Agent Smith

Today, as I walk back to my truck from Taekwon-do, I’m assessing whether or not I have internal bleeding in my liver. It’s hard to say, so I’m going to wait till morning and see if I’m more yellow than usual.

How’d this happen? Well, I have my own personal Agent Smith. On the remote chance that you have not seen The Matrix, Agent Smith is an entity that the heroes of the film are not able to harm in anyway, even if they hit him. Whereas the damage that Agent Smith does to them is both significant and lasting.

My Agent Smith is another guy at the Taekwon-do dojang. We’re about the same age, but he’s been at it for 10 years longer than me. I’m not a black belt yet, but he’s a black belt three times over. His black belt has the roman numeral three on it. This means he earned the belt, trained for no less than 1.5 years to get the roman numeral two added to it, then trained at least two more years to get the three added to it (this pattern keeps going through the levels of black belting, i.e., he’ll train three more years to get a four on his belt, though I believe his about halfway there now).

The point is, he’s thrown some kicks in his day. He’s also 3-4 inches taller than me. A really talented shorter person (which I am not) can overcome that deficit with certain tactics. But an adept taller person (which he is) can essentially play with a short dude like a cat with a mouse. I cannot put leather on this guy for the life of me. If we go at it for a three-minute round, the score is typically something like 17 to 2 in his favor. No exaggeration.

Now, here’s the crazy part, the dude’s last name is actually Smith. I call him Mr. Smith in the dojang because you address senior belt levels formally, but he’s Agent Smith in my head. What’s more, his first name starts with a T, so it says “T. Smith” on his belt. All you have to do is put an A-G-E-N in front of his first initial, and what have you got? Agent Smith. He also has a son who’s in his 20s who’s a black belt as well (and ABSURDLY faster than me), and you are not going to believe what his first initial is. It’s A. So it says “A. Smith” on his belt, lacking only the G-E-N-T to make Agent Smith.

So, for all those conspiracy theorists who think we’re living in a computer simulation, I’m not convinced yet… but I’m listening.

Anyway, there’s your cast of characters. Here’s how I wind up headed back to the truck debating whether to drive home or straight to emerg.

We went through a fast but intense warm up before Master Arden told us all to line up, which means we all get in rows by rank and stand at attention. As we all sweated and panted, he said, “Today, I want us to work on some combinations that I have found very effective in competitions. They need to be fast, so I’ll be counting them out quickly. If your birth year starts with a 19, you may have trouble keeping up. Focus on quick strikes and getting right back into your guarding stance. After that, we’re going to work on our sparring.”

There’s no vulgarity allowed in the dojang, but the translation of all of that is: “Buckle-up, bitches.” It means that for about 15 minutes, we’ll be doing aerobic activity, paired with precision techniques that will fatigue both mind and body. You might not think that throwing punches and kicks at the air is work, but when it’s three kicks, two punches, one 360 degree rotation, all at combat speed, over and over again… it will work you over. Then we will spar for about 30-35 minutes, and for those who haven’t fought much, that’s equivalent to doing wind sprints for half an hour.

Though I sigh internally when I hear we’ll be having a high intensity conditioning day, I’m always happy about it after. We leave the dojang exhausted, but it is the satisfying kind of weariness that comes with a sense of accomplishment. True to his word, Master Arden put us through our paces with multiple combinations on quick tempo, then said, “Put your sparring gear on.”

Nothing to report from my first few bouts. I absorbed a couple hits, dealt a couple too. Mr. Chan was in the mix; he’s a second degree black belt (or second “dan” as they’re called in TKD). He’s young and fast, but he keeps his distance. He’ll always out score me by a wide margin, but I have heavy hands, and I know he does not relish the odd time I catch him with a fist.

Eventually, I was squared up with Agent Smith. Our match went as it always does. I try moving in and out and around, but it’s like I have a blind spot with him. Not only am I unable to put a fist or foot on the guy, but I can’t seem to creatively imagine a way past his guard. It’s probably more of a mental block at this point than anything else.

I’m landing my usual one point to every six of his when it happens. I’m in my guard with right foot forward, meaning I’m standing not quite sideways to my opponent, but three quarters. Imagine a boxing stance with the right foot in front. I start to jump in with a front foot side kick, so I’m pushing off my left foot, and raising my right to strike.

Have you ever heard the saying: He beat me to the punch? It comes from combat sports, and it sucks. Agent Smith, through prescience or simple anticipation, throws a left foot side kick at me as I’m moving forward with my right, but he is ahead of me. He beats me to the punch. With my momentum moving me forward, but my leg not yet up to strike, Agent Smith’s left foot hits me in the abdomen, and it hits me square.

There’s one time in my life when I’ve felt an impact like that. I was carrying a log under my right arm while traversing a snowy slope. I slipped, my feet went above my head, and I landed with all my weight on that frozen log. Got a rib fracture out of that one.

This felt like that. I’ve been hit a lot since being in TKD, and my brain has two responses to traumas. It either goes: Am I hurt? The answer is usually, Nope, we’re fine. But the other response is: We are HURT!, and that’s what happened this time. I knew it immediately, and I can tell you exactly where I was hit and with what part of the weapon. Right side of my abdomen: the bottom of my ribs with the ball of his foot, my liver with the heel. I felt it like it was tattooed on my skin.

Seeing it happen, even the perennially unflappable Master Arden let out a small, vicarious, Oooof!, and called out a reminder, “Tap-tap-tap. Not going for power today, just get the points.” Both he and Agent Smith saw that I was in trouble. I didn’t drop my guard, but I’d stopped moving and was involuntarily curling slightly around my right side.

Agent Smith paused, but stayed in his guard, ready to fight. Master Arden asked, “Do you need a minute?” I was so close to saying I did. I was in pain, and it was pain I knew was going to stay with me for days or weeks, but… I don’t like to stop.

I was at least 15% sure that nothing was broken or ruptured, so I decided to keep at it. I tried to respond verbally, but all that came out was a high-pitched monosyllable: “Hep.” That’s literally what it was. I leave it to you determine what a falsetto “Hep,” means. I’m the one who said it, and I’m not sure myself. So I just banged my gloves together and began to move around in the universal signal that we are still game on. However, any fight that I had in me was kicked clear out of me, and I was only going through the motions.

There was about 30 seconds left in that round, and I led with my left side forward and kept the right arm carefully guarding my body (as it clearly should have been only a few seconds ago). There were only a couple rounds after that, and I faced off against some youngsters who tend to kick at my head because they are abundantly limber, and head kicks score three points. So, I was able to avoid catching another blow to my blood-filtering organ.

Note: I’m posting this story two-weeks after the initial injury. As I type, I can still feel it, but it’s much better, and I never did see any jaundice.

By the way, as far as I’m concerned, this is still a high endorsement for Apollo Taekwon-do. Enroll your kids in martial arts they said, it’ll be fun they said. Look, neither me nor Agent Smith has ever hit a kid with a hard shot while we’re sparring. There’s lots of kids in the dojang, and when I spar with them, I do it like I’ve got barbed treble hooks in my gloves, pulling every punch and kick like I’m in a tug-of-war. Your kid is going to get bopped in Taekwon-do, but they’re not going to get hurt. It’s different when two grown ups are sparring.

To be fair, the tournament “rules” are the same for grown ups; light contact, retract your kicks and punches rather than follow through. It’s just that people regard them differently. The last tournament match that I was in, the ref looks at me and my opponent and goes, “You guys done this a few times; you know the rules, right?” Both of us nod. “Don’t kill each other,” he winks. “Too much,” he adds, and laughs.

I have noted there are very few instructors or refs who won’t let consenting adults do what they please. I’ve had just one tournament fight where the ref kept stopping the fight for excessive force, and both me and my opponent were like, “What’s this dude’s problem?”

In the training dojang, there’s an unspoken understanding on that one. Master Arden runs a tight ship. We do light contact. But if a couple of big dudes who can legally vote go a bit harder than the kids, he’s mostly going to let that play out.

Furthermore, as poor as my performance may be, it’s important for Agent Smith to spar with me. There may be thousands of adults who take up combat sports, but the kids far outnumber us. This means that Agent Smith has limited reps sparring with someone who can A. Feasibly hurt him, and B. He can fight on full throttle. He needs practice fighting grown-ass men because that’s who he faces in the ring come tournament time. I may be a subpar fighter, but I’m much better than a heavy bag.

And deranged and masochistic as it sounds, I truly appreciate the chance to spar with Agent Smith. Every round is a gift, an opportunity to become a better fighter. Catching a rib-buster once every few years is simply the price of admission, but I’m more than happy to pay it. And he’s also a really great guy. I tell this story and people think I have a nemesis. Far from. After class, we stood around talking about workout routines and what we’re up to these days. It’s just like the Loony Tunes bit; I’m Ralph the Wolf gettin’ tuned up by Sam the Sheepdog, but once we clock out, we’re buds. Agent Smith had no intention of hurting me. He just threw a solid kick while I was moving forward, and I’d dropped my guard. Freak event. If you don’t get that… combat sports ain’t for you.

Since Agent Smith is an AI in the film, I thought it immensely appropriate to use a real AI to generate the image paired with this story. It took a few prompts, but, dang, it didn’t turn out too shabby. I asked for Agent Smith from The Matrix delivering a kick to the ribs in a TKD fight with a bald guy, and it delivered.

The bald guy even looks like me. Maybe the computers are already surveilling us to helpfully fulfill our requests, and the AI just activated my camera and dropped me into the pic, or maybe all bald white dudes look the same… I don’t know, but it’s a fair likeness.

I got it to give me a red belt, but I drew the black line near the end of the belt on myself. I wear a red belt with a black stripe at one end, indicating the penultimate rank before black belt. One more successful test, and I’ll wear a black belt with an A. Schnell and the roman numeral one on it.

So why didn’t I just tell the AI to put a black tag on the end of that belt instead of editing the photo? Well, AI is still not as smart as we might like it to be. For example, it took me several prompts to get Agent Smith kicking me in the gullet instead of the head. When it gave me a pic with a kick to the head, I would say things like: “Thank you. Please show Agent Smith kicking the man in the white uniform in the abdomen.” And it would generate the image, change everything in the background, and the kick would still be to the head. It would even politely repeat my instructions to me. “Here is Agent Smith kicking the man in white in the abdomen.” I’d read the response, look at the Agent’s heel making contact with my chin, and wonder how a hyper-intelligent program could be dumb as a stone.

Once you get something close to what you want, your best bet is to download the image and count your blessings. If I took that image and said, “Thank you! This is an excellent picture! Please produce the exact same picture, but add one small black line to the end of the red belt, running perpendicular to its length,” Agent Smith might sprout three more legs and a set of antlers in the next iteration. I’ve seen it happen.

And yet, the thing gets some of the details so spot on that it’s positively eerie. I specifically said a Taekwon-do match, and look at Agent Smith’s arm in this pic. Dude has got his right arm straight out over his right leg. This is called a checking punch in TKD. It’s paired with the side kick in many of our patterns, and its purpose is to fend off a counterattack coming over the top of the kick. Agent Smith is putting on a freaking clinic on side kicks with a checking punch in Taekwon-do, and I didn’t even ask for that. AI image generators are moronic and creative, brilliant and unimaginative creatures.

Now, if you know The Matrix, you’ll recall that our hero eventually does beat Agent Smith. Indeed, he fends off all of Smith’s attacks with ease, even becoming immune to the strikes should they land. For the record, I do not anticipate this happening for me with my Agent Smith. In fact, I see no possibility of this whatsoever.

All I can promise is this, for as long as I’m in Taekwon-do, I will keep trying to narrow the skill gap between me and Agent Smith.