Sacraments

Neo makes them coffee that morning, just as he has every morning they've had together here in Io since they settled in. As Trinity's getting dressed, she can hear him boiling the water, scooping the grounds into the French press, not a movement wasted in the dance of familiarity, routine but not without care. She brushes her hair, which has finally grown out to the length she likes it. It's almost time to get it cut for the first time. Switch used to do it, always trimming her bangs shorter than she'd asked for. "Because you look so flirty when you push your hair out of your eyes," Switch would tease.

Even then, she's only half-conscious of the way she's doing it as she steps out of the bedroom into the living area, meeting Neo's eyes, feeling her heart flutter – there's no better way to describe it. The first look each morning is special.

He kisses her, a soft, slow, unhurried kiss that says he wishes he could spend the whole day right here, like this. "Good morning," he says, his lips still touching hers.

"Good morning." Reluctant to let go, every single time. But she sits down across from him eventually for breakfast, appreciating the little touches one by one – the spoon resting on the napkin at her usual seat, the synth-sugar bowl refilled. The outward signs of an inward grace.

Today they're both quiet as they eat, thinking about what's ahead of them. Stirring the mash that's the closest thing they could find to Tastee Wheat, because they've been finding to their surprise that some old habits die really hard.

"You ready to meet them?" Neo asks eventually.

Trinity sets down her spoon. "I don't know what to expect."

He covers her hand with his. "Me neither."

After a moment, she looks up at him. "I'm scared."

"So am I," he says. Waits for a long moment. Exhales. "We don't have to go."

"I think not knowing scares me more." She smiles wryly. "Finding out is a close second, though."

It had been a month ago when Neo asked the innocent question that set them on a collision course to where they are now. Bugs was walking with them from a city meeting. A few crew members of the Mnemosyne had tagged along, as they did.

There had been a lot of meetings. Neo and Trinity had made a controversial entrance into Io, since part of the missions to retrieve them had arguably carried been out using Io's resources, without official municipal approval. Some wanted to strip everyone involved of their ranks, from Bugs to the General herself. The General wasn't going to happen, they were told, but for as long as people were upset, meetings would be held. Meetings Neo and Trinity were sometimes brought in to, to demonstrate how little they knew about any of it, how little of a threat they posed.

Beyond that, though, they've been keeping a low profile to let the heat on the General die down. (With the notable exception of leading the crew of the Mnemosyne to recover Sati's parents, a righteous hack if there ever was one.) They don't mind. Even with the meetings, they still have more time than they've ever had before. They like keeping out of public view. There's so much they're discovering, studying and even tinkering with some of the synthiants, visiting the gardens and libraries, going shopping, being late to their medical and acupuncture appointments, processing the last sixty years, building a quiet domestic life together, but a lively one too. An extended nesting. The rare chance to hit pause and step into a pocket outside time.

Knowing that it won't last forever – that they will eventually likely have a public-facing role again – only helps them savor it more. They inhabit a stillness in recognizing that their work as the One is far from finished, while laying the foundation for it to come from a place of rest and peace.

Most of the problems of arriving sixty years in the future with nothing in a city that hadn't existed when they'd last held anything by way of citizenship were smoothed over, conventionally enough, with money. Niobe took up a collection for them, privately, nothing to do with Io's government, she said. They're not fooled. Though she claims many people contributed, they know the bulk of it came from her. They could live comfortably on this for a lifetime and more. Sometimes they wonder if that was her intentn, to all but buy them a way out of causing trouble. But in the end, the money was given to them without strings, and they accepted it without promises. There are changes they want to make to the world.

All that to say that even if their days don't seem busy, they've had things to do, and they haven't been in a rush to meet new people. For now, Bugs and the crew of the Mnemosyne are still their main conduits to the world, whenever they're back on shore leave.

As Neo asked Bugs to help decode some of the things the General had said and not said in that last interminable meeting, Trinity let him talk, following the conversation with her eyes. His usual way of handling change and culture shock was asking questions. Hers was listening.

Then he said, "There's something I haven't been able to figure out. Why aren't people on their phones?"

Bugs looked confused. "But we are."

As he searched for the words to explain what he meant, Bugs suddenly brightened. "Oh, you mean like people in the Matrix? Constantly? Not sleeping? Addicted? Dying from playing video games?"

"Well, some people here still die of playing video games sometimes," Seq said. "Hey, did you know that someone's ported all your Matrix games? I haven't heard of anyone dying from playing them yet, though."

Neo closed his eyes with a pained expression.

"Sorry if that was too much," Seq said meekly.

Neo looked back at Bugs. "Yeah, sure, addicted. You have everything we had and more with smartphones, VR, AI. How do people here have a healthy relationship to technology? How do they know how to be human?"

The crew looked embarrassed. Neo and Trinity exchanged a look, puzzled.

Bugs said, "All right, I guess this is when we tell you." She gave them an almost guilty look. "This will feel a little weird."

"So in sixty years, there's been a whole mythology about the One, what you and everyone at the time did, right?" Bugs said. Neo winces. "What's the matter?"

"In Zion, people used to bring him offerings," Trinity said. More than hating it, he'd felt terrible about it, somehow, but he also didn't want to disappoint them. She looked down. "They'd ask him to hold their babies."

Much to their relief, Bugs just breezed past that. "Oh, that was early days. Most of that is gone now. A relic of the past." She looked awkward. "Because you were their god, and then you died."

"My grandparents never recovered from that," Seq said.

"Sorry," Neo said, even more awkwardly.

Bugs tactfully cut back in. "There are still a few of those early Zion worshippers left, hitting themselves with spoons or whatever it is that they do, but they're considered to be on the extreme end of things. On the other extreme, you have the liars and deniars who say that none of it ever happened. Those guys are way further out than people like the General who just don't believe in the One. Those guys say you never existed at all, it's all a conspiracy, blah blah blah."

Neo nodded. It was logical. "So the middle of the bell curve," he said. "That's... all of you?"

They all looked offended. Bugs puffed up with indignation. "I told everyone who ever joined the Mnem that we were going to find you. The first thing I did after I was unplugged, as soon as I could walk, was get this white rabbit tattooed on my arm!" She rolled up her sleeve and flexed the real world version of the one he'd seen in the Matrix. She'd also proudly showed him how she had it look a little different in her RSI each time she jacked in. Sometimes the rabbit got accessories. He wondered if that was maybe against the spirit of what a tattoo was supposed to be, but she obviously got a lot of enjoyment out of it, so what did that matter? "I was fresh out of my pod! It hurt like a mother!"

He laughed. "Okay, so you're crazy. You had to be, to come looking for us." They beamed at him. "But what do most people do? What does that look like?"

"Cultural One-observance? Think more folk hero than messiah, but no less revered for that." Bugs lowered her voice. "We call it the sacraments."

Bugs had explained there was no building for the sacraments, no church or temple or shrine. "Because it's not about a building, it dwells in the people who practice it. Me, though, I'm a bit of a collector." So they were standing in Bugs' apartment, a little apprehensive about discovering what it was that she collected.

The first thing they couldn't help seeing was a large framed photo of her and Niobe with their arms around each other. Bugs waveed them away from with some embarrassment. She coughed. "So, the sacraments," she said. "Consensus today says they started somewhere between Zion and Io. Fittingly, because they are of neither."

"It's a religion?" Neo asked.

'Some would say yes, others would say no."

Trinity raised an eyebrow. "So it's a cult?"

"Some of it on the fringes, maybe... Shit gets weird everywhere, right?" Bugs shrugged. "You have people looking for alternatives to the current system, the state, and so on. But most people who follow the sacraments, they're… most people. And you couldn't find a person alive today who hasn't heard of them.

"The sacraments are a series of practices and meditations rooted in the life of the One. They offer contemplation of the One as an alternative consciousness, a freedom from addiction, consumerism, the ego. Some people who follow the sacraments would even say they don't strictly believe in the One, but it still helps them, you know? Helps them find peace, free their mind, that sort of thing. You don't have to believe in it for it to work."

"But what people believe matters," Trinity couldn't help saying.

Bugs got it. "Of course it matters. It's the difference between being a rat pressing a lever a thousand times for a hit of cocaine and a... a tree. A tree that grows and gives shelter to others."

"Like a sequoia," Neo said, and Bugs nodded. "You said practices? What did you mean by that?"

"You know, practices. Like giving gifts on Christmas. Like Passover. Old traditions that people value and pass down to their kids. Customs that stick around for a long time."

"Tell me there's no Neo Day," Neo said.

"There are some special days that some people observe," Bugs said evasively, in a way that him sure she did. "But the sacraments are for every day. Ordinary time."

Bugs walked up to a series of framed line drawings, black minimalist curved lines on white squares. There were seven. "Let's start with this one." She pointed to the one in the middle. "Since you asked why people aren't on their phones all the time."

Trinity looked at the drawing. A moment later, she experienced an almost out of body sensation as she realized she recognized the scene depicted. Sentinels rear back, overcome by wild lines depicting the waves of an EMP. Her hand has pulled the jack halfway out of Neo's head, but his eyes are already wide open. The drawing, though purposefully plain, evokes all the drama of a renaissance painting. "So is this the Sacrament of Unplugging?" she asked, her voice sounding distant to her ears.

"Essentially. Its proper name is the Sacrament of Connection," Bugs said. "Because it's really about choosing to disconnect from the Matrix, from technology, from mindlessness, from everything that imprisons and oppresses, in order to fully embrace human connection." She brightened. "There are increasing numbers of synthiant practitioners, you don't have to take human too literally."

In the drawing, Neo's monitor shows a flatline spiking back into healthy, regular activity. Trinity felt her face grow warm with the certainty that other artists would have chosen to depict that other moment instead for the Sacrament of Connection. "Not that many people even knew this happened, at least in our time."

"Evidently, at least one of those people remembered." Bugs thought for a moment. "So I've heard stories that in the early days of Io, especially with the need to stay vigilant against another attack, everyone was on high alert all the time, soldiers and civilians alike. It was just like you see everywhere in the Matrix. People weren't sleeping. They were burning out. Chewing on their own tails. So our General tried putting a ban in place, tech curfews, all kinds of restrictions that people immediately found all kinds of ways to hack. None of the things she tried worked at all. Real change couldn't take place without the intention of the heart."

"Choice," Neo said.

Bugs nodded vigorously. "By the time I got here, it was just part of the culture to put your tech away when you weren't really needing it to work or communicate. Tech here isn't designed to exploit the attention economy."

"People aren't the products."

"Right on. Connection is probably the most widely practiced sacrament. Just about everyone can get onboard with it in some way. Because it's not just about cellphone use – it's much more expansive than that. It can be about being present with someone in trial, even if you can't experience it together with them. Or it can be about knowing when to act." She looked curiously at Trintiy. "How did you know?"

From catching up on the past sixty years of study, she'd actually formed a theory. "The heart has an electromagnetic field that reaches at least three feet outside the body. We can detect it when we really listen." Even with the backing of research, though, something about that answer still didn't feel right. She fell back on her old answer, as unsatisfying as it's been to most people. "You know when you know."

"Yeah!" Lexy yelled, her voice muffled behind the kitchen door, where she was making cookies.

(Lexy would have fully lost it if she'd heard the discussion Trinity and Neo had years ago: she'd asked him how he'd known, up on the rooftop of the government building, that she was going to shoot the rope and leap as the helicopter spiraled out of control. "I didn't," he said. "I was ready to pull up the entire helicopter or die trying.")

Neo asked, "So who came up with the sacraments? The neologists?"

Bugs looked surprised. "Oh, no. I mean, some neologists are cool with the sacraments, but others really hate them, because of their equal emphasis on Trinity."

Trinity looked over sharply. "Me?"

"Finally," Neo said, even as the look she gave him was mixed with exasperation. Among other things, she'd been grateful to escape the public scrutiny he'd faced.

"Of course. Thus far, the sacraments only held that Neo was the One, like all the rest of us, but you could say they were ahead of their time in their outlook. I imagine we'll be seeing some new ideas about the One in the sacraments soon, and they'll be an easy fit."

They spent a few moments taking in the other things on the wall and in the glass cases beside it. More drawings, handwritten quotes. A cross-stitched banner that read Temet Nosce, Crede Id. A 3D printed model of a B-212 helicopter. A watercolor of a sky of rainbows. The Sacraments date back forty or so years to the period between the fall of Zion and the rise of Io. For all that time, Trinity noted, what's here depicts what really happened. Sentimental from one angle, heartfelt from another – maybe the distinction has always said more about the perceiver and their preconceptions. There's fanaticism, and then there's the way love sees things as they truly are.

Bugs said, "I imagine this has to be awkward for you, since you never asked for any of this. But that's what draws people to you. In the midst of all those other influencers trying to grow their own followings, go viral, activate their own swarm modes of coppertops, your story has meant so much to so many. It's been beloved through generations. The stories we live by are the ones that we somehow enter into, that allow us to discover our own lives are part of some larger whole that was here before us and will continue after we're gone." She smiled. "That's our war, and that's our peace."

Then a weird shrill ping rang out, oddly loud. Bugs looked startled. "Oh shit, I have to take this," she said, pulling out her phone. She thumbed through it rapidly, then froze. A long moment later, she looked up again. "Oh my God. They want to meet you."

"Who?" Neo asked.

"The Elder." Her eyes were wide. "One of the first keepers of the sacraments."

"They're the founder of the sacraments?" Neo asked.

"They say they're not, per se," Bugs said. "But their posts date so far back that they might as well be. Anyone who's been there since the beginning is the beginning, essentially, right? Some people have theorized that they're more than one person, just holding the title and the office in succession. We don't know. Someone else gave them that name and it just stuck over time."

She was texting furiously as she talked. There was another shrill ping from her phone. "The Elder said they know this must be unsettling for you, but they want to meet and speak with you alone."

Neo and Trinity looked at each other, unsure of how to respond.

"No one has ever been contacted like this," Bugs said. "This isn't even coming to me directly. The Elder left a message that one of the mods saw and sent along to me, figuring I had the best shot of getting hold of you."

"They didn't say anything else?"

"No."

"Have you met them?"

"I don't know anyone who has. The Elder's all text online, no audio or video or holo ever. Usually only a few posts per month, but they're respected. Old school… Well, that's just school for you guys, isn't it?"

Neo and Trinity exchanged another look. "We feel right at home," Trinity said.

"So what did you think?" Trinity asked. They were eating dinner together in their apartment that night. Blowing on their miso soup.

"Is it weird that I think it's a lot less weird than it used to be?" Neo asked.

Something that was weird, though, was that the Elder had set a date to meet them more than a month out. No explanation why. Bugs had showed them the messages. There was nothing else they could infer from them.

For the next month, they tried to investigate what they could. Detective work. But maybe the only noteworthy finding was how little they could find out.

Everyone they talked to said that the Elder could be trusted. Which made Trinity even more suspicious. Is it possible the Elder was a deep machine plant? she asked Bugs. A failsafe, the antithesis of the Analyst?

Bugs didn't think so. "The insight they've given us into the two of you from the beginning dates back to a time before the Analyst. This kind of thinking, the spiritual depth, no program's ever had this."

"One did," Neo said.

Bugs shook her head. "I'm sorry, Neo. Sati says they're not the Oracle. Rama-Kandra and Kamala agree. Whoever the Elder is, they're positive they're human."

They never expected very much to come out of their attempts to reach out to the Elder directly. Their replies were few and far between. This was consistent with how the Elder communicated, everyone said.

Through Bugs, they sent a message asking: Why do you want to us to come meet you?

A week later, the Elder replied: I believe you live, but still I wish to see you with my own eyes. I regret that I cannot come to you.

They asked: You ask us to trust you with our lives?

Two weeks later: I trust you with mine. I have trusted you with mine. Please come.

They sent other messages, but didn't receive any more replies.

With so little to go on, all they could do was go on with the routines they were in the process of building. Reading something old and something new every morning. Washing day, laundry and housekeeping, which they had never once been in Zion long enough to do. Groceries, pickling, watering their plants. Setting aside an hour each week to hash out unspoken arguments and withheld grievances, to ask for understanding and forgiveness. Lighting candles at the close of the day. Though sometimes Neo pulls her to the bed before she can get to that, and that's fine with them too.

Thirty days passed without a ripple breaking the surface of their lives.

And now, rinsing out their coffee mugs, they hear Bugs knocking on the door.

"When they gave me the coordinates this morning, I understood," Bugs is saying. Mostly they've been quiet, but from time she makes nervous conversation, out of habit.

They've been walking through a mechanical line for about an hour. Bugs had warned them they would be going some distance. Luckily, their boots are more broken in than they were a month ago.

Bugs continues, "Whoever the Elder is – or whoever they are – it seems like they're living out in the Styx, hacking our signals to broadcast from around Io. That explains why we've never been able to get a fix on their location. No one's supposed to be out here, but you know." Bugs shrugs. "That's how people are when you tell them what to do, right?" She checks some kind of meter she's brought with her. "We're almost there. Do you hear something?"

Trinity nods. The humming of an engine, getting closer.

They round the corner just as a dim light sweeps around onto them. The light is low enough that they can see they're face to face with a hoverbike coming to a slow stop before them, levitating a few feet above the ground. There's no one on it.

Bugs goes pale. "Oh, no." Her eyes dart between them. "It's not here. Wherever the Elder wants to meet you, it's much farther."

The hoverbike is made of stippled curves of metal, obviously repurposed. Not a synthiant. Bugs gets out her meter again, taps a different setting. "It's clean," she says, with admiration, and they know she means in terms of bugs, and maybe bombs, because the bike is filthy, covered in dirt and black grease.

"It's going to be a tight fit for two," Neo says, eyeing it.

"Good thing we like each other." Trinity steps forward, giving the controls a cursory look. She nods as she turns back to Neo.

He walks forward, right hand extended. Sensing. While his new eyes don't see machines as glowing light, he can feel their presence, their purpose. He felt it in his dreams even before coming to consciousness on the Mnemosyne, and it's only grown stronger since. He's asked Trinity if she feels anything different this time around. She's not sure. But he's been confident that she'll develop the same abilities he has. Maybe there just needs to be some kind of awakening, they figure. One that hopefully doesn't have to involve trauma.

He steps up to the bike. Touches its side, runs his fingers down a long seam where it was previously pierced, mended now.

They watch him close his eyes, taking a few slow breaths.

"I don't know," he says at last. "I don't distrust it. But I don't recognize anything about it either. This is new."

Trinity nods. "Then we'll go, as we agreed."

Seeing how calm they are, Bugs starts getting agitated. "Oh, God. I can't believe I'm letting you do this. I should go with you. What if it really is a trap?"

Neo looks up. "It's okay. The Elder wanted us to go alone. So that's what we're going to do. Just look for us if we're not back in a few hours."

"What are you doing, Bugs?" Bugs asks. Answering herself. "The sixth sacrament is trust." Her voice gets higher. "The seventh sacrament is sacrifice."

"What's the eighth?" Trinity asks, swinging one leg over the bike.

"There is no eighth."

"Not yet," Trinity says.

"Okay, okay." Bugs lets out a shallow breath. "I don't like this. I accept whatever it is I'm supposed to learn. But I don't like this at all."

As Trinity tests the bike, getting a feel for its center of gravity, a different shade of alarm flashes in Bugs' eyes. "Trinity, Neo… Whatever they say to you... I don't know what they're gonna say, but don't stay out there, okay? Please? Don't go building some alternate world somewhere else. We just found you. We need you here."

Neo smiles as he gets on the hoverbike behind Trinity. "Don't worry. We'll be back. We really like our apartment."

They ride through the dark, the low thrum of the engine immersing them in a sense of clarity they haven't had in a long time. At times like these, they remember they're old soldiers, and nothing makes them feel alive like having a mission. Whatever this is, it's doing it for them.

The bike's murky headlights trace sagging power lines, loose debris, rusted arteries of an abandoned past. No signs of any machines, which Neo confirms.

Mostly, they keep their eyes on the darkness ever looming before them and wonder where they're going.

Trinity grips the handlebars, but the bike's steering itself, and there isn't much to do. There isn't much she can do, besides focus gratefully on the way Neo has his arms securely around her waist, the way they lean into the turns together like they've done this before a thousand times, though this is actually their first out here in the real world.

Trust, she thinks.

Sacrifice…

Their journey to Machine City. Crashing the Logos. Confronting Smith. Choosing to surrender. The way Neo had reached out to touch the seventh framed image on Bugs' wall and asked, "Is that what it looked like?"

She exhales. Feeling the pain in her whole body from those memories. She's been choosing not to dwell too much on the past, but it feels very close somehow, in this sprawling darkness. Like the dark is exposing new vulnerabilities.

She unclenches her jaw, tries to tune back into her surroundings. The air cools slightly, but even with how fast they're going, it isn't cold. They seem to be keeping close to the earth's core, staying where it's conducive to human life. That's something, at least.

Lines from a poem she read this month coming back to her over and over again. Nothing will tell you where you are. Each moment is a place you've never been.

It feels that way again as they speed further and faster into the unseen, replaying all those years and all these months of recovery and repair that have brought them to this.

This. Where it feels like a dream they're afraid they'll wake up from, when the bike stops in front of the temporary shelter, and the Elder comes out to greet them, weeping. They recognize him immediately, the stone around his neck cool on their chests as he embraces them. "My friends," Morpheus says, again and again. "I thought the story was over, even as I carried in my bones an ache that could not be shaken. My friends, my friends."

It's so hard to know where to begin that don't, for a while. By the light of a few ancient lamps Morpheus has strung up, they sit down and eat together. Not knowing what to expect, they had packed a lunch. A picnic for parts unknown, they'd called it. Hippie sandwiches – bread made from a blend of ground beans, soy protein pickles, fruit juice. They want to leave more of it for Morpheus, but sense his greater enjoyment in sharing it with them. "I have enough. I eat a lot of mushrooms that grow down there," he says. Smiles. "But I haven't shrunk yet, except from old age."

He's been living on the distant outskirts of Zion for the last forty years, where the anti-Zionists had once lived. "Me, once the High Chair of the Council," he says, letting out a short bark of laughter they remember so well. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. He has some human neighbors, he thinks, but all of them seem to have decided they're better off not knowing who they are. Just like how Io made the decision long ago not to find out anything about the area Bugs called the Styx, which is as far as he'll venture when he needs to make contact as the Elder. "Though I wasn't the only one. There were others with me, at first. We wouldn't have made it, otherwise. We scavenged a lot from Zion, and we had help from friends in Io who risked everything to help us – they gave us water purifiers, protein sources, medicine. But there were never many of us. That wasn't the intention. Now I am the last one left."

He looks down at his lap for a long time. "Have they told you it was my fault that Zion was so inadequately prepared when the machines attacked us? Because it was."

"They said you trusted that the peace they had made could not be broken," Neo says.

Morpheus shakes his head. "Trust was no excuse for failing to see what was happening right in front of me. I know that through my actions much was built and much was destroyed. In my foolishness, I had believed myself to be a revealer of mysteries. In my pride, I failed to discern when it was time to listen to the counsel of others. It is well that what was not true should be struck down, but I bear responsibility for those who lost their lives because of my mistakes."

"I know that the majority of the Council supported you to the end," Neo says quietly. "And no one knew what was going to happen."

Tears fill Morpheus' eyes. He tries to smile. "Ah. The number of times I wished I could have asked the two of you…"

Trinity holds his hands in hers, remembering their shape, memorizing the differences. He has to be about a hundred years old. "Everyone we talked to believes you died," she says. "That you couldn't possibly have survived."

"I didn't desert Zion," Morpheus says. He looks visibly relieved when Trinity and Neo nod, without a trace of suspicion or accusation. "I was at the epicenter of the first strike. In fact, I was their target. Understandably – I don't begrudge anyone this – I was thought to be dead. Everyone else around me was."

He looks up at them, and mirth breaks through his sorrow. "And here we are now."

"I apologize for keeping you in the dark when I invited you to come here," Morpheus says, as their conversation circles around to it. "I am sure it was disquieting. But I had to keep my identity hidden. You and the others have plausible deniability if I leave no clues pointing to who I am. I am freer to move in your midst if I am absent." He shifts in his seat. "While not perfect, Io is extraordinary, and I am humbled. General Niobe has been a greater leader than I ever was. But I know I have to not be there for Io to be what it needs to be."

An exile Neo thinks, like the exiled programs. But an exile by choice. "You created the sacraments?" he asks.

"In a manner of speaking. I was one of the early co-creators, yes. I sowed some seeds, but it was always meant to be a communal understanding that would keep expanding." He bows his head. "I thought you were both dead. Even so, the last thing I wished was to co-opt your lives in service of some agenda. I just did not want to see you forgotten. And others were beginning to exploit your story, to use it for something it was not."

"How did you get the idea?" Trinity asks.

"From you, Trinity," Morpheus replied. "I thought of you. The rituals you created and spread when we were on the Nebuchadnezzar. Reading something at the start of every morning." His gaze softens with fondness. "Like you were trying to believe seven impossible things before breakfast."

She sighs, fighting tears. "Every time I reread that book, I thought of you."

Morpheus looks at Neo. "You weren't around long enough to see this, but she did so much. She had us observe birthdays, not just with a drink but with asking people to share what being unplugged meant to them. She made them meaningful. She'd have people call the person who had unplugged them, and the person who had unplugged that person."

Trinity smiles. "We called it calling our grandparents."

"You did." Morpheus' voice cracks a little. "I could go on. My life has been enriched in every way by the years I had with you. That was what I wanted other people to share. It's a testament to the both of you that so many people have lived their lives by what they find in yours."

They don't know what to say to that, which Morpheus notices with embarrassment. "I really am sorry about the ways you must be experiencing it now. Having finally in my old age embraced the wisdom of anonymity, I know what a relief it can be."

They assure him they're okay. Being the Elder, they know, must come with its own challenges.

The three of them catch up on the rest of what the last few months have held. They are impressed but not entirely surprised to find out the extent of Morpheus has access to. He reads everything but interferes with nothing, leaving as few traces as possible. Here off the grid, they're able to say so much more.

A part of each them comes to life again. As welcoming as everyone in Io has been, there is nothing like being able to talk among people they've shared so many experiences with.

The subject of the One comes around, eventually. Specifically, the future of the One.

Neo says, "Morpheus, you've seen a lot in over sixty years, from the inside and the outside. Do you have any ideas about what we should do next?"

Morpheus' smile then was wide and entirely familiar. "Plenty."

By the time they have to leave, their roles have reversed. Morpheus is the one reassuring them, while they're helplessly teary. He knows they're thinking that at his age, they might never see him again. "Don't worry. You'll hear from me again. Soon." He looks them both in the eye. "There's time."

Trinity's eyes widen. "You always used to say that."

"And now I have lived to believe it anew," Morpheus says. "There's time for everything. There's a time for everything. A time to dream and believe, a time to grieve in darkness. And now, a time to have my dreams given back to me, broken so they could be multiplied. Broken so they could be reshaped to be better than I could have ever imagined."

"Thank you, Morpheus," Trinity says softly.

"No, thank you. You have made my dream known to me, and its interpretations are still being poured out. The story hasn't ended yet. Something new is always beginning. In every misstep now, there is a redemption. In every death, a resurrection."

He smiles as he hugs them both again. "Who can see what will happen after them? We have. We have been given a time to see that what happens after us is not the same as what would have happened without us. I am grateful every day that you lived. And I am transformed because you live still."

"Morpheus…" Trinity almost doesn't ask, until she realizes how much she really wants to. "The statue they have of you in the cave…"

Morpheus smiles. "I've seen photos of it. It's a fine statue. A very flattering likeness that also divulges my old vanity."

"I've never asked you the story about why you wear that stone." Now that she's seeing it right in front of her, the very same one that she saw for years, she knows this is the original.

Morpheus is quiet for a long time. "I haven't thought about that in many, many years." He drops his gaze. "I got it on my first trip to Zion. I went everywhere, saw everything. I was young then. I thought... that if I ever had children, grandchildren even, I wanted to give them something from me. More than writing, more than words, I remember telling myself at the time. Something real." He laughs. "It wasn't my finest piece of symbolism. Who wants to have the weight of the past around their neck?"

But his smile after that is full of true gladness. "I suppose I wanted to give those who came after me something that would last."

They know they're happy because they feel like talking on the way back, even though that means half-shouting to be heard over the engine. Maybe this is how all their conversations will be like, Neo muses, someday when they get even older and these wondrous bodies of theirs, out of the carefully controlled environments of the Anomaleum, eventually start to wear down.

"That was unexpected," Trinity says. Then she laughs. "And familiar. Of course he would want us to get the Oracle first."

"Some things never change." Neo rests his head on her shoulder for a moment. "Besides, Rama-Kandra and Kamala thought it could be done, too."

"It just goes to show that was the most modest of his ideas. No one else could have dreamed up the rest of what he suggested. There's a lot we're going to have to start looking into tomorrow."

"What do we tell the others?"

"That the One has a new spiritual advisor in the Elder." She smiles. "But we still get to make up our own mind."

"That sounds good to me," Neo says. She can hear the smile in his voice. Belief and disbelief, faith and doubt, every day of their miraculous lives. "Those kids. They think they know our story. But it just keeps getting weirder."

She leans back against him. "We're getting older. We could always retire."

"Fuck no, it's not time for that yet," he says, and they keep laughing about it as they fly the rest of the way home.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading. From the bottom of my heart. I am guessing this is going to be my last Matrix fic as I plug back into a busy season of real life commitments (which I inconveniently signed on for before I knew how much Resurrections was going to rock my world), so I wanted to say again, thank you. I love fangirling and will reply effusively to all comments, even though it might take me a few days. Just thank you, thank you for being here.

This is going to be a really long and unwieldy author's note, but as I was reflecting on my 2002-3 Matrix fic-writing younger self (e.g. s/1352984/1/Sacrosanct - so many of the same ideas I have now, but really, ABBA lyrics, here?) and all the years of writing I've done between then and now, many of which felt like death, I've been like, oh, so this is how I write? I was so wrong for so long. So I wanted to record this for me, but also to thank everyone who helped, because I could not have done without all of it, and I wanted to make all the connections known, so here goes.

When I first conceived of this, it was essentially a humor fic, a lampoon of itself and the ideas I'd been building up in the previous six(!) fics. It was going to be the Bowery King, Laurence Fishburne's character in the John Wick movies, meets a parody of Carrie-Anne Moss' Annapurna Living. Just to give you an example, I had a note that said "Lol old Morpheus living in tunnels eating mushrooms." Humor is great (and much of it remained), but I had the nagging sense that it was going to be the kind of story that, as a friend once said about something else, had its head up so far up its own asshole that that was about all it was going to be good for.

Just a few hours later that day, I started reading Tish Harrison Warren's Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep, and just erupted into tears from the first sentence and cried all the way through the first chapters. This must sound miserable, but really it's the highest commendation I can give a book. The way that voice was willing to be present in pain reoriented the heart of this story. It let a lot more pain in, but that was what brought in a lot more healing, too.

For maybe the first time, as I wrote these fics, I felt like my writing, what I most deeply believed, and everything I was experiencing, hour by hour, from books I was reading to other people's ideas in passing on Discord – all of it was coming together, it was all one thing. Reconciliation. I know the language and associations may be very different for other people who have had different experiences around prayer and faith communities, but what Warren writes about "praying other people's prayers" in community is exactly what I feel like I've experienced in fandom, from the Hardline to Discord servers and AO3 comment threads that, even when I thought I was just chatting or lurking, were creating a fusion of ideas wherever people met. Collaboration everywhere, the sum so much greater than the parts. I used to say jokingly that The Matrix is my true literary/artistic heritage, but I see now that that's entirely true – chosen and graced. So… thank you again. To everyone who's been a part of these movies and all they've brought to life.

Extra thanks here to Zephyr and danascully for the encouragement to bring more of myself into my writing (I still can't get my head around what this means, but I'll keep trying), which was a piece of be-outside-the-system my own upbringing/paradigms could not have given me. And thank you everyone I talked to in the comments of previous fics. Seriously, so much went straight into the next thing I was writing. Thank you tenoh27 for asking why Morpheus wears that stone around his neck because then I had to figure out something that would do it justice! And thank you aspocko, for how your stories have made me think incessantly of utopias/dystopias, and for spreading such hardcore good vibes for twenty yearzzz.

Someone in some Discord, I am sure (I am just the worst with Discord, I'm sorry), made a passing comment about Morpheus probably still being alive and living in a tunnel somewhere. I would never, ever have thought of it otherwise.

Richard Rohr: "Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addition, consumerism or any egoic consciousness."

"Washing Day" was a great fic by Blake back in the day. I think I printed it and everything.

"The story we live by is one that we somehow enter into..." is adapted from Tish Harrison Warren's Prayer in the Night, as are Morpheus' words, from this: "At its heart, theodicy is the longing for a God who notices our suffering, who cares enough to act, and who will make all things new. It is an ache that cannot be shaken, which we all share deep in our bones and carry with us every day – and every night. ... In our deepest suffering, we do not simply want words to battle other words. We want things made right." What she writes about praying other people's prayers and finding that to be one true thing to be held by during deep suffering in darkness, I have also been finding in the stories we write and live together. How lucky are we?

Neo ready to pull up the helicopter or die trying ;_; came from this Reddit thread: questions/137213/what-about-the-helicopter-rescue-convinced-morpheus-that-neo-was-the-one

"Nothing will tell you where you are…" is from "Black Maps" by Mark Strand.

The seven sacraments along the Neo Trin journey, I had the sense that they would be: 1. Awakening, 2. Questioning, 3. Freedom, 4. Connection, 5. Gratitude. 6. Trust, 7. Sacrifice. The eighth, of course, is Resurrection. :) I suspect I might have adjusted some of those if I'd had more time on them. In the spirit of the sacraments, as crazy as I felt inventing a belief system based on fictional characters in their own fictional world, I am genuinely curious about what other people might have come up with!

Carrie-Anne Moss's Annapurna Living's free Fierce Grace mini course was the source of many ideas and the whole first scene. Did you know the heart has an electromagnetic field? The heart's EMF vs. the ship's EMP. :3

One definition of a sacrament is that it's an outward sign of inward grace. To me, that is exactly what a story is, and our lives living it.

With love and gratitude, again. This resurrected me.