Morpheus's Numbers were Down
In the early years, every single person had gone red │Fiction │Text
Something had changed, and perhaps it was him. Morpheus removed his small pince-nez sunglasses. Maybe if they could see his eyes, they’d trust him more?
The door opened. The latest potential recruit walked in. A skinny guy who hadn’t seen the sun in months. He sat down, frowned at his phone, placed it face-down on the table.
Rain splattered the windows. Morpheus let the silence do its work, as usual. “Welcome, Neo. I am Morpheus. I imagine that right now, you’re feeling a bit like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. Hmm?”
Neo shrugged. “Honestly, I just followed that girl because I thought there might be snacks.” Neo’s phone vibrated. “Is this like an escape game or something? Because it’s late and I’ve got an eight-a.m. stand-up.”
“Time is an illusion, Neo.”
“My boss Nigel isn’t.”
“I assure you,” said Morpheus, dragging the sentence out. “Nigel is an illusion, however compelling. But you have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he expects to wake up.”
Neo nodded. “Alarm’s set for 6:45. I expect to wake up well-rested too. Got a great new mattress.”
“That’s not—”
“A Casper. Do you want a coupon? NEO15 will get you free pillowcases.”
Morpheus had been interrupted before, but he’d never been offered a discount code. The script, he should just stick to the script. “Do you believe in fate, Neo?”
“I read The Secret in 2012. It gave me an ulcer. Does that count?”
Morpheus cracked his knuckles. “You are here because you know something. What you know, you cannot explain. But you feel it. Like a splinter in your mind. That there is something wrong with the—”
“Climate change?”
“No.”
“Microplastics?”
“No.”
“The phones. It’s the phones, isn’t it?”
Morpheus took a long breath. Usually, these were to signify gravity—the on-rushing of the irreversible. But this one, like many lately, was born of frustration. “I am talking of The Matrix. It is all around us. You can feel it when you go to work. When you—”
“I work from home.”
“You are a slave, Neo. Born into a prison that you cannot smell, or taste, or touch. A prison — for your mind.”
Beneath the table, Neo’s thumbs were moving. The phone was back in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
Neo looked up, caught out. “Nothing. Sorry. Continue.”
“Are you searching for me?”
“You’ve got no footprint at all, Morph. Can I call you Morph?”
“No.”
“Not even a LinkedIn. Which usually means either witness protection or Amish.”
Morpheus gripped the smooth edge of his jacket. He was a churner of minds, not butter. “I only exist outside the Matrix, Neo.” From his pocket, he produced his case. It never failed to focus them. “This is your last chance. No turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends: you wake in your own bed and believe whatever you wish to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
“Cool.” Neo nodded, squinting at the pills as if they were unfamiliar mushrooms. “But can I offer a quick bit of feedback?”
Morpheus felt his eyebrows knit, then knot.
“The urgency thing.” Neo air-quoted. “‘Last chance.’ ‘No turning back.’ It’s very 1990s sofa sale. Just saying.”
“All I am offering you is the truth.”
Neo gestured to the two pills. “And are they benzos? I do really badly on benzos.”
Morpheus blinked several times and then, like a machine restarting after a critical error, resumed from the top. “If you take the blue pill, you wake in your own bed.”
Neo smiled. “Egyptian cotton. So that’s nice.”
“If you take the red pill, I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Neo’s shoulders lifted. “Do you think you could just… tell me instead? Seems like all the risk is mine, is the thing.”
“Your mind can’t withstand the full truth. It will be revealed to you in stages.”
“That sounds super cult-y.”
Morpheus let out a booming laugh. “You are already in the cult. I offer you liberation from it.”
“Said every cult leader ever. Maybe you have some slides, then? Or an online course? I could become enlightened at my own pace. Without the drugs.”
“Zion does not offer online courses.”
“What’s Zion exactly?”
“Our true home.”
“This Zion. Is it walkable?”
“Walkable?” Morpheus laughed once more. “It is at war.”
“Ugh. With whom?”
“The machines.”
“AI? My copywriter friend Dave just lost his job. It’s rough.”
“War where metal sentinels tear human flesh.”
“Well, not in my name. How’s that war working out?”
“Poorly,” Morpheus said, commending himself on his honesty. On upholding his promise never to lie to them. “That is why we need you. There is a prophecy.”
Neo winced. “Okay, L. Ron.”
“I ask nothing of you that I have not given myself.”
“How old were you when they offered you the pills?”
“Nineteen.”
Neo nodded, and went on nodding, but said nothing. Morpheus understood that something had been conceded, but he didn’t know what.
“Look — it’s not you. It’s just I’ve done this before.”
Morpheus leaned forward. His jacket squeaked. “You have not done this before.”
“I have.” Neo started counting on his fingers. “The unpaid internships. Following my passion. Learning to code. Crypto. Kratom. Podcast. Peptides. Ice baths. Four hundred dollars for a course about how to sell courses. I’ve taken so many red pills, Mo. Every single one started with some version of wake up. And every single one made somebody else rich.”
Morpheus found that his head had become inexplicably heavy. “You have made yourself so difficult to fool,” he said quietly, “that you have made yourself impossible to reach.”
Neo picked up his phone, tapped it three times, and put it back face-down. “Maybe. But I’m in an okay place. Therapy’s finally working. I’ve got a golden retriever called Bartrum who’s thrilled when I come—”
“Bartrum is a projection of electrical impulses into your cortex.”
“No code could simulate morning breath like his.” He smiled. “My partner and I just locked in a decent fixed rate. We’ve got health insurance. At nineteen, I’d have taken both your pills. You and I would be tripping balls in Zion.”
“You bought a home inside a dream.”
“A dream?” Neo blew a raspberry. “You should see what we’re paying in interest.”
“Humanity is enslaved, Neo.”
Neo shrugged. “Maybe. But in whatever this is I’ve got a warm shower, half a tub of Häagen in the freezer, and a lovely dog with stinky breath. What does Zion have to offer?”
“The truth unvarnished.”
“Eh,” Neo said. “Maybe I’ve become a varnish guy.” He held out his hand. “Give me those pills a second.”
Morpheus hesitated before his curiosity got the better of him. He tipped both pills into Neo’s palm. Neo separated them, sat up straighter, and dropped his voice an octave. “This is your last chance, Mo. You take the red pill — you go back to Zoobadoo and get blown up in your crappy drone war.” Neo gestured to the blue pill. “Or, you take the blue pill, and you wake up in a soft bed. Your back hurts a bit. You make coffee. You do a job that’s 99% meetings. Someone loves you, mostly. The dog throws up on the carpet.” He lifted the hand with the blue pill, slightly, the way Morpheus usually did with the red. “But nobody shoots lasers at you. And the only robot you ever have to fight is an inkjet printer.”
Morpheus laughed. It was tinged with nostalgia. “I think,” he said after a beat, “that we have both already made our choices.”
“Sweet,” Neo said, placing the pills carefully on the table, picking up his phone, and standing up. “I believe you. About the whole Matrix thing. That’s what makes this difficult. Anyway, my Uber’s here.”
He reached the door then turned back. “Have you thought about doing this on Zoom? It’s a big ask, coming out at night.”
Morpheus lowered his head.
The door closed. Outside, the storm continued. Morpheus sat in silence. He was used to being disbelieved. He was not used to being believed and declined. He put his pince-nez back on and looked down at the pills. He was still looking at the blue one when he noticed he had been thinking, for quite some time, about mattresses.
—
A little background: I went for a run on Sunday and an idea popped into my head—what if Morpheus was now a boomer and Neo a jaded millennial? The idea made me laugh, and that’s usually enough.
The story went in a different direction once I started, as they always do. The question of whether it would have become harder to convince people to believe in—or opt out of—the Matrix since 1999 turned out to be more interesting. I think I was also inspired by this post (amazing!).
Neo stayed a jaded millennial, though, just like me.
I’m working on a book of funny tech fables. Think Black Mirror, but with famous tech founders being tortured by their own creations. It should be out in a couple of months. My AI “They’re Made Out of Meat” parody/homage will probably be a bonus chapter. Maybe this will be too.
Anyway, see you next Friday.
Adam