It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Virginia Woolf

Those Who Dare to Dream

It was testament to her new understanding of this world that she could stand outside the park, but not go into it.

Morpheus had permitted her this indulgence, and he'd made no secret out of the fact that it was an indulgence, and a dangerous one at that This was meant to be a quick in and out. He'd take her to the Oracle, the Oracle would impart her wisdom, and then they were going to head back to the safehouse. This world, this simulation around her…it wasn't real. It never had been. Having woken up, she shouldn't feel any lingering feelings towards the Matrix, and only slightly more to the people that remained within it. She most certainly shouldn't want to enter parks, to listen to digital birds singing digital songs.

Yet she'd asked him for the luxury. He'd granted it to her. Now the car they'd been in was approaching its ten minute limit, and she was standing between a road and a fence. On one side were cars, pedestrians, and a homeless man being ignored by the world. On the other was the park – children, parents, teenagers. She could estimate that the time was past 3pm, but she wasn't even sure of the day. Since waking up, time had blurred for her on the Nebuchadnezzar, and she hadn't thought to ask whether time in the Matrix was synced to that in the real world. She'd been too busy asking other questions at the time, ones that usually began with words such as "how" and "why." The questions she'd asked had provided her with the answers, to understand that what she saw before her now wasn't real. And that she was in danger every second remained here.

And yet remain here she did. Watching mothers with their children. Watching teens play a game of soccer. Watching buskers perform. "Normal," she would have called it once. But she had to remind herself that it was just an illusion. When she unclenched her right hand, when she finally brought the cookie the Oracle had given her to her lips, when she bit into it…again, it wasn't real.

"So, Trinity. I see she gave you one too."

The former hacker looked at Morpheus. Just standing there, clad in his trenchcoat, his eyes hidden by his shades. Eyes that she knew were always looking everywhere for any sign of danger.

"How is it?"

She took the cookie away from her lips and just let it lie in her hand.

"Well?"

She looked at Morpheus. "Does it matter?"

"When I saw the Oracle, she gave me such a gift. I however, refused to take a bite."

"Why?"

"Because I would be consuming a falsehood." He chuckled. "Still, over the years, as I have taken dozens of men and women to the Oracle, I find that they usually accept her gift. So over those years, I can't help but wonder how it tastes."

She could tell that he was genuinely curious. "Like a…chocolate cookie?" she ventured

"That's not very specific."

"It's…fine? Normal? It tastes like cookies do? I mean, you've had them, right?"

"Perhaps once, in the first few years of my life when I believed that such things were real."

"And you've never sampled any of the goods since?"

Morpheus laughed. "Take another bite Trinity."

"Pardon?"

"Another bite. The second question will come afterwards."

She spared a glance at the park, where two children were eating ice-cream. They were enjoying it. Nevertheless, she took a second bite, finishing it quickly.

"Well done," Morpheus said. "Now tell me – how does it feel?"

"Like…a cookie?"

"Not how it tastes, how it feels," he said. He tapped his stomach. "Down there. Does it nourish you?"

"Since it's chocolate and dough, probably not."

"Hunger, Trinity. Does it satiate it?"

She put a hand to her own stomach.

"Is there any change?"

There wasn't.

"But that doesn't mean anything," she said. "It's just one biscuit."

"Just one, and yet, you feel nothing apart from the taste," he said. "That's correct, isn't it?"

Trinity couldn't be sure. It was just one cookie. And yet, she had to admit, Morpheus had a point. The cookie gave her a sensation of taste, but that was it. There was no feeling in her stomach, no sense of being full, or craving more. She looked at her mentor.

"Look over there Trinity."

She followed his arm across the street to a restaurant. Men and women, all wearing business attire, were eating there – maybe it wasn't as late in the day as she thought.

"For them, this is required," Morpheus said. "To them, this world is real, which means that they must have nourishment."

"Even with the pod."

"Even with the pods," Morpheus said. "The body and the mind require nourishment in both worlds. If one starves in one, they will perish in another."

"But not us."

"But not us," Morpheus repeated. "Do you know why?"

"Because we know the truth?"

Morpheus chuckled. "An apt answer. But no – it's simply because you're not hardwired to the Matrix itself. Your body and mind are far more separate, so you need only nourish the former. So while your mind may receive data that simulates taste, that is the end of it."

Trinity fell silent. She looked back at the children eating ice-cream. It must have tasted great, considering how quickly they'd devoured them. If they kept it up, they'd get fat.

But not her. Her RSI was set. Her ability to taste, but not be nourished…just further evidence of her separation from this world.

Morpheus put a hand on her shoulder. "We should go," he said.

Trinity nodded, but nonetheless looked over the park. Children. Teens. Parents. Buskers. Businessmen. The life of the normal. Those who could walk through a park, and not worry about being seen. Of finding oneself in the open for the world to see. And by "world," she meant the phantoms that dwelt within it. The ones Morpheus had told her about. Those whom could not be slain.

"I'm going to miss this," she murmured.

"I know. And that is why you have to look away."

She did look away, but only in as much that she looked at Morpheus. "Don't you ever miss it?"

"No."

"Really?"

"No."

"But-"

"There have been those who have missed their old lives Trinity. There have been those who have plunged themselves into pleasure simulations on hovercraft, those who tried to recreate their old lives in Zion, even those who have taken their own lives in despair. But they knew, as you must know, that there is no way back. When one awakens from a dream, they can't return to it. The dream has ended."

"This dream still exists though."

Morpheus didn't say anything, but there was a quiver in his lip that acknowledged her point.

"There's a saying I remember you know," Trinity said, as they began walking up the road to the crossing. "That Man could only achieve dominion over the Earth through his ability to dream."

Morpheus just kept walking.

"I mean, it makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, when you consider in how humans are the only species to have ever achieved sapience, we-"

"Man's ability to dream, and Man being imprisoned within a dream, are not the same thing," Morpheus said. He stopped, turned, and looked at Trinity, and for a moment, she felt a stab of fear.

"I didn't mean to say-"

"This world isn't ours. This world can be shaped only as much as the machines allow it to. This world…" He sighed. "When I awoke you, it was the year 1992, to your knowledge, no?"

Trinity nodded.

"Then understand that the year means nothing. The Matrix is the machines' take on the late twentieth century. Ten years ago, this was the same. Twenty years ago, it was the same. Thirty years, forty, a hundred…the Matrix is as the machines will it, and the people who are trapped inside are how the machines want them to be. Docile. Contented. For whatever reason, they couldn't create utopia, but they created the society through which we could best be kept under control." He gestured towards the skyline, to a giant crane. "One can re-arrange the blocks of the house. But the house will always stand. The house can't be left. All that is left is to destroy it."

"And that's it," Trinity said. "Destroy the Matrix."

"If that's what it takes."

That stab of fear returned – she could tell that Morpheus meant it. Even as she smiled and put his hand on her shoulder, that sense of unease remained.

"Rest assured that my end goal is more simple," he said. "To find the One, who will free mankind. I…believe that such a moment will be as humane as fate allows it."

The One. Trinity recalled the Oracle's words – that she would know the One through her heart rather than her mind. That through the One, one would become two, through that which was called love. Thinking of Morpheus, of everyone else on the hovercraft, Trinity could take solace in knowing that the One had yet to emerge, and that Morpheus might not have missed the mark or somesuch.

They reached the end of the street and the crossing. Before they walked over, Trinity glanced at the homeless man – a slave to one system, and spat out by another. Either by accident or design, the machines hadn't erased poverty from the human condition. He couldn't be saved in the system of this world, and from what Morpheus had explained, he was likely too old to be unplugged as well. Unlike the children she reflected. Those with ice-cream. Those who didn't know they were in a dream, and might not want to wake up. Those who would grow, and live in the world their parents had. An unchanging world. A dream world.

The green man appeared and they began to walk.

She dropped what was left of the cookie.

A/N

I doubt I'm the only one who noticed this, but it's telling (to me) that Neo takes at least one bite of the cookie the Oracle gives him in the first film, but never eats the candy she gives him in the second. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I like to think it's kind of conveying that by the time of the second film, he's well and truly accepted the Matrix as being a simulation, so eating candy would be completely meaningless. In the first, he can at least enjoy the cookie. Or maybe it's because cookies taste better than candy.

Anyway, drabbled this up.