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It’s a quiet Saturday morning when Neo comes up behind Trinity sitting at their little kitchen table. She’s reading the menu of this week’s upcoming rations, imagining what they will cook together. Like in Zion, there are always the standard mushrooms, but that’s where the comparison ends. She’s still thrilled by the novelty of receiving generous portions of green vegetables, and she savors the small quantities of fresh fruit with equal gratitude.
He presses his lips behind her ear and she stops reading.
“I hate to ask this,” he says, “but—“
She sighs as he nuzzles into her neck. She slips a hand into his hair that’s just long enough to be silky. Perfect for running her fingers through.
“But you told Berg you would go,” she says, trying for annoyed but ending up more breathy.
He nods into her hand and kisses down her neck.
“And you want me to go with you.”
“I wasn’t gonna ask. I know how you feel about them.”
“I feel…” but she loses her train of thought as he slips a hand over her breast, her stomach, and onto her thigh. Her eyes close and she waits to find out what he’ll do next.
After a few beats during which he doesn’t touch her anymore, she feels him take her hand. She opens her eyes. He crouches beside her chair and looks up at her, a question in his doleful eyes.
“I thought it would be a nice outing,” he says. “But I don’t want to push you.”
She knows she’s been spending a lot of time in their room. Besides needing more rest than she thought possible, it’s felt easier to read about IO than to get out and explore it.
Maybe she’s ready.
Plus, he’s giving her that goofy little grin she can’t deny. He whispers, “I might need some backup if they start to come on too strong, though.”
“All right,” she says, squeezing his hand.
He lets out a grateful exhale and stands to kiss her forehead. “Thank you.”
“You’ll make it up to me later.”
“Oh, I will.”
The roughness in his voice sends a thrill to her core. A promise of more pleasure to come.
She can do this.
They stroll hand in hand through the walkways of IO. Whereas Zion was a giant cylinder with all the living and working areas curving around the central core, IO is composed of many vertical towers spread out under the bio-sky. They had maps downloaded when they arrived, but Berg also dropped off a little hand-drawn card yesterday. It was like an official invitation, complete with a map to the Neoologist headquarters.
Neo holds the card up as they walk, turning it to orient to the direction they’re facing. She finds him impossibly cute when he’s puzzled. Then his face clears and he points towards a tower about a quarter mile away. She smiles and squeezes his hand.
“What do you think they’ll be like?” Neo asks.
Trinity imagines a stuffy basement room with scattered bean bag chairs, card tables, and snack bags. Everyone who got unplugged is some kind of nerd, but she imagines these guys as the nerdiest of them all. In her mind they fulfill every stereotype of a high school Dungeons and Dragons or LARPing group, complete with costumes and voices and re-enactments.
“Probably dressed like your old RSI and practicing saying ‘Whoa.’” She smirks.
“Come on. Give them some slack,” he says, but he grins back. They’re always in on the joke together.
“Well, I wouldn’t know. No one is out there worshipping me,” she says with the same smirk.
“Don’t be too sure about that.”
She leans in and whispers, “You’ll see to that, right?”
“Mmmm,” says Neo and wraps an arm around her waist.
It’s a little slower to walk this way, but they’re in no rush. She looks out over the agricultural fields spreading below the walkway. She’s still getting used to seeing so much green here, yet her body feels an easy connection to the nature. There must be a cellular memory that somehow survived generations in pods to lead humans back to growing their own food. It’s pretty amazing to consider.
She and Neo may be able to manipulate reality in the Matrix, but they’re still bound to the basic biological needs of light and food.
“I hope they don’t give you any more spoons,” she sighs. “We really don’t need them.”
He throws his head back and laughs at that. They walk in silence for a while and it feels easy and light.
“Thanks for coming with me,” he says and squeezes her fractionally closer.
She thinks about how much she would have hated this mission, in the before times. How much she has had to let go of the sense of urgency that used to fuel her days. How dealing with her teenagers possibly made her feel a little more prepared for this.
Parenting teenagers in the modern age is a very different skill set than that of a soldier. It turns out the main thing is letting the kids just be. They might be loud and obnoxious at times or sullen and withdrawn at others. But if she waited them out, they would usually come around and share something perceptive with her. If she tried to push them, she would get nothing.
Thinking of the children she had raised brings up surprisingly little pain. Maybe in this moment—feeling so grounded, walking beside Neo, their faces warmed by the bio-sun —she’s experiencing a temporary separation from the aching sadness of her imprisonment. Or maybe, after two months, she is starting to integrate into her new, free life. It’s been such a short time and yet she feels surprisingly close to finding her balance here.
There is still so much to process, but she lets a small bud open in her heart, the start of a feeling that could, if she squints past the minefield of memories, be happiness.
They find the right tower and take the elevator up to the seventh floor. Out of habit, they smirk at each other as the doors close and they find themselves in an empty elevator. But they resist the urge to make out. Maybe on the way down.
They arrive at a red door. There’s a symbol on it.
“Is that—?“ Trinity asks.
“Yeah, it is,” Neo sighs and looks at his shoes instead of at the door knocker, which is a spoon shaped into the number 1.
Trinity runs a hand down her face.
“This is it,” he says, pitching his voice low for dramatic effect.
“No turning back?” She asks, matching his mock solemnity.
“I’m afraid not,” he responds in kind with the hint of a smile.
In that moment, she loves him fiercely. It’s an absurd and giddy feeling to love someone so much over such mundane things. She lets it wash over her, grounding her before they walk into… whatever this is.
He knocks on the door—with his knuckles—she notices, not touching the spoon.
When the door opens, he holds his hand against her back and keeps it there as they walk into the room. She’s grateful for the steady pressure.
Berg shows them into a small meeting room with a circle of comfortable furniture. Seq is there and gives each of them a big hug. They shake hands with the two other members: construct engineer Ranessa, and an archivist DI named, of all things, Roger (Trinity carefully avoids meeting Neo’s eyes after that intro).
They all look pretty normal, actually, and greet her with genuine warmth. She takes a breath and reminds herself that people like these are the reason Neo is here and, by extension, why she is here.
She and Neo sit on a loveseat and sip at a drink which is sparkling and pleasantly floral. It would’ve sold well in San Francisco.
She blinks away that disorienting thought and looks around the room. Unfortunately, that turns out to be another strange, time-warping experience.
The walls are collaged in posters of Neo, the Neb crew, and even a young Niobe. Some are hand drawn with considerable skill. Others look like marketing materials (from the video game?) that feature full-body RSIs posed over a white background like the Construct. Disconcertingly, the images cut off the heads just above the mouths. Matrix advertising at its best: without a brain, you can’t realize you’re trapped.
Technology relics lay scattered across every surface, most of which she recognizes as being from around the time Neo was first unplugged. 3-D printing technology must have come a long way since Zion. She can’t quite process the strangeness, so she returns her focus to the people instead.
“Sooo…” asks Ranessa, leaning forward, eyes sparkling. “What do you think of IO?”
“It’s great,” says Neo. “I can’t believe the food here is so good. If I’d’ve known, I would’ve unplugged sooner.”
The group laughs generously at his nervous quip.
He glances at her for approval.
“Mmm-hmm,” she agrees with a small smile and a raise of her glass. This is his show.
“Uh, so, thank you for having me. Us…” Neo says and squeezes Trinity’s thigh. “What did you want to know?”
“Aside from everything you mean?” says Roger. When everyone laughs, his particles ripple with amusement.
His humor has the desired effect: the room feels more relaxed now. Trinity finds herself warming up to them.
The Neoologists lob him some easy questions: what was it like in the ‘99 version of The Matrix, where was his favorite noodle shop, and how many people did they free that first summer?
As the conversation flows, Trinity leans back comfortably, now keeping her own steadying hand on Neo’s back.
Then the conversation turns to the reset. She sits up and takes Neo’s hand.
“We know the Architect gave you a false choice between saving Zion and saving Trinity.” Berg takes a significant breath. “We think you two started to come into your power as The One at that time.”
She and Neo exchange glances. “Oh?” she asks.
“We might be called Neoologists, but we subscribe to the two-as-One theory,” Berg explains. “From what we’ve read, there’s long been inklings that the anomaly was never just one person.” Berg passes a meaningful look from Neo to Trinity.
“Of course, this only became clear in hindsight,” Roger adds. “It took many years of study to put together all the pieces, analyze the unprecedented events, and start to understand the power you both hold. We think perhaps the Oracle may have known. But unfortunately she’s not here to ask.”
Trinity tucks this information away for later. There’s so much she doesn’t know.
“Obviously, no one can do what you two can,” says Seq. “But what we’ve also been working to understand is the impact of your story.”
He’s too polite to interrupt, but Neo leans back and makes a little “huh” noise, which Trinity recognizes as disbelief. There’s even discouragement written in the knot of his brow.
“I don’t know if you fully realize what it meant for you to reach 01 and broker a deal to help the synthients,” Berg says gravely.
“That was long before your time. How do you know all this?” Neo asks.
“A combination of Zion and synthient archives, General Niobe’s oral history, and—I’m sorry to say it—your game.”
“Not just the game,” Seq continues, “even though that has freed a lot of people.”
“Not to mention it helped us find you,” Berg adds.
Seq sits up quickly to say, “We know it was a horrible time for you. But we’re actually kind of grateful that you were just as obsessed with your past as we were. In fact, that’s how we located and freed this one,” Seq wraps an arm around Berg, who blushes. He presses a kiss to Berg’s temple and continues, “When we got access to the game, we cross-referenced the narrative with our archives to figure out if it was just coincidence or if it really was you. It helped us find you and also filled in a lot of gaps.”
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Neo says, “but that game came out more than six years ago.”
Trinity’s heart beats sharply at the way Neo’s voice pitches deeper when he’s being careful of both the other person and his own closely-guarded pain.
“Or maybe more,” he continues, more to himself. “I’m not sure how many resets there were.”
Trinity breathes deeply to stay present in the room. She squeezes Neo’s hand. It’s so easy to fall down that rabbit hole of wondering how many years they lost.
“We were working on it most of that time,” Ranessa says gently. “It took a while to verify all the sources.” She pauses and frowns, “Plus the General, well, she kinda put up a lot of road blocks.”
“That’s an understatement,” says Roger.
“I know she wasn’t happy with Bugs when we first got here,” Neo says. “I’ll bet jailbreaking me didn’t help.”
Berg and Seq share a knowing look and a small laugh.
“What made her agree to get me out?” Trinity asks, having forgotten she was going to let Neo do the talking.
There is a moment of surprised silence after she speaks. Perhaps Tiff would have felt embarrassed to be put on the spot, but Trinity levels her best second-in-command gaze at each of them until someone speaks up.
Only Neo holds her gaze. He clears his throat and says, “I told you how Sati called in Niobe and me to share her plan. Niobe changed her mind after Sati apologized for keeping us a secret.”
Trinity feels a flush of anger and grief scorch up her chest. She tries to keep her voice even but it comes out steely. “Sati knew about us? The entire time?”
“She said she wanted to see IO built,” Neo says quietly.
Trinity stands up. “I’m sorry, I need to step out.”
She can feel all eyes on her as she strides out the door.
Outside on the catwalk, she leans against the metal wall. That betrayal burns brightly. She takes a few breaths, willing the blaze in her chest to become a simmer.
She thought this would be a silly fan convention, just some nerds fawning over Neo. She didn’t expect to be sideswiped by the idea that someone knew—had known for years, possibly decades—that they were trapped and did nothing to get them out.
They could have had this for so much longer. IO. Each other.
She looks out across the city to ground herself. It is beautiful, in a bizarre, undersea kind of way. Almost as if there should be fish floating by. She lets her eyes unfocus, tries to think of nothing.
After a minute, Neo appears at her side. He presses into her gently, shoulder to shoulder, mirroring her posture. She tries to regulate her breathing to match the steady rise and fall of his arm against hers.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says.
“It’s all right,” she says at last. “I don’t think I wanted to know.”
He finds her hand and entwines their fingers.
“Do you want to leave?”
“No,” she says, resolute. Any recent flashes she’s had of Tiffany’s fears have only made her more committed to being herself. And The Trinity doesn’t run away just because the truth is uncomfortable.
She looks up at Neo, catches his beautiful eyes. She’s about to say something more, but he squeezes her hand and she knows. He understands.
They go back in and sit down. It’s quiet, but in a spacious way. They’re making room for her and all that this revelation means.
It’s a small mercy that feels so unexpectedly good it hurts. She clenches and opens her fists a couple times, searching for release.
“We’re not the same people we were back then,” Neo says simply.
She doesn’t know how he does it, the way he sits with an idea long enough to distill it down to its essence and the few syllables needed to express it. She’s not a talkative person, but sometimes she feels like it in comparison.
“No,” she agrees. “We’ve lived so many lives at this point.” She laughs a little, though it’s anything but funny. “Even though we’ve already been out before, it’s like we’re foreigners in the real world. There’s so much we don’t know about our own history.”
She can’t rationally say why she trusts them with this vulnerability. She’s feeling out how much they can hold, these knowledge keepers. It’s proving to be a lot more than she expected. Maybe they do see her and Neo beyond the legends. Or at least they’re willing to learn.
“Maybe we can help? Supply some of the missing pieces?” Roger offers.
Trinity looks at the four sitting across from her, each of them nodding encouragingly. She takes a deep breath. “I think I’d like that. Some other time, though.”
“Of course,” Roger agrees.
“Thank you,” she says.
“So. The game,” Neo offers with a hint of that cocky smile.
The whole room leans subtly forward. Trinity leans back.
It’s like Neo could tell she had used up the last bit of her conversational steam. The way he always knows when to rescue her. Once again, she is suffused with gratitude, warm as the sun.
“I think I was just as obsessed with my past as you all seem to be. I couldn’t think about the present, or even imagine the future. I was haunted, driven in a way I hadn’t been since I was searching for Morpheus, before I even knew what the Matrix was. I thought if I could recreate my experiences, then they would be real, even though everything in that world tried to convince me they weren’t.”
Trinity remembers to close her mouth around the awe that has taken her over. She and Neo have talked a little about these things over the past few months, but there is still something amazing about him sharing his feelings so openly. She can feel the sadness radiating off of him.
“It was pretty good marketing, right?” Neo continues, trying for levity. “Keep people in the Matrix by playing a game about the Matrix.”
“Thankfully it didn’t work so well,” says Seq.
“How did you…?” Neo asks, looking at Berg.
“I found it through my brother,” Berg says. “He and his friends thought it was cool, so I did too. They lost interest when the sequels came out. Said they weren’t as good as the original. As always, I was the odd one out. But I got drawn deeper into the story as it became more complex. I hung out in some subreddits and Discord servers with other fans, trying to piece together the subtext and the truth. It meant everything to me at a time when nothing else in my life made sense.”
“We lurked in those forums to see who might be Redpills,” explains Seq.
“And they weren’t the ones who called themselves Redpills,” Berg adds with disdain.
“I know,” Neo says, shaking his head slowly as if he could encompass in one gesture all his regret for the unfortunate subcultures that developed around the game.
“Morpheus—DI Morpheus—said some people here thought,” he glances at Trinity with an unreadable expression, “they thought I was in league with the ma— with the ones who made the Matrix.”
Once again, Trinity has to school her surprised expression. Having been there for it all, it’s unfathomable. Absurd even.
“Is it because of The Oracle? Did other people know she was a program?”
“Ah yes, I can answer that one,” says Roger. “The disappearance of the Oracle was partly to blame. Even though Morpheus became the leader of Zion, his stance as a believer in the Prophecy was called into question when no one could consult the one who made the prophecies. With the arrival of the synthients, evidence started to build up that Zion was another level of control—an extension of the Matrix. This led to even more skepticism about the Oracle and another group diverged. But Morpheus had been right enough times for many people to follow him. Not to mention that he promised peace and they’d had enough war for a lifetime. He said that’s what you did, Neo, you brought peace. No one knew exactly what happened, since you didn’t come back, but the peace did last.”
Neo and Trinity take a moment to look at each other, holding a gaze that speaks volumes about the pain of that final journey and the realization that no one really knew what they had done. They alone had reached the sky above the clouds, had crash-landed in the machine city, had brokered a deal to end the war.
Trinity gets up and moves to the window. She needs to ground herself in the present again, in this current timeline where they survived. But, as usual, her need for answers wins out over the pain of the past.
“And the people of IO, how do they feel about us now?” she asks to the window, but her steely voice carries.
There is a shuffling behind her and she turns to see the Neoologists all standing, watching her.
“Let’s go on a walk,” Ranessa says and heads for the door.
Neo holds out his hand and they fall into step behind the others.
There is a mural that spans the entrance to the Shrine to Zion’s True Believers. It depicts historical scenes that flow together as though in a dream. From the Second Renaissance to the founding of Zion to Neo and Trinity freeing hundreds of minds before reaching 01.
They take in the images as they walk along, Trinity holding Neo’s hand and skimming the fingertips of her other hand along the smooth painted rock, pausing to touch the image of them aboard the Logos. The Neoologists walk a respectful distance behind them.
Across the opening to the temple, the story continues in the other direction, as if leading the way out of the past: the sentinels leaving Zion, Morpheus speaking to the people and the newly arrived synthients, the synthient war, the trek to IO, and the building of a new community. In the last scene, the bio-sun shines across a lush garden tended by human, synthient, and DI Ionites. It’s pastoral and hopeful and Trinity can’t take her eyes off the golden glow of the sun.
Neo comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist.
“Look. We’re just one part in the middle of the story,” he says next to her ear. She can hear the relief in his voice.
She feels it in her chest, too. Like the sun melting away the expectations she had been holding onto too tightly.
It is a comfort to see their history laid out like this.
She remembers being a kid and looking up at the stars in the night sky. That feeling of being so small somehow made her feel better, like she was free to just exist, to explore and find out what she wanted, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else.
Maybe that’s how they can live now: just two people in a city of thousands. A place that has been flourishing without them and will continue to do so. They can live for themselves, just one small part of a long history of resistance and resilience.
Back in their room, as soon as they close the door, they begin undressing each other slowly, reverently, and without words. Their bodies need touch and holding after their minds and hearts were sent through the ringer of the past.
It feels as if they’ve stumbled out of a whirlpool and must get their bearings the only way they know how: by connecting to each other.
Neo slips the shirt off of Trinity’s left shoulder and kisses along the soft flesh between her bones and around her plugs. Her head tips back as his mouth works a trail of heat down to her breast. The fabric prevents his mouth from reaching her skin, but his hand coming from under the shirt finds her breast and massages until she gasps.
Giving in to the sensations, she begins to lose her balance. He huffs out a satisfied breath when she tips into his chest. She lets him support her weight as his one hand continues its perfect ministrations on her breast and the other strokes up and down her back. The sensation soothes and ignites her at the same time.
Her face against his shoulder, she breathes him in. Her fingers dig into his waist under his shirt like it’s the only thing tethering her to land.
“Neo,” is all she can say.
“Trinity,” he says and it means everything—all their looks that afternoon coalesced into a single sound. Or the other way around: one word that stands in for so much they haven’t yet been able to feel. All the private pieces of their history that will never be painted on any mural.
The way they chose their fate together before boarding the Logos.
The way they were a united front even against Bane and a wall of sentinels on their flight.
The way he never stopped believing in her.
All these moments flash through her mind, an unbidden slideshow, as Neo lays her down on the bed and covers her body with his.
They move together like waves. Her brain continues to bring up memories, images from other places and times. The gorgeous rhythm of Neo’s panting into her neck brings her back to the present. All she can feel—and all she wants to feel—is them. The memories are like sand castles, washed away in the rising tide of so much liquid heat between them, connecting them and urging them ever closer.
She is suffused with a light that breaks her open and then mends her back together.
She exhales deeply, coming back to herself among the minor wreckage of entangled limbs beginning to tingle with lack of blood flow. Neo, melted into her side, hums against her chest, reverberating contentment around her ribs and through her heart.
Perhaps this is the way to start healing past wounds: by rewiring her circuitry with pleasure in the present time. Driving out all the devastation and replacing it with hope.
They have that chance now, and damn it, they will take it.