Changes

Recall a wonderful scene in which Cipher, the traitor, the agent of the Matrix among the rebels, who is located in reality, kills one after the other rebels (who are immersed into the VR of the Matrix) by simply unplugging them from the connection to the machine. While the rebels are experiencing themselves as fully immersed into ordinary reality, they are effectively, in the "desert of the real," immobilized on the chair on which they are connected to the Matrix: Cipher has the direct physical approach to them the way they really are "helpless creatures" just sitting on the chair as if under narcotics at the dentists, who can be mishandled in any way the torturer wants. Cipher is communicating with them via the phone which serves as the communicating link between virtual reality and the "desert of the real," and the horror of the situation is that, while the rebels feel like normal human beings freely walking around in reality, they know that, at the Other Scene of the "desert of the real," a simple unplugging of the cable will cause then to drop dead in both universes, virtual and real. This situation, while parallel to that of all humans who are plugged into the Matrix, is worse insofar as here, humans are fully aware not only of their true situation, but also of the threat posed in reality by the evil agent who intends to kill them shortly. It is as if the subjects obtain here the impossible direct link with the Real of their situation, the Real in its entire threatening dimension. (Surprisingly, The Matrix is much more precise than one would expect with regard to the distinction between the Real and reality: Morpheus's famous "Welcome to the desert of the real!" does not refer to the real world outside the Matrix, but to the purely formal digital universe of the Matrix itself. when Morpheus confronts Neo with the image of the ruins of Chicago, he simply says "This is the real world!", i.e., what remained of our reality outside the Matrix after the catastrophe while the "desert of the real" refers to the grayness of the purely formal digital universe which generates the false "wealth of experience" of humans caught in the Matrix.)<br><br>