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A story - Why we must discover choices

We must discover new choices for that is the most beautiful part of our journey in this world.

To show this by allegory I have narrated a story from the Animatrix which is a prequel to The Matrix Trilogy.

Background to the Story
1. Machines reason like us and feel like us i.e. they are human but made of metal.
2. Machines are ruling the planet
3. Humans who are free are only in Zion – a small secure place somewhere on Earth

The Story
A group of humans ambush a machine and take him unconscious. Their objective is to find a way to gain control over the machine but unfortunately find that it is a complicated task.

The machine has a reasoning ability like that of humans and so he can't simply be re-programed. Thus they have to find a way to trick him, inevitably choosing between having to kill him or successfully brainwashing him [into willingly help the humans].

And so the group of humans plugs themselves and the machine into a virtual world where they intend to brainwash him.

In the beginning they brutalize him by playing mind games; they do this by creating a world of horror with the scene changing from one moment of darkness to another. In doing so they are successful in traumatizing the machine.

The second part of the simulation, towards the end, is when one of the women [a member of the human group] goes up to the machine and drags him out into more comfortable surroundings. She takes care of him and makes him feel loved. It seems the machine is taken to the woman [because we know that he has the heart of a human].

Near the end of the simulation a raid by a group of machines begins on the [human] hide out and in the battle that ensues some of the attacking machines and almost all the humans die.

In one part of the battle we see that an enemy machine comes to attack the woman who needs help. She calls out to the machine she had befriended. The friendly machine thus has to make a choice between helping the machine or helping the human.

But the friendly machine has already fallen in love and decides to save her. During the attack the woman looses consciousness. So he plugs himself and her back into the virtual world [where they are both awake]. But because the woman never really loved him and has herself just been traumatized chooses to run away.

The machine realizes that what had touched his heart wasn’t real but he knows he felt it and understands this feeling.

In the last scene we see that the machine is alone on a mound of earth in a barren waste land sitting pensively.

What I saw in the story
The machine was made aware of a choice – the feeling of being loved – and now it does not want to go back to the operational routine world of the machines. [It detaches himself from the machine world and ponders on the options]. I imagine he wants to find a way to be in love again.

Thus I think discovering a choice can shake the very world we live in.

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