3بخش

Neo!

Mr. Anderson!

No!

It can’t be.

I’ve missed you.

It’s in my mind.

It’s in my mind.

Can you hear me, Thomas?

Follow my voice.

Feel the tips of your fingers.

What are they touching?

The bell.

Do you hear the bell?

Do you remember what happened?

How you got here?

You must have walked.

I heard Deja Vu outside, opened my door, and there you were.

You feel like you can talk about it?

When we started working together, you had lost your capacity to discern reality from fiction.

You came to me after trying to jump off a building.

You said you wanted to fly away.

We have made a lot of progress since then, but you seem particularly triggered right now.

Can you tell me how it started?

He texted me.

Who?

Morpheus.

Ah.

So, he’s back.

It wasn’t actually him.

It was a program I coded for a Modal.

And this “Modal,” Morpheus, came to help you escape from a virtual reality called The Matrix.

Am I crazy?

We don’t use that word in here.

What word should I use?

What word explains what is happening to me?

Can I see the texts?

They were erased.

If we got in my car and drove to your office, what do you think we’d find there?

Nothing.

Because there was no attack.

No one was killed.

No one texted.

My mind made it all up.

Is that what I’m supposed to say?

Is that what you believe?

It felt real.

Of course.

It was your great ambition to make a game that was indistinguishable from reality.

To achieve this goal, you converted elements of your life into narrative.

Your sublimated anger toward your business partner cast him as your nemesis.

A married woman named Tiffany became the “Trinity” of a doomed romance.

Even your dislike of my cat made it into your Matrix.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s what artists do.

But it becomes a problem when fantasies endanger us or other people.

We don’t want anyone to get hurt, do we, Thomas?

Hi, Thomas.

Everyone calls me “Tiff.”

Who are you?

My name is Trinity.

No one can tell you, you’re in love.

You just know it, through and through.

Balls to bones.

You have to let it all go, Neo.

Free your mind.

Huh.

Looks easy enough.

Free my mind.

Shit.

Okay.

Free my mind.

I fly or I fall.

Who the hell are you?

You won’t remember me, but a long time ago, you changed my life when you leapt off another roof.

Back then, I was just like any other coppertop, pretending my life until I looked up and I saw you.

It was a different you, but I saw the real you, just a second before you leapt.

And you never fell.

Are you the one that hacked my Modal?

Yeah.

That’ll be Jude.

He’s not your friend.

He’s a handle, a program used to control you.

He’s on his way here, and he’s bringing Agents with him.

Jude.

Bro, I’ve been calling you all night.

We have a major problemo.

Are you alone?

That’s kind of a sexy question, dude.

They don’t look like typical Agents.

They use bots now, skinned as normal people, which means they’re everywhere and you never know who to trust.

Why should I trust you?

Because if they open that door, we lose our hack.

I will be caught and killed and you will be put right back on that treadmill they designed for you, just like they did the last time you tried to leap your way out.

I know why you left your Modal open.

You needed someone else to free Morpheus.

And it’s because of him that we were able to get to you.

I know these things the same way that I knew one day I would find you.

And that when I did, you would be ready for this.

If you want the truth, Neo, you’re going to have to follow me.

Okay.

Where are we?

Tokyo.

A moving portal makes it harder to track us.

Seq is the best of them.

Portal’s clean.

Reading our shadows.

I don’t remember this.

We don’t have to run to phone booths anymore, either.

Door’s on your right.

Set and setting, right?

Oh, no.

It’s all about set and setting.

After our first contact went so badly, we thought elements from your past might help ease you into the present.

Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.

This is footage from your game.

Time is always against us, etcetera, etcetera.

No one can be told what the Matrix is, blah, blah, blah.

You gotta see it to believe it.

Time to fly.

Wait.

If this is real, if I haven’t lost my mind, does that mean this happened?

But if it did then we died.

Obviously not.

Why the Machines kept you alive and why they went to such lengths to hide you are questions we don’t have answers to.

Hide me?

I’ve been at a company making a game called The Matrix.

Doesn’t seem like they were trying to hide anything.

We’ve been tracking that company for years.

We screened every Thomas Anderson we found.

What we didn’t understand was that they could alter your DSI.

Pods generate your digital self-image through a feedback system called Semblance.

This is how you look to yourself.

Somehow they were able to alter your DSI loop.

This is how everyone else sees you.

Twenty years?

Why did it take 20 years to find me?

It took a lot longer than that.

It’s been over 60 years since you and Trinity flew to one of the Machine Cities.

What?

There’s so much we don’t know.

Like why you’ve barely aged, or how many times they’ve altered your DSI.

But based on what we do know, it appears no one found you because you didn’t want to be found.

That’s not true.

Maybe it isn’t.

Maybe there’s no foundation to the rumors that you disappeared, because you were working with the Machines from the beginning.

Morpheus, stop.

All I’m saying is this is the moment for you to show us what is real.

If you want out, you’ll take this pill.

But if you are where you belong, you can go back to this.

Every day.

Over and over forever.

Fuck.

Keep the loop tight.

Cybebe needs that tower pin.

I got a signal.

It’s faint.

It’s definitely off-grid.

Captain.

I’m tracking a whole lot of weird.

What?

It’s some kind of graft.

Thomas?

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

We got company.

How’d they find us?

Thomas, none of this is real.

You are in the midst of a serious psychotic break.

Lexy?

Almost there.

Thomas?

Thomas, please.

This is not a game.

Feel my hand.

This is what is real.

Stay with me.

No.

No.

Stay with me.

Neo!

Morpheus!

Let’s go, let’s go!

Bots are being activated.

It’s a swarm.

Come on!

I got a hack in the bathroom.

Hurry!

Yes.

Come on!

Seq, where?

That mirror.

What?

We’ll never fit.

You gotta fit, ‘cause I don’t have another way off this train.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

No, no, no.

Think “perspective.”

Closer you are, bigger it gets.

Okay, come on.

In you go.