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SPECULATIONS The Matrix: Revisions |
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6. THE DOGSTAR TIME-PARADOX ENDING In an alternate dimension, the Machine presents Neo with the most shocking and unthinkable revelation yet: that Neo, or rather, his alter-ego in the Real World beyond the "Screen-World" (a concept Neo struggles with) is the very cause (somehow) of the Matrix itself. Of course, it's Keanu's fault again!It turns out that some time in the Real World late 20th Century (a time notorious for horrible atrocities of thought and action), Keanu, together with several other musically-inclined losers, created a band called Dogstar. At first this small act went unnoticed, but over time, it became obvious that the cacophony created by Keanu and his fellow "band members" was some kind of evil machination with which they meant to subdue the world in an agonizing paralysis of noise pollution. Under constant torture and stress, only a few deaf geeks could manage to function well enough to find a means of subverting the malicious plan of the musical conspirators: they had to create the Matrix. Humanity was only too glad to get in those spiffy little sound-proof pods and drift away into cyber-silence. So now Neo realizes what he must do; reeling with alter-self-loathing, he chances upon another time machine (this time sans Alex Winters and George Carlin’s “Rufus”), throws a few dials, and lands in a strange room in the Real World 20th Century filled with row after row of blank-faced, hypnotized individuals. They are staring at a large screen, on which he sees a projection of the very Machine that revealed to him his alter-ego's heinous crimes. "Whoah," says Neo. Fleeing this supposed "Movie Theater", Neo then conveniently collides with himself, or rather, the dread Keanu(!), on his way to a secret “band meeting” where the devious plan for world-domination-via-sonic-pollution is to be devised. Neo trails Keanu into a small warehouse, where he beholds drummer Rob Mailhouse, guitarist Bret Domrose, and second guitarist Gregg Miller. Seeing no other choice, he fights through a hail of thrown drumsticks and wah-wah peddles to slaughter them all with his kung fu magic (surprisingly weak here in the Real World). He then corners mad musician Keanu and beats him to death with a Flying-V Stratocaster. The realization that he’s just committed alter-ego suicide/homicide – “Whoa!” –culminates in the ultimate sci-fi paradox: if you go back in time and kill yourself, thus preventing the creation of the problem that led you back in time to do it, how could you have gone back to do it all in the first place? Desperately fighting the paradox, the entire goddamn Kosmos sees no alternative but to spontaneously implode upon itself. Thanks a lot, Neo. (M. Francois) 7. THE AGENT SMITH UBER ALLES / TURTLE POWER ENDING  Come on, admit it: Hugo Weaving’s snarling Agent Smith is the best part about the entire trilogy. Who would you rather have in charge of a gray, joyless, Machine-dominated world: the gray and joyless Neo, or the sarcastic, quip-spewing Smith? In this version, Neo passes out on the way to The Machine city, and before Trinity can revive him, Smith self-replicates beyond the bounds of the Matrix and out into infinity, becoming every single holon composing the entire Kosmos, all the way up, all the way down.“Mr Anderson,” he calls to—and through—Neo, “let’s do this turtle style.” Coming to his senses in the bowels of the now-defunct Logos, Neo gasps in horror as every quark, atom, molecule, cell, organism and super-organism throughout the manifest realm dons a pair of sunglasses, adjusts its tie, and leaps into an extended dragon stance. “Time to die, Mr. Anderson,” declares the entire Smith-Kosmos before whipping Neo’s ass in every fighting style ever invented since the Big Bang. (P. Salamone) 8. THE WHITE MORPHEUS/AQAL-OVERLOAD ENDING  Final scene where Neo confronts the Machines in Machine City. Desperate, he tries all the last minute actions he can think of: he sits down in a lotus pose, he jumps up and floats in a crucified pose in the air in front of the Machine, he--"Neo, just stop. It's not going to work okay." Sighing, Neo turns to face Morpheus, who is flanked by the entire population of Zion (big gasp of surprise/confusion from the audience: How did they get to the Machine City?). "But I tried so hard to be Messiah-ish!" says Neo. Morpheus rolls his eyes. Panicking, Neo raises his arms to part some imaginary flood, then drops them to his sides, baffled. "Look man, this Messiah crap isn't going to work,” Morpheus explains. “I told you from the start ... but you didn't listen ... you just wanted to do that whole thing with getting yourself blinded and all so you could see those pretty lights ..." Morpheus then clears his throat and addresses the Machine with a deep, patronizing sigh: "We didn't want to have to do this. We really didn't. But frankly, you and Messiah-Boy here have given us no choice. It is time for you to face Zion's ultimate secret weapon." Ominous drumroll ... Morpheus lowers his voice to a striking whisper. "He is, in fact, my very own long-lost, and evil twin. He is known to us only as ... The White Morpheus!" Sadistic laughter. The crowds part. Oohs and ahhs go up from the audience as a tall, lean, muscular white man with a completely bald head, tinted shades, and an Armani suit clears his throat and steps forward. "It is time for a battle between matrices,” says the White Morpheus, a mischievous smirk coming to his lips. “Your Neo-Cyberpunk-Green-Matrix-Thing versus ... the AQAL Matrix!" A wave of dread ripples through the crowd, affecting human and machine alike, at the sound of the dreaded acronym "AQAL." The White Morpheus lets out an evil cackle, takes a sip of Red Bull energy drink, and smoothes back his nonexistent hair. A blackboard is brought forward by a young, Armani-clad assistant. "Chalk please." Pausing for effect, The White Morpheus divides the blackboard along a horizontal and a vertical axis, writing pronouns in each of the four quadrants created. He then draws a series of nine concentric circles, starting from the center out, and labels them with name of colors—“beige,” “purple,” “red” and so on. "When you create a world,” he explains to the Machine, “you just ... do it. But when I manifest my being-in-the-world in a first-person mode and then describe the enacted landscape, a different event horizon is made available, a different worldspace appears--a world with different phenomena, different boundaries, different rules, different contours--contours that do not fall at the speed of an apple, take up any physical room, or move according to geological and topographical currents. I am neither perceiving this world nor creating this world, but both. All of these 8 event horizons are tetra-enacted by the occasions occurring together in any opening or clearing within that horizon. For AQAL metatheory, these event horizons represent the probability of finding a particular occurrence in a particular region of the AQAL matrix disclosed and brought forth by the perspective enacting the occurrence." The Machine cringes, yet holds its ground. "Haven't had enough?!" the White Morpheus thunders. "Fine.” He removes his tailored, pinstriped coat to reveal a skin-tight A-shirt and continues. “If we call this first event horizon a 'first-person experience of first-person realities,' we could represent it as (1p x 1p), where ‘1p’ means ‘first person.’ You, as second person (2p), also have your own first-person experience, which, with reference to me, would be: 2p(1p x 1p)--which means, your second person has its first-person experience of its first-person realities." At this point, strange fumes waft from the core of the Machine as it races to calculate. The White Morpheus, looking smug, continues: "If my perception of your first person, which can be represented as 1p(1p) x 2p(1p), matches your perception of your first person, 2p(1p x 1p), then we have mutual understanding: 1p(1p) x 2p(1p) = 2p(1p x 1p). That is the beginning of an integral ..." “NNNOOOO!” roars the Machine in a distorted tone. Strange clicking noises erupt throughout its interior. “DOES NOT COMPUTE! SYSTEM ERROR!” Gurgling, it belches out sparks of electricity, then explodes in a fit of mathematical anxiety. The White Morpheus stands with pride over his conquered foe, yet no one has remained to witness his victory. Everyone else has fled. "Just too hardcore for them," he sighs. “Damn green Matrix.” Meanwhile, the fools of Zion fling garlands over Neo. He may be dumb, but they understand him. (M. Francois) 9. THE SWISS FAMILY ANDERSON ENDING  Upon bursting through the cloud layer in the Logos, Neo and Trinity are dazzled by the sunny blue sky and decide not to leave. So they just fly around above The Machines, The Matrix, Zion, the suffering of humanity and everything else, making out and laughing at what idiots those “stupid groundlings” really are. This continues for a about a day or two, then the Logos run outs of energy and they make an emergency landing somewhere off the coast of Easter Island, where they swim to shore and start a new human society.Looking off into the sunset many years later, Grandpa Neo stands with his many children, grandchildren, and great-children, most of them rotten with the hideous mutations of years of inbreeding. Raising his withered palms to the sky, he swears “on Morpheus’s bald, pock-marked skull” that the free people of the Earth (a.k.a. the 158 Neo/Trinity descendents wading in food scraps and animal dung on the tiny island) will one day rise up against the Machine menace. Seconds later, a routine squid patrol spots the campfires of Neo’s island and swarms in, putting every last inhabitant in a high-speed submarine bound for Machine City home. (S. Palomino) 10. THE DESSERT OF THE REAL  John sits quietly in a darkened room with a large canister of dry, puffed corn coated in chemicals and sodium chloride. Every few seconds he digs a fat hand into the canister, then shoves a wad of the corn into his mouth. While the seats to his immediate left and right are empty, the rest of the room is filled with similarly fat, quiet people stuffing their fat faces. They are all facing a 40 x 20 foot panel at the end of the room, upon which little green numbers and letters are being projected by a Machine locked in another, smaller room somewhere behind them. Periodically, the little green numbers shift around to become the flat shapes of people talking, moving, and taking stances on various important-sounding issues. John is 35 and lives with his mother. He was recently laid off and has no health insurance, 401(k) or girlfriend. Meanwhile, the political entity he is a citizen of has declared war on a backwards, sand-choked nation using the flimsiest of evidence. The Leader of that political entity, the son of a spy/gangster with business ties to a large family of contractors and terrorists, rose to power through the disenfranchisement of minority voters and shrewd legal machinations. Meanwhile, The Leader’s affluent compadres are busy scrapping every civil rights bill, environmental protection act, and disarmament treaty in the name of a chimerical “war” on a hazy, undefinable concept. The real world is going to hell, yet John remains silent. He eats double bacon cheeseburgers and masturbates, trying to fill a void inside he can barely understand. As John sits in the large room, staring up at the screen of illusions and stuffing his fat face, The Leader is in an underground bunker commanding a platoon of working-class minorities halfway around the world to bomb an empty building . A young boy watches the soldiers march down his street, and vows revenge. Three nuclear devices cross the Russian border in a pair of gym bags. A thousand fish float dead on a cloudy brown river, and a fire in California blazes out of control. The universe hurtles towards oblivion, and John, John…. (Y. Wrath) |
©2003 The Manifest E-Zine