Chapter 3

Neo and his escort climbed up the stairs of the building 135A. It seemed like a typical old house, with writing-covered walls, and paint on the ceiling chipping off.

The unplugged agent tripped and grabbed Neo's arm to keep from falling. She held on to him just a second longer than she needed to, and flashed another smile before letting go. "Thanks."

The agent in the lead glared at her, but kept silent, and the third agent laughed quietly and said "Don't mind her. She always does her falling trick when she sees a cute face."

Those definitely were strange agents.

On the fourth floor they stopped and the leading agent took a key out of her pocket. She opened the door and motioned for Neo to go inside. As he complied, he found himself in a large room. It was filled with many boxes, and all the furniture lay in the corner, as if someone just moved in. His guides led him to the empty kitchen, and from there into a smaller room. The only furniture there was were a walk-in closet in the corner and a round, three-legged table in the middle with three chairs surrounding it. The closest chair was empty; another one seemed to be surrounded by shadows, even though there was nothing blocking the sunlight from the window. Still, Neo could make out a figure sitting there. And although the person in the last chair was sitting with her back to him, he could tell right away who she was. It was the Oracle!

Neo stood in shock, and the Oracle apparently didn't notice the arrivals.

"And then you drop the temperature another fifty degrees and leave them in the over for just three more minutes, so they are nice and crispy," the Oracle continued, talking to the person in the shadows, "and then they are ready to eat."

Then the agent in the lead spoke. "He's here."

"Oh, thank you, Thompson," the Oracle replied, turning around, a grin on her face. "You can all go now. And Smith," she added more sternly, "don't you dare eavesdrop again." Going into the smiling mode again, she suggested, "why don't you all go buy me some sugar? I used it all on the last batch of cookies."

The unplugged agent smiled guiltily and the two others nodded. Then all three of them left the room. The Oracle turned her attention to Neo.

"I know what you're thinking: 'I should have guessed'. And you have a lot of questions, but you don't know whether to ask them: after all, how can you believe my answers?" The old woman pointed to the empty chair. "Sit down. We have a lot to talk about."

Neo ignored the suggestion and glared at her. "It was all a lie! You're one of them. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

The Oracle shook her head and chuckled. "Those young people. Absolutely no respect for the elderly," she said to the silhouette in the shadows. "Oh, I don't think you were introduced. Neo, this is Shadow. Shadow, this is Neo."

The shadows in the corner lifted as if by magic to reveal a girl sitting in the chair.

"You're Neo, the one meant to stop the war?" she asked him, and, without waiting for a reply, shrieked excitedly "Meep!"

Neo decided not to ask what "meep" meant. There were too many other things to talk about. He turned back to the Oracle. "Why did you lie to us? It this another measure of control? Or is it just your way of having fun?!"

The Oracle held up her hand so he would stop talking and listen. "I never lied to you. You ARE meant to stop the war. Just hear me out and you'll understand everything."

Only when it was already too late did Neo realise that he sat down. But since he already did, there was no point in getting up again. If the Oracle acknowledged this as a victory, it wasn't evident on her face. She just continued speaking.

"First of all, you're probably wondering about my servants. I wanted to create a more social, more human-like agent. Most of them are just too formal, no wonder they scare everyone away. Then I decided to make it a girl agent. Thompson was my first attempt. But she's not what I wanted. At some times she's too much of an agent, and at other times too much of a human. And sometimes her two natures clash, and she just goes crazy. She's a mess. I wanted to delete her, but then decided that I might need a good worker, even if she does have multiple personalities." The old woman chuckled, then went on. "I tried again, and failed again. Smith was too human. So much so that she refused to be an agent. She says they are evil and have horrible fashion sense. That's how she got her name - she's unplugged too, like the other Smith. To distinguish her from him I call her Agentette Smith."

Neo sat without speaking and looked at the Oracle, as if hypnotised by her story. He was listening, but he was still in mild shock after seeing her here. He was still waiting for the explanation.

He didn't interrupt because any kind of information she gave could be useful.

"Then I tried for the third time," the Oracle went on, "this time more successfully. Jones is pretty much what I wanted, though not exactly, but I decided that for me three agents is more than enough."

The Oracle seemed to have changed; she straightened, lost that provincial tone of voice, and looked Neo straight in the eyes. He couldn't help but straighten also, feeling that the main part is about to come.

"But enough chit-chat," the Oracle said, confirming his guess. "Let's get down to business. It's a long story, but you'll see where I'm going."

She looked at him intently, as if waiting for his reaction to what she was about to say.

"I was a human once." The Oracle paused, and probably the look on Neo's face didn't disappoint her, because she let out a soft chuckle. "It was more than two centuries ago. I and many others lived in Zion. We fought the Matrix to free our kind, much as you do now. And one day, we won."

She looked at Neo again, and again his expression seemed to amuse her. "We found a way to free all the people, and that way we took the energy source away from the Matrix. You can't imagine what a glorious day it was!"

The Oracle's gaze left Neo's face and instead rested somewhere on the ceiling. She seemed to go into her memories, hardly even noticing the young man anymore. She spoke slowly, in a soft voice that seemed a bit distant. "The Matrix was at our mercy. But too many people weren't happy in the real world. They would sell their souls to be plugged back into the Matrix."

She sighed. "So it was decided to shut down the most dangerous programs like the agents, and then to let people back. Eventually almost all people were plugged back in. Who would want to live under that black sky?"

The pause lasted a bit too long. Neo already started thinking that maybe she expects an answer from him when she finally continued.

"Years passed, and some people died of diseases and old age. And then someone came up with a brilliant idea - why not copy out neural patters into the Matrix computer? That would make us virtually immortal. No matter what would happen to our bodies, our minds would live on as a part of the Matrix."

The Oracle shook her head, and looked straight at Neo. There was something strange in her expression, some kind of arrogance mixed with regret and sorrow - that expression made Neo uneasy.

"We did that and didn't bother with out bodies anymore," she went on. "But that created another problem - as more bodies died and more minds were built into the Matrix, we started to run out of energy. So we artificially created more bodies, ones that had very primitive minds.

"After that everything would be fine, but we started to get bored and lonely. We gave ourselves new powers and abilities to keep us busy. Eventually we stopped bothering with names, and we became what we do. I am the Oracle, and Shadow can control light and shadow patterns. Otherwise do you really think an AI is needed for those kinds of jobs? But there were too few real people and often we had no one to talk to."

Maybe having a premonition about what was going to follow, Neo felt a wave of hostility wash over him. Suddenly he got a strange urge to make a face and sarcastically say 'Awww poor you.'

The feeling amused as much as disturbed him, but either way he decided to stay quiet and stone-faced. It seemed that he didn't completely succeed though, because the Oracle slightly frowned, and began talking more intensively.

"We gave the artificially created bodies minds that were almost equal to our own, and allowed them to vary genetically. That way they would always be surprising and amusing to us. But perhaps we allowed too much variation. Some of the artificials were too rebellious, and some of them started to wake up. They believed that THEY were people and WE were machines, when in reality it was the other way around. They started to fight us. We had to turn all the Matrix's defences back on. Now that we were part of the Matrix, all the guard programs ignored us and fought against the artificials."

"Whoa, back up a second there," muttered Neo, bewildered. "You mean to tell me that all the people that I know - "

"Are artificials, organisms created by humans," the Oracle nodded.

Neo opened his mouth, but the Oracle answered before he could even ask. "Yes, Trinity and Morpheus too. And yes, you also."

"You lie!" said Neo in a falsely confident voice, jumping to his feet.

The Oracle just smiled at him. He immediately understood the reply as 'you know I don't', and had to admit that he did believe what she said - that's why he was so upset.

In the meantime the Oracle continued speaking, her soft voice calming him down a bit, but not enough to make him sit down again.

"At first we weren't worried about artificials getting out of control, but eventually they became a real threat. Then I foresaw that the One will come to help us defeat the machines. But I couldn't find him on my own. So I pretended to help the Resistance to they would find the One for me. And they did." The Oracle smiled warmly at Neo.

"Remember all the times you were in hopeless situations but somehow managed to survive? I was watching over you all this time. It was me who short- circuited the sentinels three days ago, too. And you probably already guessed that the control room is here, in this very apartment.

"Now you must distract the Delphi from stopping the sentinels, Zion will be destroyed, and the war will be over. The prophecy was the truth, you are meant to stop the war, just not the way you thought."

Neo looked at her blankly, not knowing whether to believe her story. He knew that deep down he already believed, but he still felt the way he did when he was first unplugged - all his beliefs were taken away from him and he wanted to just forget what he heard and go back to the way he lived before. Yet in a way all of this made sense now.

Except there seemed to be a solution so obvious that it was hardly possible that nobody thought of that, and yet so perfect that it didn't make sense why it wasn't implemented. There was such an easy way to end the war with neither "artificials" nor people getting hurt!

Neo finally sat down.

"All right, let's say I believe your story," he started cautiously. "Why don't you just let all artificials go and allow them to return if they want to? I'm sure there will be enough of them coming back to keep the Matrix going."

The Oracle shook her head. "They will envy us. They will want immortality and power, and when we give it to them too much energy will be needed to sustain us all."

Neo frowned. He was sure that if the plan was properly thought out it could work. But then another idea hit him. "Well, I think that if-"

"You're not here to think, kiddo," the Oracle interrupted. "I've thought everything through FOR you. Now do as I say."

"So you accept no other solution than to have the free artificials destroyed?!" Shouted Neo, frustrated by she sudden change of tone.

"As I said," the Oracle repeated in a cold emotionless tone that seemed to almost physically crush Neo, "everything has already been thought out. And right now there's no time to argue. This is the optimal solution."

Neo got up. "We are still people," he said, not even trying to hide all the anger he felt. On the contrary, he tried to amplify it, to make it show in his every move, to make it obvious in his every word. He tried to retaliate against this cold voice full of empty reasoning. "Does it matter how we were created? We want to live, just as you do! If I must choose to fight you or us, I will choose you."

Shadow quickly glanced at the Oracle, and the latter shook her head ever so slightly.

"Please don't be hasty," said the Oracle to Neo. "Just look at this from a different point of view. You're the One, you should know better than to make rash decisions." She smiled the same way she did before, but now Neo saw the smile as evil and menacing.

"You're the one who's hasty here!" Neo unintentionally backed away a bit, almost tripping over his chair. He automatically caught it in mid-fall, but instead of putting it back he threw it against the floor.

"I want nothing to do with you!" he exclaimed and moved towards the exit.

The Oracle and Shadow both sighed.

"I was afraid you wouldn't agree with me," the Oracle said, speaking clearly to Neo, but looking at Shadow. "I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but..."

The old woman got up with a young girl's ease. Neo, however, decided that it would be best for him to miss the spectacle that was about to start. He quickly turned around, but didn't get a chance to find the doorknob. The room became pitch-black, doubtlessly at Shadow's command. Neo knew this couldn't be a good sign. He frantically felt around for the doorknob, but it was futile. He decided to bash the door out, but at the moment when he was about to plunge himself at its unyielding surface, he felt cold metal touch his hand. The point of contact was just a small area, no more than the end of a ball-pen. It touched his skin softly, gently, yet the effect was instantaneous. He felt weak, and instead of the jump that he prepared for, he fell to the side. If there were no wall, he would've fallen. As it was, he leaned against it, in the dark, feeling alone and disoriented. A soft, cold hand held him so that he wouldn't break contact with the thing. It felt easy to free his hand. A small circular motion would be able to do it. But his hand just wouldn't move, just like the rest of his body. He just leaned against the wall helplessly, and kept trying to concentrate on something other than the ache in his head.

It felt like lightening was piercing his mind, and he couldn't help but cry out in pain. He - he had already experienced something like this before. Back when he was surrounded by Smiths, and one of them was trying to override his mind. The feeling that Neo later described as 'it felt like dying'... He felt it now, with every fibre of his being, with every last corner of his consciousness. And there was nothing he could do.

Then in an instant the pain was gone, and the soft metal touch that now felt more like a terrible sting disappeared. The darkness lifted and Neo saw the Oracle put something in her wide pocket, and return to her seat. Shadow still sat where she was before, and watched him with interest. Apparently she watched the whole thing, unobstructed by the darkness. Neo rubbed him temples and half-involuntarily lowered himself onto a seat.

"What did you do to me?" He asked hoarsely. His voice felt like it hasn't been used in years.

"I don't have time to convince you to help us, so I had to convince you the quick way," the Oracle replied, and smiled at him again. "Some electric and chemical signals to your brain to make you see my point of view."

"You... You... enslaved me?" Neo knew that sounded stupid and wasn't exactly what he wanted to say, but he still hadn't fully come to his senses after the ordeal.

"No, nothing like that," the Oracle waved her hand dismissively. "You're free. Go. Do whatever you see fit."

It took a lot of willpower to collect enough energy to get up. He was still confused, but he knew he wanted to get out of there. He staggered outside. With every step it became easier and easier to walk, and with time his head was beginning to clear.

Neo stopped just short of leaving the building. He had to think for a while. Finally he was able to digest all the information he got.

Everything was really quite simple. Everyone he considered human before... Neo imagined what would happen if THEY had won. He never actually stopped to think about it. But if they DID win - what then? Having an empty planet with black sky, devoid of other life and sunlight. Neo involuntarily thought about Cypher. There were bound to be a lot of people like him, unhappy with the real world. Right now the cause of fighting, the Matrix, kept them occupied, and kept them together. But after - what then? Neo wasn't sure what he would do himself.

And thinking about the people he knew... What was so good about them? What was it that made THEIR cause the right one? After all, it was just a selfish pursuit of something none of them could taste, or even define. What was that 'freedom'?

Also, how many people were killed during this struggle for nothing? People who were still plugged into the Matrix were considered nothing more than potential threat. The programs were considered just an enemy. Neo was sure that anyone from the Resistance, given a chance, would kill any program without a second thought.

And yet those programs were PEOPLE! They had feelings, they had goals, they felt pain. They were HUMANS, like himself. No, Neo corrected, even more so. After all, he was just an artificial. He was created, which meant he was replaceable. The REAL humans weren't.

Neo was surprised at how blind he was before. But now he finally knew what to do.

There was no other way but to destroy the rebelling artificials. And, he realised without any regret or fear, he fit into that category too.

There was a strange feeling, or more like a trace of one, which frantically screamed against what he now realised. Neo shook it away. He had been on the wrong side for far too long. It was time to try and redeem himself.