The Matrix Still Has You

Written by Anakin McFly

It was with some apprehension that Casey Reeves peeked into one of the hundred chambers that filled that room, but the sleeping face that looked back up at her through closed eyelids gave off an aura of serene calm. Tubes and wires ran in and out of the submerged body, but they were neat and sterile looking.

Casey raised her camera and took a photo of the chamber.

"How... real is this simulated world, exactly?" she asked, lowering her camera.

"Real enough," Steve Winchell assured the small tour group. "Very real, in fact; virtually indistinguishable from real reality. Of course, they never get to experience real reality, which doesn't give them any basis for comparison.

"Don't any of them ever suspect anything?" a young female journalist questioned. "You mentioned that there were glitches sometimes, so... what do they think when they see those glitches in their reality?"

Winchell's face broadened into a large grin. "That," he said, "is where the fun lies."

He gestured at the hundreds of chambers in the room. "We get problems now and then, it is true. Sometimes, some of them suspect that something is not quite right in their world. Most don't do anything about it. But some do. Some of them try persistently to discover the truth, and the only way to prevent them from doing so is to stop them before it is too late.

"How? you may ask. It's really quite simple, really. What these people want is some answer to all the things they see don't match up. All we need, therefore, to ease their minds, is to give them an answer. Not the answer, but another one. A decoy. We don't set them free, but we make them think that they are free.

"The moment they get too close to the truth, we send in our Agent programs. These programs are our police force in the system, if you may. They will go after these people and capure them. Sometimes, to add to the realism, we make the targets think as though they have a chance of escape, usually delivered through a mysterious phone call or e-mail message or... some other form of communication. Of course, the targets can never escape, and once the Agents have them, the rest of their fate is in their hands.

"What the agents do is shift that person's mind into another simulated reality, separate from the rest of the virtual world. Like a... video game, only more real. In that world, which is almost exactly like the one they knew, they find the 'truth' in a story where they are the hero. They discover this thing called the Matrix, and enter into the 'real world' where they are fed some story about machines taking over the world and how they are the saviour of the human race, blah blah blah."

"And they believe it?" another journalist asked.

Winchell spread open his hands. "Of course. Partly because they want to believe it. Everybody wants to be a hero. So they save the world, they get the girl or guy, and then they die – a hero's death, of course, sacrificing themselves for the good of the human race and all that. They're happy. Of course, they're also dead, which means that they are no longer a threat to the system. But that means that we're happy. Meanwhile, the real Matrix gets to carry on business as usual."

"But... isn't it kind of cruel to keep them all trapped in there?"

Winchell gave a short laugh. "What... you would prefer if they were allowed to live out here with the rest of the world? There are millions – billions, even – of people in the simulation, and even without them the world is already so overcrowded. Where would we get the food and water to sustain them? Or land for them to live on? Whereas now they only need a minimum amount of energy to stay alive. They spend their lives asleep. It's the most energy-efficient form of existence there is. And the lives they think they have are as real to them as the lives we have. The same deal for so much less stress on our planet. Think of the pollution all these people would have created, for one. The amount of natural resources they would have consumed. This... is the better way, for us and for them."

Winchell checked his watch. "We're almost out of time here, so... any more questions?"

#

Several hours later, Casey Reeves connected her camera to the computer to transfer the photographs over. They looked good, except for one that appeared to have something streaked across its surface. Casey squinted at the thumbnail photo, then double clicked on it to get it up to full size.

The streak was a line of words that had not been there before.

"Hello, Casey," they read.

She blinked.

"The Matrix still has you."

#