The slight apparition of a smile is irritating. Deckard whips out his lightsaber from its holster concealed beyond the left shoulder. In the very fraction of a moment when the thumb strives for the blade's ignition switch, when the fingers loose their opponent, when the primate's hand's unique ability to form a circle and grasp the things in their entirety is nullified, the other one strikes his wrist.
Despite of black mirrorshades their eyes are locked, never unlock, not even when their hands briefly connect. Connect incredibly fast. Vagaries of perception. Had their indeed been a shadow of a smile? Merlin's smile? The old sage sometimes sported this incomprehensible smile, because he already knew what would happen next. Or so they say. A smile expressing amusement over a joke yet untold, yet unthought of. A joke.
No laserblade spawns, the weapon's dead handle clatters over rain soaked concrete and settles in the slope of an avalanche of kipple, once emerged from an overflowing dumpster unemptied for decades, now frozen in time. Out of human reach.
Genuinely baffled Deckard states:
"You are Nexus."
Then, briefly overwhelmed by his frustration and upcoming hatred, now quenching the syllables through his tightly closed teeth, he adds:
"Mr Anderson!"
Perfectly calm, untouched, not even cold, but completely unaffected, the other one replies:
"I am Neo."
The manner of the reply so much resembles his own usual, internalized professional attitude. Looked upon analytically Anderson's statement clearly is as pathetic as a sentence spoken in this circumstances can be. But it's not open to analysis, not even to interpretation. It just floats there in the empty. They are both awake to vacuity. Regretting his moment of anger and wrath, Deckard says:
"I'd really like to run the Voight-Kampff test on you."
In fact he'd really love to, but just in time substituted 'like' for 'love'.
Again he harvests a perfectly restrained answer:
"You'd better run yourself. Run for your existence."
But then, starting to loose his emotional control himself, Anderson amends in a respectless, even mocking tone, matching the arrogance emanated by his preacherman's frock:
" ... Blade Runner."
" ... time to retire."
High above them Tally Isham's perfectly beautiful, larger than life, more human than human Zeiss-Ikon stare on the blimp's screen, urging them to get off world.
m a x m o d
