"We cant jack out.....mind telling us why not. Thats all we want to know...Weve lost several friends because of it, spare us the longwinded pleasentries. They fall on deaf ears when your mourning friend. Surely you can understand this. We just want to go home.
Castor spoke with a bit of emotion, although heknew that trying to appeal emotionally to a machine woudlnt help. At least he thought
"As I am sure you were capable of reasoning independantly, I have re-coded your presences here so that you cannot leave the Matrix. The encryption that is preventing you from doing so will be removed when I feel like doing so and at no other point."
I see Melitus seems to have the measure of Castor... I bet Heph doesn't take things so well!
"Now, which one of us was it who threatened to kill the other at our last meeting?" asks Melitus. "That's right... it was you people threatening me. You forced me to help you, and furthermore to help you try and dispose of one of my greatest assets, Jericho. You are clearly a threat to me and I do not tolerate threats."
(Relaying...and Heph is MAD...)
Heph starts twitching, gripping his staff. He walks into Melitus' line of view.
"So, you aren't going to let us go home?" Heph says, twitching. He plants his fist firmly in the mirror above Melitus, cracking it. "You think I want to hear that today!? Jericho did not meet us in person! He had one of his crew plant a spammer so that the Agents knew where'd we be and at what time! Three of them and a full SWAT team! We were riddled with bullets and punched with bone-cracking force! I was thrown clear across a room and knock unconscious! Then, when we got out of the building, narrowly escaping an Agent..." Heph, while enraged, still uses his wits and leaves Medea out of the story, knowing that Melitus would tell Jericho of her treachery. "...we saw the CCC building go up in flames and crumble! The entirely SWAT team and three Agents gunned down our friends and the building blew! And you think I want to hear that we are going to DIE?! By your SICK WHIM!? By the whim of a MACHINE?! I bet you don't even use this iron lung, that it is fake!"
Heph is bright red, still clutching staff like a madman. He turns to Fire. "And it is all because he threatened to kill you! I stood by feeling sorry for you, not knowing if you were machine or man. And now you are ensuring we are going to die."
He turns to the others. "I say we kill him..." Heph raps his staff hard on the iron lung. "Kill this bastard!"
"I did not think for one moment you had not heard it," says Melitus. "I must say you amuse me. You accuse my breathing device of being fake. Hardly an observational triumph. This is the Matrix. It is ALL fake. Did you think that is air you are breathing? Like everything here, it is an affectation. Nothing is as it seems. If you questions are as amusing as your assumptions I may be minded to answer..."
Heph sighs and rubs my temples. "Oh my god, not this bullshit..."
Heph turns back to Melitus. "You think I meant that did you? I know this is the goddamn Matrix. I know this is all fake. But that is not what I was talking about..."
"If I turned off this representation of an iron lung, would you die here in the Matrix, or is it a cherade?"
"You seem pitiably unable to grasp this simple concept. EVERYTHING is a charade in the Matrix. You cannot distinguish between two imaginary types of 'fake'. It is either real or it is not, and in the way your primitive brains understand real, it is not, just like everything your brain is telling you you can see in this room. That is all there is to it, and so your other related questions are irrelevant."
"As you can see my comrads are quite mad. I can't say I really blame them, altho some would better learn to control their emotions. You have placed us in a nice situation here, preventing us from getting out, I would have done about the same in your position tho. However we didn't kill Jericho today, we might never kill him but we might kill him some day. Anyhow we survived *gestures at everyone* that means Jericho has a problem as well. Either he hides as good as he can, I don't think he'll be much use to you then, or he tries to kill us, doing it himself or using one of his crew. But rest assure this people *gestures at Castor and Heph* will not rest until they have found Jericho or until we can get out of here.
To answer a few of your questions, Wether or not Jericho was present is uncertain, I atleast didn't see him then again he would probably have been close by, so not much of a message we got from him. Altho his set up seems pretty clear: Leave me alone, we got that message.
Seeing as I am uncertain wether or not Jericho was there I don't think he killed any of us himself."
You aren't really sure how these things work, Heph.
"The casual insult of the ignorant," he says to you, Heph.
As for Fire.
"I can assure you, you will never terminate Jericho's existence. And Jericho has no problem. You people have been dealt with. You are no threat to him any more, though it is not as if you were much of a threat in the first place.
After all, you will not now be even leaving this place."
(bwah..what's the point of swearing and being angry, guyz? 😬)
RAde looks at his cleagues, then turns to melitus.
"we seem to need you, to be able to jack out again.." says Rade "..also, we're here because you let us be here. All of this brings us to a very simple question....what do you want from us?"