise other than screaming or sobbing in the last couple days.

"... Yes, it is. His name is Key. I'm Coder. We're going to take you home with us. If that's okay?"

There was no argument that Jerry could give. He didn't know who he was, wasn't sure what to think. He wasn't crazy - this was the real world. There really were dragons, in the real world. There weren't any in the Matrix. He said this, muttering, as Coder dragged his wasted form onto Key's back.

They lept to the air, and found a way around the harvesters, back to their ship. Jerry had lost consciousness again, by the time they 'docked'.