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A/N For the purpose of my fan fiction, I am modifying the ending of Revolutions slightly. Spoilers entail, and it would be best not to read on if you haven't seen it yet.

Instead of the matrix just letting there be peace, as the Source bargained with Neo before he died, I have changed the story slightly so that the matrix was actually destroyed by Neo. I offer no explanation as to why or how. Just accept it.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

'Neo?' a voice breaks my sleep. 'Wake up.' I feel somebody shaking me. Grumbling, I rub my eyes blearily. It must be my mother. Damn that woman, always taking my spare key and letting herself in whenever she pleases. Then suddenly I spring fully awake, and see Morpheus' smiling face only a foot or so away from mine. I jump. And then remember. I won't be seeing my mother again for a very long time.

'We've got to go, Neo,' Morpheus said. 'The Oracle's a busy woman and she won't wait long.'

'I never thought she was busy,' Neo said.

'Perhaps when you last knew her, she wasn't,' he said, 'but she has lots of people to see, and lots of things to do. That's just the way it is.' He passed a bundle of clothes over to Neo, who was still rubbing his eyes, trying to stop the aching pain extending through them and throughout his whole face. 'You'll be wanting these. We've got five minutes. Link wants to see us down at the plugging stations by then.'

I nod. Morpheus leaves. And Trinity enters.

'Hi,' she says, sitting down carefully on the edge of my bed. 'How are you feeling?'

'A little sleepy,' I admit, 'and my eyes really hurt, but other than that, not too bad.' I smile. 'Seeing you makes me feel a whole lot better.' I clasp her hand, for a moment, in mind. She smiles slightly. She, too, looks incredibly tired. Pale and drawn, bags etched under the eyes and shadowed by dark, cloudy charcoal.

'Do you want me to go with you?' she asks me, after I pull my jumper on over my bare chest and, efficiently under the covers, my trousers over my boxer shorts.

'Yeah.' I say, without hesitation, 'that'd be nice.'

'Okay. I will then.' She leans down and drops a quick kiss on my cheek. 'I'll go tell Morpheus.'

'I'm ready now,' I say, 'unless they want my bed made.'

I don't think it was funny, but Trinity hoots with laughter – she laughs so hard she has tears cascading down her cheeks. 'Oh, God,' she grins, shaking her head, 'that was so funny.'

'If you say so,' I say. 'I was -'

'Neo!' a voice calls from outside the room. 'Are you ready, my man?' I grin, realising it's Link. I swing myself out of bed, where I stumble a little and Trinity catches me. We both hurry out of the room, down towards the plugging stations, where Morpheus is already settled in his station.

'Nice of you to join us,' he comments. 'And you too, Trinity. Get in, then.'

So we do, and my stomach turns a little at the thought of being transported again. The sensation of having a needle-shaped plug shoved in the back of one's head is never particularly pleasant.

'Now, things may of course be a little different to what you remember, Neo,' Morpheus says, 'but I trust that you'll accept the changes as they are, and wait for the explanation.' It is not a question, it is a statement – an order. I nod. I look at Trinity on the station beside me. She extends her arm and clasps my hand in hers for a brief moment. Then Link, unexpectedly, plugs me in. My body jolts from the shock, and then I find myself once again being transported through a surreal void before instantly appearing in the middle of a busy Manhattan street.

'We're back,' Trinity says, a moment later, when she appears alongside me. 'Now, where's Morpheus? He should be here any minute.' She looked at her watch. 'By my calculations, he should have arrived eight seconds ago.'

'Is that bad?'

'Not really. It might just mean there's a delay in the mainframe,' she says.

'Oh, that's all right then.'

'I mean, it could mean something worse – but it's unlikely.'

We wait another two minutes. There is still no sign of Morpheus. I begin to grow nervous. 'Do you think he accidentally got transported to a different place?'

'Could have,' Trinity replies, 'but it's unlikely. Link's an expert. He knows what he's doing. In the meantime,' she says, 'I'll take you to the Oracle. Link will have a sensory device to know where to send him when we're done. Either way, he'll have to find us at some point.'

'Trin, are you sure that's a good idea?'

'Morpheus told you. The Oracle is a busy woman. She doesn't have time for us to waltz in an hour later and just sit down to have a chat and a cup of tea.'

I sigh. 'All right.' I am still worried about Morpheus, though, but I try and let my fears subside. After all, fear gets you nowhere. I have definitely learned that much.

We walk the two blocks to the Oracle's apartment. We both must look so strange, so detached from the rest of this world. We are misfits. We are both dressed in our familiar black outfits. I feel so out of place. I haven't been in this role for so long – Neo, the saviour of the world.

Trinity rings the doorbell. Almost instantly, the door is flung open.

'Trinity! And Neo!' The Oracle proclaims, half-shadowed by the darkness. 'How nice to see you. Come on in. I'm baking biscuits at the moment.' I look at Trinity, as if to say, 'I thought you said she was busy.' Trinity shrugged, and follow the Oracle inside. In turn, I follow them both.

We are now standing in the middle of her living room, and I gasp when I see her face. She is nothing at all like the Oracle I once knew, or the Oracle I remember. This one is not only about fifty years younger, looking like she is about twenty, but she has long blonde hair and deep, dazzling blue eyes. I can't quite associate the character I knew with the appearance standing before me. I raise my eyebrows at Trinity, but her gaze remains fixed ahead.

'I know my appearance must come as a shock to you,' the Oracle said to me. 'Sit down, please.' Her behaviour, however, is still like that of a seventy-year-old. It puzzles me to no end. Either I'm going mad, or the world around me is going mad. I finally decide that it must be a combination of both. 'Now,' she says. 'How can I help you?'

'Well, Neo wants to know some answers,' Trinity says.

'Ah, yes,' the Oracle grins. 'The proverbial curious cat. I see.' She extends a plate of biscuits. 'Biscuit?'

I shake my head. 'No, thanks. I'd just like to know what the hell is going on.'

'Well,' the Oracle says, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in her seat. 'There's no easy way to tell you this, Neo, but everything that you dreamed that night, actually happened.'

'Don't worry, I've figured that out already.'

'Of course you have. But you still don't believe it. Oh, you remember parts of it. Like de ja vu, even though that could be considered a glitch in the matrix itself. You remember Trinity and your emotions, and you remember the Nebuchadnezzar and Morpheus and me.' She smiles and sighs. 'But you still don't believe it, because there are things you don't want to believe.'

I decide it is best not to argue.

'So,' she says, 'as you are undoubtedly aware, things have been changing around here.'

'Yes,' I say. Where is all this leading? Will she ever tell me.

'Now, I think it best to begin with what you once knew. You fought with the Nebuchadnezzar crew to defeat the matrix, and ultimately to kill the machines. But you did not succeed. Trinity died near the Source, and you died after your strength exploded the carbon copy of Agent Smith he'd made of you.'

'Yes.'

'And then you awoke, from a terrible, terrible dream. Sweating and crying and shaking. You began seeing strange things during the day. Your boss was becoming a little frightening. You continually saw Trinity, and she was very elusive. You did not understand.'

'I know all this,' I say.

'Of course you do,' she says. 'But I'm gonna say it anyway. All this leads to one inevitable point. The cycle has begun again. Yet it doesn't seem to fit, does it? No, you don't seem to understand.

'When you awoke that morning, a lapse of one hundred and seventy eight years had passed since you died within the Source.'

I am dumbfounded. The Oracle would not have shocked me more had she picked me up and thrown me out the window.

'How?'

'Oh, don't ask how,' she says. 'Strange things happen when people are the One, after all. Basically, everything that happened to you happened one hundred and seventy eight years ago, though it seems like only a month ago. That's the power of the matrix and its effect on people.'

Trinity interjects. 'I found out earlier than you did,' she says. 'I spent a year or so before you woke up that morning, hacking the matrix and joining the crew and trying to kill the agents.'

'But if the matrix ended, then how were you there to hack it?'

'I always said that the matrix would be born, live and die – and do it over again,' the Oracle intervenes. 'And that's what it did this time. It took one hundred and fifty years before the first inklings of artificial intelligence became true. Only three years later, the matrix was created by a mob of angry machines. And thus, there was a matrix to battle for and against once more.'

'But I read a newspaper article…'

'Oh, that was just rubbish. Human rubbish. The matrix was controlling somebody; a man was becoming too knowledgeable about it all, and they killed him. Then they decided to claim that artificial intelligence had just been discovered, to throw people off track.'

'Okay,' I say. 'So I wake up after one hundred and seventy eight years, even though it seems like a day. Then what's with everything else?'

'Aha. Now you've reached an interesting point. Neo, can you expect everything to remain the same as it always was, forever?'

'No,' I say.

'Exactly. You've answered your own question. When things change, as they do and as they did this time around in the matrix, you see things that shock you. Surprise you. Confuse you. Which is what happened to you. People, while essentially the same in person, are often completely different on the outside.'

'Why?'

'Why? Neo, I'm not a scientist. Go ask a genetic biologist. All I can say is that it happens, that it did happen, and you can either choose to disbelieve it or accept it.' She pauses. 'In the long run, it'll be easier for everybody concerned if you just accept it for what it is.'

'So that's why Morpheus is Asian,' I say, half to myself and half to everybody else, 'and why you're like that, and why people are different…'

Something is bothering me at the back of my mind, but I can't quite place the thought.

'Anyway,' the Oracle says, 'you two must be off now. I have things to do. Goodbye, Neo,' she says, 'take care. And you, too, Trinity.'

And we leave. We are standing on the Oracle's doorstep. Confused, and rather disoriented. I feel dizzy.

Then Trinity's phone rings. She pulls it from her coat, and glances at the screen. 'It's Link,' she says, answering it. She pales, and grits her teeth. 'Shit. Shit. SHIT.'

'What?' I ask.

'Shit,' is all the response I receive.