USH'S MATRIX GAME 2006 FIFTH ASSIGNMENT- 'The Pagoda'

"There you go. And whether the outcome be good or ill for..."

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"... you, I am surprised you accept such manipulation so easily. As I..."

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"... say, each of us is trying to achieve an agenda. I claim no..."

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"... superiority. Merely honesty."

"Well, we didn`t have time to consider it all. However can we believe your honesty? But frankly, I am not sure if I would like to have anything to do with Oracle if I had hope of surviving."

"It is your business as to whether you believe me or..."

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"... not. I feel, however, that you find my words make sense."

"They do, Melitus."

"So you agree that the virus is a threat to you, so that means you'll help us stop it. Right, old man? We need to act now, before it's too late." Cloud says.

"It is not yet too late."

Just waiting on Azrael.

"I don't see that I should curse her for not telling me something about my future," Azrael says, "Before I spoke to her, I knew nothing of it. To come away knowing anything is a gift.
"And if she planned all this to maintain her existence, I suppose she also has some idea that you will not allow the Virus to spread. So why pretend you are going to?"

I'm still looking for the other relevant point, but my time's very limited. If anybody has any idea about it, please speak up.

Well for a start, you need to decode your Prophecy for that to make sense. She gave you a clue about that near the dtart of this story.

THEN you have to make sense of the second point she made to you, more recently.

"She told you nothing useful, Azrael. Nothing..."

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"... about the way your friends treated you. Nothing about..."

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"... your role in opening the door, or going against the plans of..."

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"... your friends. She made all of this happen to you."

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Trick is quite the vet, folks, so help him out.

I wish I could, but right now I've got nothing helpful. I'll start helping to decode Trix' prophecy and oracle banter tomorrow (finally got a day off Uni, yay!)

I generally can make little sense of all the Oracle babble (my mind simply doesn't not deal with abstracts and stuff like that well), but I'll take a look and see what I can find.

Okay, well, first of all, the Oracle asked us this:

"Is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons? And what's the difference between the two?"

The Oracle also asked Azrael how dedicated he was to the war, and Azrael said he saw it as a means to an end...he also said that he'd die for his cause, and the Oracle asked "What could be another name for your last fight, the one that will kill you?"

That last bit in particular is very important, I think.

Hmmm, what else...

She also asked in the last assignment "Why do I make a prophecy for someone, Azrael?"

Oh, and "You don't want victory, you want a future. Victory cannot possibly get you that." might be important as well but I'm not sure.

And that's all I can dig out that seems spectacularly important. Wooo.

You might want to also consider Azrael's actual prophecy in comparison to that.

I've got nothing to do for the rest of the day, so I'll be working on this for a couple hours.

Originally posted by Lana
Okay, well, first of all, the Oracle asked us this:

"Is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons? And what's the difference between the two?"

The Oracle also asked Azrael how dedicated he was to the war, and Azrael said he saw it as a means to an end...he also said that he'd die for his cause, and the Oracle asked "What could be another name for your last fight, the one that will kill you?"

That last bit in particular is very important, I think.

Hmmm, what else...

She also asked in the last assignment "Why do I make a prophecy for someone, Azrael?"

Oh, and "You don't want victory, you want a future. Victory cannot possibly get you that." might be important as well but I'm not sure.

And that's all I can dig out that seems spectacularly important. Wooo.

And to add Azrael's prophecy to all of that...

"The fight of your life shall pass, and you won't have a scratch on you."

THERE. Everything important together in one post. I hope.

Okay.

So, one last thing I want to add to the list of relevant points, something that Jericho said:

the/truth/is/ne/ver/pleas/ant. but/it/is/done/now. if/it/makes/you/feel/better/az/ral. what/choice/did/you/e/ver/have? to/fight/me/is/to/die. now/the/war/is/won. it/is/time/to/ac/cept/that. fare/well

Basically, no one had any choice in any of this. But I don't think it's true, at all.

As for Azrael's prophecy and the clue the Oracle gave about it towards the start of the story...probably a very obvious conclusion, but that the 'fight of his life' is not actually a fight at all, at least not a physical one. A mental one, more like, a hard decision or choice to make. Or the illness...which I suppose is physical but not a fight like we'd generally think of it.

And then to bounce that off of what Melitus just said (and bring it back to what Jericho said, somewhat), no, the Oracle didn't say anything about details like that. But she couldn't, could she? She always says she wants us to understand, not just give us answers. Not only that, but the stuff that Melitus says that the Oracle never told Azrael could very possibly have not ever happened. We could have decided to not open the door. We could have managed to not get the key. We could have decided to simply get rid of it. We could have decided to blow the EMPs when we were under attack by the sentinels. And so on. There's a million little things that could have happened that could have changed everything. A million little choices we could have made that could have caused things to go differently.

And then, to bring in a quote from the movies..."Because you didn't come here to make a choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it." And then at the end of Revolutions when Smith asks Neo why he keeps fighting, he replies "Because I choose to."

And...what else...basically, I've jumped all over the damn place here. But I think the important parts are that 1) the detaily things that the Oracle could tell us she wouldn't as they wouldn't help us actually understand anything, and 2) depending on what we decide to do, might not have even happened anyway.

Hopefully that's everything and I'm not completely off-base with this.

Well, a little- as Lana now understands via private chat... sometimes a cabin is just a cabin...

Forget all the conceptual analysis- there is a direct and only slightly ambiguous reference that has been made in all of thus, linked by similar use of the same words, that everyone is skating past in favour of far more conceptual stuff, which is really not the thrust at all.

btw, I don't think your sentiment about the Oracle will go down well. There was little understanding to be gained by going through the experience of the Door other than "Oops!"

Melitus is essentially right- she did indeed fairly much manipulate you guys to do the job and kept essential info from you. It's the exact same tactic she uses with Neo. You have to admit, there was VAST amounts she did not tell him because it did not suit her plans.

Is it that this is Azrael's prophecy coming true.

That he is now fighting the battle of HIS LIFE. As in he is now fighting for whether or not he chooses to live for a future or die for a victory?

Whether the means of winning, taking down the Matrix, is worth the outcome?

Edit- and If I'm way off I blame Lana 😛

Yeah yeah yeah. I'm trying here 😛

The 'fight' bit is very important. Pops up twice from the Oracle and also from Jericho.

Originally posted by Lana
Yeah yeah yeah. I'm trying here 😛

The 'fight' bit is very important. Pops up twice from the Oracle and also from Jericho.

Also should we be asking why would the Oracle manipulate us because that could also be very important?

And by the way Lana you are doing a good job.