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Matrix that he has known his entire life. What awaited Neo on the other side was a bleak
nightmare. People are controlled by machines, machines that have no soul, no emotion, no
ethics. These machines are the perpetuators of stasis and of the status quo. The machines
have perfected the logic and practice of appeasement and control. The only hope is to
forsake all that you have ever known to escape to an authentic existence. Anything else is to
surrender your life to meaninglessness and extinction.
Larry and Andy Wachowski 1996 (http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Matrix,-The.html)
MORPHEUS We
are trained in this world to accept only what is rational and logical. Have you ever
wondered why?
impossible which is why the younger a mind is the easier it is to free while a mind like yours can
be very difficult. NEO Free from what?
himself. MORPHEUS
MORPHEUS From the Matrix. Neo locks at his eyes but only sees a reflection of
Neo swallows and nods his head. MORPHEUS It's that feeling
you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a
splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? The LEATHER CREAKS as he leans back. MORPHEUS The
Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or
on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the
world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
NEO What
truth?
MORPHEUS
That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage... ... kept inside a
prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind .
PANE of glass. MORPHEUS Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. NEO How?
MORPHEUS Hold out your hands.
last chance. After this, there is no going back. In his left, a blue pill .
MORPHEUS This
MORPHEUS You
is your
pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.
pills in his open hands are reflected in the glasses. MORPHEUS You
The
Neo feels the smooth skin of the capsules, with the moisture growing in his
that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more. Neo opens his mouth
The Cheshire smile returns. MORPHEUS Follow me. He leads Neo into the other room, which is
cramped with high-tech equipment, glowing ash-bliie and electric green from the racks of monitors. Trinity, Apoc and Cypher look up
as they enter. CYPHER Shit. TRINITY I knew he would. Cypher saddles up to Morpheus, talking in a hushed tone away from, Neo.
CYPHER Morpheus, I know what you believe but I think this is a mistake. We're rushing him. He's old. I'm afraid he might pop. MORPHEUS
Haven't I always told you, Cypher, not to let fear control your life. Apoc, are we on-line? Neo recognizes the large man from the El
train. APOC Almost. He and Trinity are working quickly, hardwiring a complex system of monitors, modules and drives. NEO Apoc? You
wrote the Four Horsemen Virus. APOC That's right. MORPHEUS Neo, time is always against us. Will you take a seat there? In the center
of the room sits a chair. Near the chair is an old oval dressing mirror that is cracked. MORPHEUS I
Neo sits and Trinity begins gently fixing white electrode disks to his head, arns, and the back of his
neck. NEO A little. MORPHEUS Tell me about it. NEO Essentially, it's a hardware system that uses an apparatus; headgear, gloves and
whatever to make you feel that you are in a computer program. MORPHEUS If
it, was wired to all of your senses and controlled them completely, would you be able to tell the
difference between the virtual world and the real world?
wouldn't.
you
Neo whispers to Trinity. NEO You did all this? She nods, placing a set of headphones over his ears. They are wired to an old hotel
strange.
pill you took is part of a trace program. It's going to make things feel a bit
Distantly, through the ear phones, he hears Apoc POUNDING on a KEYBOARD. Sweat beads his face. His eyes blink and
twitch when he notices the mirror. Wide-eyed he stares as it begins to heal itself, a webwork of cracks that slowly run together as
though the mirror were becoming liquid. NEO Shit... Cypher works with Apoc checking reams of phosphorescent data. Trinity monitors
Neo's electric vital signs. Neo
reaches out to touch the mirror and his fingers disappear beneath the
rippling surface. Quickly, he tries to pull his fingers out but the mirror stretches in long rubbery
strands like mirrored-taffy stuck to his fingertips .
strands thin like rubber cement as he pulls away, until the fragile wisps of mirror thread break. With the TINKLING of GLASS,
shimmering snowflakes of electric-blinking mercury fall, hit the ground, and fade. He looks at his hand; fingers distended into
mirrored icicles that begin to melt rapidly, dripping, running like wax down his fingers, spreading across his palms where he sees his
face reflected. NEO Uh-oh... TRINITY It's going into replication. MORPHEUS Apoc? APOC Still nothing. Morpheus takes out a cellular
phone and dials a number. MORPHEUS Tank, we're going to need the signal soon. Stay calm, Neo. The mirror gel seems to come to life,
racing, crawling up his arns like hundreds of insects. NEO It's
panic, tipping his head as though he were sinking into the mirror, trying to keep his mouth up .
NEO
It's all over me -- Morpheus is right next to him, with the phone. TRINITY I got a fibrillation! CYPHER I knew it, I knew it... MORPHEUS
Shit! Apoc? Streams of mercury run from Neo's nose. APOC Targeting... almost there. An ALARM, on Trinity's monitor ERUPTS. TRINITY
He's going into arrest! CYPHER He's gonna pop! APOC Lock! I got him! MORPHEUS Now, Tank now!
mirror, rolling up and closing as a high-pitched ELECTRIC SCREAM ERUPTS in the headphones -It is a piercing SHRIEK like a computer calling to another computer -- Neo's body arches in agony
and we are pulled like we were pulled into the holes of the phone Sucked into his SCREAM and
swallowed by darkness.
[Continues, probably with text deleted]
Floating in a womb-red amnion.
His body spasms, fighting against the thick gelatin. Metal tubes, surreal versions of
hospital tubes, obscure his face. Other lines like IVs are connected to limbs and cover his genitals .
desperately now.
He is struggling
Air bubbles into the Jell-O but does not break the surface. Pressing up, the surface distends, stretching like
a red rubber coccon. Unable to breathe, he fights wildly to stand, clawing at the thinning elastic shroud --
Until it ruptures, a
He is bald and naked, his body slick with gelatin. Dizzy, nauseous, he waits for his vision to focus. He is standing in an
oval capsule of clear alloy filled with red gelatin, the surface of which has solidified like curdled milk. The IVs in his arms are
plugged into outlets that appear to be grafted to his flesh.
the back of his head where he finds an enormous coaxial plugged and locked into the base of his
skull.
He tries to pull it out but it would be easier to pull off a finger. To either side he sees other tube-shaped pods filled with
red gelatin; beneath the wax-like surface, pale and motionless, he sees other human beings. Fanning out in a circle,
All connected to a center core, each capsule like a red, dimly glowing petal attached
to a black metal stem. Above him, level after, level, the stem rises seemingly forever. He moves
to the foot of the capsule and looks out. The image assaults his mind. Towers of glowing petals
spiral up to incomprehensible heights, disappearing down into a dim murk like an underwater
abyss.
His sight is blurred and warped, exaggerating the intensity of the vision. The sound of the PLANT is like the sound of the
Below Neo, a petal detaches from the stem, bearing away the
body of an old man like an automated barge even as a new pod rises up and plugs itself into the
empty space. Inside the new capsule, its surface more translucent and pinkish in color, Neo sees a small baby.
From above, a machine drops directly in front of Neo. He swallows his scream as it seems to
stare at him.
soft polymers.
It is almost insect-like in its design; beautiful housings of alloyed metal covering organic-like systems of hard and
A black particle beam washes over Neo, he reacts in pain as the scanner seems to
expose the nervous 2system wired to the coaxial cable at his cerebral cortex. At the back of the
neck, the cable lock spins and opens, disengaging.
The cable pulls itself free, a long clear plastic needle and
cerebrum-chip slides from the anterior of Neols skull with an ooze of blood and spinal fluid .
snap free and snake away as The back of the unit opens and a tremendous vacuum, like an
airplane door opening, sucks the gelatin and then Neo into a black hole.
So the world, then, is a radical illusion. That is, at least, one hypothesis. At all events, it is an unbearable one. And to keep it at
bay, we have to realize the world, give it force of reality, make it exist and signify at all costs, take from it its secret, arbitrary,
accidental character, rid it of appearances and extract its meaning, divert it from all predestination and restore it to its end and its maximum
efficacy, wrest
it from its form to deliver it up to its formula. This gigantic enterprise of disillusionment- of, literally, putting the
illusion of the world to death, to leave an absolutely real world in its stead- is what is properly meant by simulation. Ii is not, then, the real which
is the opposite of simulation- the real is merely a particular case of that simulation- but illusion. And there is no crisis of reality. Far from it.
There will always be more reality, because it is produced and reproduced by simulation, and is itself merely a
model of simulation, the proliferation of reality, its spreading like an animal species whose natural predators
have been eliminated, is our true catastrophe. This is the inevitable fate of an objective world. We have to
restore the potency and the radical meaning of illusion, which is most often reduced to the level of a chimaera
diverting us from what is true: what things deck themselves out in to hide what they are. When, in fact, the illusion of the world is the way things have
of presenting themselves for what they are when they are not actually there at all. In appearance, things are what they give themselves out to be. They appear and
disappear without letting anything at all show through. They unfurl without concern for their being, or even their existence. They signal to us, but are not susceptible
of decipherment. On the other hand, in simulation, in this giant dispositive of meaning, calculation and efficiency that encompasses all our technical devices, including
current virtual reality, the illusion of the sign is lost, and only its operation remains. The happy non-distinction between true and false, between real and unreal, gives
way to the simulacrum, which consecrates the unhappy non-distinction between true and false, between the real and its signs, the unhappy, necessarily unhappy,
destiny of meaning in our culture.
seen, in fact, whether the illusion of meaning is a vital illusion or one that is destructive of the world and the subject itself. However this may be, faced with this
strategy on the part of the subject, the world develops a much more subtle and paradoxical one, which is to give itself out for what it is, when it is actually not there.
Over against the subject, that indomitable producer of meaning, stands the world, that inexhaustible producer of illusion, including, no doubt- with the involuntary
complicity of the subject- the illusion of meaning.
There will be no end to this frenzied race around the Mobius strip where the
surface of meaning perpetually feeds into the surface of illusion, unless the illusion of meaning were to win
out once and for all, which would put an end to the world.
By advancing a politics of reality, the affirmative actually exhausts all of its possibilities,
bringing us to the end of the world in the completion of this perfect crime
Baudrillard in 96 (Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher, The Perfect Crime, First Printed by Verso 1996, Chapter: The Automatic
Writing of the World, pages 27-28, Print)
The perfect crime is that of an unconditional realization of the world by the actualization of all data, the
transformation of all our acts and all events into pure information: in short, the final solution, the resolution of the world
ahead of time by the cloning of reality and the extermination of the real by its double.
Clarkes short story The Nine Billion Names of God. A community of Tibetan monks have for
centuries
devoted themselves to transcribing these nine billion names of God, and once they have accomplished this
the purpose of
the world will be achieved, and it will come to an end. The task is a tiresome one and the weary monks call in
technicians from IBM, whose computers do the job in a few months. In a sense, the history of the world is completed in
real time by the workings of virtual technology. Unfortunately, this also means the disappearance of the world in real time. For suddenly, the
promise of the end is fulfilled and,
as they walk back down into the valley, the technicians, who did not really believe
in the prophecy, are aghast to see the stars going out one by one. This is perhaps the fate that awaits us at the
end-point of this technical transfiguring of the world: its accelerated end, its immediate resolution- the final success of modern
millenarianism, though with no hope of salvation, apocalypse or revelation. Merely hastening the final term accelerating the movement towards
disappearance pure and simple.
And so, quite without knowing it, the human race might, like the IBM technicians, be
assigned to this noble task: triggering the code for the worlds automatic disappearance by exhausting all
its possibilities. This is the very essence of the Virtual.
And, the flip side to this coin of hyperreality is the eradication of Otherness, the ethnic
cleansing by means of communication
Baudrillard in 96 (Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher, The Perfect Crime, First Printed by Verso 1996, pages 109-110, Print)
With the Virtual, we enter not only upon the era of the liquidation of the Real and the Referential, but that of
the extermination of the Other. It is the equivalent of an ethnic cleansing which would not just affect
particular populations but unrelentingly pursue all forms of otherness. The otherness of death- staved off by unrelenting
medical intervention. Of the face and the body- run to the earth by plastic surgery. Of the world- dispelled by Virtual Reality. Of every one
[chacun]- which will one day be abolished by the cloning of individual cells. And quite simply, of the other, currently undergoing dilution in
perpetual communication.
If information is the site of the perfect crime against reality, communication is the site of
the perfect crime against otherness. No more other: communication. No more enemy: negotiation. No more
predators: conviviality. No more negativity: absolute positivity. No more death: the immortality of the clone. No more otherness:
identity and difference. No more seduction: sexual in-difference. No more illusion: hyperreality, Virtual Reality. No
more secret: transparency. No more destiny. The perfect crime.
we find ourselves faced with a dual project: a bid to complete the world, to achieve and integral reality- and a
bid to continue the Nothing (of which this book is a part). Both are doomed to fail. But, whereas the failure of an
attempt at completion is, necessarily, negative, the failure of an attempt at annihilation is, necessarily, vital and
positive. It is for this reason that thought, which knows it will fail in any case, is duty-bound to set itself criminal objectives. An undertaking
directed towards positive objectives cannot allow itself to fail. One which pursues criminal objectives is duty-bound to fail.
tempered application of the principle of evil. If the system fails to be everything, nothing will remain of it. If
thought fails to be nothing, something will remain of it.
even as Neo jumps for the third-floor platform. Neo kicks in the window, jumping into the hall.
The doors count backwards:
biggest gun he can find. The lasers begin to slice through the hull .
there. MORPHEUS He's
TRINITY Hurry,
Neo.
TRINITY Where
is he?
TANK Almost
PHONE RINGING. 305... 304... Agent Brown reaches the broken window behind him just as Neo
grabs the handle of 303, throwing open the door to find -- Agent Sniith, waiting, .45 cocked. Neo
can't move -- can't think -- BOOM.
INT. HOVERCRAFT
Three holes in his chest, Neo falls to the blue shag carpeting, blood smearing down the
wallpaper. Agent Smith stands over him, still aiming, taking no chances .
HOVERCRAFT
Through the lasered opening, Morpheus screams, blasting away at the machines;
comet-wads of plasma burning holes in their armored housings. Trinity collapses onto Neo's
body.
TRINITY No-no-no!
Kneeling
AGENT SMITH I
INT. HOVERCRAFT
bolt knocking him to the ground. They can't hold them off any longer. Morpheus lunges for the
self destruct -- As Trinity whispers in Neo's ear.
TRINITY You're
I'm not letting you go. Do you hear me? I won't let you go .
elevator, leaving Neo's body behind. INT. HOVERCRAFT Morpheus
TRINITY Goddamnit,
Neo! Don't give it up! Not now! She pounds on his chest .
The BLOW ECHOES deep in his mind. His eyes snap open.
INT.
Trinity screams as the monitors jump back to life. Tank and Morpheus stare,
unbelieving. It is a miracle.
chest, sitting up. Down the hall, he sees the elevator closing and -- Agent Smith staring at him as
if he were looking at a Cypher. Neo gives him the finger .
elevator door.