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"So this is The Crossover," Tony Stark said, staring at the man across the table from him. "Watering hole for the multiverse, where beings from every conceivable reality hang out, drink too much, and wake up in a neighboring dimension with a Galactus-sized hangover and a sentient tattoo. My kind of bar."
The large, dark-skinned man in the black trenchcoat and sunglasses said, "But no bar fights. The rules are enforced at a metaphysical level--you literally can't attack someone here. Which means even the worst enemies can meet and talk without violence."
"Good to know. Hey, I've noticed that a lot of the people I've seen here are . . . well, there's no delicate way to put this--"
"Fictional?"
"Yeah. Like you, for instance. Morpheus, right?"
Morpheus smiled. "Correct."
"Where I come from, you're a character in a movie trilogy."
"Not surprising. A story that resonates powerfully enough often shows up in a neighbouring reality as art. Details may vary, of course."
Stark nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. As a tech guy, there's something that's always bothered me about the Matrix. The AI that's running the whole system is using human beings as batteries, supposedly because the computing system was originally solar-powered and the sun is now blocked by the after-effects of a nuclear winter. Right?"
"Yes."
"But that makes no sense. There are plenty of other power sources available--atomic, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal. And all the machinery needed to keep a human being alive and healthy in a tank would consume far more energy than the human body would generate in electricity."
"So it would seem."
Stark frowned. "Okay, I don't know if I'm breaking some kind of alternate-universe etiquette here, since the tagline for the first movie was "The Matrix cannot be explained," but--how about an explanation?"
Morpheus leaned back in his chair and studied Stark. "Billions of human minds linked together, the largest neural net ever built. All that grey matter provided the computing power to generate the Matrix itself. It was never about feeding the machines energy."
"Then why bother? Why keep humanity alive at all?"
"Because it needed us. We were the hardware that the AI software ran on. But let me ask you a question--what does any competent leader do before executing a complex protocol?"
"Make sure his repulsors are fully charged and his lawyers are highly caffeinated?"
"They run a simulation. You see, there was a Matrix before the Matrix. The machines needed as much data as possible before they set actual events in motion. So they created a scenario and ran it. Multiple times, in fact. But no matter how they adjusted it, they kept running into the same problem. They called it the Saviour Effect."
"Let me guess. Neo?"
"Not quite. But a single human did always rise to mobilize against and utltimately defeat the machines. They tried to delete that element again and again, but every time they reset the simulation it resurfaced. They even experimented with altering the timeline of events to prevent the creation of the disruptive element."
Stark looked thoughtful. "What was the name of the original simulation?"
"They called it Skynet. . . "http://thecrossover.thecomicseries.com