hi. i've read your explanations regarding the matrix and found them very convincing. i have just a few questions if it's ok for you to explain it for me.
1. in the second installment of the matrix, the oracle sent neo to find the keymaker so that he can go to the source. later we discover that he is the 6th person to go to the source. if this was his purpose, to go to the source, why make the charade of having a quest of finding the keymaker so that he could enter the source? yes, the merovingian captured the keymaker, but then why did the agents want to kill the keymaker? if they killed the keymaker then the one could never enter the source and thus not fulfill his purpose. why doesn't the merovingian want the humans to have the keymaker? he knows that if neo couldn't get to the source then the matrix will crash and kill everyone including himself. it just doesn't make sense.
Why don’t the machines work together to allow Neo to get to the source… because not all the programs share the same amount of knowledge or insight or interests. It is a truism of human society that is still hard for beginning students of sociology or politics to grasp: if policy X will produce results that will be detrimental to society at large, who could ever be in favor of policy X. Now substitute advertising for cigarettes or standards that allow for global warming for policy X and you start to see that not all members of society have the welfare of every other member at heart. And that is what we see in the Matrix – a program society where the interests or motives of the various programs do not necessarily harmonize. The agents are no doubt programmed to eliminate any exile program whatever its purpose or intent: they are the white blood cells of the Matrix and they’ll take you out whether you are there to mess with the fabric of the Matrix in a good way or bad. The Keymaker was only recently captured by the Merovingian, and his capture was pretty much just so the Merovingian would have greater access to the hidden back alleys of the Matrix (and one might guess the Source too). This much is pretty much spelled out in the “Enter the Matrix” video game where you see the Merovingian lock up the Keymaker and tell him to get to work. As for why the Merovingian doesn’t want the humans to have the Keymaker, why should he? Having been banished from his role in the maintenance of the Matrix he no longer appears to care about the how the Matrix is enabled to continue to exist, depending on others to make it happen – not unlike a criminal gang that does not concern itself about the health or stability of a government while it preys upon the society the government administers. As to whether the Keymaker gets killed… well the same questions could be asked about Neo getting killed. If he gets killed can the Matrix never get reloaded again? I suspect that if Neo was not able to fulfill the role of the One then there would have been another “possible” who might have been able to succeed where he failed… that is the probabilistic nature of the One that has led to the role already having been fulfilled five previous times. And if the Keymaker bites it, well, as with Smith, we can always anticipate “upgrades.” So the machines are not limited to a one time shot at reloading the Matrix, we just happen to be following the storyline of that one time that actually succeeds in revolutionizing the Matrix.
2. i can understand that neo can sense and destroy the sentinels since a part of him is inside the system. what i can't understand is how he was able to end up inside the train station when he collapsed at the end of reloaded. he was already jacked out of the matrix. i could accept that he could have separate conciousness inside and outside the matrix by sensing the sentinels and all. But how did he magically appear in the train station after his collapse? if he could do that then he could go inside the matrix even without plugging himself on the machine.
The train station is only a train station in optical form, in reality it must be some sort of receptor that collects or saves machine-patterned-impulses that are temporarily disconnected from their proper environment. It has been designed as a receptor for such patterns (unlike the Matrix). Think of it as a safety net to catch construction workers who fall from a bridge. This particular safety net was constructed by the Trainman under the direction of the Merovingian to facilitate his smuggling of programs out of the source and into the Matrix, which functions as a sort of haven for programs marked for deletion. Since programs marked for deletion cannot travel by sanctioned routes to the Matrix they must make use of this surreptitious catch-all as a mean of entry – at a price, of course. Neo ends up there the same way programs like Sati did, his “mind” was broadcast and the train station executed its function and collected the unofficial broadcast, just as it would any smuggled program. So Neo was re-imported into an access point of the Matrix by means of a system devised to evade the controlled portals of entry. As a human, he should have died when his mind was separated from his body, but as the One he has already endured the type of neural shock this produces and survived once (end of the original flick) and so was able to do so again. Neo’s visit with the Architect through door of light and his entanglement with Smith at the end of the first movie may also have been responsible for introducing machine-like patterns to some of his thought patterns to make his reception by the train station possible.
3. on the end of the movie, revolutions, the oracle asked the achitect, "what about the others who aren't out?". the architect told her that they would be freed and that she has his word. well, i thought the machines need the humans to survive? if they are to free all the humans then how would they survive? They need them as batteries, right? i suppose they could find an alternate source. but this possibility wasn't even explored in all three movies. and if ever they have found alternate power sources, why did they bother using the humans in the first place? they could have killed us all and have the earth for themselves.
The machines do not free all the humans, only those who have begun to emit a pattern in their thought that echoes that of the One and other “pod-spawned” residents of Zion indicating that they are beginning to resist belief in the programmed reality of the Matrix. This will still constitute a minority of those in the Matrix (remember, Morpheus told us that after a certain age the mind cannot adapt to life outside the Matrix). The Matrix will grow older demographically, and this might eventually threaten the power source that the machines depend upon, but the process will take decades. Remember also, that the humans have sued for peace, so one has to wonder if peace includes hacking into the Matrix and screwing with the residents to convince them to leave. My impression is that the Matrix will become a sort of neutral meeting ground for the machines and humans, one that still provides power for the machines, but where the machines will allow for the exit of minds not attuned to submission to the programmed reality. So in the end, it really was about the salvation of Zion, not destruction of the Matrix. After all, where would you feed six billion Matrix folks? Who would retrain them to use their muscles, eyes, brains? The Matrix will continue, but it will no longer be an enforced reality, but rather one “chosen” even if “subconsciously.” The real victory is in the preservation of Zion and allowance for free migration from the Matrix to Zion (and, presumably, unharrassed visits back as well).
hope you could answer these. i've asked these questions in a lot of forums and never got a logical explanation. i've read your explanations and it's the best i've read so far. that's how i understood the movie too. except for these.
Thank you for your perceptive questions and generous comments. Hope what I had to say was at least half as perceptive. Feel free to email again with any other comments or questions. --MM
5:42:58 PM 
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