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

But Verne continued to dream.
Chapter Three
Somewhere in the late twenty-second or early twenty-third century
About two months after The Matrix
Onboard the Nebuchadnezzar
The hovercraft moved silently through the underground sewers.
Neo lay on his bed in the darkness of his cabin, listening to the quiet hum of the Nebuchadnezzar’s
engines and hoping that the storage compartment hanging over his bed would not decide to fall on him.
If you fall on me, I’ll bash you, he thought darkly. And I know kung fu, so I can probably bash you pretty
hard. Neo gave the wire frame of the storage compartment a warning look and then wondered why he
even bothered.
He rolled over in bed and stared at the metal wall, stained here and there with bits of grime, rust, and
who knew what else. Staring so intently at it made him feel a little uncomfortable, so he rolled back over
and tried once more to fall asleep.
He’d spent the better half of that day flying around inside the Matrix and freaking out the occasional
person who might spot him. Some time later, he had gone to get himself a cup of coffee from Starbucks
for no apparent reason other than the fact that he missed the beverage. So what if it wasn’t actually
real The taste of the drink was good enough for him; in fact, it had been so good that he’d bought
another cup. Unfortunately, Neo had overlooked one of the more common side effects of consuming
too much caffeine. Somehow he’d never thought that it would be an issue, what with the coffee not
being real and all that.
The mind makes it real, Morpheus had once said to him what, a month or two ago It felt much less
than that.
The mind makes it real. For some reason, Neo had always thought that that only applied to injuries,
death, and that sort of thing.
Apparently, though, that wasn’t the case.
So here he was now, suffering from insomnia because of too much digital-coffee-derived imaginary
caffeine in his system. It was kind of pathetic, when he came to think of it. Neo closed his eyes. “There
is no caffeine,” he thought aloud, waited a few seconds to let the words sink in, then opened his eyes
again. It didn’t seem to be working. He swore under his breath.
Maybe it would help if he walked around a little. Getting off the bed, Neo left his cabin and turned right
into the dimly lit corridor, running his fingers lightly against the wall, which soon turned out to be a
mistake for the walls were kind of greasy.
Several seconds later, he entered the mess hall, illuminated at this time by a single light near the food
dispensers. Ah, the wonderful food dispensers that dispensed the nutritious glop which the crew of the
Nebuchadnezzar had to eat three meals a day, twenty-four seven.
The mess hall was empty and devoid of any life forms, humans or otherwise. That is, unless you were
one of those people who believed the rumours that the aforementioned nutritious glop had a mind of its
own and came alive at night.
Neo missed real food. Then he realised that he’d never actually had real food before. Until he was
unplugged, he had been just another one of the many billions of humans jacked into the Matrix – living
off nutrients fed through tubes, with the occasional dead guy thrown into the mix. But at least he hadn’t
known back then that the slice of pepperoni pizza he was eating technically didn’t exist and was merely
an artificial construct of the Matrix.
Ignorance was bliss. Neo wondered what a real Big Mac would taste like. Two flame-grilled patties,
lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, on a sesame seed bun… Oh, great. Now he was hungry, and save for the
possibly alive stuff in the food dispenser – which was a rather unappetising option – there wasn’t
anything to eat.