Sometime in the future, computer programmer Thomas Anderson operates as a “hacker,” under the alias “Neo.” Through his work with computers, he comes across an unknown concept, referred to as “The Matrix,” that piques his curiosity. One day, he is contacted by a woman named Trinity, whose cohort, Morpheus, wants to share information with him. Soon, a group of Agents in suits take Neo into custody, and insist on his help in apprehending Morpheus, whom they have deemed a terrorist. When Anderson meets up with him, Morpheus offers him a red pill that will reveal to him the meaning of the Matrix, or a blue pill that will send him back to his regular life. Anderson takes the red pill, and wakes up as Neo in an another world, in which he and other humans are held captive in liquid pods, hooked up to a power grid. Neo is saved from his pod and taken aboard Morpheus’s hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar, where he learns the truth about the Matrix. Following a twenty-first-century war between humans and artificial intelligence, machines conquered humans and began using their bodies as a source of power, by hooking them up to an electrical system to sap their energy. Meanwhile, the captive humans’ brains were tricked into believing life was back to normal, via the Matrix, a virtual reality program that presents a simulation of late-twentieth-century human existence. Morpheus operates out of Zion, the only city in the real world inhabited by free humans. By hacking into the Matrix, he has been able to recruit people like Neo, who can use their knowledge of the Matrix to manipulate it, gain superhuman abilities like the power of flight, and, ultimately, overpower the machines. However, if they are killed within the Matrix, their human bodies are put to death by machines called Sentinels. The Agents who apprehended Neo earlier have to be evaded, as they constantly police the Matrix for aberrations. Morpheus oversees Neo’s training, and based on his combat skills, determines that he is “the One” who will save the human race. They go to see “the Oracle,” a seer who indicates Neo is not the One, and that, in the fight against the Machines, he will have to sacrifice either Morpheus’s life or his own. One of Morpheus’s men, Cypher, resents the struggle and wants to go back to living in the Matrix. He tips off the Agents, who descend on Morpheus’s group. Morpheus offers himself as prisoner while the others flee. Back in the real world, Cypher attacks and kills several crew members, but a fighter named Tank kills him before he can attack Neo. Inside the Matrix, Morpheus is interrogated by the Agents, who want access to Zion’s mainframe computer system. Neo is determined to save Morpheus by giving his own life. He re-enters the Matrix with Trinity, and Morpheus manages to escape with Trinity while Neo is killed in combat by the Agents’ leader, Smith. Back on the Nebuchadnezzar, which is under attack by Sentinels, Trinity hovers over Neo’s body, which has not yet been extinguished by a Sentinel. She reveals her love for him, and says that the Oracle told her she would fall in love with the One. Trinity brings him back to life with a kiss. Newly fortified, and having learned his own power to manipulate the Matrix, Neo overpowers Smith and frees himself from the Matrix just as the Sentinels are incapacitated by a pulse sent out across the Nebuchadnezzar. Sometime later, back in the Matrix, Neo calls to alert the machines of his plan to free the human race. Afterward, he takes flight.