Part One (633 KB) - Whoa is (Not)

His breakfast seemed to be calling out to him. Eat me, it said. Eat me, Neo. I'm nutritious and healthy
and tasteless, and I'm all you're ever going to eat for the rest of your pitiful little life. And what's more,
there's nothing you can do about it. Hah. So there.
Neo stuck his spoon into the food and swirled it around. After a while he took up a spoonful of food, the
excess bits slopping off back into the bowl, and he brought it into his mouth.
The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions. If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating
runny eggs. Or a bowl of snot.
Neo swallowed. There was no need for chewing. Half-heartedly, he scooped up more of the nutrient
mix masquerading as his breakfast and mentally prepared his tastebuds for Round Two.
Tastee Wheat, the late Mouse had said. It tastes like Tastee Wheat.
Neo had never eaten Tastee Wheat before – technically, none of them had – but he was sure it tasted
better than this. If Tastee Wheat really tasted like this, then it wasn’t the least bit tasty. In general,
however, it seemed that the machines knew how to simulate good food in the Matrix.
Like the coffee. The blasted coffee that had kept him up all night. He didn't feel fully awake yet. Maybe
this was all a dream, he thought sleepily. Maybe he hadn't actually woken up yet, and when he did
wake up he'd have to eat breakfast all over again...
Or maybe he'd discover that everything that had happened in the past few days had just been one long
dream, and wake up back at his computer in the dingy little apartment that had been home for so long.
And everything would be normal again. He'd go to work, arrive late as usual, get yelled at by Mr.
Rhineheart, go to his cubicle and try to look busy, get dinner, go home, vegetate in front of his computer,
fall asleep, then wake up the next day and do it all over again. He'd have a social security number, he'd
pay his taxes, and he'd help his landlady carry out the garbage. No Agents chasing after him, nobody
expecting him to save the world on a diet of glop, no navigating the sewers in a hovercraft... and no
Trinity.
But he supposed that everything had a price to it.
Plop.
Neo looked up from his bowl to the others, picking away at their food with varying degrees of
enthusiasm and enjoyment, faces bathed in the eerie white light of the ship’s fluorescent lamps. No one
was talking. The only sounds in the mess hall were the quiet ones of eating and the ever-present hum
of the Nebuchadnezzar.
It was a surreal scene. And once again, Neo sensed it: that elusive feeling that he was being watched.
And not only him, but all of them.
Uneasily, he scanned the top of the wall in front of him. He wasn't too sure what he expected to find –
cameras, perhaps – but there was nothing.
Neo went back to staring at his food and reluctantly consumed another two spoonfuls. Vaguely, he
found himself thinking that anyone who wanted to lose weight should spend a week or two in the real
world. No delicious, scrumptious eatables here to tempt you. Just your average gooey white stuff, take
it or leave it.
Plop.
Neo gently shook the now half-empty spoon a second time, and another lump of food fell off to land in
the bowl beside the first. They looked like two eyes. He used the spoon and drew a little mouth
underneath them, forming a smiley face of sorts.
A rare grin flicked briefly across Neo's face.
The food was alive, it had a mind of its own...
Stop it, said the little voice in his head. You're thirty-seven years old, for crying out loud. Stop playing
with your food and eat it up.
But... he protested silently.