What is Reality?

Neo couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, and he was trapped in darkness and at the mercy of the machines hooked into and surrounding him. Images of the fight flashed through his brain, sympathy pains running through his body as synapses shut down.

Again in his head, he fought the breadth and width of that nonexistent city, trapped within the Matrix. Battling with a foe that had hated him enough to intrude on his real world, who had possessed a body in order to kill him; the two gods of the new frontier fought. Titan blows landed on both sides of the battle, his body flying well out of range of attack, only to turn and run head on into Smith again.

Smith, the virus that was trying to remodel the Matrix to its own liking, and he was steadily gaining the upper hand between them. Smith, after all, was not anything more than a program, a series of code, electronic static. Neo on the other hand, though a similar string of code in the matrix, was flesh in the world, and his body was suffering the beating.

His real body lurched, as he felt the meteoric impact with asphalt, thunder erupting in his ears as it split asunder with his body as the wedge, the One driven further into the Earth. Smith was atop him trying his best to ensure Neo wouldn't get up again. It was part of a plan, a formula that Neo had presented to the Machines, his promise to rid the network of Smith's dark influence. The quest was one that had cost him so much already and threatened much more than his sorry life.

He remembered standing again, even though his body protested the abuse, wanting only to lie still and die. Smith growled, "Why won't you die!" attacking him again, shredding his small bit of strength easily, and leaving him weak and disoriented. He remembered speaking the defeatist words, remembered Smith's fingers sinking into his heart. Neo felt the numbness overtake him, the other awareness growing in him, overpowering his identity. For many minutes he felt as if he was suffocating, and in a way he was, as Smith became him. Two halves of one whole, forced to come together under brutal circumstances.

Then the lancing pain and brilliant light filled his perception as the machines worked through him, a virus to infect the virus. Some part of him was aware when Smith all of him, was destroyed, and Neo could feel his consciousness pulling back, trying to hide, trying to die in a small warm corner of his brain.

Through steadily graying senses Neo "saw" that he was no longer sitting on a seat of snaking arms, hooked into his remaining plugs, but lying instead on the hard surface of the outlook in the Machine city.

He felt the tentacles come to life under him again, hard metal against his slack pliant flesh, the chill of the contact stealing away heat from his feverish body. Metal clacked against itself as multi jointed and fluid arms moved like tracks under him, and suddenly the One flashed back to a concert that never happened, where he had once crowd surfed. Inside he smiled at the analogy, but his face remained slack. He felt like he was floating, moving slowly forward and he caught an unfocused sense of a great distance below him, even when he had no eyes to see it.

The view was blocked when he was placed on another hard, flat, and cold surface. He floated again, but there was no view this time just movement and his slowly muddling thoughts.

Trinity flashed suddenly into his failing mind, at once smiling grimly at him in the midst of battle, and next bloody and lifeless on the deck of the ship, where she had died. Pangs of anguish moved through him, wishing that he would die, that he could reunite with his love of loves, even if it was in the afterlife. He wanted to cry his pain to the world that had stole her away from him, just as easily as Smith had taken his sight. Yet again his body failed him, he could only lie on that hard surface staring without sight to one side.

"I'm sorry Trin'," he whispered in a broken voice to the electric air, hoping that she was somewhere to hear the apology, "We'll be together soon."

Motion seemed to go on forever, like days had passed with this journey, to wherever it was they were taking his broken form. He started internally when suddenly the motion stopped.

There was a high-pitched droning behind him, and he could hear the machines as they shifted and moved about. They were talking, but he couldn't understand because it wasn't English, it was code.

Neo shifted from his prone position, able only to move his head a little. His sightless sense caught the two machines, unlike anything he had seen yet, as they conversed. He could almost see code falling from the sky through his failing perception, but was unable to interpret the conversation going on behind him. What did the machines have planned? Were they breaking the deal?

Will he be salvageable?

His wounds are not life threatening

Can he be reinserted?

Easily

Will he serve us?

Without question

The humans think the One dead...no one will look for him. He will be needed to win when hostilities resume

They will not know what happened

He must remember nothing about his previous life, or his prior programming. There can be no resemblance

He will remember nothing but what we memories we give him

And his 'talent'?"

Will remain intact...he would be no good to us otherwise

Around him another noise began, and again he was lifted from his prone position and moved. They were gentle caresses, reverent, almost loving as they lifted him, and then lowered him again. The pressure in his ears told him it was something enclosed on all sides but the top, and a thrill went through him as he realized he was in one of the life supporting pods. NO! He thought adamantly, but couldn't make his abused body move. He didn't want to go back in, he wanted to stay in the real world!

There was more electric pain as probes reattached themselves to his spine, his arms, legs and head. His skin prickled as fluid filled up around him, after just a few moments he was submerged.

A searing bolt of lightning ran through him, his body tensing under the strain. Memories began dripping from his mind like water through a leaking faucet, until he was aware, but could not remember even his name.

New images filled in the spaces, running like a video on ultra high fast forward...he tried to scream, but nothing came out.

The man started awake from the vivid nightmare, nearly falling off of the couch on which he had been sleeping.

"Whoa," He uttered, sitting up and putting his bare feet on the floor. He ran a thin pale hand through his disheveled black hair and stretched his dark eyes. His body was shaking with adrenalin.

"Mark are you alright?" a soft feminine voice came from the adjacent room.

Mark looked around him seeing the plush suburban apartment around him, and reminded himself that this was his and his girlfriend's place. He looked down as something dully thunked on the floor. With a shaky hand he reached down and picked up a book that had landed on its leaves. Hooking a thumb into the pages, he lifted the book from the floor, turning it so that he could see its front cover.

"The Matrix: Revolutions," he muttered, dropping the book on the couch as the images fluttered back through his mind. He had insisted on reading the book after watching the movie, one of those people who wanted minute details that the movie would never be able to show. After all he had read every movie magazine from Entertainment Weekly to Wizard, to the local chat rooms on the Internet trying to get the most intimate trivia from the movie, even before it had been released as a movie. He had watched all three movies with obsessive zeal, and couldn't tell you how many times he had seen each. Tammy had been giving him crap about how he spoke the lines with the characters.

He had been reading it nonstop for nearly five hours now, and must have fallen asleep. He wasn't Neo, he hadn't fought Smith for the life of the Matrix, he hadn't been reinserted as a tool for the Machines to use as a weapon against his own kind, "It was a dream."

"Mark?" came again, and a blond woman peered around the corner from the kitchen.

"I'm fine," He whispered, "It was just a dream."

A/N: Or is it? Hmmm...this little story came out of the "OMG how could they do that? Is he alive or dead?" ending of Matrix three. This is a little theory I developed for what might happen should they decide that a fourth need be made. Just a little blurb to getcha thinking. Just a tad ironic there at the end if you know what I mean!

This is slightly changed from the previous rendition, some grammatical corrections made and some more detail added to the segment. Not a lot mind you, but enough.

Darwin