My new apartment was exactly like I imagined it would be. Metal all around, with grates, steel beams, rust on most surfaces, and a low rumbling sound from the back wall that could only be the constantly flowing rushing water through the pipes that carried it to the rest of the city. The place had a small bathroom, a good sized bedroom, a much smaller side room that could be a second bedroom, a living room, and a galley kitchen.

“This is bigger than my apartment in the Matrix.” I commented and heard the maintenance guy behind me laugh.

“High rent for a better location to get to work faster?” He asked as he set the cart off its wheels to put the portable shower down.

“Yep, the same trap a lot of us fall into when we get a better job.” I answered.

“I was an engineer myself. Highly paid and shared a little hole in the wall with three other guys.” He said and walked over to the bathroom to look inside. “It was pretty much just a place for us to sleep.”

“Damn, did you use college dorm rules?” I asked.

He grinned at me. “There was either a necktie or a pair of panties hung on the apartment's doorhandle all the time! Ha ha!”

I laughed, too. It was the only way to get any privacy that everyone that saw it understood what it meant. “Don't worry about helping to install it. I need to rework it a little to fit, unless I move the sink.”

The guy looked back into the cramped bathroom. “Yeah, I get it. You'll worry about it later.”

“Exactly.” I said and walked with him back to the door.

“Are you sure you want to deliver the other two yourself? It's no trouble for us to do it.”

I nodded. “It might be the same situation, so I need to check and see if they can even have one fit in first before I can give them one.”

He nodded as well and stepped out. “Drop them in here, boys.”

He stepped back out of the way and I did as well. Two more shower stalls were brought in and stood next to the first one.

“Thanks again, guys.” I said.

The three of them waved and walked off, the three carts rattling slightly as they dragged them behind them.

I shut and locked the door, stored the three stalls, and went to work. There was only basic things for furniture. A couple of chairs, a table, and a cot in the main bedroom. All were slightly rusted metal, so I vanished them and went to work.

Since everything was metal anyways, adding expansion runes was as easy as transfiguring them into the corners and charging them up. The main room doubled in size, giving me plenty of space that didn't look out of place, since this apartment was in the far corner of the level and slightly away from everyone else.

It didn't change where things were connected, since only the inside of the room was expanded. The small personal communications setup at the side of the room with a little desk in front of it was unaffected.

I went into the bedroom and expanded it as well, making it big enough to add a king-size bed, two nightstands, a dresser, and a standing closet. It was all transfigured to be metal to match the aesthetic. It took a bit of time to add an ensuite bathroom against the wall where the real bathroom was between the two bedrooms.

The reason I chose there was because it wouldn't take much to open up the wall temporarily to connect everything to the existing waste pipes. I set copies of the shower stall, toilet, and sink inside where I wanted them.

I expanded the actual bathroom next, leaving the current items inside where they were. I would worry about moving everything later and I set one of the freestanding shower stalls in the corner. I then went into the second bedroom and expanded it to be the same size as the other one and added in the same things, even a door to make the existing bathroom into an ensuite bathroom for the second bedroom.

My thinking was Mouse wouldn't assume I was taking the bigger room for myself and only giving him the spare room, like leaving him leftovers. The apartment's living room would be split if he wanted it to be, too. We'd have to share the kitchen, though. There was no way I could get away with adding a second kitchen without anyone questioning it.

The next thing I did was add soundproofing materials to the walls. It dampened the sounds from all around by a significant degree, which reduced the rushing water from a loud rumble to barely a whooshing sound. So, I cast a permanent silencing charm on the material and it became whisper quiet in the apartment.

I laughed at the change and covered the material with metal plates that matched what the walls looked like before, only without the weathering and rust color. When I was done, the entire apartment looked like I had taken an industrial sand blaster to the thing and everything was all nice and shiny without a lick of paint anywhere.

“I'll ask Mouse what colors he likes before changing anything.” I said out loud and went into my bathroom, split the wall and floor open where I could mount the pipes for the sink and toilet, attached them to the existing ones with cut off valves, and closed everything up and left the pipes sticking out. I put the toilet and sink into place, attaching them properly, and it was done.

I went out into the living room and wasn't sure what I could do with it. I didn't really know what Mouse would enjoy for relaxing on, like a comfy couch, wingback chairs, or something else. There was also no television, no personal computers, no workspace, and definitely nowhere to set up a construct attachment like in the Nebuchadnezzar.

“He is totally going to want the living room to become a jack-in station, isn't he?” I asked and looked at the space as I mentally added the things needed.

If we were careful, it was possible to fit one computer setup on the wall between the hatches to the bedrooms and then barely enough room for two barber chairs on either side of it. There was no other space big enough... and then I remembered his bedroom.

I let out a laugh and went inside and stored everything and saw it would fit in there easily. He would definitely choose this place for it, since he didn't really need a big bedroom, and will use a cot for when he absolutely had to sleep in a normal bed.

That meant I would be calling in the few favors I had with the maintenance guys to ask for a spare older computer setup and a couple old barber chairs. I'd fix them up and make the connection computer more robust, by modifying it and updating it, then I would give Mouse a call and let him know he had a place to live off of the ship. A place he could call his own.

Now I just had to figure out if the Woman in the Red Dress he programmed was portable on a disk or if he would have to transfer her from computer core to computer core. I couldn't ask without giving the surprise away, so I pushed the thought aside and walked over to the small communication station in the living room.

I was about to start making calls and started to type the first number before I realized how late it was. I turned it off and went to my bedroom. I took off my only set of clothes, hung them up in the closet, and climbed into bed. Tomorrow was going to be a full day of running around and exchanging favors for things, especially clothes and personal care items, and I would also deliver the two shower stalls.

I couldn't wait to see Dozer's, his wife's, and Switch's and Apoc's faces when I showed up to install it for them. Like everyone else that had been either born in Zion or rescued from the Matrix, they probably hadn't had an actual shower in a very long time, if ever.

Was giving Switch a personal shower as a thank you for the soap, and Dozer for the custom made sweater, a bit too much? Not really. Councillor Dillard had told me that soap and yarn to knit with were considered luxury items and that giving a luxury item in return was an appropriate gift to give in response.

It would be a long time before the shower stalls were available to the general public, since the first models were being allocated to the council and their families first, then to the brass of the defense forces, then to the captains of the ships, then on down the line to everyone serving before they started distributing them to the civilians.

The showers also cost resources to produce, so gathering them and making more, cut into producing other things that people needed. It all had to be balanced delicately and that was understandable with a quarter of a million people to make things for. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep with thoughts of how long the last person in Zion was going to have to wait to experience their own personal shower.

*

Mouse was a little out of it when he received a call from Neo to meet. It had been a couple of days since the crew left the ship and he thought that Neo had forgotten about him, just like the others did. They forgot about his existence completely, until they returned to the ship when their shore leave ended, then treated him like a pet or a mascot.

He had no doubt they cared about him in their own way, when they remembered him; but, he kind of resented the treatment, especially when they disparaged him over his admiration of his own coding prowess. The Woman in the Red Dress was a technological marvel and no one else had come as close to making a Virtual Intelligence as versatile as her.

There was no way he could get the processing power needed or the coding knowledge necessary to make her into a true AI, not that he would be allowed to do so, even if he could get both. Creating another machine mind was an unspoken taboo that he was a little afraid of doing, mostly because he was afraid they would delete her... or worse, delete him.

“Mouse!” Neo exclaimed happily when the elevator doors opened on the lowest deck of the habitat and saw him.

Mouse squeaked appropriately when the much larger man pulled him into a hug, which made Neo laugh.

“I'm sorry, Mouse. I just finished getting your room ready and I'm a little excited to see what you think of it.” Neo said and let him go.

“My... my what?” Mouse asked, his eyes wide. Surely, he couldn't mean what he just said, could he?

Neo laughed at his expression. “I already cleared it with Councillor Dillard and she assigned the both of us to Bachelor Haven!” He said and waved down towards the far end of the living area. “It's down there and you're going to love it.”

Mouse let the large man drag him by the arm down the main hallway, around a corner, and down another long hallway. It really was the last hatch in the hallway, right at the end, and there were no other hatches nearby. The loud churning of water and other machinery let the thin man know why there was no one else living all the way down here.

Neo saw his face and laughed again. “Hey, don't worry. I fixed that deficiency.”

Mouse sincerely doubted that until Neo opened the hatch to the apartment and pretty much shoved him inside. He stared, almost uncomprehendingly, at the lavish and opulent living room that was completely silent when the hatch was shut.

The apartment was huge, as was the attached kitchen, and the living room had an actual couch, which was something he hadn't seen outside of the Matrix. There was also a large viewscreen hung on the wall across from it that showed different scenes of landscapes that made it look like a window.

“I didn't mean this part, even if it's great. Your room's over here.” Neo said and led him over to one of the two hatches in the room.

When it was opened, Mouse caught his breath at what was inside and then fainted.

It seemed like only a moment later, Mouse opened his eyes and he was laying on a cot at the side of the room and he was facing the large computer setup and two obviously repaired and rebuilt barber chairs. It was a login setup he had only dreamed about and he couldn't believe that Neo had given it to him. The hatch to his room opened and the man he was thinking about walked in.

“Good morning, Mouse.” Neo said and handed him a bowl of something that looked like oatmeal rings in milk.

Mouse stared at it and didn't know what to say. There was no possible way it was real. No. Way.

“I had to call in a special favor with Zion's mainframe server maintenance crew to get the recipe for Tastee Wheat.” Neo said and Mouse lifted his gaze from the bowl to stare at him. “There's recipes for everything in the archives, by the way. It just takes time to sort through all the other crap to get to it.”

“But... but... but...” Mouse stammered.

“It actually tastes like it's supposed to, too. I had to trade a reservation for a shower stall for the powdered milk; but, it was worth it to see the look on your face.” Neo said and gripped his shoulder. “Eat up, take an actual shower in your bathroom, get changed into some new clothes, and we can play in a simulation or two before supper tonight.”

Mouse blinked his suddenly wet eyes and tried to parse out what he said. “But... but...”

“I'll be in the kitchen working until you're ready, okay?” Neo said and handed him a spoon. “I want to see if I can make leavened bread without burning out the small cooker we have.”

Mouse stared at him as he left and tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn't bother trying to wipe his face off as he looked back down at the bowl in his hand. He dug the spoon into the bowl, the feeling of nostalgia rose at the familiar feelings that produced, then he lifted a single oat ring and some milk up and carefully put it into his mouth.

He fully expected it to vanish before it hit his tongue, only it didn't. His taste buds flared with remembrance and he softly moaned as he chewed on something that was supposed to only exist as a mental projection from when he was a kid. He swallowed the sweet morsel, realized there was also a sprinkle of brown sugar on it as well, then dug into it like a madman.

Mouse felt his stomach bulge a little when the bowl was finally empty and he couldn't have felt more content if he tried. He couldn't remember the last time he had any kind of solid food in his stomach, or if he ever had any. The normal food on the ship was just a slop consisting of a single cell protein, combined with synthetic amino acids, vitamins, and minerals that was everything the body needed.

He sat there for a while, kind of languishing in the feelings he had, and tried to not laugh at how sluggish and happy he was. He eventually stood and walked over to the hatch at the side of the room. His hand absently ran along the repaired barber chair and he entered the bathroom with a smile on his face.

Mouse actually did laugh at seeing his goofy expression in the mirror and turned to see a real shower stall in the corner of the room. He walked over to it and marvelled at its simplicity and versatility. He stripped off in moments and was inside and moaned as the room temperature water sloshed over him.

He didn't even reach for the soap until ten minutes later, then he washed himself quite thoroughly for the first time. He stepped out of the shower stall, feeling like a new man, and started to reach for his clothes, then stopped. He thought he remembered Neo saying something about new clothes and went into his bedroom and over to a free-standing cabinet.

Once opened, Mouse stared at all of the nice warm clothing inside. He knew it must have cost a lot to get them all, since both cloth and yarn were hard to come by, and Mouse's appreciation for Neo grew beyond any normal expectations he had. It seemed like the tall blond had given him everything he ever wanted, including a way to spend more personal time with his creations.

Mouse pulled out comfy underwear to put on, then thick wool pants he easily fit into, and then he put on a top that was more fur than cloth. He had an odd thought that it felt like a bear pelt and laughed at the ridiculous thought. Where the hell would anyone find a bear pelt?

Mouse stepped out of his room, feeling more alive and happy than he had ever felt, and smelled something delicious. He kind of stumbled across the living room and sat down at the kitchen bar to stare at Neo cooking something that looked like several thin strips of meat. Actual, real, meat.

“I call it faux bacon.” Neo said and slid a few pieces onto a plate for him. “Go ahead and try it.”

Mouse's shaky hand took a piece and slowly lifted it to his mouth. He bit into it and moaned as the most wonderful taste of bacon filled his mouth. He swallowed and let out a sound like a deflating tire as he fainted and slumped down onto the counter.

“I'll take that as a compliment.” Neo said with a laugh and started cooking some more. He had a feeling Mouse was going to want a lot more of it when he woke up. He added a slice of leavened bread to his plate as well, toasted of course. Making good food by cheating had been a long standing tradition in Neo's kitchen for a long time.