Some weeks ago I dreamt I was watching a film. Not on TV, but in the cinema. Since dreams are a kind of visual fantasies, dreaming of films is almost too convoluted.
But perhaps it still made sense, since the film was Matrix. Not the first one, nor was it the second or third. Nope, it was the fourth matrix-film which to my knowledge hasn't been made yet.
Don't ask me what the film was about, as I only saw 1-2 minutes (out of 1½ hour). When I woke up, the dream still shimmered in the background as I turned on the pc, drank coffee, checked email.
A pleasant surprise: bulgarian mail. I had lately hoped someone would offer new material for my fantastik-ezine Phantazm. Bingo. Here it was, 3 science fiction stories - if I was interested..?
Indeed I was. But I almost hit the ceiling when I saw the title of the third story: it was "Matrix 4"... A tale consisting only of dialogue, no action at all, but lots of perspective.
Without revealing too much, the author suggests that the idea/impulse behind Matrix actually came from a very distant future. Quoting the last AI (speaking to Neo):
"The dialog across time ... is stored in a metaworm I’ve shot back across time straight into the minds of two brothers directors from that era. The worm will decompress slowly and gradually, first into their dreams, then into their discussions, which give birth to their new films, until they come to believe this is their great idea for a movie trilogy that will overwhelm the world.”
Synchronicity indeed! (I thought such stuff only happened to PKD?) The story appears in Phantazm.net sometime in April. And if you should start dreaming about distant things? You wont be the first...
Mads Dam, April 2006