The Matrix is an illusion. It appears to be America at the turn of the 21st century; a vast megacity and an adjacent mountain range. In truth it is a virtual, digital world that humans experience through feeds running directly to their nervous systems. These humans experience an artificial life in the Matrix, unaware of their real state.

In reality, the actual date is unknown, but it is believed to be a couple of centuries later. The proprietors of the Matrix are machines that have won a war with humankind. In the war the sky was “scorched,” denying them their source of energy, solar power. Instead, they now use sleeping humans, enclosed in liquid-filled pods on vast batteries, to generate heat that becomes electricity.

A few free humans, based in an underground city of Zion, resist the Machines and hope to defeat the Matrix system, which they see as a form of slavery. These free humans, too, can jack into the Matrix, by lurking close under the surface world in their hovercraft. But when they do, they are ruthlessly hunted down by Agents of the Machines. One can die in the Matrix.

A Hovercraft Captain named Morpheus has heard a prophecy that there is one who can control the Matrix reality by will alone. Morpheus Summons Neo and explains the true state of affairs. He thinks Neo, a young man awakened from the illusion and brought from his pod into the real world, is The One.

Neo’s powers awaken, and the battle escalates, revealing complications. Along with humans and Agents of the Machines in the Matrix, there are free, sentient programs – Exiles – enjoying life as humans in the virtual world.

The Exiles are varied. The Oracle is benign, and guides Morpheus and other humans in their quest. The Merovingian, aka the Frenchman, is a sybaritic gangster, commanding a host of human-formed programs with powers like that of ghosts, werewolves and other supernatural entities.

Morpheus	The Oracle	The Merovingian

There’s also a wild card, Agent Smith. Instead of being destroyed by Neo in an epic confrontation, as he seemed to be, he has become an independent virus-like program who can replicate himself, and overwrite others -- a legion of lethal clones in sunglasses.

Neo encounters the crowning complexity when he meets the Architect, the program who designed the Matrix. The Architect reveals there were previous iterations of the Matrix that failed, and even previous Ones like Neo – and a bloody cycle of destruction and renewal of the Matrix, Zion and humanity is inescapable.

Neo won’t accept this. But first he saves the woman he loves, Trinity, from death, by spectacularly reaching into her torso and massaging her virtual heart back into pulsing life. Ironically, it is Neo’s capacity for love that makes him the mightiest warrior, the One.

The crisis is imminent. The Matrix is failing because of Agent Smith’s viral takeover of every individual in it. It’s cleansing, and the destruction of Zion by physical machines, is almost underway.

Neo does the impossible; he and Trinity break out of the underground and fly a hovercraft to the city of Machines on the surface world. He proposes a deal: he’ll defeat Smith, whose cancerous growth threatens all the Machines, in exchange for peace between the Machines and the free humans. The deal is struck.

Neo does destroy Smith, with an assist from the Oracle (who had allowed Smith to overwrite her with curious equanimity – what did she have up her sleeve?), in a battle worthy of ancient gods of the sky. The Matrix is saved. Zion is saved. The Machine Civilization is saved.

A truce is made – free humans (“Redpills”) can even awaken the sleepers (“Bluepills”), although too much of this would threaten the Matrix. It’s one of the ambiguities the Matrix films boldly allowed to stand. Another: Neo’s fate. He seems to have died in the battle with Smith. But the Machines do not return his corpse.

This disturbs some people, and their actions set the story of The Matrix Online in motion…

Posted by The Matrix Online Team