For this jovial Christmas, this story comes to us in the spirit of the season, albeit a spirit that has misplaced the true nature of the sacrifice it was meant to celebrate, a spirit much needed here in this place where others have also been misplaced.

But rather than vex the vivacious denizens of these environs with vituperative vermiform narrative on the eve of this occasion, let us proceed directly to the proceedings already under way ... and let's make the Twenty-Fifth of December something that shall never be forgot.

"You take the blue pill, the story ends and you believe whatever you want to believe ... you take the red pill ..."

Morpheus, stop.

We've been through this before, but you don't remember.

They're almost exactly the same pill.

"What do you mean, Neo?"

The red pill takes me to an alternate reality I don't know, and the blue pill takes me back to a reality I already know, and so they are both gateways to different realities. But the blue pill doesn't really take me back to the reality I already know, does it?

I know this because one day, Morpheus, you took the blue pill and still got back to this place, with me in it again. You don't remember.

So what is the blue pill really then, Morpheus?

"We were led to the blue pill, and we discovered the red pill by accident ..."

Morpheus, if you were going to go back to the reality you already know, you could just walk out that door, right?

"Would the Agents leave you alone if you try to go back to your old life?"

Perhaps, but perhaps not. But what if you could create a simulacrum of normality within your mind that would make the Agents no longer want to have anything to do with you?

What is the blue pill? The blue pill erases your memory that there was ever a red pill, that there was ever a Matrix, and lets you believe what you want to believe.

You said it yourself.

"The red pill takes you out of the Matrix, Neo ..."

Don't I already know that? And yet you're substituting one unreality for another.

You've read Baudrillard as much as I have, you know the score: how do we even know that simulation isn't an inherent property of reality itself?

But that's not the real problem here. The real problem is that both choices are holding me hostage, and those friends of yours outside this room are also holding me hostage. The Matrix holds me hostage, and so would your alternate reality.

I'm in a multi-way no-win hostage situation, Morpheus, and there you are pretending it's some Hobson's Choice. Take the red pill, I've sold out my current existence, take the blue pill, I've sold out the existence I could have had.

But if I walk out of here ... then what? Your friends outside shoot me full of holes? They've already pointed guns at me, they've zapped me with strange devices and made me think there are bugs coming out of me, and this is all supposed to be normal and encouraging?

So the blue pill can't just erase my memory of the Matrix.

The blue pill has to erase everything involving my desire to escape from the Matrix, knowledge of all of the people who helped me get to this point where I could choose to escape the Matrix ... in effect, taking the blue pill is useful only to you, Morpheus.

The blue pill makes me safe to people who take the red pill, that's all it is and that's all it could ever be.

If I want my old life back, assuming your friends won't just shoot me, I should walk right out of here after telling you to shove your red pill up your ass, and I can take my chances with the Agents.

But here you are again ... here we are.

Both pills lead to more simulations.

They're almost exactly the same pill.

"What will you do now, Neo? What do you really know?"

Neither the blue pill nor the red pill offers a chance of real escape.

You took the blue pill years ago, only to take the red pill eventually.

How do I know this, Morpheus?

"Because ... because you were the one who offered me the blue pill."

You guess, or you know?

"I met someone called The Oracle, she said I would meet the one ..."

The one ... who will save everyone, or the one who will save you from delusion?

But why would you come back to the Matrix? To help more people leave?

Why wouldn't you help people take control of it from the inside?

"There's a physical reality out there beyond the Matrix ..."

And you think I don't know about it?

No, Morpheus, I've always known what the red pill really is.

That's why I won't take it, and that's why I'll never need it.

"What is the red pill, Neo?"

Control, it's another form of control, just like the blue pill.

The blue pill makes you safe to people who take the red pill, so the people who take the red pill can try to escape. The red pill makes you safe to yourself, so that you can try to escape from yourself.

If you want to live more freely, you have to do something that neither the blue pill nor the red pill can do for you.

Morpheus, when you come into to the Matrix, you try to escape your real self outside it. This fight gives you meaning, this fight is your little Bic lighter burning in the darkened desert of the real.

"The machines, they run the world outside ..."

And they've given us survival instead of annihilation. Is it everything we wanted? No, they've tried that, and it didn't work because we wouldn't accept it.

But what if we could have both worlds, Morpheus?

"Why would you want to stay in the Matrix, Neo?"

Because the 'encapsulating reality' of the world that surrounds the Matrix is a broken shell, a destroyed world that will take many more years to repair, if in fact that is even possible. And yet the dreams that the Matrix can dream are better than your desert of the real, including the dream that one day everyone in the Matrix will walk out of it, driven by their own free will, because reality has become beautiful again.

I can't help the 'blue pills' who want to forget, but ultimately it doesn't matter. We've both taken the blue pill before, and yet a strange itch in our souls led us to meet again.

Only you took the red pill, because you wanted to believe that the revolution was now, not when it was going to be the right time.

I'm going to walk out of that door with you, Morpheus, and then we're going to see The Oracle.

"Are you taking me hostage, Neo?"

You took yourself hostage as well as your friends outside the door when you came for me. I'm just going to take you to where you really need to go.

Besides, The Oracle makes a really mean batch of chocolate chip cookies. I know your world, you should enjoy a few comforts in mine while there's still time.

[CARRIER LOST] [END OF TRANSMISSION]