Chapter Five Exiting Kansas

Andy shifted uncomfortably in his seat, waiting for the pill to do something. Was his brain going to fry? Was he going to start slobbering, and gouge out his own eyeballs? Was an alien going to pop out of his stomach? Was he going to become convinced he was a fish?

Nothing happened for a while.

"That's it?" Andy muttered. "What was that, a placebo?"

Morpheus smiled. "No," he replied. "Come with me."

Morpheus stood up, and strode to another door in the room, slowly opening it. Trinity and Neo were inside, standing over a computer. The computer was hooked up by several wires to a recliner, which sat beside a floor length mirror.

"Sit," Morpheus said, making it sound like an invitation rather than a command. Andy cautiously stepped into the room, and sat down on the recliner.

As Trinity and Neo began to work, Morpheus began the speech he used with every person he woke up.

"Have you ever had a dream, one you were sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world, and the-?"

"-Real world."

Andy found himself lying on a cold, metal table, unable to move. Without his glasses, his vision was slightly blurred, but he could see hundreds of needles protruding from every part of his body.

"Whuzzat?" he asked drowsily.

"I said 'welcome to the real world,'" Morpheus replied, standing over him. His arms were folded, his sunglasses and black trench coat gone. Instead he was wearing rags."

"Where am I?"

"You are aboard my ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. We are currently a few kilometers beneath the earth's crust, on our way to Zion, the last human city. An underground city, near the core of the earth, where it's still warm."

While his body remained unmoving, Andy's mind raced. He had been, for obvious reasons, skeptical up until the very end. But he could tell from the treatment he was currently undergoing that his muscles had atrophied, from prolonged lack of use, as if he had been sleeping his entire life. Applying Occam's razor to the situation, Andy realized that the simplest explanation was the one he had refused to accept from the beginning. It hadn't seemed possible, but after all the evidence he had been provided with, a more logical explanation was unavailable.

The question now was, what would he do with this information?

As if in answer to his question, Morpheus decided to speak. "Your muscles are almost fully healed. Tomorrow, we will begin your training."

I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore, Andy thought. Then he realized this statement was inaccurate. He was in Kansas now. He had just been in Oz so long he had started to think of it as Kansas.

"And you were there too, Scarecrow," Andy muttered as he saw Neo walk by. Neo glanced at him for a minute, looking slightly puzzled, then continued walking.