My take on it - at the beginning, Neo is plugged in to the Matrix. When he takes the blue pill, it triggers the “death” routine. I imagine when humans plugged in to the Matrix die, the routine treats their avatars as “body” objects.
But then Neo gets the implants removed, like the others who were rescued. When he jacks in later, he is plugging in to the Matrix - they are projecting their own simulation into the computer’s network. So the avatars appear out of nowhere, and disappear when they leave, because they are inserted objects, not native objects.
They are injecting code into the existing network and firmware, so the rules are different.
Oh, so are you saying that, when you first unplug your residual self or avatar dies and then whenever you hack in you’re using a different avatar than you were originally using? If so, I can see that.
I actually wrote a term paper for Professional Sales using The Matrix. I explained how the first 45 minutes or so of the film was nothing but a sales call. I related each of the 7 steps to the film.
There was a point just after the paper, that I swore I would never watch the movie again. EVER AGAIN. One can only watch the Pill scene so many times.
I got an A+ on the paper [Tied for highest grade in the class on the paper.]
Since then, I’ve watched Scanners and had other concepts hit me just right as to watch the movie again.
And with the questions here today. Looks like I will be doing it again.
Its just hard to believe I know that much of it to hold down a convo here.
I don’t play MMOs, but doesn’t what we see in Matrix match with what we get in MMOs?
If you just plain yank the ethernet cord…poof, you vanish.
If you die, you leave behind a corpse.
Part of the purpose of the Matrix is to make people think it’s real. Therefore, when playing by the rules dead people have to leave behind a corpse. If they didn’t, that wouldn’t make a believable world.
The Matrix is designed to keep up the illusion, so once your brain is gone, the matrix keeps your body data around.
It looked like the plue pill triggered some sort of controlled “logoff” routine. Remember Neo started to get absorbed by some sort of mercury-looking liquid?
The Agent survives. Don’t know about the human. It did look like everything was returned to normal after Agent Smith was defeated. So presumably the process didn’t kill everyone and everything Smith took over.
We don’t really ever find out, but when a Blue Pill dies in the Matrix they might just respawn with no memory of their death or previous life. I mean there is really no reason why you would have to be your same age, race, height or even sex in the Matrix as you are in real life.
I don’t think this was clearly explained or explored. An agent can take over any avatar, but when they do, what happens to the “person”? Does that person go into sleep mode, until the Agent is done and gives them back their avatar? Because I would think having the person be aware of being taken over would break the Matrix for them, and leave them with residual doubts.
So let us take this further. One way it could work - the person is put to sleep until the Agent is done, then wakes up in their body with some memory loss, or gets reinserted into a “logical” place, like waking up in bed with a weird dream. Since the Agent took over the existing avatar, but not the consciousness behind it, if the Agent dies, the subroutine could still be working to plug the person back in at an appropriate place with his own avatar. It would make sense that the Agent takeover routine includes code to safe the person for continued use as a battery/processor.
Further leading to the question of what happens when a normal dies. I guess since the body experiences what the avatar does, death in the Matrix is likely to result in death outside the Matrix. But with the Agent takeover routine, the avatar could be separated from the body behind it, thus preventing that body from being wasted.
Or they could not care, and the underlying body is still tied to the Avatar, and death to the Avatar the Agent is using kills the host. Now that I think about it, I think we see this happen.
Yeah, that’s essentially it. They make new Avatars, and dress them up with new gadgets and gizmos and weapons and outfits, then insert them into the Matrix.
Yeah, didn’t fully recall the scene, but you are correct. Still, it triggers the same routines as death - the human body is disconnected and ejected. I think the point of the liquid metal is a forced “erase Avatar” routine, because killing the avatar would likely be fatal to the host.
Well, if they are using the wetware memory of the brain for the person’s identity, then resetting that is going to be a lot trickier than just deleting bits here and there. I don’t think the people are blank slates to work with. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so difficult to create a believable Matrix, they wouldn’t have had such problems that led to the current version. I suppose if you had been given a black avatar even though your body was Chinese, you could be brought up in the Matrix thinking of yourself as Black and experiencing that life. But once to that state, I think it would be more difficult to rewrite to a new identity.
Cipher was in the Matrix, having dinner. I’ve been thinking about this, and if I was to make a contact outside of my organization, which I have in various D&D games, I’d do exactly something like this. I’d set up a system wherein I professed a love of fine foods, and ask to go to the Matrix as often as I could, and eat dinner at the same restaurant. I’d do this for weeks, or as long as I thought I could, and then when I made my contact, I’d do it at exactly that restaurant.
IRL I’d be eating dinner at the same restaurant, just like always. Perhaps Cipher did this, and then eventually they just stopped paying close attention to him. He was kind of a whiner - maybe people just avoided him. If he was smart, it could have all been a persona from the beginning.
Think about it - the real world is a goddamned nightmare. The Matrix is where all the acutally pleasant stuff is. I suspect there’s a hell of a lot of Matrix R&R going on - as long as they aren’t doing anything I expect they can remain under the radar of the machines. After all, they are ‘hacking’ the Matrix.
Well, it would be safer to write their own programs and run them in the training environment where Neo first practices. But that means needing skill at coding, or getting the squirrely kid to do it, and then you have to tell him what you want.
Hell, maybe the machines know. In the end it all turned out to be planned, anyway. Maybe the machines were under orders to ignore them until the One came along, except for minimally bothering them to let them know the threat was OMG REAL…
oooo, here is a fucked up thought. If that is the case, and everything is planned, maybe they put the memory of meeting with the Agents into Cipher’s head before he ever became unplugged, to trigger after some time, when it was right for the ‘revolution’. Maybe he never even met with them…
Not really. Remember, they could simulate the Matrix on their own computers - see the “jump” program, or Mouse offering a little downtime with the lady in red on the side. So you wouldn’t really have to jack into the Matrix just to have dinner, you could do it on the ship, by yourself.
Of course, you’d still be hungry afterwards, and you’d know that it wasn’t real. Which was Cipher’s point.
Well, I’m of the opinion that all the original people have long since died, so the computers have some sort of a breeding or cloning process to ensure they maintain their body counts. So they are growing new fetuses and inserting them into the Matrix as babies to be “raised by their parents”. Every human in the Matrix is experiencing a life just like our real world one. They start as a newborn, and grow their brains through the experiences in the Matrix. They have some sense of their demographics with respect to their age.
But you have a valid point that it is amusing that Neo looked exactly like his real world body when there is no reason he must have (other than, of course, movie logistics). Unless the computers use sensors inside the pods to provide inputs for their avatar generation?
But that wouldn’t help him, now would it? And it doesn’t answer the question of how he got into the Matrix. No, I think they were regularly hacking the Matrix for their own downtime. It’s human nature. And he took advantage of it.
Why not? Hell, they might have mastered genetics to the point where they can extrapolate what they would look like based on their DNA, and then edited for what happens in the Matrix.
What about people with some condition, whether it’s something like being fat or having MS? Is their meat body fat? Do the machines just pump some hot fudge into the meat bodies until they match the Matrix perception? Do they get spit out of their pod with MS?
Hell, if you lose an arm in the Matrix do the machines chop off your arm inside your pod? I’d guess not, why bother? It’s not like they expect you to ever actually leave the Matrix. Unless they’re OCD, which I could actually see machines being.