Oracle: Baking Cookies

In both M1 and M3, the Oracle bakes cookies when Neo goes to see her. I do not believe the cookies appear in the movies for the sole purpose of adding to the Oracle's warm grandmother character. I believe the Oracle uses her cookies to pass influencing code to other humans and programs. Remember that the Merovingian is able to easily transmit and run a program “in a woman” by means of disguising the program as food. The secondary purpose of that scene was to demonstrate the Merovingian's belief in cause and effect, although we certainly didn't need such an elaborate scheme to demonstrate an example of the Merovingian's simplistic outlook. The primary purpose of that scene was to clue the audience in to the fact that food can transmit code.

It's also tempting to try to find a way to imagine Oracle's cookies doing the same thing that web browser cookies do. Such a literal interpretation of the Oracle's cookies would be satisfying. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much evidence (nor does the plot line create any need) for a literal cookie analogy to make any sense. Web browser cookies are files that websites store on your computer to make it so next time you visit the website, the website recognizes you and your preferences more easily. If a literal cookie analogy worked, it would mean that the Oracle is using cookies to make it so she more easily recognizes Neo next time she sees him. Obviously, she has no trouble recognizing him. As I argue in Matrix System: Prime Program, in fact, she is the one who is responsible for mathematically encapsulating rejection into the One. Fortunately, what I believe the cookies are for is a purpose that I find just as satisfying.

So, if food can be used to transmit code, what code did the cookies transmit?

Cookies in M1

The first time we see the Oracle bake cookies in M1, she gives one to Neo. Remember that M1 ends that very same day: after Neo eats the cookie, Morpheus is captured by Agent Smith, and then Neo goes back into the Matrix to rescue Morpheus. We see Neo briefly at the phone booth inside the Matrix (19 months after M1 began), but this scene doesn't tell us anything about Neo except that he is now on a mission to free as many minds as possible.

Not until M2 do we get to see the full effects of the changed person Neo is after a decent amount of time has passed (six months). We learn that Neo can no longer sleep well, and that he has visions. When Neo begins speaking to the Oracle in the park scene, the Oracle tells Neo, “I know you’re not sleeping. We’ll get to that.” Although they never talked about his lack of sleep again in the conversation, she did tell Neo that he now has the sight of the world without time (and this sight is what wakes him up). The Oracle gave Neo a small part of her "eyes" through the cookie he ate in the first movie.

Some think that Neo started seeing visions of the future because he rejects some rule of the Matrix that causes visions of the future. This makes no sense. First of all, although Neo does have a constant wireless "connection" to the Source, Neo isn't actually jacked in to the Matrix when he has his visions, so there are no rules that he can break. Second of all, no such rule exists where its rejection causes accidental prediction of the future.

In M2, the Merovingian says, “It is said they [the eyes of the Oracle] cannot be taken, they can only be given.” I believe that is exactly what the Oracle did for Neo through her cookie in M1. Remember that the Oracle is an actual machine in the real world. The Oracle's sight of the world without time is nothing more than calculations based on input she receives from inside and outside the Matrix. It is not a supernatural ability, and neither is Neo's sight. But having the sight involves having the right kind of access to the Source, enabling a connection to all people within the Matrix. This connection had to be proactively granted to Neo. Again, the eyes of the Oracle can only be "given."

Why would sight of the world without time wake Neo up? As I argue in Colors, Neo's mind is wirelessly connected to the Matrix through the Source when he produces these dreams. To say the least, a lot more is going through Neo's mind when he is dreaming than what goes through our minds when you or I dream. Once each vision is finished, the process of disconnecting from the Matrix may be what wakes Neo up.

Candy in M2

While I believe the cookie in M1 gave Neo the vision of Trinity dying, I think the candy may have given Neo the vision of the power lines that would not only prompt Neo to consider the option of going to Machine City, but would also actually help navigate him to Machine City. Neo first had this vision in M3 when he was in the train station trying to figure out how to get himself out of the station. Why in the world would that vision suddenly flash in front of him when he's trying to concentrate on something else? If he truly had the same depth of vision the Oracle had, he would have seen that all he needed to do to get out of the station was wait for Trinity to show up. This particular short vision was way too convenient to be a random result of Neo's anomalous summation.

Also, consider that the only two visions Neo has (Trinity dying and the power lines going to Machine City) are, very conveniently, the two visions that Neo needed to have most in order to make two key decisions the Oracle needed him to make. The visions were not Neo's doing - they were part of the Oracle's grand scheme of manipulation of the entire system.

I do have another theory about what the candy did to Neo. The candy could also be a "patch," or a software update to the anomaly summation encoded in Neo. Remember that Neo is the "integral anomaly," meaning that he is a summation of all rejection in the Matrix. If Neo is going to make a single counter-choice to cancel out all rejection in the Matrix, how does the system account for all the new natural redpills that have appeared since Neo was unplugged from the Matrix in M1? Since Neo is unplugged, the Prime Program is no longer able to directly encapsulate rejection into him, and if the Oracle is indeed the Prime Program (which I do believe), it only makes sense for her to give Neo an "update."

Before eating the Oracle's candy, the summation of rejection in Neo was six months outdated. Neo returns to the Source directly from Machine City only one or two days after his conversation in the park with the Oracle, so this "patch" candy would make his summation sufficiently up-to-date. Perhaps the candy was a two-in-one package, giving Neo the vision and anomaly updates he needs to finish doing the Oracle's bidding.

If the Oracle's candy is indeed a patch for the One, Machines would need to prevent Zionists from hacking the Matrix in order to minimize the number of rejections that occur inside the Matrix until Neo reaches the Source. That is exactly what happens by the end of M2 and the beginning of M3, right after Neo gets the candy, as the conversation at the beginning of M2 confirms:

Why would Zionists suddenly find it nearly impossible to hack into the Matrix after a century of successful hacking? Obviously, Machines have been letting them. Sure enough, the Vigilant and Nebuchadnezzar are destroyed by sentinel bombs within minutes of each other, and the remaining ships would have been destroyed in the Zion dock if they hadn't been sabotaged by Bane.

Having said all that, it is important to note that we never actually see Neo eat the candy that the Oracle gave him. However, we also don't see Neo drop it on the ground, put it in his pocket, nor do we see the Oracle putting the candy back into her purse. Which makes more sense to you? I think Neo ate the candy, but an alternate theory is presented below.

Cookies in M3

I also believe the Oracle used her cookies to cause Smith to say, "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo." We know that was the Oracle's doing since Smith had never called him Neo before - he always called him Mr. Anderson. Of course, Smith threw the Oracle's cookies against the wall and probably didn't eat them later on. But it is easy to assume that Smith took a bite from a cookie in Sati's paper bag.

Trinity in M4

What are we to make of Trinity's visions of the future in M4? Upon casual inspection, it would appear that the visions are literally just some kind of result of sharing powers of "The One," which would blow my above "cookies/candy" theory out of the water since this is a power contained solely within the One without any need for an Oracle. However, I'd like to think that if additional movies are made to fill in the gaps, we would see that the Oracle "doesn't go quietly" right before she is purged. Supposing the purge took place, say, 10 years after M3 ended, it isn't unreasonable to think that the Oracle could have seen 50 years into the future and planted something inside Trinity that would give her these visions when the time was right, effectively giving one giant, glorious middle finger to the Analyst before she is purged. This would essentially ensure the defeat and demise of the Analyst.

The Oracle's vision of the future is only limited by irrational choices that the chooser doesn't understand. Under the Oracle's choice-based Matrix, choice was authentic and always therefore honored. Under the Analyst's emotion-based Matrix, choice was treated as an illusion. The authenticity of choice is no longer important in his system as long as the chooser is fooled into thinking it is. This may very well reduce the number of opportunities people have to make irrational choices, which would in turn give the Oracle further sight into the future before she is purged.

But I think even more than that, the Analyst is a very different "god" in the Matrix than the Architect: the Analyst seems to intervene as often as he pleases - an intervening god - while the Architect acted more like the "clockmaker" god (i.e. the god who builds a universe and then steps back and simply watches everything unfold as it will). When a major irrational decision is made (such as Neo deciding to walk off the ledge of a building), this decision is irrelevant to the events that take place after that since the Analyst steps in and essentially erases the decision, effectively gas-lighting the decision maker. In other words, no matter what Neo or Trinity do in the Analyst's Matrix, seeing what happens in the future no longer relies on what decision makers do; it only relies on how the Analyst responds to them, which, fortunately for the Oracle and despite the Analyst's deep understanding of emotion, is always a rational decision. (The Analyst deeply understands emotion, but he's not a slave to it.)

This would effectively give the Oracle infinite vision into the future, or at least infinite until another Matrix version is begun with a new set of rules. And that fits in nicely with the fact that Trinity's dream ends when she is on the rooftop: that is the precise moment when the new Matrix version is begun, past which the Oracle could not see.

Why would the Oracle need to give Trinity this vision? If the Oracle hadn't, Trinity might have walked into the coffee shop full of FBI agents (at 4am or 5am, no less, or whatever late time in the morning it was) and done what you and I would have done: say "WTF" close the door, get on the bike and go back to bed, wondering "what the hell was I even doing going to Simulatte that late at night?" But because she already had this vision, she knew it had special meaning and was compelled to proceed.

If I'm wrong about this, I'd be seriously disappointed, because it would mean that (a) Trinity's ability to dream the future is the result of some kind of ability she was born with, some rejection of some rule in the Matrix, or some ability the Matrix system (starting in the fetus fields) implanted her with, and (b) the dream she had just happened to consist of information she most needed to have, reducing her dream to nothing more than an incredibly convenient coincidence, cheapening the script (i.e. events take place because it's convenient for scriptwriters) and changing M4 from sci-fi to fantasy.

Coffee in M4

Another possible source of Trinity's dream: Perhaps "baking cookies" in M1-M3 is the same as "brewing coffee" in M4. In other words, maybe the Oracle is in a male shell now, disguised as Barista, who has a very brief part in M4 when Trinity orders a coffee:

In this scenario, Trinity's dream would have been transmitted to her via one of many coffees or snacks she had consumed from that coffee shop. This would also mean that the Oracle found a way to survive the purge. It is never stated directly that the Oracle was purged; only that Ionists did not hear from the Oracle again right before the "rising of the new power" (the Analyst).

As bonded as Sati and the Oracle were shown to be in M3, it seems very likely to me that Kujaku carries the Oracle in its construct, just as I think it carries Sati (see Sati for more on that). This would also help to explain Sati's ability to keep a close eye on Neo and possibly help to manipulate him against the Analyst. Before the purge, the Oracle would have been able to see exactly who Neo is since there's no limit to how far in the future the Oracle could see in the Analyst's new choiceless Matrix version. Once the Oracle knew who Neo was, it wouldn't be difficult for Sati to infiltrate Deus Machina and become one of Neo's coworkers.

Feedback

Someone who wishes to be known as Seraph from Sweden wrote to me his reasoning for thinking that Neo did not eat the Oracle's candy in M2:

Seraph from Sweden is focusing the following part of the conversation between the Oracle and Neo:

If this is true, then his choices in M1, M2 and M3 (accepting the cookie, keeping the candy, and rejecting the candy, respectively) would perhaps symbolize Neo's disrespect for authority and the path the Oracle leads him down in order to be the first One to defy the system.

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Oracle: Baking Noodles

Oracle: Choice