My impression is that the matrix keeps the average time in the late 20th century.
First of all, if the matrix was rebooted to 1899, then there would be a major time shift people would have to deal with anyway. All living adults would have to go mentally from living in one perod of time to another.
Plus, we have seen Neo wake up in the middle of the night after his interogation- time shifted there. Plus theres things like deja vu etc.
I was thinking about this when the first movie came out, before I even knew about previous 6-8 Matrices and I came to the conclusion that time must be used in the same way as a stage is used in a play.
Time moves forwards, day after day- but civilization and history are static.
This virtual reality is set in the late 20th century - always. Specifics are kept out of it. There is no need to recreate every historical reference, because as far as the people jacked into it, they wouldnt know really if you used the same world history every day over and over for each day or not- because the robots have the means to control history and even alter it if they wish and the people would know no differently. Not that people do the same things over and over again, just that history has no necessary significance for them. They will judge time by milestones like "thats when I was married", " thats when my son was born", "remember how sick she was that year?" but it would all be set in a present day so vague that it never has to age. They dont need to be told information concerning progression of civilization- their time is an illusion anyway.
Time still goes forwards- synchronized with Zion, but HISTORY can be repeated or manipulated otherwise. The operators might be able to notice "whoa- the matrix just skipped ahead an hour" or " "look at the coding- the matrix jumped back a whole week!"
I dont know if what I wrote is understandable, but thats what I thought before seeing Reloaded. Or hearing about the comic withthe guy reliving 1975 over and over. I think it still makes sense. They say the pinacle of human civilization- that says to me that history doesnt need to go back 100 years just because thats how old the Matrix is, because the Matrix can create the civilization and timeperiod as they want it to be.
This is a really good thread. Something new and interesting of MwM v. Zion is real. Thank goodness. And just for impact, the guy in GOLIATH lived out his "last" life in like 16 minutes in the spaceship. The last line, as read by his wife reading letters he left after his "short life because very tall people live short lives, was: "The last 16 minutes have been the best years of my life."
Forty, fifty years in 16 minutes. Crazy stuff.
I wonder also how big the population of the Matrix Earth actually is. Operators like Link only make vague references to location and that seems to be enough. "You won't believe this but you're all the way up in the mountains. The city is such and such miles away.." or something along those lines. THE city.. and it ALWAYS seems to be the same city. ARE there other cities? I hope this isn't all off-topic, but I figure a 100-year long simulation, if in fact lasting for 100 REAL years, would be easier to maintain in a deceptively small Matrix-Earth with a unnoticeably small population.
BTW, I believe Ghost makes a direct reference to Nietzche (sp?) in Enter the Matrix. If the past 100 years of the Matrix werent simulated and are all vague references to.. stuff, then how does he know about that historical figure? Let us also not forget about the historical images in the Architect's room..
Dunno.. all confusing .. someone take it from here.
Thank you Static Age for the perfect explanation. I kept trying to explain this, but not very well. It's probably always 1999 or there abouts. Time is an illusion, even for us. Has anyone ever lived in a time that wasn't now? Its always now. Time doesn't exist and in the Matrix they can do anything with it, as well as memories, knowledge, anything. Real has very little meaning in the Matrix. Static is right, we just walk around on a stage we call time. And in the Matrix where the AI are constantly playing around with the humans' brains and perceptions of their lives we really can't relate it to a real world.
Neo:I just thought, um...you were a guy.
Trinity:Most guys do
Maybe that's also an explanation for why it is possible for the Agents to take over the bodies of people still jacked into the matrix. They just suspend time for them, or something like that. Maybe a deeply severe daydream...
There's a topic I haven't yet discussed... What happens to the people who are taken over by Agents? Further, WHY do the Agents have to commandeer a human avatar in the matrix? Does that mean that the Oracle, Seraph, Mero and his gang, Persephone, and the Keymaker all took over human avatars? Well, I'd argue that by saying that the Keymaker died, and his appearance didn't revert back into a human avatar, so it's doubtful that those programs have to commandeer a body. Why then, do the Agents have to?
I'd say that the agents have to take over a human body because that gives them the freedom to morph in and out and go wherever they want very quickly, as opposed to the Oracle and Keymaker, who have to resort to conventional means of travel.
And I always thought that humans automatically died when taken over by an agent, but ETM convinced me otherwise - a security officer was taken over by an agent, and he took a plane flight (I think) somewhere else. Once the agent felt his job was done there and his current mission was secure, he morphed back out, and the security officer was back, saying things like "Man, I don't even know how I GOT here". So it seems like people only die in the rare instances of an agent getting their body killed, and also probably when Smith replicates to them (because that replication is permanent - he doesn't plan on morphing back out of their bodies).
Well, I think that the Smith issue may be debatable due to how things played out with Bane. We know that if the mind is killed, then the body is too, but Bane obviously didn't have enough of a change in his vitals when Smith replicated into Bane. Maybe Bane isn't dead, just moved out of the way, like the other people who get morphed into by agents.
Well, the body was still alive because it still had a mind, but this time, it was a different mind - Smith's. I'd say that Bane's consciousness is something to the effect of being suspended permanently - which would probably mean the death of his true mind...or maybe there *is* a way to bring him back?
I read a comic called 'Wrong number' in the comics section of the Matrix web site, by vince evans.
(spoiler ahead)
It's about a chick that is running from agents and needs an exit. Turns out a phone dude is putting in a phone in a building right by her and an exit opens up.
To make a long story short, an agent morphs into the phone dudes body at the end and blows out the brains of the woman who is trying to get out.
Then the agent leaves and the body morphs back into the phone guy and he is like, "what happened?"
Until this comic, the only people I had seen morphed back were dead cops with bullets holes in their heads that the agents left when they got shot.
So, now we see that if the human host is not killed by a bullet or something, they wake up after the agent leaves and just have amnesia and a loss of time.
This seems to back up what Unreal mini me found in Enter the Matrix with the security gaurd on the plane.
As for Bane, it might be possible that he is still in that head of his somewhere asleep, with Agent Smith at the helm.
Just a thought, might be stupid, but maybe Bane is awake in there somehow and that's why he was cutting himself with the knife. No....that would be too silly, like Jekel and Hyde.
The cutting really is an odd thing, though...it really could be Bane trying to wrest back control...or it could be Smith wanting to feel real pain, and bleed for real...or it could be Smith testing to see how sharp the knife is (but then why do it *again*, making a third cut in ETM? - same for the second possible reason). The fact that the third cut in ETM makes it look like pi is all the more confusing...and to be honest, I reallllly doubt that this will even be answered in Revolutions. We might end up having to speculate about this forever.
I think Banes Mind will go where ever Neo wakes up.In the reveloutions trailer we see Neo waking up in a white room.Maybe this is an inbetween the matrix and real world type place like the loading program they use.That would explain why he is in a coma cause his mind is not inside his body.Banes mind could also have been trapped there cause it would have no where else to go
Unreal_Mini-Me said this in post #38 : Well, the body was still alive because it still had a mind, but this time, it was a different mind - Smith's. I'd say that Bane's consciousness is something to the effect of being suspended permanently - which would probably mean the death of his true mind...or maybe there *is* a way to bring him back?
His brain must have been "written" with Smiths "persona",
Smiths soul written onto this brain cells,
if it was the same way the copter pilot program or Kung Fu was written into Trinity and Neo's brains,
when they got these instant learning sessions, they still had their original brain cells as well.
So, I figure Bane was still in there, somewhere, at least whatever brain cells that made up his mind,
but that Smith was powerful enough, he had full control.
06-10-2003 04:16 AM
