When Neo had woken up, Morpheus had taken him through a hallway to a small room. Wherever Neo was, it seemed that he was on a spaceship. Neo was placed in a chair, and had several electrodes placed on him by the other people he saw at the warehouse. The people worked on a few computers for a few moments, and everything went black.
When Neo woke up, he was in a room, but it was a strange room. It was perfectly white everywhere and did not seem to have any walls or ceiling. It just was empty white space.
"Cool!" said Neo. "It's like I'm in a car commercial!"
Morpheus was in the strange room, too.
"Good morning, Neo."
"Hey, Morpheus."
"Are you ready to find out what The Matrix is?"
"Yes."
"Sit down, and I'll tell you."
"How can I? There aren't any chairs."
Just then, Neo turned to his side. There were to chairs beside him.
"GAH!" he screamed. "THIS IS TOTALLY CREEPIN' ME OUT, MAN!"
"Sit down."
Neo paused, and sat down in one of the chairs. Morpheus sat in the other.
"The Matrix is not real, Neo," said Morpheus. "It is a cyber-dreamworld designed to hide you from the real world. You believe that right now, it is the year 1999. This is what you think the world looks like."
Morpheus and Neo turned to their side. There was now a television beside them. Morpheus held up a remote that had appeared in his hand and pressed a button. Film of the world Neo knew began to play on the screen. Film of the great cities of the world. Skyscrapers, office buildings, metropolises. The world Neo knew.
"But the truth is, the year is more actually 2199. We're not exactly sure what year it is. Apoc lost our calendar a few weeks ago.
"Any way, this is what the world really looks like."
Morpheus pressed a different button on the remote, and more film began playing. Film of a terrible world. A thick layer of smoke hung in the air. Entire cities were burnt and destroyed, crumbling to the ground. The skies were wrought with gas and smoke. It was a horrible sight. Neo stared at the screen, not understanding what he saw. He paused, and looked around. Him, Morpheus, the two chairs and the television had somehow got into this terrible world. Neo looked around at the rocky ground, and looked up and saw the destroyed city he saw in the film.
"Welcome to the desert of real," said Morpheus.
Neo paused, and looked around. They were back in the white room.
"At the height of the 21st century, the world found the dawning of a new age—the age of artificial intelligence. But the machines that used this power took it too far, and they enslaved humanity. No one thought that with the environmental disasters that were happening that the sun, which was no longer shining on earth, that the machines could no longer survive without a power source as strong as the sun. But the machines found a power source strong enough to fuel them: the natural energy that comes from humans. So, the machines created a computer program called The Matrix. It was so advanced, that it made the brains of all the humans on earth believe that they were not in the present, enslaved by the machines, but it made them believe that they were back in the 21st century, at the peak of civilization. These machines have been mining the humans out of their energy for years now, and only a few of us know what the real world is like.
"When The Matrix was first made, a person was born inside it. This person was called The One. He selected me and a hand few of others, and brought us to the real world. He told us the truth about the earth, and he showed us the place where the humans were now being created. I saw that humans were no longer born, but grown in "fields" that stretched on for miles. I did not believe the truth about the world until I saw the fields with my own eyes. I saw the dead bodies of the humans being melted down, and the tissue of the bodies being re-formed and creating new humans. That is when I realised the truth of the world. That is when I knew that the entire earth was been digitally simulated to keep the people from knowing that the machines are turning them from a human into this."
Morpheus held up a battery.
"Oh, I'm sorry, what?" said Neo. "I wasn't listening. The author went so long without a joke that I got bored and stopped paying attention."
"Stupid unfunny scene..." muttered Morpheus. "Making the author waste 5 paragraphs on serious stuff..."
"Hey! A battery! Thanks!"
Neo grabbed the battery Morpheus was holding, took a Game Boy out of his pocket, put the battery in, and began playing.
"Hey! Cut that out!" Morpheus slapped the Game Boy out of Neo's hands.
"Sorry," said Neo. "So, the whole world is just an elaborate sham designed the shield the human race from knowing that we're being farmed for our energy by robots?"
"Correct."
"Man, that sucks."
"Totally."
"So, everything I think I've done is just The Matrix telling my brain I've done it, and I haven't really done anything I thought I've done?"
"Yes."
"Aww, man! I'm never gonna get a date..."
"Ha-ha. Also, I believe that there was a little matter of the $20 bucks, so, if you could just cough it up..."
Neo groaned and handed Morpheus a 20.
"Okay, there. Now, where am I, anyway?"
"You are in a place called The Construct. It is a computer program not unlike The Matrix we use to get things. Our technicians can load anything here from training programs to weapon utility."
"Cool."
"We shall start your training tomorrow."
"Sweet."
Everything went black for a few seconds, and then Neo found himself back in the strange computer room.
"Okay, where am I now?" asked Neo.
"You are in the real world, on my ship, The Nebucadnezzar. It's a hovercraft. We patrol the city using the sewer system."
"And, what city is that?"
"It's called Zion. It's an underground city. It's the last human city in existence. The entire population of earth lives there. Of course, there are only about a thousand people who have been unplugged from The Matrix, so it is a small city. Any, we live underground for two reasons. One—because underground is close to the earth's core, so Zion is pretty much the only warm place left on earth. Also, we use it to hide from the machines that patrol the world. If the machines found out about Zion, the human race would go bye-bye."
"And...that's bad?"
"That's ba...? YES, OF COURSE IT'S BAD!"
"Sorry! Don't have to yell..."
"Anyway, it's time to show you the crewmembers of my ship."
He motioned to Trinity.
"You already know Trinity, of course, so I'll show you the ones you don't know."
He motioned to three other crewmembers.
"This is Switch."
He motioned to the young woman with short blond hair from the car.
"This is Apoc."
He motioned to the young man who had been driving the car.
"This is Cypher."
He motioned to the man with a goatee and no hair who Neo had spoken to at the warehouse.
"This is Tank and his brother Dozer."
He motioned to two large, strong looking men. They smiled at Neo.
"And the little one behind you is Mouse."
Neo turned around. A little man who looked a few years younger than Neo was standing behind him.
"Hi," said Mouse.
"Well, now that you've met everyone, I think it's time to go to sleep," Morpheus told Neo. "You've got a big day of training tomorrow."
Morpheus led Neo back to his cot. Neo sat down on his bed.
"This whole 'the world not being real' thing really creeps me out."
"I know. I'm sorry. I know how fragile someone's thoughts can be. The mind has trouble letting go."
Morpheus began to walk off. After he closed the door to Neo's bedroom, he murmured to himself, "Yes! I got the $20!"
The next morning, Neo got out of bed and rested his head against the wall, thinking about all the things he now knew. After a few minutes, the man named Tank walked in to the room.
"Hey, the new recruit! Something wrong?"
"It's just that all the things I've learned are too much for me."
"I know. It's hard to understand when you first find out. But you get over it. Anyway, as you already know, I'm Tank."
"Neo."
They shook hands.
Neo looked at Tank for a second. Unlike himself, he had no Matrix plug sockets all over him.
"Hey, no holes.
"Yup!" said Tank happily. "Me and my brother Dozer are 100 percent human, born and raised in the real world!"
"Lucky."
"No, it's not! The pizza in the real world tastes awful! That's one of the reasons me and Dozer joined Morpheus."
"I see."
"Anyway, today is the day you learn your training. Come with me."
Tank took Neo back to the Control room. He strapped him into the chair and attached some electrodes to him and plugged a wire into the socket on the back of his neck. Tank sat down at a hair behind a computer.
"We're supposed to start off with basic operating programs, but that's major boring shit, so—"
"Wait—operating? You mean, I'm gonna be a surgeon?"
"What? No, no, no! I'm not even gonna do the operating programs. Let's start with something a little more interesting: combat training."
Tank took out a small disc and put it into the disc drive. The words "Combat Training—Ju Jitsu" appeared on the screen.
"Ju jitsu?" said Neo. "I'm gonna learn ju jitsu?"
"Yup. Here we go."
Tank pressed some buttons on the computer, and all the information on the tiny combat training disc flooded through the electrodes and into Neo's brain.
Neo looked up. He suddenly knew everything there is to know about ju jitsu. Somehow, in about five seconds, Neo had become a martial arts expert.
"Whoa!" cried Neo. "I know ju jitsu!"
"Hey, Mikey, I think he likes it!" yelled Tank. "You want more?"
"Hell, yeah!"
"Well, I'm not gonna give you it."
"Aww..."
Later, Morpheus came into the control room. He saw that Tank was watching a computer screen very carefully.
"How's he doing?" asked Morpheus.
"He's a machine! He's already got 20 guys out!"
Tank was watching a screen that displayed whatever was in The Construct, watching Neo virtually knock out 20 guys using his new-found martial arts skills.
"HE'S A MACHINE? KILL HIM!"
Morpheus ran up to Neo, took out a knife, and just as he was going to slit Neo's throat, Tank yelled, "Stop! He's a figurative machine!"
Morpheus paused.
"I knew that..."
After a few minutes, Morpheus had transported himself into The Construct. He had pre-set it so that when he came in to see Neo, the two of them were inside a large Construct gymnasium.
"The Matrix, Neo, is a computer program, with rules, just as all others. But, you being a hacker, should know that program's rules can be broken, and reality can be bent."
Morpheus ran up to the wall, and ran across it, horizontally, as if gravity was facing sideways.
"Like that."
"Neat!"
"Very."
Morpheus and Neo began to have a huge kung-fu action sequence with cool techno music and stuff like that.
The whole fight, Neo had been doing pretty good defending Morpheus's attacks, but when it came to attacks, somehow Morpheus seemed to defend them with more ease than humanly possible.
Meanwhile, back on the Nebucadnezzar, the little guy named Mouse noticed the fight raging on the screen. He ran over to the galley where everyone was eating.
"Hey, everybody! Neo's fighting Morpheus!"
Him and everyone else ran up to the screen.
"Amazing!" murmured Mouse as he watched Neo. Not many people could go this long in a fight against Morpheus without losing.
After a few minutes of fighting, there was a pause.
"Why can't you defeat me?" asked Morpheus.
"Because you're too strong," replied Neo, who was gasping for breath.
"Do you think that me being strong or fast has anything to do with it? Do you think that's air you're breathing right now?"
Neo looked up.
"Then what am I breathing? Chocolate pie?"
Neo burst into laughter.
"Uh...yeah...you're right...it's not chocolate pudding..." murmured Morpheus nervously. "Not chocolate pudding at all...no..."
Neo had now got his breath back. He and Morpheus continued to fight just as they had before. Neo not losing, yet not winning.
"Come on, Neo!" said Morpheus in mid-fight, in an almost taunting tone. "You're faster than this! Stop trying to hit me and hit me!"
A fist came flying at Morpheus's face. Neo's fist. It stopped about two inches from him.
"Impressive," said Morpheus, and then he said in a loud voice, "Tank, load the Jump program!"
Back in the real world, Tank took out the Combat Practice CD and put in the Jump Program CD.
Morpheus and Neo now found themselves on a roller coaster.
"What the? Tank, what happened?" yelled Morpheus.
"Oh, sorry," said Tank into a microphone on the computer. I accidentally put in my Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 CD instead of the Jump CD. My bad."
Tank put in a different CD.
Morpheus and Neo now found themselves on a skyscraper high above a busy street.
"Clear you mind, Neo, and you can do anything you want," said Morpheus, and then, with a leap that should have only got him two feet forward, flew through the air and landed on the skyscraper across the street—a physically impossible jump.
Meanwhile, back in the Nebucadnezzar, the crewmembers watched The Construct screen with anticipation.
"What if he makes it?" asked Mouse.
"He's not gonna make it," said Apoc. "No one ever does."
"Yeah, I know, but still...what if he does?"
"He's not going to, okay?"
"But what if he does?"
"HE'S NOT GOING TO!"
"HE MIGHT!"
"HE WON'T!"
"HE MIGHT!"
"HE WON'T!"
"YOU WANNA BRING THIS OUTSIDE?"
"I'LL TAKE YOU ON ANY DAY!"
Meanwhile, in the Jump program...
"Whoa," murmured Neo upon seeing Morpheus's jump. "Okay, clear my mind...okey dokey...here we go...cleared my mind...mind is clear...mind no-clear no-no...'kay, here we go..."
He ran up to the edge of the skyscraper and leaped forward.
"WEEEEEEEEeeeeeee.......!"
Of course, the fun of flying through the air was short lived, for Neo now saw that he was about to hit the ground.
"AHHHHHHH——!"
Just then, as Neo hit the ground, he realised that he would not die, because the ground suddenly seemed to be made out of slime or something, and he just bounced back out into the air.
"Cool! It's like Jell-O!"
Just then, Neo came back from being flung 15 feet in the air and landed flat on the ground, which was now hard again.
"Cool! It's like concrete!"
Neo was then transported back into the chair in the control room. He felt his mouth with his hand. It was bleeding; it was as if what had happened in The Construct had actually happened.
"I though The Construct and The Matrix weren't real."
"The mind makes it real," said Morpheus.
"Um...yeah, that makes a lot of sense...anyway, so, if you die in The Matrix, do you die in the real world?"
"The body cannot live without the mind."
"Yeah...I'll take that as a yes."
Neo headed back into his bed.
"I am so gonna get that $20 bucks back."
Author's Notes: Tomorrow, The Oracle! Today, review!