video.

[dissent]

[ It's late, and Anders is up on the surface, face lit occasionally by the rolling crackle of the sky. But he's not thinking about this strange place called Earth, his eyes distant. ]

Has anyone else met someone they... knew in their Matrix, but who was extracted from a different Matrix?

[ He's fumbling with the question, not sure how to ask what he wants to ask and not daring to voice what underlies it. ]

There are other versions of us still living their lives. It feels like I'm ...

[ A pause, and he decides not to follow up with whatever point he was planning, sighs instead, switches the feed off and tries to work out if there's some way to delete the recording from the network. ]

Comments

voice

[dissent]

Well, it's not actually my name. They took me away from my family when I showed signs of magical use, and people called me Anders there, because I looked and spoke like I was from the Anderfels. It stuck.

[ It doesn't touch on how emotional even thinking back on that time makes him. None of it was real anyway, so his father turning him over to the Templars shouldn't still sting but oh, it does. He'd forsworn his name then because they'd given it to him, and now it's hard to remember that he ever had another. ]

voice

[rathercommon]

[ She's heard that's what magicians do. They take on new names, just like that. She remembers faintly a boy, just a little older than her, being taken away - a boy she'd sometimes played with - and someone saying, He'll get a new name now. It makes them more powerful, apparently, choosing their own names - that's what's she's heard. Honestly, she thinks it's because they're all just too ashamed to face the people who knew them before they were wicked and exploitative and cruel, and so they're hiding by changing their identities. That makes a lot more sense.

So this one, too, then. Casting off his name as soon as he got apprenticed to a magician. Forgetting who he was, forgetting his common origins. Probably so he could be more cruel. If he saw his family again, would he be ashamed? Would they turn away from him? Or would he even care, would they just be another throng of common fools to him? Would he even bother to glance at him from the window of his luxury car?

And also, that single question that she just doesn't understand: why does he run a clinic? Why does he care? He's a magician - what's his angle?

She forces a more chipper note into her voice. She tries hard to sound cheerful. ]

Well, it's a cute name. I like it. And do you like how you turned out?