By Your Command

[terrycloth]

butterfluff suggested I write up what the plot of the third Matrix movie should have been. Today, it hit me -- and here it is. It has all the same action scenes, more or less, and a few new ones, but the plot makes more sense. IMO at least.

Neo, in the train station, talks with the Indian programs. “You mean this goes to the machine city?” “Yes, it’s a secret route they don’t know about. The Merovinchian uses it to smuggle programs out.”

Trainman arrives. “I make the rules here. I *built* this place!” Neo switches to Matrix-vision, and changes the rules. The trainman is defeated. “We’re going to the machine city.” Indian man is crushed: “But – but my daughter!” Neo: “I won’t let anyone hurt her.”

Meanwhile, Neo is in a coma, of course. Bane/Smith awakens and goes on murder spree. Trinity et al fight to keep him from killing off Neo. They succeed, and in the process Smith gives away where Neo is now. They go into the matrix to talk to the Merovinchian about getting him back. The Merovinchian refuses to help w/o unreasonable request. They get in a fight, and discover that the Merovinchian is working with Smith and is planning to send Smith to infect the machine world, in return for retaining his own independence, but his trainman is missing. Smith did not know that last bit of info, and betrays the Merov. Merov + cool mythicals + Trinity et. al. have to work together to escape from Smith Invasion – which sweeps over the dance club like a wave of infection ala 30 days later. They go to the Oracle to defend her against Smith, since if he gets her he’ll know too much.

Meanwhile, Neo/Trinity/Morpheus need to stay jacked in, so they do in Niobe’s disabled ship, while the other guy leads off some investigating sentinels on a race for Zion.

Zion is invaded! The sentinels’ lasers make short work of the fixed dock defenses, but the APUs are under cover instead of standing out on walkways asking to die, and are able to fall back to the next defensive position. Scene where infantry blows up driller to delay machine invasion goes here. Short reprieve, but it’s only a matter of time…

But Neo + trainman et al have reached the machine city – a weird virtual world that doesn’t obey any sane physical laws. Neo is The One, though, and with Hack-Fu fights off the defensive programs and sabotages the sentinel program – just as they break through to the temple. Now they have no lasers and just fly around aimlessly as they have no coordination, and are easy prey for the APUs, although there are still far too many of them.

Fleeing hovercraft discovers that the sentinels, which were previously arranging themselves in waves to defend against EMPs, are now ALL rushing too attack – which will work, because Zion has no EMPs! They were all sent out with the attack wave that Smith sabotaged! But THEY have an EMP…

Trainman and Cute Little Girl are suddenly taken over by smith clones, who located the access and ‘walked’ down it without a train. They start to invade the machine city… leaving Neo to wreak more havoc as the defenses turn to face the real threat. Neo is confused, until he sees the swarm of smiths boiling like locusts across the machine city network virtual reality. “Woah.”

Architect appears, and tells Neo that THIS is all his fault for not going to the source and rebooting the matrix! Now it’s too late, because Smith got out! Neo offers to help the architect defend the machines if they’ll agree to spare Zion. The architect laughs in his face, and tells him that there’s nothing he or anyone can do. Besides, Neo sabotaged the controls that would let him recall the sentinels – they’ll destroy Zion no matter what he agrees to. Neo, tries to stand by and watch as the Smiths spread, but seeing all the programs being converted, he thinks of the little girl and the other programs that didn’t seem like such bad folks, and goes to fight anyway.

Meanwhile, back in the Matrix, Smiths are everywhere, but the Oracle and Trinity are hidden. The Oracle tells Trinity that she’d hoped they wouldn’t have to use such a plan, which is why she didn’t suggest it earlier, but that the only way for Neo to defeat Smith now is to sucker him into trying to convert him, instead of killing him. Neo has the power to rewrite the code of whatever reality he’s in – including the code of the Smith Virus. Trinity ‘wakes up’ and walks over to where Neo is still in a coma. “I love you,” she says, “Please, please hear me, wherever you are. You have to lose…”

Neo, embroiled in a battle with Smiths in the zero-G glowy machine network wonderland, hears Trinity’s voice, because of his love for her… and while he’s saying “Trinity?” and is distracted, Smith beats him to the ground, and cackles maniacally, then gives a speech about how love is his downfall, and goes to convert him. Neo is dumped into a horrible black void where all the souls of the people and programs Smith has devoured are frozen in agonized portraits, and the same is happening to him… but he’s The One, and reverses the process, shattering all the bonds. Smiths everywhere start glowing and explode.

At the same time (switch back and forth between this paragraph and the previous), heroic mission to open the dock gate is launched through the swarm of sentinels, who are thankfully still stupid. Niobe pilots the other ship into the dock, just as THE WAVE OF DOOM of ALL the remaining sentinels swarms in. The ship is ripped apart piece by piece as it tumbles down the shaft towards the temple, and all the sentinels swarm around it… then the EMP fires, and the entire invading army is destroyed. Zion is literally buried in sentinel corpses.

Neo, meanwhile, is NOT dead – he’s all glowy and inhuman now, while all the other programs and people Smith formerly infected are now unconscious. The Original Smith is there, in Neo’s grasp. Neo absorbs him into his body. It’s over.

The Architect tells Neo that he saved the machines, and the matrix can continue since the compromised pods are now ‘clean’ – the instability is cleansed. The war will continue.

Neo threatens the architect – after all, he was able to fight off a threat that the machines were helpless against, and now has all Smith’s power as well as his own. End the war, and let anyone who wants to go free, or he’ll do a number on the machines too. The architect tells him that he could still kill everyone in the matrix, and that there’s nothing he can do to save Zion. Neo reinitializes the sentinel program, showing Zion’s victory, and tells the architect that humans aren’t as helpless as he thinks.

The oracle then appears, and tells the architect that he’s a fool – she’s won. Her pawns are victorious over his pawns, and besides – the instability in the matrix will always need an outlet, and most humans will always prefer to live in fantasy. The collective machine consciousness considers her words, and decides to give her primary authority over the matrix again, with the architect back in a secondary role. She tells Neo that the war is over, and he can go home now. The people he loves are waiting for him.

He wakes up, and he and trinity embrace. Something in the last scene gives away a bit of Smith’s mannerisms in Neo, as a final gotcha/cliffhanger. The end.