Somewhere, in a plain and ordinary apartment, a pale young man slumbered peacefully. He was slumped face-down in his soft fluffy bed, his right arm dangling at his side.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The young man, known to the world as Thomas A. Anderson, rolled off his bed and landed with a muffled thud on the hard, concrete floor. He leapt up, startled, and quickly grabbed his digital alarm clock. He stared at the clock face in horror. Half past seven. And he was to go to work at seven o' clock, sharp, as his boss explicitly stated.

"Oh, shit."

Panicking, he stripped down to his waist and, throwing open his wardrobe door, he pulled on his work shirt. And then, he realised that he forgot something. Something important...

"Ugh..." Tom groaned and plopped down on his bed. Slowly, he changed back into the casual t-shirt that he wore at home. He had remembered what he had forgotten earlier. It was a Sunday. He didn't have work on Sundays.

He was just about to fall asleep again when his desktop computer emitted a deafening noise. His head immediately jerked up, and he groaned again. Apparently, he had cranked the volume all the way up when he was listening to his favourite rock album the night before, and he had forgotten to turn it down.

He decided that it was too late to try and sleep anyway, so he slid over to his computer in his swivel chair.

"That's odd..." he muttered. He peered closer into the screen and rubbed his eyes. When he looked at it again, it remained unchanged. He wasn't dreaming.

On the screen, he could see that his computer was site-hopping. His fingers rapidly flew over his coarse keyboard (worn due to constant use) and he tried every command he could think off, but to no avail. His computer must have gone haywire or something.

Then the screen went black. Green letters started appearing.

"Hello, Neo."

Thomas A. Anderson gaped at his computer. 'Neo' was a secret nickname of his that only his friends know of. He continued to stare blankly at the computer for some time. And then:

"Oh, shit."