What is the Matrix?
I'm going to tell you about the time I watched the world melt.
This isn't something I'd tell to just anyone. I've chosen you. I've taken you into careful consideration, weighed my options and tangents, and resolved that telling you will be, in the long run, the most prudent thing I may ever do. It will also, in all likelihood, be the most important you ever hear, so eyes up, ears open, and listen closely, because time is always against us.
It was hot that afternoon. Blazing heat. The kind of temperature that makes you want to hop into your *CENSORED* little excuse for an apartment freezer, curl up in a ball, and think about skinny dipping in a bubbling vat of liquid nitrogen. You can lean back in that squeaky old office chair that sits motionless in front of your computer along with you each and every day, day after endless day, on end. As you lean back, you can think about that vat, and in your mind's eye, it seems like the whole world is in that endless, vapor-ridden basin of swirling, vaguely-blue fluid. The back of your mind tells you that jumping in would kill you, sure, but it would sure cool you down nice and quick.
The only thing now is the decision. The choice. The time to decide if dying is worth that briefest moment of chill; that sudden jolt of the most Real joy you've ever felt. And on a b*tch of a scorcher day like this, no less.
B*tch...scorching day...the heat. It hits you full in the face like a thousand-ton mac truck; like some sort of giant and cruel, steel-lined impersonation of a clown mobile. There is no vat. There never was any nitrogen or relief. It's just you, your room, and that God d*mn sun outside that unmercifully open window.
That's exactly what that day was like.
I can distinctly remembering each individual rivulet of bloody sweat as it ran its way down my face and flesh. I felt like I was melting. Me. Nothing else. Just me. I was sure it was just me. At least, for awhile.
And then I wasn't so certain anymore. Maybe it wasn't just me. Maybe it all WAS melting. It would account for the temperature, I supposed as best I could. It was all so hot; my room like a furnace, and my computer desk like a baking pan. My sweat was in my eyes. D*mn it, that stung. I closed them and tried to relax, to calm down. To chill. Chill. If only.
Melting. Everything melting. Wouldn't that be a b*tch of a thing to see. I'd have to see it. I couldn't miss it.
I cracked an eye. I closed it and cracked it again. What the f*ck? It was melting after all. All my sh*t, my whole room, was running over itself like my sweat, with my sweat. I wouldn't believe it; I couldn't believe it, but I knew as soon as I thought that I knew that I was lying to myself. I did believe it. I had to. It couldn't be Real, but it had to be, all the same, because I could see it with my own two eyes. I could see the glass of my computer monitor liquefy and bubble as it ran out of its damp plastic frame like transparent mercury. I felt the cheap wood of the desk it sat precariously upon wet my knees as it sagged with the superheated, impossible onslaught of Reality as I knew it. I could see the walls swirl as they slowly pooled around me, as if they were bleeding themselves out. A part of my brain was telling me, practically screaming, that I should be amazed, but I turned around in my head and found that I wasn't. I had expected this to happen. Of course sh*t would melt; it was hot as f*ck out there today, and hotter than f*ck in here.
Oh f*cking Jesus ow, my legs. The skin on my legs. It was burning. I could smell it. I bolted upright and staggered back from my desk, my steaming pant legs trailing long, sticky strands of the boiling goop. I couldn't say anything. I didn't need to say anything. It was only me.
And then I saw the numbers. Sh*t, of course, it was all just numbers. And it all made so much SENSE. The plaster that dripped from the ceiling above me became strands of glowing green equations, shivering with static, as they splashed to the floor. As the numbers hit the vaporous mire that was rapidly spreading beneath the soles of my shoes, they spread into vast puddles of mathematics, and it looked like the floor was being made into gaping swiss cheese, and I could see the vast, endless tracts of information that ran below the surface of my world; my Reality.
I was not afraid.
I watched as the walls themselves finally splintered and collapsed into smoking heaps of ember-ridden slop that spooled away into spider web upon spider web of coded material, each strand of delicate, spun silk a glittering line of numeric data. I could see the City all around me, every nook, every alleyway, and every building, before those two, like my room before them, melted and liquefied away, until all that lay before me, behind me, all around me was endless black expanse. Well, not endless. But filled with more information than any one soul could ever hope to begin to add up and calculate given even a thousand lifetimes, a thousand thousand even.
I wasn't hot anymore. There wasn't any heat. It was all just a sequencing routine governing things in my head that told me either ‘you're hot' or ‘you're cold.'
And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw the man in the black suit standing with me, behind me, our green, digital world of endless loops and lines of code reflecting from the darkness of his sunglasses lenses.
"It's time you woke up, Dante," the man said, and he pulled me both to and from Reality. My Reality.
What is the Matrix?
The Matrix is a hot afternoon in front of your computer.
~V
I'm going to tell you about the time I watched the world melt.
This isn't something I'd tell to just anyone. I've chosen you. I've taken you into careful consideration, weighed my options and tangents, and resolved that telling you will be, in the long run, the most prudent thing I may ever do. It will also, in all likelihood, be the most important you ever hear, so eyes up, ears open, and listen closely, because time is always against us.
It was hot that afternoon. Blazing heat. The kind of temperature that makes you want to hop into your *CENSORED* little excuse for an apartment freezer, curl up in a ball, and think about skinny dipping in a bubbling vat of liquid nitrogen. You can lean back in that squeaky old office chair that sits motionless in front of your computer along with you each and every day, day after endless day, on end. As you lean back, you can think about that vat, and in your mind's eye, it seems like the whole world is in that endless, vapor-ridden basin of swirling, vaguely-blue fluid. The back of your mind tells you that jumping in would kill you, sure, but it would sure cool you down nice and quick.
The only thing now is the decision. The choice. The time to decide if dying is worth that briefest moment of chill; that sudden jolt of the most Real joy you've ever felt. And on a b*tch of a scorcher day like this, no less.
B*tch...scorching day...the heat. It hits you full in the face like a thousand-ton mac truck; like some sort of giant and cruel, steel-lined impersonation of a clown mobile. There is no vat. There never was any nitrogen or relief. It's just you, your room, and that God d*mn sun outside that unmercifully open window.
That's exactly what that day was like.
I can distinctly remembering each individual rivulet of bloody sweat as it ran its way down my face and flesh. I felt like I was melting. Me. Nothing else. Just me. I was sure it was just me. At least, for awhile.
And then I wasn't so certain anymore. Maybe it wasn't just me. Maybe it all WAS melting. It would account for the temperature, I supposed as best I could. It was all so hot; my room like a furnace, and my computer desk like a baking pan. My sweat was in my eyes. D*mn it, that stung. I closed them and tried to relax, to calm down. To chill. Chill. If only.
Melting. Everything melting. Wouldn't that be a b*tch of a thing to see. I'd have to see it. I couldn't miss it.
I cracked an eye. I closed it and cracked it again. What the f*ck? It was melting after all. All my sh*t, my whole room, was running over itself like my sweat, with my sweat. I wouldn't believe it; I couldn't believe it, but I knew as soon as I thought that I knew that I was lying to myself. I did believe it. I had to. It couldn't be Real, but it had to be, all the same, because I could see it with my own two eyes. I could see the glass of my computer monitor liquefy and bubble as it ran out of its damp plastic frame like transparent mercury. I felt the cheap wood of the desk it sat precariously upon wet my knees as it sagged with the superheated, impossible onslaught of Reality as I knew it. I could see the walls swirl as they slowly pooled around me, as if they were bleeding themselves out. A part of my brain was telling me, practically screaming, that I should be amazed, but I turned around in my head and found that I wasn't. I had expected this to happen. Of course sh*t would melt; it was hot as f*ck out there today, and hotter than f*ck in here.
Oh f*cking Jesus ow, my legs. The skin on my legs. It was burning. I could smell it. I bolted upright and staggered back from my desk, my steaming pant legs trailing long, sticky strands of the boiling goop. I couldn't say anything. I didn't need to say anything. It was only me.
And then I saw the numbers. Sh*t, of course, it was all just numbers. And it all made so much SENSE. The plaster that dripped from the ceiling above me became strands of glowing green equations, shivering with static, as they splashed to the floor. As the numbers hit the vaporous mire that was rapidly spreading beneath the soles of my shoes, they spread into vast puddles of mathematics, and it looked like the floor was being made into gaping swiss cheese, and I could see the vast, endless tracts of information that ran below the surface of my world; my Reality.
I was not afraid.
I watched as the walls themselves finally splintered and collapsed into smoking heaps of ember-ridden slop that spooled away into spider web upon spider web of coded material, each strand of delicate, spun silk a glittering line of numeric data. I could see the City all around me, every nook, every alleyway, and every building, before those two, like my room before them, melted and liquefied away, until all that lay before me, behind me, all around me was endless black expanse. Well, not endless. But filled with more information than any one soul could ever hope to begin to add up and calculate given even a thousand lifetimes, a thousand thousand even.
I wasn't hot anymore. There wasn't any heat. It was all just a sequencing routine governing things in my head that told me either ‘you're hot' or ‘you're cold.'
And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw the man in the black suit standing with me, behind me, our green, digital world of endless loops and lines of code reflecting from the darkness of his sunglasses lenses.
"It's time you woke up, Dante," the man said, and he pulled me both to and from Reality. My Reality.
What is the Matrix?
The Matrix is a hot afternoon in front of your computer.
~V
Not just for the writing ability but the weather in the story. The streets are buried in snow as of my writing this message. Blazing heat would be pretty cool- no pun intended- right about now but no dice.))