The Logic of the Machines

[dorchadas]

Just wrote this bit of Matrix fanfic on Facebook and wanted to share it here. It's just done in script form because I dashed it out and didn't feel like turning it into a narrative, but I don't know that a narrative would improve it.

Morpheus:
What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

Neo:
No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.

Morpheus:
I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.

Neo:
No, I mean it's literally not possible. There's no way the machines could use humans as a power source. That violates the second law of thermodynamics! They'd have to spend more energy keeping us alive than they'd get out of us, regardless of how efficient their systems are. And if they have to keep the Matrix running on top of that-

Morpheus:
The second law of thermodynamics?

Neo:
Yeah, the internal energy of a system decreases over time unless energy is added from an external source. They couldn't sustain the Matrix with the energy they get from us, much less power themselves. It doesn't work.

Morpheus:
Where did you learn that?

Neo:
In high school physics. We've known it for centuries.

Morpheus:
And where did you go to school?

Neo:
I went to... I...

Morpheus:
Where, Neo?

Neo:
...in the Matrix.

Morpheus:
Exactly.

Neo:
...how does physics work?

Morpheus:
We don't know. The real world doesn't function on rigid rules--that is the logic of the machines.

This is, of course, just the logical endpoint of the "The Matrix is Mage: the Ascension fanfic about a Virtual Adept's Awakening" insight I had in 1999 after walking out of the theater--you'd just need Morpheus to start explaining the Consensus and the Ascension War. When I got home from seeing the movie, I went to the White Wolf forums for the first time ever, intending to share my brilliant insight with the masses, but in a pattern of behavior that would come to define my behavior on the internet for literally the next twenty years, I first read the list of threads to see if anyone else had posted a similar thread.

When I saw ten threads with the same idea, I posted nothing and checked the Vampire subforum instead.

Comments

[corvi]

The rest of the story is just doing physics experiments in the real world.

[dorchadas]

You know, I'd honestly be more interested in that than watching either of the official sequels again...