The car had stopped in front of an abandoned warehouse. Trinity had shown Neo through the warehouse to a room on the top floor. She pushed open the doors, and her and Neo walked in to the room. It was a large room, with two chairs in the middle, and a tall window on the opposite side. A man was looking out side the window, at the stormy grey sky. He had no doubt heard the door open, but he did not move from the window.
There was a long pause.
"Morpheus?" called Trinity.
No answer.
"Morpheus!"
Again, no answer.
"Morpheus!"
The man at the window now looked up and yelped, as if he was startled.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said the man. "I fell asleep there for a second."
Neo frowned. The man turned to Neo.
"Hello, Neo. As you may have guessed, I'm Morpheus."
"No, I hadn't guessed that."
"You hadn't?"
"No."
"Well, I am Morpheus. Now, for my long metaphorical speech. Sit down."
Neo and Morpheus sat opposite each other on the chairs.
"Have you ever had a dream, Neo," said Morpheus, "That you couldn't wake up from? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"
"I wouldn't."
"I know. It was a rhetorical question."
"Oh."
"Moron."
"Hey!"
"Anyway, as I was saying...do you believe in fate, Neo?"
"Yes."
"Wha...? You do?"
"Yeah. Sure."
"No! You're supposed to say 'no', so I can continue with my creepy, boring speech!"
"Oh. Sorry."
"Okay, let's try this again: do you believe in fate, Neo?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like the idea that I don't control what happens in my life."
"I know exactly how you feel!"
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"Not exactly."
"Huh?"
"You don't know how it feels to touch my nose with my tongue."
Neo touched his nose with his tongue.
"I'll show you!"
Morpheus tried to touch his nose with his tongue. It didn't work.
"Son of a...anyway, okay, as I was saying. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"Umm...Dollywood?"
"Stupid—no!"
"The Matrix?"
"Yes, moron. Do you want to know what The Matrix is?"
"Meh."
"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."
"What truth?"
"That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."
"Whoa. Creepy."
"Very. Now, you probably feel like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole."
"No, I don't. I feel like Neo, sitting in the leather chair."
"You stupid—it was a metaphor!"
"Man, this scene is confusing."
"Yeah, what were the Wachowskis thinking with all these metaphor?"
"No sense at all."
"Anyway, I'm going to offer you a choice."
Morpheus held up his left hand. In his palm was a blue pill.
"You take the blue pill, and you wake up in your bed, and you believe...whatever you want to believe."
Morpheus held up his right hand. In his palm was a red pill.
"But you take the red pill, and you stay in Wonderland and see how far the rabbit hole goes."
There was a pause. Neo thought, and said, "I'll take the blue pill."
"What? You're taking the blue pill? But—don't you want to find out what The Matrix is?"
"Mmm...nah."
"Stupid script...fine, take the blue pill."
Neo took the blue pill, drank a glass of water on the table beside him, and swallowed the pill. Neo paused and looked down.
"Whoa!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't the blue Matrix pill, it was a Viagra pill."
"Sweet!"
"Well, you still have to choose a pill, and since the blue pill is gone, I guess you'll have to take the red one."
"Fine."
Neo took the red pill, drank the water, and swallowed it.
"Okay," said Morpheus. "Time to go. Follow me."
Morpheus and Neo walked to a door at the end of the room. They walked through it, and in it, Neo saw a bunch of people sitting at computers. He recognised three of them as Trinity, the woman in the car, and the man in the car. He did not recognise the four other ones.
"Sit down," said Morpheus, motioning to a large chair that looked like a dentist's chair. Neo sat down in it. Trinity began attaching electrodes from a machine next to the chair all over Neo's head."
"The pill you took is part of a trace program. It's designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signal so we can pinpoint your location."
"Umm...I'm going to pretend I understood that."
"It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is goin' bye-bye."
"Who asked you, Baldy?"
"Shut up! It's genetic!"
Neo looked to his side. There was a mirror there. The mirror looked somehow...strange. Neo put his hand to the mirror. It felt like touching slime. He pulled his fingers away from the mirror. The mirror stuck to his hand for a moment like a piece of mozzarella cheese on a pizza, and then snapped back with a large ripple. Neo looked at his hand. There was glass on his hand, but the glass was like slime on his fingertips. He stared at the slime glass for a moment, and then felt the slime glass growing and oozing onto his hand, then his wrist, then his arm.
"OH GOD! HELP ME! MIRROR SLIME! MIRROR SLIME!"
"Tank, find a signal," said Morpheus.
"I'm trying," said a man at one of the computers. "I don't see one..."
"JESUS CHRIST! IT FEELS COLD AND WET AND STUFF! IT'S ON MY ARM! IT'S ON MY ARM! EWWW!"
"Come on," urged Trinity."
"I've almost got it," said the man named Tank. "One second..."
Morpheus was speaking into a cell phone.
"Now, Tank."
The glass slime began going up Neo's neck.
"One...second...got it!"
The glass slime was on Neo's face.
"Now!" said Morpheus
Suddenly, everything Neo saw went black.
When Neo woke up, he felt a strange feeling. He looked around. He was in a strange glass jar, about the size of a bathtub. The jar was filled with sticky red goo. It was like a preservative. In fact, that was exactly what it was.
He bolted straight up. He looked at himself. He was entirely without clothes and hair, and he had all sorts of electrodes attached to his head. He looked again, and saw that all sorts of wires were plugged into strange sockets all around him. He paused, and looked to his side. He saw a huge row of glass jars just like the one he was in, each with a person in it, each just like Neo, without hair or clothes, with electrodes stuck on their heads. He looked around, and saw that his jar and the row of jars around him was just one row of gigantic towers with hundreds of ledges on the side, each ledge with a row of people jars on them. He looked around. All he could see, as far as he looked, were these strange towers, each with thousands of human jars on them. With all the towers he saw, the entire population of the world had to have been in this strange place. They were all kept in these jars, unconscious, the electrodes on their head telling them that they were not in a jar, in a tower, in a horrible, dark place filled with the human jars, but telling them that they were at home, where Neo was a few minutes ago. Earth. Or so he thought.
"Wow...this was unexpected..."
Just then, a strange floating robot came up from wherever the ground was and right up in front of Neo. A strange metal arm reached out from the robot and clamped around Neo's neck. It lifted him out of his jar, leaving him dangling above the ground. For a moment, Neo thought that he would die, but that's when the robot's other arm took out the electrodes from his head and ripped the wires from the sockets, and dropped him back into the tub. There was a pause, and then a tiny door opened up on the wall of the tower behind Neo's tub. The sticky red goo rushed out of the tub, carrying Neo with in. Neo fell through the door, and he felt a humongous fall as he soared through the hollow interior of the tower. Luckily, he did not hit the ground. He hit water. But he did pass out from falling so deep into water, and was not conscious to see another robot come down from a hole in the ceiling, pick him up, and carry him off.
When Neo woke up, he was lying on some sort of bed. He could hear Morpheus and Trinity's voice.
"Am I dead?" he murmured.
"Far from it," replied Morpheus.
"Then what am I?"
"Right now, you are..."
Neo passed out again.
Damn, though Neo.
When Neo woke up again, he was on a table with thousands of tiny needles stuck in his body. Morpheus was there, with another man that Neo remembered from the computer room at the warehouse. Morpheus and the other man were carefully removing all of the needles from Neo. When they were done, Neo asked, "Where am I?"
"You are in the real world," responded Morpheus.
"Why do my eyes hurt?"
"Because you've never used them before."
"Yes, I have."
"No, you haven't."
"Yes, I have!"
"No, you haven't!"
"$20 bucks says I have!"
"Your on!"
Morpheus led Neo to small room with a cot in it. Neo sat down on the cot.
"What's going on here?"
"I will tell you tomorrow. Get some sleep. Not that you ever have before."
"That $20 is mine!"
Morpheus had already closed the door.
"That $20 is mine..." murmured Neo, and he fell asleep.
Author's Notes: The plot thickens! See how the bet ends tomorrow!