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

Jerry sat and stared at the wall, until he finally realized that he was holding a mug with warm liquid-stuff in it, and had been drinking from it regularly. He gulped back another swig of it, and actually thought that it tasted pretty good. It wasn't very thrilling on his tongue, but it was food, and he had been starving.

His feet hurt, his legs ached. All kinds of pain came to him now that he was awake again. Joy. He noticed that his hands were quite pale, along with the rest of him. But he'd been put into clothing of some sort. Burlap like, a scratchy overshirt that went on top of a heavy shirt in brown. His legs were covered in denim-like material, faded to sky blue.

But the sky wasn't blue, Jerry's mind rebelled at that thought. It wasn't blue, it was stormy and black, it was overcast the whole time. It was horrid.

Was this home? Was this what it was to be like, out here? Reality sucked?

"How are you feeling?" Asked a woman, "are you awake now?"

"I guess..." Jerry said. "Who are you?"

"I'm Derfegurtz," she said proudly. Jerry blinked.

"Bless you," he said.

"... what?" Derfegurtz asked, tilting her head.

"Nothing," Jerry smiled. "I... I don't know my name any more. I don't know if I want one like yours..."

"How about Walker?" She suggested, but Jerry shook his head.

"The last thing I want is to be reminded that I've been walking for who knows how long... Out there."

"It was crazy, Coder said he thought there was movement, but we can't bring the ship down that close to the fields. You... you know about the field, right?"

"I guessed," Jerry said.

"So we sent Key and him down there. And we found you!"

"Yeah... You did." Jerry leaned back, against the cool metal wall. Eventually he got the story of how they'd found him, and what exactly the people on the Dragonchaser did. And, the bit about how there are dragons. That he paid attention to most.

He asked questions about where they came from, how they were made... Inside the Matrix and outside of it. Derf could answer most of his questions, but she clearly seemed like she wanted to know more about being inside the Matrix than where she was outside it. Jerry noticed that she had no head plug, and assumed correctly that she could not enter the Matrix, even if she'd wanted to.

But she told him about another Matrix, one which wasn't the same as his. Where magic worked, where dragons flew. Vere, its name.

"Can I go there?" Jerry asked. He was startled when another person answered that question.

"You can, but you have to be prepared for it. It's not like your Matrix." Coder said. It was odd, because Coder looked kind of like Jerry thought he should - with a bit more of a tan, dark hair.

"Good, because I want to. I ... I don't know if I can handle this. This reality is pretty harsh."

"It sure is, but it's not bad once you get used to it. Plus," Coder said, "there are the dragons." He gave off a mighty grin, and left the room.

***

"Do you want something?" Asked one of the others. Jerry stood in the main room of the ship, blankly looking at each of the people in it.

"... I want my drawing pad. I can't have it, it's not real."

"He's lapsing, isn't he?" Asked Derf.

"I'm not - I'm okay," Jerry said. "Look, I know that you guys must think that I'm a total whiner, but... This life is not what I've expected. And I'm an artist, and I haven't had the chance to draw in what, like two weeks? I don't even know if I really can draw."

"Give the boy something to draw on," Tech said. She handed him what looked like a charcoal stick. It would be good enough.

Jerry's hands shook, when they scraped up a spare piece of metal that had been painted. He could use it over if he wanted to, that was a plus. And, it looked like he had to because his first attempt to even hold the charcoal ended up with a big lump of black smirching the metal surface.

"Dangit," he said. "I just want a good point. I always used mechanical pencils because they gave the best lines..." He struggled with the charcoal until it went into a more fine line. At last, while they flew over the wastelands of their world, Jerry found himself drawing with an ease that he hadn't known before.

"Maybe it's the muscles finally getting to work," he said, as he sketched Cel who he could see from one of the viewscreens. "I don't know."

One of the things he started to draw was only faintly familiar to him - Charybdis, as a memory. He barely remembered her interaction with him, that part of his memory was affected by the drug she'd used to knock him out and remove him from the Matrix. As he drew the strands of hair around her face, Yana gasped.

"That's a Sentinel!" She said. "You don't need to draw those damn things."

"That's... That's the woman who got me out of the Matrix, captain, her name's Charybdis." Jerry said. He shaded the tentacles a bit more, and decided that even though everyone else didn't even want to look at it, he liked the picture and would want to keep it somehow. He cleverly put it below one of the observation cameras over the broadcast seats, and hit 'record' to keep it in a chip.

"Point, that's not really a person, is it?" Tech asked.

"Yeah," Point - Jerry's new name, due to his constant grumbling about finding a good point on his charcoal - said. "It is. She was pretty nice, really. I don't remember what happened, but she got me out of there. She told me not to look for her..."

"Well I can see why," Tech snapped. "The Sentinels are the things we keep running from, you haven't seen them? With the things?" She made a waggling motion with her hand, emulating the eerie waving of the Sentinel's limbs.

"She was pretty cool," Point said. He explained how he'd come to be outside, eventually.

They were ready to dock, apparently there was some hesitation on the part of Zion control to allow the ship to come in at all. But it was quickly settled, what with a new free mind on board.

Point stood in wrapt awe, as they came into Zion's shipyard. It was gigantic, all enclosed, an amazing mess of machinery and grime. People swarmed around like ants on faraway catwalks, and Point's only wish was that he had a camera with him. But he realized that he'd never need one. This might be his home now.

It was a strange sensation for him, thinking that. That his home was no longer real, that he was now a figment away from everything he knew and loved. "Before" and "after" meant so much more to him now. He wondered: did his body die in the Matrix? Did he have one any more? Did he just vanish or what?

The hovercraft slipped into its dock and came down to rest, at last. Point picked up the couple things he'd been given and hauled himself out of the ship. The dragons stood outside it already, waiting. They were biomechanical things, creatures with as much machine to them as flesh. They too had head jacks, but he assumed they were short-range broadcasting to the ship, because they occasionally added their commentary while they were flying outside it.

"Welcome to Zion," said a friendly dark-skinned woman with deep creases in her face. She offered Point a bit of food and someone else came with a sweater. His feet were still bare, the crew of the Dragonchaser didn't have much in the way of spare footware. Someone was sent off to find him some shoes. Point was overwhelmed.

"You are all so... very kind," he said, swept with emotion. "I can't repay you for this," he held the sweater in his hand.

"I am not asking you to," the old woman smiled, "that is not our way. Come along. You have much to learn."

***

What Point learned, eventually, was that Zion was a city outside of the reach of the Matrix, and the Machines. It was hidden, it was deep within the crust of the earth. He learned of the demise of the surface world, and of the endless pursuit of freedom that the Human race aspired to. Zion was a large place, not so huge that it matched the old cities of the earth, but it was big physically and it was somewhat confusing to Point.

But he also learned that the people of Zion somewhat mistrusted the Dragons. They were creatures half-machine, therefore they could only bring trouble. Was trouble really what Point wanted? Not really - but a dragon, that would be the thing he could handle. Zion needed defenders. Dragons fit the bill, even if they were manufactured ones.

So Point spent more and more time with the crew of the Dragonchaser, until they decided he was ready to visit Vere. The place was more a myth to the people in Zion that were from the Matrix. Precious few - if any - were the freed minds of Vere. They apparently liked being where they were, a lot more than the Matrix inhabitants.

And Point could hardly blame them, when he was jacked in and sent down with Cel, Key, Tech and Coder. The place was magical - literally. It was like Earth, only it was so much better...

Point realized he could do something like the magic the gifted ones had. He was artistic, and he was freed - meaning that he knew it was all something different than it appeared. Exert a little control over the color nearby, and he faded to a shadow. He could manipulate light and color almost immediately. Not at a distance, but right around himself, directed, even at a wall - he could make drawings appear where a blank space was.

This would have been unheard of in the Matrix, but here? It was perfectly acceptable. A round of applause came to him, when he'd done a Sorcerer's Apprentice shtick waving his hand around and causing sparkling rivers and clouds to appear.

Laughing, he saw Tech and Coder, standing in the dim recess of a building nearby. They seemed to remind him: this is not real either, Point... This is not your home. It's only one of the places you can be.

So he bowed, and graciously accepted the praise that younger kids gave him for the performance, and slipped back to the ship's crew.

"You like it here," Coder said.

"Of course I like it here," Point said, happily. He looked a lot more sedate than some of the mages here, but not quite like he had in the Matrix. His hair was a bit longer, more garishly red, black in the back. He didn't adopt the dark shades that Tech and Coder used. Why do that? It was something out of the Matrix - not here in Vere. "I can do my art here, like never before."

"But you're going to be a visitor, Point," Tech said, "always."

Point looked down, and nodded. "I know. What now?"

"Now," Tech said, "we wait for the eggs to mature. And we wait for the dragons. We'll arrange for you to stand, it won't be too hard. You're obviously the right kind of person. You blend in with the folks here - and with some practice I think you could do the same thing in the Matrix proper."

Point nodded again, knowing that he would want to return to the 'real Matrix' sooner or later. But he'd do that with a dragon. Right?

Right!