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Holiness begins with a breach.
Having offered his testimony, Morpheus wastes no time in presenting Neo
with the opportunity to begin initiatory rites. Though they have, in a
sense, already begun, Neo has to decide before he enters the point of
no return. As Tresmontant explains, the "personal act of judgment,
of refusal, of choice" cannot be avoided; the No to the old world
and the Yes to the new. This is only the beginning, but it isn't too late
to turn back. The red pill or the blue pill: "You take the blue pill
and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you
want to believe" In spite of Morpheus' charisma, the viewer knows
that the blue pill is a genuine temptation of comfortable numbness and
ease. The red pill is the avenue to truth, the unmasking of fictions,
and as-yet-unimagined strife: "Remember, all I'm offering is the
truth. Nothing more." Neo takes the red pill.
 In
a matter of seconds, Neo's perceived reality begins to liquefy around
him, and as he touches a nearby mirror, he begins to be enveloped by all
nearby matter as if he's being expelled from within like an air bubble.
In one of the most horrific and effectively rendered moments in science
fiction film, he then awakens in a completely wired state and enclosed
within a gelatinous membrane which he will have to push through in order
to breathe. After breaking through, he discovers that he is in one of
a seemingly infinite number of pods, where the rest of humanity lie dormant,
as far as the eye can see. He is, in a sense, graphically born again,
but he's about to be discarded and flushed down the chute.
Once the Matrix has discovered his awakened state, a machine appears for
the purpose of removing him from the system. In one peculiarly chilling
moment, Neo see himself in the gaze of the machine and knows that he is
exactly nothing, a defect whose awareness has made him useless, dead to
the world of the Matrix because he's now alive to a new one. He's dropped
into the sewage only to be salvaged by Morpheus' ship, the Nebuchadnezzar.
"Welcome to the real world, Neo."
"Am I dead?" he asks. "Far from it."
4
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Copyright
©2003 by David Dark.
Adapted from Everyday Apocalypse, published by Brazos
Press; used with permission.
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