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Apologies if this has been quoted previously!
Taken from:
Concerning the 6th Incarnation
About Neo Number 7 we have very little to say. He is a god, and not really part of the story. He represents what the 6th Neo becomes. All the suffering is with Number 6, and so that is where my focus is. But even among the non-godly six, the sixth and final mortal incarnation is quite different than all who came before him.
Perhaps the most important way that the 6th Neo is different from his predecessors is that he wields apparently supernatural powers in the real world. I also think that his abilities within the Matrix are far beyond what any previous incarnation possessed. Let's start with what the Architect says in Reloaded:
ARCHITECT - Your 5 predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific, vis-a-vis love.
We have sufficient evidence here to say the 6th incarnation is different. But I want to explore the fact that the Architect says Neo's attachment is by design. In one email exchange with a reader, I suggested that Neo might be genetically engineered. A "programmed" human would make perfect sense to the machines, and it would also seem to give credence to the idea that Neo is continually reincarnated -- at the end of each incarnation's journey his genetic code is recorded, then it is reinserted at a later date. The machines design Neo to feel an attachment toward the rest of humanity through genetic engineering just like they design his ability to manipulate the Matrix.
I know the genetically-engineered aspect is uncomfortable for a lot of people. It's not the whole story of what I'm trying to say, either. I think it's parallel with Dune and the kwisatz haderach. In Dune, the Bene Gesserit order has been manipulating bloodlines for eons (i.e., genetic engineering through selective breeding) in order to bring about a superbeing. Their experiments actually work, but in a way that they did not intend. Muad-dib is much greater than they imagined, and not under their control at all. So it is with Neo. The machines manipulate genes in order to try and "catch" the energy of the unbalanced equation -- to provide a receptacle that can contain this energy and use it within the confines of a predefined script. Exactly how or when this "One" appears is unknown, but in aggregate statistics it's an certainty that he will appear. And when he does, he is led down a specific path. What the machines do not grasp (except for the Oracle) is that this kwisatz haderach is not under their control and is becoming much more than they imagined.
(As a sidenote, I don't think it is actually necessary to believe that Neo is reincarnated six times. It's possible for the story to work perfectly well with no connection whatsoever between Neo and the previous six instances of The One. I think it adds to the awe of it to have the reincarnation aspect, though. It requires a soul, something greater than what can be rationally summed.)
Now regarding Neo's special abilities: the functioning of the Matrix is the way to understanding these. It's quite a popular opinion that the abilities in the Matrix correlate exactly to strength of will. The idea is that Neo is just willing himself over these obstacles. I think that ignores the facts. Neo's powers in the Matrix manifest when he feels deep bonds with other human beings, most of all Trinity. As his relationship with Trinity grows, so does his power in the Matrix.
I don't think this is very surprising. The Matrix is, in William Gibson's language, a consensual hallucination. It should exhibit the qualities felt most strongly by its participants. (This is also why there is The One: to allow humans to exercise their will on the Matrix. More on this momentarily.) But even on a purely physical level it's still the case. The Matrix is powered by human bio-electricity. What is that? It's thoughts and feelings, impulses and urges of the body. Therefore, everything in the Matrix is the result of human emotion, or more accurately the ebb and flow of the aggregate emotion of the entire human race.
Neo is genetically designed to tap into this aggregate bio-electrical circuit, and he focuses and amplifies that energy. The extent of that amplification is tied to his personal emotional level. In his previous incarnations, Neo's generic feeling toward the rest of humanity afforded him a certain amount of power in the Matrix. But this time around, because of Trinity, the depth of his emotion is incredibly multiplied. As a result, so is his power in the Matrix. The same explanation works for everyone else, too. ER, not really everyone. We don't see special abilities in the Matrix from anyone except Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Ghost, and Niobe. All five of them have strong emotions and deep connections to others. It is possible to suppose that all five of these people were genetically designed as well. I won't go either way on that except to say one thing: If the first interpretation that I gave regarding the relationship between the Ages and the Incarnations is true, then there is very little engineering that needs to be done.
It's not a very big leap from powers in the Matrix to Neo's powers in the real world. All the human bio-electricity flows from the pod fields to the Source, and then it is redistributed back to the Matrix along well-defined channels. The humans plugged into the Matrix then have experiences, from which they have emotions, and their emotional energy flows back to the Source. What I haven't mentioned is the machines. They are parasites on this energy loop between the humans and the Source. We should also notice that Neo's apparently "supernatural" abilities in the real world are strictly limited to affecting machines. He doesn't fly or do kung fu in the real world. The reason for this limitation is that he is merely tapping into the energy loop and...modifying it. Just like in the Matrix, where he modifies the energy loop to defy gravity, etc.
In the real world, however, his interface to the loop is much less well defined. There's no specific plug to filter the energy stream. He's got to tap into it directly, and that puts him in immediate contact with the Source, and that leads straight to Mobil Ave (at least until he is mentally and spiritually prepared for such direct contact). Now I suppose there isn't an explicit mechanism by which Neo should be able to tap into an energy loop in the real world, but it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to genetically design someone to be sensitive to electrical currents. I prefer to think that his real-world abilities were never part of the design.
There are of course much broader mythological meanings through all of this. The best evidence of that is Link and Zee. I think these were the two most emotionally charged characters in the trilogy, and between them accomplish some amazing things that strain the limits of possibility. And it happens in the real world. That's where the real energy and the real message is.
I'd like to return once more to the idea that all the machines are running off of human emotion. It isn't power that the machines need from humans, it's feelings, belief, and hope. The electrical power angle is just the metaphor. One reader wrote me to ask "What makes the machines go on day after day? Why do they continue? What reason do they have to exist?" Aside from ringing all the symbolic bells in the entire story, it spotlighted the exact nature of the machines' power source. The machines go on because the humans go on. The will to live and to grow and to feel and to experience is what they do not have and cannot invent. The power they get from human beings is the power to hope.
And finally this goes to the deepest core theme of the trilogy. At the end of the Reloaded essay when I speculated far and wide about what might come, I said this:
Humanity achieved "simple" godhood by creating beings in its own image. It will achieve "complex" godhood by reuniting with its estranged children. At the same time, so will machines.
Neo's -- humanity's -- path is toward reunion with The Source, with God. At the same time, the machines' path is toward reunion with another God, the human beings who created them. They are each other's path to the divine. As the Oracle said, the only way forward is together.
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