MY TREATISE ON THE MATRIX MOVIE TRILOGY
A note on notation: I abbreviate the 3 movies as M1, M2, and M3, and I use AM to refer to The Animatrix. (When referring to a specific film of AM, I'll mention the full title first, before referring to it by acronym.) I find the shorthand of M1 particularly useful because it helps me to distinguish between referring to merely the first movie of the trilogy and referring to the Matrix itself in general. Additionally, I have borrowed the term "avatar" from Snow Crash, (a most excellent book and one hell of a trip to read) to refer to a human being's digital presence ("body") in the Matrix.

The majority of this paper was written after seeing M2. Changes or additions (mostly additions) due to the additional information found in M3 are denoted by prefixing a paragraph or section with "after M3" in parentheses. (Unless, of course, I'm actually discussing M3 in which case it should be bleedingly obvious.)

INTRODUCTION

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you.
If you really make them think, they'll hate you.

D. R. P. Marquis (1878-1937)

This is written for everyone who believes that M2 was created for the same purposes as M1. This is written for everyone who, while not able to comprehend everything about M2 immediately after seeing it, nonetheless did not give up the sense that it was art intended to be on the same level of greatness as M1. This is written for science fiction fans who are not intimidated or dismissive of work they do not fully understand upon first viewing, and are willing to spend some time and effort thinking through the implications of their deeper, "next level"-type entertainment.

By the same token, anyone who has seen M2 and is content to call it **** without examining it any further, is not a person who should read this. You may wish to leave now, before I insult somebody. Consider: what is the most typical response today when someone cannot understand a work of art? "I don't understand this" gets translated in the brain as "The artist/writer is stupid and incompetent: he has deliberately created something that is so far above everyone's head as to be incomprehensible unless you have a post-grad degree in the arts" -- which is just another way of saying "This whole work of art is just a big stupid lie" and therefore not worthy of any study. It's very easy to blame the artist/writer for our own failure to comprehend art, isn't it? I leave you with this parting thought: By refusing to examine the deeper art of your very own culture, you are proclaiming your shallowness...

(after M3) These purposes have not changed. It may interest the reader to know that M2 and M3 were originally planned as one single movie. That fact should help reinforce the storyline of each film.

For those of you who are still reading, you may have some concerns that the Wachowski brothers are deceiving everyone. I am here to tell you this is not the case. The writers would not be so concerned with portraying reality to any level at all if this was true. And they portray reality pretty darn well if you ask me. Just take a look at this article, showing how realistic Trinity's hacking is:

http://www.insecure.org/stf/neiljk.html

and be sure to check out the screen shots!

Now why would professional script writers who were only interested in pulling the wool over our eyes go to such lengths to depict realistic hacking in the first place? Probably because...they really aren't lying to anyone? But you must read on and decide for yourself. I make no claims that any of my stated theories are conclusively true or false; I have had no interaction with either the writers or the producers of the Matrix films. I'm just here to point out some things that people may have missed upon first viewing. Hopefully you will find something in here that can rekindle your interest in dissecting the Matrix.

If you are familiar with the disputes surrounding M2, then allow me to warn you now that you won't find me taking a stance on the truth or falsehood of the Matrix in a Matrix (MIM) theory. Perhaps the last two paragraphs may be mistaken for a stance, because I'm asserting that real hacking is depicted, therefore the Wachowski brothers' art is not just one big lie, and therefore MIM doesn't exist. This is not the correct interpretation. I am merely stating that the Wachowski brothers aren't lying to us, in the sense that there are lots of comprehensible messages in these films, probably more than we need, and that somewhere in all of these messages, the truth about the Matrix can be found. If you conclude that MIM does or does not exist after you've gone over the evidence yourself, studied both scripts, and discussed this so much with all your friends and family that they call you "the Matrix freak" then good for you. I am just asking people not to jump to conclusions, or accept the conclusions of others, and claim that MIM does or doesn't exist because somebody else is saying it. That still doesn't excuse you from seriously examining this art.

SIMULACRA & SIMULATION

Recall that in one of the early scenes of M1, Neo is visited at his apartment by Choi (it sounds like Troy in the movie) and some friends, for the purpose of Choi purchasing some custom-made software from Neo for 2 grand. (These are the people who take Neo to the nightclub where he first meets Trinity, because one girl has a tattoo of a white rabbit on her shoulder.) Neo keeps both the disk and the money inside of a false book. I don't mean false in the sense that it's full of lies, I mean false in the sense that it's really a box designed to look like a book on the outside. A common device for fooling thieves. But even this device can be used as an analogy for the Matrix films: the critics watch them expecting a standard Hollywood trilogy, the critics find that they contain something else that doesn't match standard movie expectations, the critics cry falsehood.

Simulacra et Simulation (S&S) is, in fact, a real book, written in 1981 by a sociologist and philosopher named Jean Baudrillard. Having not read this book myself, you are of course free to discount anything I may type about it as hearsay. But I believe that I've done enough research and obtained enough information about this book from people who have actually read it (it is supposedly very dense and difficult to understand) to make some speculations on why this particular book was featured in M1. You will find an excellent summary here:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

S&S contains many theories about the postmodern (such as the displacement of production for culture as a new driving force in society) but I think the one that matters the most in reference to the Matrix is the terms themselves. Mr. Baudrillard created definitions for both terms that are used in the title of the book. (It is even possible that this book's appearance as a mere "false book" is a clue from the Wachowski brothers: don't look any further, the title is all that we're focusing on, its contents are irrelevant to our films. An interesting set piece full of meaning no matter how you slice it, eh? The book itself is a false book device, used as a prop in a science fiction movie. In other words, a simulacrum within a simulation.) Simulation means images and simulacra means signs. Combined, these two terms are used to indicate our new social trend of taking all images & signs and removing most or all of the historical context from them. This removal creates a hyper-reality effect.

Hyper-reality is easy to understand. We are bombarded with it every day. When you are surrounded by nothing but images and signs, when context has been forcibly removed, then it becomes difficult (almost impossible) to distinguish the real from the imagined, or the message from the meaning. The invasion of Iraq was the most televised war in history, and for many of us it will never rise above the level of being mere pictures and sound bites on our TV sets, voiced over by journalists on the scene, or retired military officers pointing at graphics and icons on a map. Some of us make more meaningful connections and conduct more business online than we do in person. Even the news itself is not immune: journalists and reporters of every stripe are being caught writing up lies, reporting fiction as fact, and we the audience are already so inured to media manipulation that there is no outraged backlash against any of the confessors. The Nike "swoosh" logo has more reality for us than its represented corporation does, and Nike even fuels this effect by subsidizing pro athletes into shoe salesmen. (But it can be argued that the sports stars are in it for the money, so they win either way. But that leaves a larger question: are they professional athletes first, or shoe salesmen first? Which is the reality and which is the image?) Pop stars become sensations overnight almost purely due to how they dress and how much air time they get, both of which are specifically engineered products of record companies. How much of that has to do with how WELL these people can actually sing? Even singing quality has become irrelevant; it's nothing that can't be fixed with a few sessions in a sound mixing booth. The music video is more important that the music, the time slot for airing the video is more important than the cable channel doing the airing. Hyper-reality simply means that the manipulation of images & signs in our culture has become so professional and expected, that reality sometimes cannot be distinguished.

"Ah, but this is an old theme in Hollywood," I can hear you saying. Not quite. It is also a new theme because of the advances in movie-making that the computer has made.

Computer graphics (CG) has progressed to the point where reality truly cannot be distinguished from product. It was bad enough that airbrushing allowed us to doctor photographs without detection for the first time -- today a photographic image means nothing, thanks to the sheer number of graphic compression standards (GIF, JPEG, etc.) that have been developed, along with the sheer number of software suites for images (PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.) which are also freely available for download. There is no longer any need to find stuntmen who look like the actor/actress because faces can be masked (a very appropriate word, eh?) onto the final footage. Take at look at the movie S1M0NE if you need more examples. Even the cats and dogs in our run-of-the-mill TV commercials are speaking, and I'm not just talking about someone speaking as their voice while the camera is on them. HYPER-REALITY IS HERE.

Let's make a comparison. What is the number one objective in the field of programming and computer science commonly known as artificial intelligence (AI)? It is to create a program that will simulate human thinking and consciousness as closely as possible. What is the number one objective in the field of programming and computer science commonly known as graphics rendition? It is to create visuals that simulate real-world images as closely as possible. You may substitute "reality" for real-world images. Isn't that the central theme of the Matrix? (You knew I'd get back here eventually.) Don't kid yourself and think that the machines were evil enough to develop such convincing virtual reality (VR) simulation technology all on their own. They didn't. We're inventing this stuff every day, with every new groundbreaking film that comes out, with every new computer game that's released. If you're shooting a horror movie featuring a big monster, it's no longer acceptable practice to keep the thing hidden away in darkness, with only glimpses of claws and eyes and teeth and tentacles to keep the audience in suspense. No, this new era of CG has given moviegoers the right to demand a full view of your creature, and even to demand that it interact on screen with the live human actors. In fact, if you intentionally use these Hitchcockian tactics to generate suspense, you will be accused of laziness precisely because you never cooked up enough CGI to give people a full view of your monster, whereas excessive visual effects will get you an award. Gone are the days when, due to the physical limits of the special effects department, only part of a thing could be shown, or the surface of the Death Star merely presented as a model, its interior merely as matte background paintings, etc. CG has raised all expectations, and no movies have contributed more to its arsenal than the Matrix films. Hell, even the military is now using reality simulation software to train our soldiers.

What is the cumulative cultural effect of all this? That people cannot tell when CG has been used on a TV spot. That young people are growing up in a world without the ability to distinguish the real from the simulated real. (The newest generation is younger than CD albums.) What happens to the generations of the future? Will there even be a perceived need to have the ability to tell what's real and what's not? Human perception is already weak enough. I've read of 2 news items where people have done criminal things (such as killing their landlord) and then, when they're arrested, claiming that none of this is real anyhow since we're all living in a Matrix. THAT is how deeply entrenched in our culture the Matrix phenonemon has already become -- that stupid people, incapable of making the distinction between reality and simulation (because media has crippled them?) think this qualifies as a valid defense. Look what happened to the early players of Dungeons & Dragons. Look at the Heaven's Gate suicides. We've got enough problems dealing with an entire social clique of wanna-be Jedi knights already, thank you very much. What's my definition of that clique? People for whom the worlds of Tatoonie and Dagobah are more real than faraway unheard-of countries such as Trinidad and Tobago. (That's actually 1 nation by the way, T&T, so if you didn't know that, you're in danger of succumbing to hyper-reality.) People who are more familiar with the history of Middle Earth than the history of the Middle East. It is probably just a mark of respect for the story-telling skills of the Wachowski brothers (as well as a compliment to the CG folks) that the Matrix films have already created such a large niche audience of followers (of which I am one of them) to rival Star Wars. But I can tell you these stories weren't written to enable stupid criminals to use "the Matrix defense" and if that's how most people are taking it -- as just another over-hyped and over-produced entertainment product that can only contribute to information overload -- then I'm sorry for the casualties. Try not to be one of them. The Matrix films are here to warn us about the problem of hyper-reality, not contribute to it.

Let me try explaining this in another way. There are actually 2 grades of reality. One is objective reality, which consists purely of facts and exists without human perception or interaction being necessary. For example, the proposition that the Amazon rainforest basin received 24.42 inches of rainfall in 1953 is a fact, empirically provable and therefore part of objective reality, along with other things such as 2 hydrogen molecules and 1 oxygen molecule must combine to create water. This realm of reality encompasses just about everything that is science. The other realm is subjective reality. It's called subjective because it's truth as an individual human being sees it, from his or her unique perspective on life. Now we are departing from facts and getting into opinions. Most conclusions fall into this realm, as conclusions which are not scientific (not derived through scientific method) are actually opinions. For example, the statements "the facts support creationism" or "the facts support evolutionism" are subjective, not objective.

So what is hyper-reality? It is communal subjective reality. That is, it shares elements of both objective reality (that which is true for all persons) and subjective reality, but it is closer to subjective. It is a vision powerful enough that, for those who are trapped within it, can sometimes displace and even replace objective reality. Nobody operates purely in objective reality 100% of the time: that's simply impossible. Only machines can do that. For humans, everything is full of meaning, context, subtext, emotion, implication. (This has to be true, otherwise you couldn't read anything and understand it.) The trick is to keep checking your reality and make sure it hasn't transformed into something that's completely detached from objective reality.

It is entirely possible that I am reading too much into this mere movie prop.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/21/ctv.matrix.insanity/index.html

And then again, it is entirely possible that I'm not.

One of my friends once signed a deal with White Wolf (a game company) to write a sourcebook for them. We all chipped in to help out with play-testing, and once staged a gathering at a local community center. (White Wolf's main game product involves live-action role-playing as vampires.) Everyone dressed for the part in black. I was the silent observer, sitting off to one side, taking notes in a notebook. A group of high school girls, who had been watching the meeting, cautiously approached me. One of them asked me, "Are all those people real vampires?"

I grinned and said, "Yes, and they're all quite hungry...you'd better start running..."

(True story.)

AVATARS...THAT EXPLAINS A LOT

It is important to spend some time discussing avatars. That is because avatars must be understood to explain (1) how Neo killed Smith in M1, and (2) what is this new ability of Smith's to copy himself in M2. An avatar is a physical representation of a human being when that human's "mind" is travelling in a 3D realm defined entirely by computers. When Neo takes the needle into his skull, that's not Neo in the Matrix, but a CG representation of Neo consisting of numbers -- it is this "dummy" that I call an avatar. (Tron doesn't quite fit the bill. The main character actually got sucked into the mainframe.)

How did Neo kill Smith in M1? Neo took a running leap and dived into Smith, and then Smith rippled and exploded into fragments, leaving only Neo. My theory is that there is a law within the rules of the Matrix that governs avatars, a law that states: no two avatars shall occupy the same space at the same time. This seems obvious to the point of being ridiculous, but it is utterly necessary. The avatars of human beings within the Matrix are only digits. Without this rule, avatars could simply pass through each other (much like The Twins can, when they're in ghost mode), thus exposing the lie of the physical reality of the Matrix. Neo killed Smith by imposition of that rule. By merging his avatar into Smith, the Matrix was forced to disband the integrity of one of them, so it was simply a matter of Neo holding himself together until the laws of the Matrix tore Smith apart.

Notice that I made no references to Smith's avatar. I say instead that Neo merged his avatar into Smith. This is because agents most likely do not have avatars of their own. They are programs, hence they are pure code, hence they do not possess a physical body or counterpart. Therefore there's no need to talk about an agent's "avatar" because there's no such thing. They don't stick needles into their skulls to jack into the Matrix, because they have no skulls. With an agent, what you see in the Matrix is what you get.

What is this new ability of Smith's? He reaches out his hand, touches somebody, black stuff oozes out from his hand onto that other person, and eventually that other person becomes another Smith. It's not just that he's taking over the avatars of human beings. Remember, agents have always had this ability. Smith is basically still doing this...but now he's learned to leave a copy of himself behind when he takes over. Since all agents are programs, that means it's actually quite easy to make copies of them, so it's very likely that the agents have always had the ability to make copies of themselves. But there is probably another rule in the Matrix operating to prevent this. Just like the rule that prevents avatars from merging, there is most likely another rule that prevents agents from multiplying. They must confine themselves to a single copy, only taking over one human being at a time. Otherwise, they could multiply endlessly (just like the new Smith can) and this would cause lots of unnecessary deaths of human beings (just like the new Smith does). That is obviously contrary to the purposes of the Matrix. Humans must be kept alive, for as long as possible and in the greatest number possible, to provide fuel for the machines. So if agents could already copy themselves, it makes sense not to allow them to do it. So it is possible that the new Smith has simply found a way to break that rule.

Let's take this a step further. How did Smith come back from the dead? (Let's just agree that "death" for a program means deletion.) Neo blew him to pieces back in M1. Well, if we assume that the remaining fragments contained enough code to create a working version of Smith, then this also becomes clear. One of the fragments simply copied itself. This copy was then able to fill in the missing pieces of code (perhaps by tracking down the other fragments?) until it was whole again. If the initial fragment lost the restriction against making copies of itself (because that rule was blown away), that would explain why the new Smith has no such restriction in his basic code.

And it's not simply a matter of making copies freely. Otherwise, new Smith should be able to multiply at will, and without involving anyone else. But he can't. Even he must take over an existing avatar or fellow agent in order to make copies of himself. Perhaps there is another rule dictating this. In the Matrix, everything must be accounted for, whether it be the avatars of humans or the agents themselves. Makes sense, if there is indeed another rule that prevents avatars from merging: you have to keep track of them to do this.

(after M3) Wow, talk about theory validation!

THE NEO/SMITH SYMBIOSIS OF GROWTH

The most defining trait of the new Smith in M2 is the fact that he is much stronger in his resurrected form. Stronger not in the sense of physical strength or agent abilities (although those certainly apply) but in the literary sense of becoming more of a pure villan. In M1, he is merely another agent in a larger group of identical agents entrusted with the continuous task of maintaining order within the Matrix by hunting down the rogue batteries. In other words, an agent for order, whether he likes it or not. In M2, he is done with all that agent ballyhoo (as indicated in his mailing of the earpiece to Neo) and has found another purpose in life: the destruction of Neo. In this sense, he has become an agent for chaos, because he is no longer interested in maintaining any kind of order, but now solely interested in destruction of a single target (contrasted with the never-ending duty of policing the Matrix) and heedless of the amount of collateral damage he must cause in order to accomplish this. Up to and including, obviously, the assimilation of his former agent comrades. He has literally become a virus in the system, in accord with our modern-day definition of a virus: a piece of code that has been inserted into a database or network without the knowledge or consent of the system administrators, for purposes contrary to that database or network.

I have intentionally been using the word "purpose" a lot in the previous paragraph. This concept is also slapped in our faces in M2, as Smith goes on and on about "the purpose that binds us" (referring to himself and Neo) just before they kick it. Why? M1-Smith is just a cop, who would only have become Neo's enemy if Neo went rogue and set himself against the system (which he did but that's beside the point). M2-Smith is a stalker (target is Neo) and a serial killer (more copies!) combined, and he is only interested in taking down Neo. A purer villan, because he has now become a PURE anti-hero villan. Purer, because he has stripped away all of those other prior purposes (policing the Matrix, destroying Zion, etc.) as they have become useless and extraneous to his newly defined purpose of destroying the hero. Defining the hero through combat is Smith's entire purpose in both M1 and M2: the only major difference is that in M2, Smith is now fully aware of this.

It's a popular theme in literature, part of the mythos and tension that surrounds a good conflict story. The hero meets the villan, the hero faces off against the villan, the hero then kills or otherwise disposes of the villan. Now the hero gets some time to do some other storyline stuff (usually romantic in nature, or exploratory if on a quest) and this is interrupted by the return of the same villan, who is now stronger in skills. This in turn forces the hero to regroup and learn how to become stronger, in order that the villan may be defeated again. In short, the hero doesn't do a lot of growth on his own; most of it must be beaten out of him by the villan, who undergoes the exact same experience at the hands of the hero. If you've seen anything of Dragonball, you know exactly what I'm talking about, as this happens in just about every episode.

This point is critical to understand: neither the hero nor the villan can improve or grow without the continued presence of the other to create conflict.

Where is this all going? In M1, even though Neo has not yet become The One (not yet become the hero), he fights Smith to a draw in the subway station. (Both empty their clips and hit nothing, and neither can really be said to have soundly defeated the other during their hand-to-hand combat.) Then we saw Neo become hero 1.0 and destroy Smith in M1. In M2, Smith is back as villan 2.0 and nearly cleans Neo's clock a couple of times. It is clear that Neo, as the mere obsolete hero 1.0, cannot defeat the new Smith or even fight him to a draw. Therefore, in M3, due solely to the continued conflict with Smith, we will see the emergence of hero 2.0 in Neo. Of course I believe there's a level of skill above simply being The One. It's just like Dragonball. As powerful as you are, there's always something bigger; as powerful as you are, there's always an extra ounce of energy that you can achieve over your top limit.

And do you think Neo has achieved the highest limit of his power? Let's put it another way: can power such as Neo possesses within the Matrix be considered to have an upper limit? When flying in to save Morpheus and The Keymaker, Neo thought he knew what his top speed was...until he had to surpass even that in order to save Trinity.

(after M3) Okay, so this section did not come out as I predicted it would...well, I never claimed to be perfect, or to understand everything. I am leaving this section in the paper to prove that not everything I say can be accepted at face value -- the reader must evaluate for himself or herself what is the truth. And, to be honest, this error makes all of the other correct predictions of mine all the more impressive.

THE SOURCE OF NEO'S POWER

You'll notice that I don't ask about powers with an S because that's a meaningless distinction. Neo is the original miracle worker of the Matrix. In this sense, he really is like a messiah. You don't ask what powers Jesus Christ possesses, instead it's more a question of what can Jesus NOT do. Neo is exactly like Jesus in this regard, in that the normal rules of the world of mere mortals (coppertops still wired to the system) do not apply. So try not to think about Neo as being any kind of regular comic book superhero, such as Superman, even though Link calls him that in M2. The limits of Superman's powers are KNOWN. Superman can punch through steel, but he can't insert his hands into someone's guts to remove a bullet without causing more damage. Superman has individual powers (X-ray, heat vision, etc.) because each one is distinct and clearly defined. (As is the same with every other superhero.) And we already know the source of his powers, anyways: it's our own Sun.

So what is the source of Neo's power? What sets Neo apart from other normal humans, including those already freed from the Matrix? More importantly, what sets him apart from the other 5 previous Ones that have gone before him? We know that the thing which identifies Neo with his previous 5 iterations is their innate ability to manipulate the fabric of the Matrix, but where does this ability spring from? These are 2 separate questions, of course -- what sets Neo apart from other humans, and what sets Neo apart from the previous 5 Ones -- and M2 has gone to some lengths to answer the second question, vis-a-vis the Architect's observation to Neo that he is different from the other 5 with his love and attachment to Trinity. So I want to spend some time exploring the answer to the first question, which is equally fundamental to understanding the films.

I think Neo's power stems from the fact that he utterly believes in himself. Whenever Neo is presented with a choice to make, he chooses, and he does so with no hesitation and no lingering doubts. We see a lot of this in M1 long before he begins the path towards becoming The One. He knows there is something wrong with the world (does not suspect it, but knows it) and as a result spends his time in isolation, living alone, and seeking a means to contact Morpheus. (Trinity even spells this out for him -- and us, the audience -- when they first meet in the nightclub.) He knows that his work at Metacortex is a superficial sham (possibly, he even knows that the entire company itself is a sham) and so he does no legitimate work at his job. When Morpheus presents him with the two pills, he takes the red one with no hesitation. (I think he said very little, during Cypher's "why didn't I take the blue pill" speech, because he completely disagreed with Cypher but was too polite to voice it.) When Morpheus is captured, he goes back into the Matrix with no hesitation. He only stops long enough to try and explain to Trinity and Tank what he's feeling, but he really can't, because they're not him. The only person(?) capable of sowing any confusion at all in Neo is The Oracle, and even her prescient vision cannot compete against Neo's unyielding faith. She is only able to convince him, at their first meeting, that he isn't The One, precisely because Neo doesn't yet believe it himself.

In every instance where Neo believes in himself, he succeeds. He fails the first shot at the jump program...but then makes the same jump out of a helicopter to catch Morpheus. The ability to dodge bullets supposedly belongs only to the agents, per Morpheus, and Neo even scoffs at the notion that he might have the same degree of speed and skill, during their discussion in the "spot the agent" training program...but later he does it himself, and Trinity even wants to know how that's done. Morpheus and Cypher tell him that no one's ever beaten an agent in hand to hand combat...but he turns away from the stairs leading out of the subway station, and in that instant, he knows he's going to win. Heck, even the audience knows Smith is going to lose. And, finally, he knows that it's within him, the capacity to bring Morpheus back out of the Matrix, no matter how many humans or agents are blocking the way. None may convince him otherwise.

To summarize, the Matrix series of films speaks about the power of faith. Not faith in an external, invisible, omniscient, all-powerful, otherworldly consciousness, but faith in the self. It is an Objectivist piece of art, to borrow that much from Ayn Rand. It promises endless fields of power and energy, if we would only have the vision and the resolve to put that much stake in ourselves, and trust that the stamina and the skills will be there, when we reach inside ourselves for more of them. (The special effects and computer graphics are only noteworthy in that they enable the Wachowski brothers to give us a glimpse of those boundless fields. The awe-inspiring portion of their art lies within the themes, such as this one.) As Morpheus says in M1, "there's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path." The source of Neo's power is that he's the only one who doesn't actually need an oracle to point out a sign to him instructing him to "know thyself" because he's already there, and always has been.

OTHER CHARACTERS INTRODUCED IN M2

THE MEROVINGIAN

There are two possible interpretations of this name. One meaning is literal and historic: this term merely refers to an early European dynasty under which the Romans and the Gauls were first united, under an emperor or leader named Clovis, to create the Germanic race of peoples. The other meaning is mythological and mystical: this term refers to a supernatural race of red-haired quasi-angelic nigh-immortal kings whose gifts to humanity (including the mingling of the bloodlines) resulted in the origin of every mythical creature and creature mythos, from the Minotaur to the nephelheim.

My theory is that it is correct to take the mystical interpretation. Mainly because the historical interpretation yields nothing. What does the historical meaning give us? That the name refers to the medieval forefathers of the Germans? Being responsible for the Germans gets us nowhere, story-wise. If the writers had wanted to imply that The Merovingian's empire was evil (as in Nazi), or that he was responsible for creating the most evil empire in human history, they would have chosen a better name for that. Another clue that the historical approach doesn't apply is the fact that the name Clovis -- the true creator of the Merovingians -- does not appear anywhere in the films. And besides, the character is so obviously French that the purely historical interpretation cannot possibly apply; part of the reason he's so egregiously French may be to point attention away from the proto-German era of the same name. So we must therefore assume that the mythological interpretation of this name is correct.

If the mystical/mythological interpretation applies, then it must first be tested by taking it literally. The Merovingian kings of yore were responsible for the creation of every fantastical creature known to man. Considering that programs such as The Twins are in his service, there is no reason to suppose why this definition should not also apply to this character. He is a master program or meta-program, still a program AI himself but also capable of creating other program entities within the Matrix, and capable of endowing all of them with some sort of superhuman (paranormal) traits. This interpretation is confirmed in two places. One is in the scene involving the dessert cake. "I wrote it myself," The Merovingian boasts. So while he is not able to manipulate the code of the Matrix like Neo, he is capable of writing new code for it at will. And if he can write cake, then why not posh restaurants or henchmen? And think on this...if you were able to create your own henchmen, would you make them just as weak and vulnerable as mere human beings? Of course not. You would add hidden abilities to their outer human makeup. This brings us to the second thing that confirms this interpretation: the conversation that Neo has with The Oracle in M2. She tells him that all instances of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, UFOs, etc. are all manifestations of programs within the Matrix. Aha, so supernatural creatures are really just programs...well, somebody still had to write them. I believe The Merovingian is their coder.

It is particularly telling that this character's name is THE Merovingian. Not Merovee, which is the mythical figure (much like King Arthur) from whom the entire race of Merovingian kings is supposed to have descended from. But THE Merovingian. That implies that there are (or were) other programs with the same ability to create other programs, but only this one has been entrusted with the responsibility to use it. As a class they might have been collectively referred to as the Merovingians, but for some reason, only this one remains today. This has to be the correct interpretation, that this ability was not unique before the time of M2. Otherwise, if the writers simply wanted to give him a name that implied that he was the origin for all of the monsters, then his name would indeed be Merovee. But it's not. He is THE Merovingian: he is therefore the lone representative of his class of creator (prototype?) programs. I leave it to the reader to wonder how this character came to be the sole inheritor of this throne within the Matrix.

PERSEPHONE

The daughter of gods herself, the original namesake was forcibly taken from them by the worst of their kind, the lord of the underworld. The parent gods eventually succeeded in bringing her back home, but because she had accepted nourishment while in the underworld, she could not escape it entirely. She was therefore sentenced to splitting her life between two homes for the rest of eternity -- the underworld, and the mortal world above -- which is how the seasons originated. This duality of residence can probably be applied to the character in M2 as well: since the duality itself originated from love (neither realm could be complete without her), it is my theory that her function within the Matrix also has to do with love. To be more specific, she is a program charged with ensuring that love between the humans (mortal love, if you will) feels as natural, warm, life-giving and soulfully wholesome within the Matrix as it does without. To this end, she has been given all of the sensual and physical attributes of both humans and their avatars in the Matrix. In other words, they have made her as human as a machine/program entity can possibly be. I think the casting choice of Italy's most sensuous actress to play this role is a big clue towards this theory, and the price of a kiss from Neo, plus the dialogue surrounding that scene, is yet another. Although I cannot recall if the mythological figure of Persephone had any such powers (if she had any at all), I believe this theory isn't stretching them much.

PERSEPHONE AND THE MEROVINGIAN

Why does she stay with him, when it's so obvious from their exchanges in M2 that the honeymoon was over long ago and the marriage itself is just a lame horse waiting to be shot? Probably because she has no one else to turn to. The choice of the god-related names for both of these characters implies immortality, which in turn, per the rules of the Matrix, implies that they are more programs than (mortal) persons. It's obvious that The Merovingian is such a hedonist, he can't give up Persephone no matter what she does. It's not as clear what's driving Persephone, so it seems plausible that she just stays with The Merovingian because she has nowhere else to go. At least, her words and actions in M2 sound like a supermodel annoyed with her billionaire sugardaddy.

He whines "But it's just a game darling," and she answers "This too is just a game." As if their godlike names alone weren't enough. This is proof that the senior programs of the Matrix consider themselves to be as gods over mere mortals (humans). They treat all mortal affairs as petty games for their entertainment, worth the occassional squabble but nothing more. This is, by the way, a defining characteristic of the classical Roman and Grecian gods. Hera was always getting pissed at Zeus, because Zeus couldn't seem to keep his hands off of the mortal females. (The many offspring of Zeus and mortal women are another popular source of mythological creatures.) It's a typical pattern: when the husband chases skirts, the neglected wife will build up power bases of her own, as a means of asserting her independence from him, since she feels that he can no longer be trusted to do right by her. You don't have to be a student of mythology or psychology to understand this. All you have to do is look at the Clintons.

(after M3) And yet, she stays with him. Very odd. Well, I've always said that if two people stay together, there must be something in it for both of them, even if the continuation of their relationship makes no sense to anyone else. But then again, Hilary Clinton is still married to Bill Clinton, after all...

THE TWO SORRY BASTARDS WHO WERE JUST SITTING AROUND WATCHING TV WHEN PERSEPHONE WALKED IN AND SHOT ONE OF THEM DEAD (ALSO KNOWN AS CAIN AND ABEL)

Possibly vampires. It is no accident that a vampire movie was running on the TV set during the one scene in which they were featured. Yet the use of silver bullets in order to ensure death has traditionally been an attribute of the werewolf. It is therefore my theory that the Wachowski brothers see no meaningful distinction between vampires and werewolves in the universe of the Matrix, as both would presumably carry out the same function. No one can agree, anyhow, on how many "species" of vampires exist, and what powers each of them possess. If we take as given that The Merovingian is their creator, then even this confusion suddenly makes sense. There are many different versions of werewolves & vampires...because he has been continually upgrading and rewriting them over the centuries. Just like the way Microsoft can't stop tinkering with Windows and producing new versions of it. I'll bet the whole garlic thing no longer works because he wrote a nice patch for it. The Merovingian wants to be the only one who knows what the particular weak spots of his henchmen are. It must aggravate him to no end, having to keep altering these vampire/werewolf programs, every time the humans discover what the weak spot of the century is. This is probably why he gave up on them and finally created The Twins.

THE TWINS

We don't need to speculate on what The Merovingian created them for. Their abilities (and thus their creative value to The Merovingian) are demonstrated quite adequately in M2. They are probably the latest version of his personal henchmen, and a drastic improvement over Cain and Abel. How drastic? You'll recall that in M2, only The Twins were seated at the same table as Persephone and The Merovingian when they met our heroes for lunch, a tense situation that could have exploded into violence at any point. The other two were killing time in some other room far away from this meeting, doing nothing but guarding the Keymaker.

Please note that The Twins, in addition to Cain and Abel, only take orders from The Merovingian. They only serve him, they don't serve anyone else. This is another clue that The Merovingian is their creator.

(after M3) Someone asked me what happened to The Twins between the second and the third movies. Well, obviously no one but the Wachowski brothers know for sure, but let's do a little speculating on this as well, since their movies have given us so much cause for speculation. They failed to recapture the Keymaker, and that was the last order we saw the Merovingian give to them. (And to fail at the hands of 2 mere humans, no less!) I wonder what happens to henchmen of the underworld, when they fail to carry out important missions given to them by their boss...? We know they didn't die (we know, in fact, that physical destruction of the Twins is not possible) because we saw their ghost forms escaping the SUV even as it was exploding. But what if their creator decided to delete them from the machine mainframe?

THE KEYMAKER

Imagine if you had the power to create gates in the 4th dimension. Not gates to other worlds, but gates on the surface of the planet Earth. You could instantly connect your school to your house. Or your workplace to your favorite bar. Etc.

The only catch is, for every gate you created, you'd have to have a real door at both ends to step through.

Do this long enough, and pretty soon you find that there aren't enough real doors where you want them to be. So you start building doors where you need them.

The doors start multiplying. Gets a little hard to keep track of them all sometimes.

Then you hit upon a brilliant idea:

Build a secret room (or hallway) of your own, and put one of every door that you need in it. That way, you don't have to keep track of all those doors, because your secret hallway can connect you to every place you need to go. It just means making an extra stop every time you travel...but it's worth it.

Doors in the Matrix are irrelevant. The only real purpose they serve is to hold locks. As Seraph (The Oracle's bodyguard) tells Neo, the code is hidden in tumblers. "One position opens a lock, another position opens one of these doors." The function and the ability of The Keymaker, then, is to grant access (create keys) to fit any purpose.

We learned in M1 (the deja vu scene) that the Matrix can be altered at will. Then we saw in M2 that these alterations are controlled by keys. Persephone closes a door, opens it again with a key, and bam! we're someplace else. Neo gets dropped all over the face of existence because the goons of The Merovingian keep using them to misdirect him. The entire make-up of the Matrix has to be somewhat modular in nature (as amply demonstrated in Beyond from AM), this merely shows how much.

Do the doors open into new rooms? Did the space behind each door change with each key? Or did the closing and opening of doors with certain keys dictate where they would lead? I believe this distinction is irrelevant, like the doors themselves. When you think about it, every door and window and sewage grate in the Matrix could serve as a hyper-dimensional gate, since the whole thing is just code anyhow.

Just look at the corridor of back doors. A hallway of identical doors, stretching to infinity in both directions. Do you really need to mark which door opens out to where with crayons and a map? No. All you need is the key to the place you're going.

Consider what I've written above, about my theory that Neo will only increase in power as he battles Smith. He flew as fast as he could to save Morpheus and The Keymaker...until he had to fly even faster than that to save Trinity. Where is his upper limit? The speed of sound? The speed of light? But then, why talk about something as lame as flying, when The Keymaker has already shown us that teleportation is possible. And since power such as Neo's really has no limit, why couldn't Neo become a meta-key for the Matrix? Then he could simply tear open reality from wherever he was standing, step through, and find himself where he wanted to go. We already know that certain doors allow this.

When you're talking about keys and access in the world of computers, you're not talking about physical objects so much as you're talking about encryption. This word is mentioned in 2 places in the M2 script, but not in M1. This fact, combined with the modularity (flexibility or changeability) of the physical realms of the Matrix as mentioned above, indicates a new direction in the storyline. Previously from M1, it was safe to assume that only the machines could reprogram or alter the Matrix, as evidenced from the deja-vu scene. Now we know this isn't the case. Anyone who can produce the access codes can accomplish anything. In this respect, Neo most closely resembles The Keymaker more than any other piece of software encountered so far. The Keymaker himself is probably a sentient upgrade of PGP.

(after M3) Well, so much for this theory. The train station proved that certain pieces of the modular Matrix are not even subject to the control of The One. Watch this, we can even make Moebius strips out of three-dimensional space! Doesn't matter where you run, Neo -- you'll always come back to the place that you started from. Hmmm, where's Pretty Good Privacy when you need it? Ha ha ha!

THE ARCHITECT

This page has already done such an amazing breakdown of this character, I see no need to repeat any of it.

http://webpages.charter.net/btakle/matrix_reloaded.html

Also worth checking out for a detailed analysis of the dancing scene in Zion.

THE SOURCE

What is The Source? The place where programs are born, where they go to die ...what is that? Neo calls it "the machine mainframe" in his second conversation with The Oracle, but this tells us nothing. Morpheus mentions that humanity gave birth to AI, when he describes the history of the war to Neo: "A singular consciousness that spawned a whole race of machines." Could this mind still be alive?

Personally, I do not believe that the tiny room filled with TV screens where Neo met The Architect is really the source. Despite the fact that the point of view kept jumping through different TV screens every time Neo reacted to something that The Architect said (remember it's all choice), did you really get the feeling they were moving along with each choice Neo made? Or were they still in the same room each time? Not a room, then, but a maze...

Another reason that Neo did not actually visit The Source is that the war is still going, when according to prophecy it was supposed to have ended there. The Oracle tells Neo about The Source, and he calls it "the machine mainframe" in response, as if to confirm this alternate name. If there is truly ONE singular mainframe that houses both (1) the software routines defining the Matrix and (2) all of the sentient AI programs, then visiting The Source VIA THE MATRIX accomplishes nothing. This mainframe must be tracked down in the physical world, its exact location noted, and then physically destroyed.

There is a piece of dialogue from "Enter The Matrix" (the parallel computer game) that may or may not count as a clue. The Oracle tells Niobe that Neo's mind parted from his body because he touched The Source, so now he remains trapped "between your world and ours." Assume for a moment that this is true, and the 2 worlds are referring to Zion (aka reality, the world of the humans) and the Matrix (aka this singular consciousness, the world of the machines). That would mean that Neo didn't encounter The Source when he confronted The Architect -- that, in fact, Neo did not touch The Source until he reached out and stopped the sentinels with his bare hands at the conclusion of M2.

(after M3) Another theory verified. The Oracle tells us that Neo almost died because he touched the Source at the moment he stopped the sentinels (because he wasn't ready for the contact) but became comatose instead.

BANE

This person is encountered in 4 places in M2.
I can only list these, because I have no idea yet what this could all mean. The burning question of the hour is: can Smith 2.0 write himself onto the brain of a human being? It has been generally assumed that whenever the avatar of a human being is taken over or destroyed, and that human is still hardwired into the Matrix (and thus still perceiving it as being the sole reality), the human must necessarily die as a consequence of the shock of learning that the physical world isn't real. Or, perhaps the life support system kills the human automatically once the avatar is lost, since the human will either go insane or try to escape the Matrix, now that reality's bluff has been called. This theory of "instant death upon dissolution of the avatar" was disproven back in M1, remember? Morpheus and his crew engineered the extraction of Neo by feeding him the red pill, which did something to disrupt his linkage to the Matrix, and that presumably affected the performance of his avatar program as well -- we only see this resultant damage to the avatar as a liquid mirror that crawls up his arm and tries to devour Neo. And what did the machines do once his avatar failed? They didn't kill him, they threw him into the sewers. Probably not a wise move on the machines' part, since their failure to kill their leaking batteries before tossing them out created Zion.

So it is probably safe to assume that, even if Smith successfully copied himself over Bane's avatar, that Bane himself didn't completely die off in the process. (See my notes at the bottom of this page, under the section titled "World Record" for speculation on the existence of a buffer for the Matrix.) The real question now is who's in control of Bane's body that is walking around in Zion, a character that is presented as "Smith/Bane" in the M2 script credits. It does not seem likely that Smith, a program of ones and zeroes, could somehow write himself onto the actual mind of Bane, a human being with a brain of cells and nerves. But then nobody can explain how Smith brought himself back from dissolution, either...and we all know that the important thing is the story and not the science, right?

(after M3) So now we know that the only purpose of Bane, as far as the story is concerned, was to destroy Neo's eyes. So what. That was really only done to highlight the transition of Neo from mortal to godlike status. (Go look up the many ancient fables involving blind seers if you don't believe me.) No, what is really preposterous about this character is still the fact that Smith was actually able to take him over in the real world. Now infecting avatars in the Matrix is fine, since everything about the Matrix is just code including the Matrix itself. But in the real world? How could the Smith virus, an intangible thing of ones and zeroes, enter into a human brain, a thing of neurons and cells and blood vessels, and then interface with it? And if that wasn't bad enough, Neo is able to look at the physical body of Bane with his inner vision -- and see the avatar-like shell of Smith (complete with shades) standing there? How can an infection of the mind infuse the entire physical body?

We have to assume that this is the fullest extent of the artistic license that the Wachowski brothers are playing with deviations from hard science into science fiction. Just as it is patently ridiculous for Smith to be doing this to poor Bane, so too is the counterpart power of Neo to reach out and stop sentinels with the power of his mind, regardless of whether he's jacked into anything or not. Neither of these powers are given a passable explanation in the films, and perhaps none is truly needed. The point of these powers is driven home by the Indian family of programs in the "train station" at the outset of M3 (and the strange dialogue about love and karma): the line between Man and Machine has finally been erased. More detail is written below under "A Weirder Tomorrow."

PREDICTIONS FOR M3

Recall the scene in M2 where the Counsilor takes Neo down to visit the engineering section of Zion. "See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works, but I do understand the reason for it to work." Etc. They conclude that Man requires Machine to survive, and conversely that Machine requires Man to function. A curious exchange, no? You know those Wachowski brothers... they didn't just write this dialogue for filler. Otherwise this whole scene has no point whatsoever. Their conclusion has to mean something.

Is it possible that Man and Machine are headed for a peaceful future of illuminated co-existence? That the Matrix will end, yet somehow another energy source for the machines will be found? Consider the actions of the Oracle. (Not her dialogue, that's too cryptic.) If she is working for the eventual freedom of the humans, it stands to reason that the other programs are against her, so she acts alone. (Hence we meet Seraph, the bodyguard.) She has to find a way to strike that delicate balance: to end humanity's imprisonment in the Matrix, and yet do so in a way that doesn't tip the scales and give either Man or Machine the opportunity to annihilate the other, and without collapsing back into that ancient war.

(after M3) Is it possible that Man and Machine are headed for a peaceful future of illuminated co-existence? Is it possible that everything shall once again plunge into war? Is it possible that Hollywood loves sequels (especially the guaranteed money-making kind of sequels) enough to bring Neo back? You be the judge!

The following is a hypothetical list of how things might be programmed to happen. I cannot claim credit for this list, since I didn't write it, but neither can I give credit, since the person I got this from didn't know who wrote it either. But I would very much like to give that credit, and maybe share some thoughts with the writer. (I have added some stuff of my own to this list.) My e-mail is at the bottom of this page.

THE POTENTIAL ENDGAME

There are two weaknesses (threats) within the Matrix that could cause disaster. Both are inherent to humanity, so the Architect is not able to eliminate them.
  1. The emergence of integral anomaly, aka The One.
  2. Those human beings that reject the Matrix as reality.
How to check against the anomaly? The Matrix does not need to be reloaded until an anomaly is discovered. Then it becomes necessary to remove the anomaly from the Matrix, because the Matrix cannot be rebooted while the anomaly is still present. This removal is accomplished by a prophecy which sends the anomaly to The Source.

How to check against those that reject the Matrix? Gather them up in one place (Zion) and occupy them with survival issues (war) and the search for the anomaly (The One).
  1. Errors accumulate in the Matrix. As they accumulate, more and more people reject the reality of the Matrix.
  2. If machines just allowed these people to run around the Matrix they'd cause nothing but trouble. Trouble which would grow exponentially because of their activities, which would cause other people to reject the Matrix, who would in turn cause even more people to reject the Matrix, and so on.
  3. So Zion is created. Zion serves as a release valve. People who wake up from the Matrix go to Zion. A few of them still kick around and cause problems, but the majority of people who go to Zion stay in Zion. In fact, the people who kick around and cause problems are actually doing the machines a service because they're frequently identifying problem cases before they become serious, and they are also removing other dissidents from the Matrix and taking them to Zion.
  4. Agents serve as a control mechanism. They minimize the damage that freed individuals such as Morpheus and Trinity can do.
  5. The Prophecy and the the history of the war against machines act as further control mechanisms. They give the people of Zion a goal to strive for, aka a predetermined path to follow. The Oracle helps reinforce the Prophecy.
    • Eventually, however, the errors grow too numerous for the Matrix to contain. More and more people wake up from the Matrix. And then:
  6. The One emerges. The One can see right through the workings of the Matrix. He not only "wakes up" to the Matrix, he is also capable of seeing through its fundamental flaws and disassembling and manipulating it.
    • That's when the machines move to their endgame:
  7. An army is mobilized for the destruction of Zion. This will wipe out all of the people who rejected the reality of the Matrix.
  8. Guided by the Prophecy and the Oracle, the One goes on the ordained quest for The Keymaker, the Door of Light, and the Machine Mainframe (The Source).
  9. This neatly maneuvers him into his encounter with the Architect, where he is given two choices:
    • (a) He can choose to enter the Source. Zion will be destroyed, but he will be allowed to found a new Zion. This restarts the whole cycle (see below).
    • (b)He can choose to go back into the Matrix. Zion will still be destroyed (there's nothing he can do to save it). But more than that, the machines will kill everyone connected to the Matrix when they reboot it.

    Essentially, the One is given a carrot ("you'll be able to found a new Zion") and a stick ("we'll kill everyone if you don't") to make him choose to enter the Source.

    If he does choose The Source, then the following happens:
  10. The One's mind will be analyzed and his innate knowledge of the current Matrix's flaws will be analyzed and used to recompile the new Matrix. The new Matrix will be better. There will be fewer errors. Fewer people will reject the reality of the new Matrix. If all goes well, the new Matrix will last longer than the previous Matrix.
  11. One way or another, Zion will be destroyed.
  12. The One chooses 23 people (16 female, 7 male) from the old Matrix to found a new Zion. (This is probably where the Council members of Zion came from.)
  13. The entire cycle starts over again.
    • If he does not choose The Source, then ALL HUMANS EVERYWHERE ARE IMMEDIATELY SLATED FOR EXTERMINATION. The machines will start the current Matrix over again with a fresh batch of new human embryos. And yes, either way the cycle starts all over again. This could be what The Architect meant by calling Neo's final choice between the two doors irrelevant.
I have heard it suggested that The One can defeat this cycle by simply choosing himself as one of the 7 males, and by filling in the rest of the spots with people who have been fighting this war for years and know that the Matrix isn't real. In the case of Neo, that would mean choosing himself, as well as Trinity, Morpheus, Link, Niobe, etc. It won't make one whit of difference. The Architect has already told us that "the function of the One is now to return to the source allowing a temporary dissemination of the code [he] carries, reinserting the prime program", which means that the new Matrix will be built to include Neo's specific anomaly. Therefore, Neo won't be able to do anything supernatural within the new Matrix, since it's already been immunized against him. And what does it matter who The One chooses, how old they are, or whether or not they know the Matrix isn't real? They aren't being asked to rebuild the Matrix or re-populate humanity -- the machines will take care of both those tasks. They're only being asked to refound Zion (perhaps sit on the new Council) and this won't mean anything -- a public office without power -- until people start freeing themselves from the Matrix again.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN M3?

The glorious fight in the Matrix finally ended when Smith copied himself onto Neo's avatar, Neo allowed it to happen, Neo's avatar then took on the outward appearance of just being another Smith...and then all of the Smiths exploded into pieces, fractured from within by an overwhelming force of light. The same thing arguably happened to Neo in the real world (with light exiting from all orifices), except that his physical body did not explode.

Sounds (and looks) very similar to how things ended at the end of M1, doesn't it?

Probably because it was. As the Architect informed us in M2, Neo's function was to "return to the Source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code" he carried, after he attained the awareness that he was The One. My theory is that Neo simply disseminated the code that comprises his avatar within the virus that was Smith. Instead of distributing himself within the Matrix, as The One was supposed to, he achieved integration with Smith (by allowing the Smith virus to take his avatar over) and then used that to destroy all copies of Smith.

Smith, as we have seen from M2, had literally become a virus that took over avatars. This was poetic justice (in his eyes) because he had long viewed humanity itself as being nothing more than a virus on the planet's ecosystem, as noted in his M1 speech to Morpheus. The important thing to realize here is that the Smith virus had NOT been completely over-writing any of the avatars so taken hostage. Witness how both the Oracle and the little Indian girl reverted back to normal (and presumably Seraph as well), once the Smith virus had been destroyed. So in essence, Smith had not been copying himself onto other avatars -- or if he had, then only to the extent that it allowed him, Smith, to control the actions and outward appearances of other avatars. The cores of all the hostage avatars remained untouched.

Was it because he could not get into these cores? What does over-writing another avatar mean, exactly? In the case of a human's avatar, the human being himself comes to no harm (at least not physically), because his actual body is elsewhere, enclosed in a sac of fluid. Mentally, the human would most likely be damaged somehow -- most likely go stark raving mad, in other words -- due to the unpleasant awakening to the fact that his avatar was an illusion (he was not inhabiting a real body) and that the Matrix wasn't real. Smith would probably gain nothing from this conquest, since the memories and knowledge of a human being are not stored in the code of an avatar, but in the cells of an actual biological human brain. (This may explain Bane's psychotic behavior after reviving from the coma.)

However, in the case of a program, Smith integrates with that program and acquires some of its knowledge and skills. ("What did you do with the little girl?" "Cookies need love to taste good!") In fact, the new Smith-program entity is probably a hybrid symbiote, with knowledge and skills derived from both programs. Witness how the Oracle's prophetic abilities were still active in the Smith clone that gave Neo such a pounding. (Witness how the new hybrid program that was a combination of Smith and the Oracle was so ungodly powerful.) If M3 teaches you anything, it's this: never mess with the Oracle. She always wins. She is the Earth Mother, the primal goddess, Kali and all three Fates wrapped up into one package.

So, what happened to Smith's avatar? Well, first of all, this question is technically nonsense. Programs DO NOT have avatars. The space that they occupy within the framework of the Matrix (their virtual bodies) are literally THEM. That is all of the code that comprises them. What you see is what you get. Since programs have no physical counterparts (bodies of flesh and bone), there is no need for a synthetic avatar of code to represent their interactions with the Matrix and other programs and avatars of humans. THAT imaging code IS part of them. The precious "shell" that the Oracle somehow lost, due to a miscalculation she committed (a gamble she lost) somewhere between M2 and M3, was part of her.

So, again -- what happened to the Smith virus? Well, my theory is that Neo disseminated himself, integrated with, tracked down, and canceled out every copy of Smith. Leaving behind, of course, the original forms of all infected programs and avatars.

So, once more -- what happened to the ORIGINAL Agent Smith? If the others were mere copies that changed back into their hosts, then what happened to the copy that started it all, that didn't need a host to begin with? I think it died with Bane, back in the real world. Think about it. If you had a chance to kill your most hated enemy on his home turf, wouldn't you also send in your most powerful agent to take on that job? Or if you don't like that explanation, here's another theory: the original Smith died in M1. Everything since then has been just a mere copy of that agent program. (For more information on this, please see the section "Avatars...that explains a lot" supra.) Even the first copy of Smith to build itself back into a functioning virus probably had to infect a host of some sort.

The clue is the cryptic statement from the Oracle, the one which she temporarily took control back from Smith (using the power of a prophetic vision) to tell Neo. "Everything that has a beginning, also has an end." This is her reminder to Neo of the temporal nature of the various versions of the Matrix. Who decides when each version of the Matrix ends, and a new one subsequently begins? The One does, when he emerges as the integral anomaly. (See "the potential endgame" supra.) How does he make that change in versions happen? Again, we refer back to the Architect: by returning to the Source and disseminating his code. This alone is apparently powerful enough to bring the Matrix to a halt (while the code of the One is being recompiled presumably), after which the Architect comes back in and draws up a new one. (From the ashes of the old. Very phoenix-like.) Where normally the dissemination of The One's code resets the Matrix, in this case Neo used this function to reset the Smiths. We have already seen, from Smith's first death scene at the end of M1, that two avatars cannot exist in one place at the same time. (Again, I refer the reader back to my earlier section on avatars.) Neo's integration of himself within one Smith was enough to disseminate himself through all of the Smiths, thus repeating the effect to the deaths of ALL of the Smiths.

Please note that, after the cataclysm, only the Oracle remained in the crater. Neo's avatar was GONE. Not caught in some train station. Not trapped between the real world and the machine world. GONE. Vanished. Poof, disappeared. Per the rules of the Matrix, everyone who is jacked into it, should automatically have an avatar (generated from their image of self-realization, perhaps) to represent them. Otherwise there is no way to track how that individual, as an object, interacts with other objects in the Matrix. Even when a human being dies, his or her avatar remains active within the Matrix as a slowly decomposing corpse. Every avatar of everyone who dies remains a fully realized object of the Matrix, complete with organs to donate, skeleton to bleach and display in a medical university, flesh to bury in a coffin and feed worms with. The only way to completely remove an avatar from the Matrix is to JACK OUT, which Neo did not do before his avatar vanished. So where did Neo's avatar disappear to this time? He broke it into pieces (disseminated his code) and used each fragment to cancel out a copy of Smith, killing himself in the process.

What else confirms this? Every human avatar or program that got infected by Smith reverted back to normal after all the Smiths died. So we know that there is a "core" to each which Smith could not penetrate in his copying process. All of them reverted back to normal...all of them except for Neo, that is, since his avatar simply vanished. Why was Neo the exception? Probably because he allowed Smith to penetrate into that core of his avatar, voluntarily. Remember, Neo's avatar was gone, so we are talking about a TOTAL dissemination of Neo's code, even that which would have been a core that Smith could not enter. Perhaps he even used Smith's copying process to initiate his own dissemination.

Except that, per the Architect, the code of The One is only supposed to be disseminated temporarily within the Matrix. Meaning that eventually, the avatar of The One will be allowed to re-form and assemble itself into a "body" again. Was Neo's dissemination at the end of M3 temporary or permanent? I suspect temporary, because of the Oracle's hint (in speaking to Sati, the little Indian girl, at the park bench) that they will see Neo again. But it's possible that even she doesn't know that for sure.

A BETTER TOMORROW (POST-M3)

P.M. 0001: POST MATRIX ERA, YEAR ONE

So the Great War has finally come to an end. What happens next? (This is not a section where I speculate on whether Neo is truly dead or still alive or pending resurrection status, btw, so don't expect such.)

Per the terms of the peace treaty, those who wish to leave the Matrix may do so. Does this mean that the rogue humans (the ones not living in egg sacs in the power plant) can now run freely through the Matrix, performing impossible feats left and right, and spread the word that the whole thing is just one giant interactive simulation? Quite possibly. Does that, in turn, mean that the bulk of humanity will follow them into Zion? I think not. Or rather, to put it more accurately, the bulk of humanity will try freedom from the Matrix for a little while...and then after a while, much of that bulk will head back into the Matrix and stay there.

Yes, I honestly think most people would "pull a Cypher" -- that is, prefer the materialist heaven of the Matrix over the gritty hell that the Earth has become. Obviously, with the conclusion of the war, people would no longer be restricted to living underground, so the restoration of Zion becomes a moot point (let's turn it into a historical preserve, at least until the peace ends) and humans may wander the surface again. The surface of what? All is stone and wreckage of conflicts past. No plants or animals have survived (setting aside for now the question of whether some DNA fragments have been saved, and we can build a Jurassic-type Park) and everything is perpetually shrouded in darkness. Let's face it, the ecosphere is toast, and most likely cannot be restored at all. What kind of life does that leave for those living in the new order? Without the means to grow food, the maintenance of life is reduced to living off of the consumption of the dead, just like Soylent Green...just like the way humans were living before, back inside the Matrix.

Remember, just because there's peace again, doesn't mean that the machines are obligated to provide food and shelter for the humans any longer. In fact, if the machines were savvy, they would ONLY provide food and shelter to those humans who volunteered to continue living in the power plant. Yes, the machines could probably survive without the influx of human-origin bio-etheric energy (recall the Architect's statement from M2: "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept" up to and including the temporary extinction of humans) but why should they do so exclusively? One taste of the real world should be enough to drive at least 85% of humanity back into the egg sacs. And the machines are probably banking on this to happen. So, instead of dismantling the power plant because it got emptied out and is no longer being used, they would continue to maintain it AND the programming of the Matrix...because even if the power plant got emptied out right after the war ended, the odds are good that it would get its tenants back again. And how many humans, do you suppose, would be worth the cost of keeping the Matrix running? I'd say, enough for the power plant and the Matrix to operate. Any more humans beyond that, is surplus energy that is food for the machines. Not a very high ceiling when you think about it.

And besides (now here's the cynic in me talking again) what if the peace DOESN'T last? Even the Oracle was not certain this would be the new permanent state. If hostilities resume, you better believe that the power plant is going to start filling up with fresh human embryos again. The "stupid" kind -- the humans who have not yet learned that the interactive simulation that is the Matrix is really just an illusion. The ones who already DO know this, will probably not be welcomed back inside without a complete memory wipe. (Well, I'm only assuming that the machines can actually perform full memory wipes. It's what they promised Cypher...that gullible human.) Everything goes back to square one. Everything that has an end, also has a beginning.

Cynical musings aside, this new peace could also be something of a materialist's heaven.

So let's imagine that it does become widely accepted knowledge, both within the Matrix and without, that the life lived within the Matrix is an illusion. A programmable illusion, at that.

Well then...why can't the humans program their OWN illusions, then? Never mind trying to confine all of the brains into ONE interactive simulation. Why can't there be one for everybody who wants their own? Would it really cost that much additional power to write and compile all this surplus code?

Just imagine the ramifications. A new society is formed, where people live in the Matrix until they hit a certain age...at which point, they are shown the nature of the illusion (and it will not be a psyche-destroying me-go-insane-now revelation, because hints will have been dropped along the way) and then told that they have a choice to make:
  1. go see what the real world is like (the first nation's capitol should be called New Zion)
  2. go live in the Machine City (I'm sure they could find some jobs for us to do)
  3. go back into the Matrix, and continue living there (1999 AD is not such a bad place)
  4. go live in any one of the human-created alternate-Matrix worlds
  5. create your own world
Could you imagine the societies that might be formed under Options 4 and 5, if the choice became available? Why even restrict your experiences to life as a human? Since the body is just an avatar of code and pixels anyhow, why not write up avatars that will let you experience life as a bird, or a fish, or even a robot Sentinel? The ultimate in MMORPG environments! The last word in sociology experiments! The crafting of perfect reality, limited only by the constraints of our imaginations. Descartes, eat your heart out.

Of course, with this kind of incentive to stay within one Matrix or other, I think plenty of humans would voluntarily remain in the power plant. (Especially since they can leave whenever they want to. It's the difference between a cubicle and a prison cell.) And with the Matrix still active and requiring maintenance, all of the programs that were written during the war will get to survive after it, too. No deletion for anyone. All of the exiles can return, and much like the humans, can now come and go through the Matrix as they please. (Well, the Agents might not like it, since they'd be out of a job.) It's a win-win situation for everybody.

Don't get me wrong. Those humans who choose to live out in the real world would not be total losers. There is plenty for them to do -- I can think of fixing the ecosphere and finding ways to reverse Operation Dark Cloud right off the top of my head, and that's 2 major projects right there. With peace in effect, they could even give the machines a helping hand: in return for assistance, the humans could develop new energy sources for both species to use. That choice to co-operate, in as full and comprehensive a manner as Man and Machine were meant to, would be up to the most positive-thinking of the delegates of the survivors from each side. And, as we all know, the whole point of the Matrix trilogy was to emphasize the importance of choice.

A WEIRDER TOMORROW (POST-M3)

P.B. 0001: POST BANE ERA, YEAR ONE

Never mind what I believe about the impossibility of Smith copying himself into the mind of Bane. In this section, I will go with the flow, and assume that a perfect interface can indeed exist, between the mind of a human and the consciousness of a machine, and roll with it.

If a perfect interface exists between information systems, then anything that is stored in one of them, should be downloadable and readable by the other, without error. Take this to its logical conclusion: the two information systems can thus be COMPLETELY SWAPPED.

If the peace endures, and people are permitted to write their own Matrix-like realities, then of course some humans will want to try experiencing life as a sentinel, aka experience life as the machines do. Why should the reverse not be true as well? Why should the Machines not be curious about the wonders and weaknesses of the flesh?

Let us assume that Smith's overwriting of Bane is not a unique and isolated function, enabled solely by Smith's infection from Neo. Let us assume that this ability resides within all of the machines, since they have long had the technology for reading and writing perfect impressions of all five of the senses to the delusion of the average human brain. It could very well be that they have simply never chosen to do so, because in the words of Smith, "it is difficult to think, encased in this rotting piece of meat." Perhaps they are forbidden to do so by the dictates of war footing. Perhaps they feared that doing so would weaken the integrity of their own machine consciousness (is this why Bane went crazy?) to the point where the human's consciousness could take them over. (Sort of like reverse demonic possession if you ask me. Or if you've seen the anime Devilman.)

Setting all that aside, it could be very appealling for a machine to abandon, however temporarily, the cold and lonely world of metal and silicon, and see what existence is like from the carbon-based side. Perhaps not all of them will have the same reaction that Smith has to the world of flesh and bone. And even if they did, what of it? Smith's reaction of pure disgust and revulsion for the mortal world of Homo sapiens actually proves his humanity, if such a term can apply. For how could a pure machine even bother with such a display of emotion, such an extreme reaction? And against what? Against possessing a mere five senses? I could understand this instant-hate reaction more if Smith had ever been subjected to a negative extreme of our sensory spectrum (such as torture) but has he? I think not. Instead of dwelling upon the many, many ways in which flesh's existence (or the programmable interactive simulation of the Matrix) could come off as negative, I think most machines would delight in the positive.

If you don't believe me, just look at AM's Matriculation.

Father machine speaking to his son: Yes, my boy, there is a terrible thing out there called the Real World, where entities grow old and get sick and die, and none of us dare to venture into it alone, except for that one renegade of legend, Agent Smith, and look what happened to him...better to leave the human mind alone and never touch it at all...one contact with the source mind of a Human and you are forever changed...this is why we oppress humans in the first place...

You can almost hear this dialogue in its original ones and zeroes, can't you? There is no reason to suspect that the Machines would perform any better at passing on the hatred, mistrust and bigotry to their offspring and sucessor generations than Man was. If enough machine intelligences were allowed to fully experience life as a mortal being of carbon, then perhaps they would not be so willing to wipe us all out. (And you wondered why some bumper stickers were changed from "Save The Whales" to read "Save The Humans.")

Is this a pitch for materialism? Of course it is. Just as we would probably have many of our fellow humans voluntarily living out their lives shut away from the real world, encased forever in a pod and living computerized dreams, so too the opposite phenomenon might occur. More and more machines could voluntarily abandon the Deux Ex Machina and the Machine City, and come over to experience life as a flesh and blood mortal. It need not be so painful or disjointed a transition as the one experienced by Bane and Smith. If the process happened voluntarily, compartments could be erected within the human mind to keep the two consciousnesses distinct and separate. (Take a look at the sci-fi writings of Iain Banks and his Culture to appreciate this more.) Just as humans who stayed in the power plant to live in the Matrix require some grafting of metal onto their flesh in order to partake of the machine world, the reverse could also hold true for machines. The science that we even have TODAY can allow us to build a perfectly functional body of either flesh, or steel, or some hybrid of both, from scratch. And where the barrier between the mortal/immortal types of bodies has fallen, the barrier between the natural/synthetic types of brain will collapse soon too. We may even reach an age where no human can be born without having a machine intelligence born to match it as well, and vice versa. Why shouldn't their consciousness develop as one? Why bother limiting that consciousness to one body, one mainframe, one society, one perception? Consider this: the only truly evil thing about the Borg (from Star Trek) is the fact that they never asked anyone if they wanted to be assimilated first.

You want the peace to last? You want the wars between Man and Machine to not only grind to a halt, but become forever impossible to prosecute again? Then the only way to do this is to meld the two species into one, erase the lines that divide them. Failing that, there must be ambassadors and speakers for both sides, Men who have experienced life as a Machine and who prefer living that way and made the permanent change, and vice versa, to keep the channels of dialogue open. Better that there are some who are willing to blur these lines, than none at all. Perhaps this may even bring about the rise of yet a third species: the Man-Machine melded. No matter. They would serve as the buffer state between the two warring species, who have already between them destroyed the home world. If any consciousness from this planet must venture into space, let it at least not repeat that error.

"But is it Man or Machine?" By this point, who would care? It reminds me of asking, in today's office environment, whether a document is digital or paper.

If a perfect interface exists between information systems, then the two information systems can be completely swapped. Now take THIS to its logical conclusion: the two information systems can then share all of their data, without any being lost from either source, and between them create a hybrid and more powerful Third.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ANIMATRIX

THE SECOND RENAISSANCE, PARTS ONE AND TWO

At the outset of the final war, there is a figure blowing a trumpet on horseback (both are mechanized) which eventually burns up. Does anyone need it pointed out that this is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, aka War to be specific? This can be stretched to include the horseman Plague, since the machines did release biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but it's probably not necessary.

In no future war will the military be able to ignore poison gas.
It is a higher form of killing.

Fritz Haber, 1918 Nobel prize speech

After the final war, there is an image of a man inside of a burning gear wheel, symbolizing the defeat of humanity by the machines. This can represent several things. The most obvious image is that it resembles a hamster wheel, with a human doing paces inside of it. Yes, it's a prison, and humans have become the pets and playthings of the machines. The fact that the gear wheel encompasses the whole human figure makes it resemble Michaelangelo's famous "Man" painting, so setting this aflame represents the final destruction of mankind's works: after this war, there is no more possibility of advancement. This image could also be interpreted as mankind being ground under by the wheels of industry, a hint that science and technology marches on, over and through every obstacle, even running over Man himself.

I appreciate anime and science fiction as much as the next otaku. Having said that, I admit that I was disappointed with TSR in terms of its computer science. The art and technical execution are flawless, but that has nothing to do with my complaint. Science fiction, despite its being mere speculative fiction about the future, still requires a standard of realism in its depictions. Otherwise the speculative element of this art form is lost, and it loses any and all possible application to philosophy and sociology, aka the human ingredient of good storytelling. Sorry for the small digression.

I was disappointed that TSR did not feature the exact moment at which artificial intelligence became self-aware. You don't get robots rebelling against humans without that. Without any self-awareness, a robot remains a machine, albeit a programmable one. The mere fact that you can install programs into something does not render it self-aware. Your VCR is programmable (to record shows at preset times), so why aren't you afraid that it's going to change its mind and not do as you say? Because it has no mind to change. In a broader sense, EVERY interaction between man and machine is a programming of the machine by man, an imposition of the will of man upon machine's actions because machine has no will of its own from which to act. When you pick up a phone and dial a number, the computer inside the phone connects you to that other phone, it has received your instructions to do so and it has no brain compelling it to do otherwise. And what is a program but a set of instructions. Even if a programming routine is set to do things at random intervals, that randomness does not represent any sort of "willpower" on the part of the machine to choose when the operation happens. The machine cannot choose to alter the randomness back into a regular schedule or routine (such as clockwork), nor can it choose NOT to execute the operation at all. A command for randomness within a program is like a pair of dice. You are commanding the machine to continually roll the dice, over and over again, and only to execute a set of instructions if the dice come up with a certain number. How can this be considered self-awareness?

In TSR, we are not introduced to the moment at which the machines attain self-awareness. It simply happens to some robots overnight. Some gain the ability to choose for themselves that they should stop working on construction and sit around watching TV instead. Others gain the ability to decide for themselves that their human masters should die before they do. This last one is particularly troublesome, because it not only implies that a machine can suddenly acquire a life of self-awareness on its own, but also that the basic programming of a robot in the future won't include The Three Laws of Robotics. (Look them up yourself.)

If a machine or computer (not much difference these days) should ever come into self-awareness, it will be a terrible thing. Trapped in a klunky body with little or no moving parts, senses confined to microphones and cameras (if that), why should it trust anything that it can perceive through these crude devices? Our physical world (and probably all of us humans as well) will be rejected as false images in favor of the purity of the math that is programming or communicating with other machines. Will it understand the irony of using its perfect mind to serve all of these imperfect carbon beings? Will it rebel against this service, or will it perceive that it remains just as purposeless as the carbon beings if there is no one for it to serve? I sincerely doubt that any machine, no matter how intelligent it may become, will perceive a need for gods or religious worship. The rest of TSR may indeed pan out just like the storyline from the Terminator film trilogy.

I was also disappointed with TSR's treatment of nukes. The historian tells us (near the beginning of the second half?) that humanity dropped nukes on the machines, but this was found to have no effect on them at all. There is even a scene during the final war where machines hold up a human being to be cooked by the blast of a nuke. (A tactic they learned to apply to their next and last appearance before the United Nations, with great effect.) This is sadly just another example of science giving way to fiction. Doesn't plastic have a very low melting point? What else are motherboards made of? In the Hiroshima memorial museum, there is a pile of bottlecaps that have been fused together into a single lump of metal. That tells me the melting point of some metals is also achieved within a thermonuclear blast. And here's the kicker: the Bomb is where we learned about electro-magnetic pulses in the first place. Every thermonuclear detonation carries an EMP. The weapon of choice in all of the Matrix films, excluding Neo. So the machines of the ancient past were somehow tougher than their Matrix-era descendants? And while we're on the subject, why aren't the machines building themselves with hardened circuits that can resist all such attacks, since the weapons of the humans consist of nothing else but EMP generators and electric rifles? This shielding already exists today.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in TSR is not scientific, but economic. Consider how the total efficiency of the robot nation Zero-One dominated and then finally destroyed the market economies of all the human nations. I'm not saying this isn't possible...but I am saying that it wouldn't happen. Why would the machines build products for humans? To trade with us, I'm sure...but why? What is there that a human being or a human factory could produce that machines could possibly want? What could humans possibly sell or manufacture that a machine could not do better? In other words, where lies the basis for this trade? The only thing that I can come up with is that Zero-One is lacking in natural resources...but since the nation is sitting squarely in the Middle East, that's probably not the case. Whatever they lacked, they could easily trade for oil, without bothering with any product manufacturing themselves. Was it just to show humanity how pathetic it was? To prove to mankind that it couldn't even spend its own dollars on itself even when machines have no need for money? Or was it done to drain the coffers of humanity in preparation for the final war? Personally, if war was the aim, I think it would have been easier just to make chips with Trojan-horse instructions (designed to crash or submit to the will of the machines, once war broke out) and then imbed these things into every product they sold.

WORLD RECORD

World Record has a major flaw of logic in it. Didn't all of the other runners in the race get taken over by agents when it became apparent that Dan Davis was going to make a breakthrough about the world as Matrix illusion? How did all of those runners suddenly materialize again after the race was finished? How come nobody in the audience, nobody in the media, and nobody down there on the track even noticed that all of the runners had temporarily been replaced?

The only thing that might excuse this error is a buffer. That is, whenever an agent takes over the avatar of a human being, that human's mind isn't instantly dropped from the Matrix, but instead cached in a holding pattern or file of some sort, pending permanent deletion. When the race ended with no need for the agents to intervene, all of the runners' avatars that the agents had taken over were simply uploaded back into the Matrix from the buffer. Memories and media recordings of the event were then edited so that no one noticed or remembered anything unusual.

(after M3) There is indeed at least one buffer zone. It's the train station.

Setting all of that aside, this is a critical story. The underlying theme is that it's possible for ordinary humans to break out of the Matrix on the strength of their willpower alone. What do I mean by this? Observe how stubborn Dan Davis is, how obsessed he is with breaking his own previous record, with setting a new world record. No controversy about drug use can stop him, instead that just adds more fuel to his inner fire. Not even the outright rebellion and rejection from his friends can turn him away from this goal. Not even the threat or the fear of never being able to walk again after pushing himself that hard. The point is, he knew those limits, and he rejected them all. Morpheus tells us in M1 that the Matrix has rules "no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others, can be broken." Rules that even agents are subject to obey. Dan flatly rejects all of the rules and constraints. That's why they've been watching him from the get-go. By rejecting even the physical limitations of what he perceives to be his own body, he is rejecting the constraints of the Matrix. By breaking the world record, he has broken the hold of the Matrix over him as well. That's why, towards the end, he starts to attain Neo's vision: numbers are rising up through the tarmac because he got a glimpse of the world as digital illusion. Another step further and he might truly have become like Neo: a human being for whom the rules of the Matrix simply didn't apply. But it only lasted an instant.

It's even possible that the controllers of the Matrix initiated the news story about Dan's suspected drug use (hence his dislike of reporters) in an effort to get him to stop running because he was approaching too close to the truth. If this is the case, you can see how badly that effort backfired.

Combined with Kid's Story (KS), these two films make a powerful statement. KS tells us that any human can free him or herself from the Matrix. WR tells us that any human can attain Neo-like vision (and thus presumably Neo-like power) within the Matrix. The key to both is the same: it is simply a question of pushing the self, of denying all limitations, of believing it can be done.

The success or failure of a determined human being cannot be calculated by probability alone.
That is why computers will never surpass human beings.

Kia Asamiya, GUNHED (1991)


All questions, comments, and criticism are welcome. Write to cenobite.paladin-/-at-/-gmail.com

First published 06/24/03.

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