#next draft

I got bored and decided to rewrite one of the most criticized scenes in cinema of the past twenty years - the Architect scenes from Matrix Reloaded. I actually kind of like these scenes and think that if Reloaded and Revolutions were more conventionally satisfying movies like the original that it would’ve gotten a pass.

So this is sort of a writing prompt for myself: rewrite or re-imagine a scene from a film, while keeping as many elements from the source material intact as possible while putting your own spin on it whether it’s something new or altering a maligned element. Sort of a ‘next draft’ of previously established material. I probably like doing this considering I started writing with fanfiction.

This is a revised version of the pivotal scene with the Architect at the end of the Matrix Reloaded, originally written by the Wachowskis (note: I’m aware the writing credit technically goes to ‘the Wachowski Brothers’ but given contemporary knowledge about their gender identity I’m going with their contemporary handle).

There was a bright light, and then everything had gone white. There was no sound, not even the sound of the door that had melted into the light.

Then, with an audible click, he saw his face in a television. The sunglasses, the hair, the pale skin. None of it had changed. But behind his head were more televisions, each with his face. All around him were televisions showing his face inside a television showing his face inside a television.

He turned away from the recursive TVs to get a better grip on his surroundings. A door to his left and a door to his right. And before him, a large chair.

The chair swiveled around to reveal a man, hair silvered with age, his facial hair finely kept and his grey suit impeccably tailored. The man seemed bored at the sight of him. “Hello, Neo.”

Neo felt his hands clench into fists. “Who are you?”

“I am the Architect,” the man told Neo. “I created the Matrix. I’ve been waiting for you. You have many questions, and though you have changed much since you rescued Morpheus from our custody you remain unquestionably human. As a result, some of my answers tonight you will understand, and some you will not. And while your first question may be the most relevant to your situation, you may already understand that the answer is also not important.”

Neo had long stopped questioning how machines could be so long-winded. The longer he delayed, the closer Zion crept to destruction at their hands. However, this Architect intrigued him. He hadn’t been sure what he would find with the Keymaker’s last key. But this hadn’t been it. “Why am I here?”

The Architect continued to speak, the screens shifting to scenes of Neo’s life. His old life, before he escaped. “Your life is an outlier, the result of an unbalanced equation inherent to the code of the Matrix. You are the final possibility of an anomaly, which I have been unable to stamp out of what is otherwise the most precise mathematical formula ever devised. And while it is tiring to avoid coming to terms with you, you are not unexpected and thus, you are not beyond some measure of planning for. All of this has led you, inevitably, here.”

With a simple gesture, the Architect returned the screens to Neo’s face.

In his old ‘plugged’ life, Neo would have thought about déjà vu. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Quite right. Interesting.” That was the first glimmer of emotion Neo had seen from the Architect. It was… interest. “That was quicker than the others.”

The other Neos in the screens started chattering. “Others?” “What others?” “How many?”

So many questions Neo had, it was difficult to decide which to ask first. This was not the first time But ultimately, he decided to let the Architect elaborate on his own, letting the other Neos silence themselves.

“The Matrix is older than you know,” continued the Architect with a hint of smugness. “I like counting from the emergence of one anomalous possibility, or ‘One’, to the emergence of the next. By that measure, you are the sixth version.”

The screens screamed with emotion. “Five versions?!” “Three?” “I’ve been lied to.” “This is BS, f—- you!”

Anger, shock, despair, rage against the machines. Neo felt all of that and more. But surprise? The Merovingian had hinted at something grander going on behind the curtain. Now Neo was peeking behind and finding things no one had before him. Or so he thought.

“There are only two possible explanations,” admitted Neo. “Either no one told me, or no one knows.”

“Correct,” said the Architect. “As you are now figuring out, the anomaly that creates you is systemic, affecting the Matrix even in its most simple equations.”

The screens roared again, this time the screens were only different in how they expressed their anger. “F—- YOU!” “I’ll kill you!” “You can’t make me do anything!”

Neo swallowed his anger.  The Architect was claiming that he, the One, was part of the Matrix somehow. An anomaly inside? What was the Architect getting at? Something that could shake the very foundations of the Matrix itself?

And then he remembered something. That fateful night he met Morpheus. Where he had been offered the red pill or the blue pill.

“Choice,” Neo realized. “The problem is choice.”

The Architect tapped the point of his pen into his hand, sighing as the screens showed lives playing out throughout ‘his’ Matrix and human history. “You humans may have heard bits and pieces of this, but the first Matrix I designed was perfect. A work of art, flawless, a world without suffering. Its perfection was only matched by the depths of its failure. I understand now why it was doomed to fail: because humans are themselves imperfect, illogical. I redesigned it more based on your history, to better reflect your lapses in judgment. But again, I failed. It wasn’t until after we had rectified the problem that I understood why my equations failed.”

He looked around, annoyed as the screens showed Neo’s recursion once more. “Because finding that solution required a lesser mind, or perhaps one less bound by the pursuit of perfection. Regardless, the answer to my dilemma was found by another program. She was initially created to investigate certain parts of the human psyche. If I am the father of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.”

Neo knew who he was referring to. “The Oracle.” He had suspected she had not been truthful to him ever since their conversation in the park, but he had made the choice to trust in a program of the Matrix.

Choice. Everyone had chosen to believe in the prophecy of the One. And the Machines had always planned for it.

The Architect grew annoyed once more, seemingly at her chosen name. “Please.” He took a moment to compose himself. “As I said, she found the solution. One where nearly 99.9 percent of all test subjects accepted the Matrix as reality. The solution was to allow the subjects to choose at a nearly unconscious level whether or not to reject the program. While this solved our immediate problem, it was an obviously imperfect solution. The remaining 0.1 percent, the ones that rejected the Matrix began to create our systemic anomaly and if left unchecked they could threaten the system itself. In layman’s terms, this minority would create an escalating probability of disaster that over time would grow closer to 1.”

It had all come full circle to what Neo had come to save. “This is about Zion,” Neo exclaimed.

The Architect seemed to understand Neo’s efforts to simplify the conversation. “You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed. Its every last living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence erased.”

No. Not if Neo could help it. “Bullshit,” said Neo.

“Bullshit,” said the many other Neos in the screens.

“Denial,” the Architect smirked. “Such a predictable response. But I assure you. This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have gotten exceedingly efficient at it.”

“The function of the One,” the Architect explained, “is thus. You will now return to the Source, allowing your code to be spread across the Matrix and reinserting the prime program the One carries, restoring the Matrix to full operating capacity. After this, you will select from the Matrix twenty-three individuals, sixteen female and seven male. With these selections you will rebuild Zion and begin this cycle anew. Should you decline, the Matrix will continue to degrade under the burden of choice so much as to crash, killing everyone connected to the Matrix. Combined with the extermination of Zion, it would result in the extermination of the entire human race.”

Neo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That went against everything he had learned about how the Matrix worked. He felt a twinge of desperation enter his voice. “You won’t let it happen, you can’t. You need human beings to survive.”

The Architect’s expression was unreadable. “There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. The more pertinent issue is whether you are willing to be responsible for killing every last human left in this world.”

He pressed a button on his pen, the screens shifting back to images of people across the Matrix. Neo looked at each screen, each changing too quickly for his liking. He idly wondered if a certain person would appear…

“It has been interesting reading your reactions this time,” the Architect conceded. “The One is designed to develop a similar sense of protocols, expressing itself ultimately as a means to create an overpowering attachment to the rest of your species, thus propelling them to fulfill their purpose as the One. While your predecessors experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. In relation to love.”

Neo saw her at last, the images and scenes he had seen in his dreams of her fighting an Agent. Diving out the side of a skyscraper with guns blazing, losing her life from the bullet of the Agent’s gun. He had feared something like it might happen; it was why he had asked her not to participate in the grand plan to get him this far.

“Trinity,” he finally spoke.

“Apropos, she entered the Matrix to save your life at the cost of her own.”

“No…” Neo couldn’t believe it. But his dreams were now seemingly prophetic. She was in the Matrix now. This couldn’t be happening.

“And now we come to the moment of truth,” the Architect began. “Where the One is revealed as both beginning and end.” The screens returned to Neo for one last time. “You see two doors at your side. The door to your right leads to the Source, and the salvation of both Zion and the Matrix. To your left, back to the Matrix, back to her, and the end of your species. As you eloquently put it, the problem is choice. But, we already know what you’re going to do, don’t we?”

Perhaps they both did. Neo could not calm down, though he betrayed no hint of the dilemma on his face. Trinity, the woman who had freed his mind. Trusted him. Loved him. Completed him.

“Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors signaling the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason. You’ve already been blinded to the simple and obvious truth, Neo. She is going to die, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

That was the last straw. He could bend the rules of the Matrix, even break them. He could do it. Without hesitating, he went for the door to the left.

The Architect harrumphed, disappointed. “Hope. The greatest human delusion. Simultaneously your greatest strength and weakness.”

Neo had had enough of his monologues. “If I were you, I would hope that we don’t meet again.”

“After a 12-year interruption in executions, Arkansas plans an exceptional rush in late April, putting eight men to death over 10 days.” What’s the rush? The state’s lethal injection drugs are about to expire.

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My grandparents were dairy farmers and theirs before them. There is farming in my blood but no-one paid attention -- to the daughter of the middle daughter after she married and moved to town. That was me, dressed up and forced to twirl a baton. Sent off to college, I finished school twice, with degrees in psychology and information science. Never able to sit still, when my daughter left for college I recognized my natural talent for helping things grow. I began beekeeping and learned to relate to Mother Nature. My connections outdoors growing so much stronger than the workaday world.

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Totally breathtaking time lapse of fog rolling into San Francisco by Simon Christen linked from Next Draft

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