What if Neo took the blue pill? What would his life be like? What would happen to the Matrix? Who would save Zion? This one-shot tries to answer these questions. I've also written an alternate ending for it.

Thanks to twistedxagonyxatxyourxservicex and to joaq4ever for their great ideas.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

„Connar, come here!" Thomas harshly called a little boy that was playing on the swings.

„Now Connar, didn't I tell you you were not allowed to swing by yourself? You can hurt yourself and you don't want that to happen, do you?" he told the boy when he came to him.

"Oh, Tom! Don't be so hard on him! Let him have some fun! It's his birthday after all!" spoke the woman that was laying on the grass with Tom.

"Sara, you know I'm being like this because I love him too much to stand the idea of him getting hurt." Tom spoke. He takes Sara into his arms and kisses her.

"Tom! What was that for?"

"That was to thank you for the 5 marvelous years you've offered me and for the lovely son you gave me!" Tom spoke and wanted to give another kiss, but his cell phone began ringing.

"Hello! Yes… Right now? Oh, no… Yeah, I'll be right there… OK… Bye!"

"Tom? Don't tell me you have to leave! Not today! We were having such a great time! Will you disappoint Connar on his birthday?" Sara spoke in a calm voice.

"I'm sorry my love, I'm sorry! I'm need at work, I really have to go. Don't wait for me tonight, OK? I love you! Bye! Bye Connar!" said Tom, leaving in a hurry.

Five years have elapsed since Thomas A. Anderson chose to take the blue pill and have a normal life. One morning he just woke up with an unexplained amnesia. Doctors could not explain why there were some moments in his life which he did not remember at all. He was constantly living with the strange feeling that he really missed something, that his life was not right, that everything could have been different. Yet, he had nothing to complain. He had given up his hobby of hacking computers and dedicated himself to hard work, so he became an important executive of Metacortex. He met Sara, whom he married, and they had a boy, Connor. He loved them both more than he loved life itself, but in those moments when he was all by himself he would often begin to wonder if he was really meant to have a family. He was looking for something, but he didn't suspect that really soon he would find it…

It was a sunny day. Thomas in a restaurant having an important business meeting. The restaurant had a huge glass wall facing the street. Tom was not too attentive to his partners, he was looking at the people walking in the street. Suddenly he saw a person that drew his attention: a woman with black hair, wearing a long black coat passed on the side walk.

"That woman… I've seen her before… I know I have… I have to speak to her" he thought rushing out of the restaurant.

"Hey! Stop! Hey!" he shouted, running after her. Finally he reached her and grabbed her by the arm. She turned around and took off her sunglasses.

"Hello Neo!" she said in a low voice, giving him a look full of sadness.

"How do you know that name? No one has called me like that for five years! Was I right to believe that I've met you before? I must have met you before… I even feel that we've had this conversation before… Weird…"

"We did meet before, Neo... But you chose not to remember… You've made your choice five years ago, Neo… You have to let go of the past and enjoy the present while you still can…"

"Wait, I'm beginning to remember… I was in the club… you came to me… I was looking for the answer to a question… The question was… What is the Matrix? You were to help me to find the answer…" Tom said looking into her eyes. Then he continued: "You took me to meet him… to meet Morpheus… He told me that he couldn't tell me what the Matrix was, that he had to show it to me… But then I go scared… I got scared of the truth… I didn't take the red pill, I took the blue one…" Tom spoke in a whispering voice.

"That's right Neo! You took the blue pill…and you forgot everything about the Matrix, that's why you don't remember many things."

"Now I remember. Now I know why I've been living with this feeling that I'm looking for something… I am still looking for the answer… I want to know…"

"It's too late now… for you, for me, for everyone…" Trinity spoke, a tear dropping from her eyes.

"I must know, please!" Tom insisted.

"Fine, I guess you should know what you've caused… Follow me…" Trinity sighed.

She led the way through the crowd, leading Thomas to a place very familiar to him: the apartment he had lived in before getting married to Sara. He was surprised to see everything was just as he left it five years before… He saw his old computer… He could clearly remember everything.

"Trinity, please, tell me… give me the answer…"

"Fine, I shall… but you'd better sit down… You'll need it…" Trinity sighed and began her story… "Neo, you see, you are living in a dream world… Nothing you see around you is real… Nothing… What you see it's a computer generated artificial reality. You see, you think you're living in the year 2004… In fact, I can't tell what year it is, no one knows for sure… But at the beginning of the 20th century there was a big war between humans and machines. The machines won… but they needed energy to continue to survive… so they used the human brain, a cheap source of energy. You see, as we speak our bodies lie in a huge power plant, asleep, and all of this is just a dream created by the machines to keep our minds busy so we don't notice that they're using us…"

"No! I can't believe it! That can't be true!" Tom could barely say.

"It is true, and it is only the beginning of the story… Few humans have dared fight the machines and have created Zion, the last city of the humans. Those who managed to get unplugged lived there. I lived there, Morpheus lived there… Back five years ago, there was a prophecy that a man, the One, would save Zion, would free the humans and will destroy the Matrix. Morpheus and I believed you were the One, that's why we looked for you. You could have saved us, but you refused, and the consequences were tragic… After a long battle Zion was completely destroyed… Morpheus died in the battle… Those humans who survived, including me, were jacked back into the Matrix…"

"No! It can't be! All that happened because of me? No!" Tom said, tears rolling down his cheeks.

"There's more you have to know, Neo, even worse… The machines decided that they must find an alternate source of energy and somehow they did. They don't need all the humans any longer. It's a matter of days, even hours, until they'll unplug almost all of us. Only few will be left alive… Neo, the best thing you can do now is go home and enjoy every moment you spend with your family… Who knows what…"

"No! No! No!" Tom shouted "Not them, no! They can't die! And all because of me! No!" Tom cried before passing out.

When he woke up he saw Trinity besides him, watching him, sobbing.

"It was not a dream, was it?" he asked in a very low voice.

"No, it was not"

"Isn't there anything I can do now? If I really am the One can't I save mankind?"

"Neo, you've missed your chance to save mankind when choosing the blue pill. Accept the consequences of your choice…" Trinity sighed and turned her head away so Neo wouldn't see her crying.

"No! I refuse to accept" he cried and rushed to the computer. He didn't know why he was doing it, but he accessed one of his old files and desperately wrote: "Forget what you feel, forget what you believe! Do whatever it takes to find out the answer to your question! Don't give up! Make the right choice, even if you're scared!" then he got up the seat and seated himself on the side of his bed, crying.

"Why do you write that Neo? Do you think that can change anything?" Trinity asked.

But just as she finished to speak something unexplained happened. She could see Neo on the chair, opening the computer… How could that be? Neo was right by her side… Yet…he was opening the computer and looking very surprised at the monitor… He lips were moving… She could read on his lips the words that minutes before she had seen on that same monitor… She could see Neo get up and leave… he was wearing the same clothes he wore the night when she took him to Morpheus… What if…

"Neo! This is incredible! I don't know how you did it, but I think it worked!"

"What?" Tom asked raising his head "What are you talking about?"

"The message you wrote, I think you've read it, I think you'll make the right choice" Trinity spoke.

"But how can…" Tom tried to say, but he didn't get to finish as he saw Trinity was beginning to fade away. "You are…disappearing!" he told her.

"This must mean you did take the red pill. The future changed, and I don't belong here. Neo, you're fading too…"

"I don't belong here either? At least the world will be safe" were Neo's last words before disappearing…

The past had been changed, the right choice was finally made…

ALTERNATE ENDING:

(The alternate ending takes off after Trinity finishes her story)

"No, I refuse to accept! Something must be done!" Tom cried.

"Nothing can be done, Neo! Just go home and pray the end doesn't come too soon…" Trinity sighed…

Tom left for home… He could barely walk, that shocked he was from what he heard. He didn't even notice that it was late at night. When he arrived Sara and Connar were sleeping so he went to bed too.

The next morning he woke up thinking that it was all a bad dream… Nothing could have been true.

A week had passed and nothing happened, so he was more and more convinced that Trinity and her story were just his imagination. It must have been that in his desperate search for answers, he imagined all of that. These thought were rushing through Tom's head in the middle of an important meeting. He didn't pay any attention to what everyone was discussing until he saw one of the other executives falling lifeless on the ground.

Everyone rushed to see what was wrong, but soon they all found themselves in the same situation… Tom was the only one left alive.

"NO! THIS CAN'T BE! It's really happening! I must get home at once!" he thought rushing out the door and running in the street. All around him people would just fall to the ground, dead in a matter of seconds. It happened so fast that they couldn't even be aware of what was happening to them.

Tom rushed through the door of his house.

"Tom, you've scared me! Why are you home so early?" Sara asked him.

"Sara, you're OK!" Tom told her crying. "Where's Connar? Is he OK?"

"Yes, he's sleeping! What's wrong with you, Tom? You look horrible!"

"Oh, Sara, I love you so much" he said grabbing her in his arms and kissing her. But she didn't kiss him back. He could feel her body getting more heavy in his arms. He felt her head slipping slowly, resting upon his shoulder. He looked at her to see that she had expired her last breath in his own arms.

"Sara! No! Sara! Sara!" he cried embracing her and kissing her, hoping she would wake up. But it was useless… She was dead… She was one of those unplugged…

Tom sat beside her crying when he remembered Connar. He rushed to his room and saw him laying peacefully in bed. He bowed to give him a kiss, but it was just then that he noticed that Connar was not breathing any longer.

"Connar! No! Not you too! No!" Tom cried and then collapsed to the floor.

Hours later Trinity walked into the apartment. She saw Neo on the floor, with his eyes fixed up on the ceiling and rushed to see if he had been unplugged too. He was till breathing.

"Neo! Neo! Tom!" she called him, but it was in vain… He never answered… From that day he never spoke a word again, he never moved again… He had paid for his mistakes in the cruelest way…