Matrix Comics
System Freeze (Vol. 2, No. 3)
Spoiler warning!
I recommend reading the original comic first, then coming back to this interpretation/explanation. While you can certainly read this instead if the comic seems too time-consuming to read, your experience will be more interesting if you read the comic first.
This comic reinforces the fact that agents can manipulate the Matrix in any way they wish. They can seal the mouth of Thomas Anderson so that he is unable to speak, they can turn a building into a parking lot instantly (see Animatrix: Beyond), and they can also do what you're about to read.
Plot Summary
Fria Canning, a very good computer programmer from New York who is world-renown (and wealthy) from her work on artificial intelligence, is climbing Mt. Everest. She passes a corpseThere are actually hundreds of corpses left on the way up Mt. Everest because it would be too risky to retrieve them, likely causing more deaths. who has made Mt. Everest its "sepulcherGrave, tombstone or burial place. Pronounced SEP-uhl-ker.." She says a prayer for the "mountain spirit" ChomolungmaTibetan name for Mt. Everest (between Nepal and Tibet, China) meaning "Mother of the Universe." to welcome the man, indicating that Fria practices Hindu. 15 minutes later, she thinks about this man again as she falls 100 feet into a crevasse, injuring herself very badly. She knows she is sure to die, but doesn't want to die between glaciers, only to be "chewed up" and "spit out" at a lower point on Mt. Everest.
Fria sees a suited individual walking "through" the ice toward her. Thinking he is "death," she remembers SherpaRefers to ethnic people living in the most mountainous region of Nepal, high in the Himalaya. In Tibetan, shar means east and pa means people. "Sherpa" can also refer to local people who serve as guides for mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas, whether they are part of the Sherpa ethnic group or not. prayer flagsColorful Tibetan (Hindu) flags that are believed to bring about good things as they interact with the wind. as she notices how little color this man is wearing (she expected him to be more colorful).
He takes her hand and pulls her up, and she finds that she is no longer wounded. He introduces himself as Agent John Fine, and he says they (presumably Machines) admire her AI work tremendously, especially her Self program, which he says is ."..the most revolutionary piece of artificial intelligence work achieved by any batt… any human." (He probably almost said "battery.") She says she feels like she has created something that is "more than the sum of her," which Agent John Fine agreed with, but with irritation in his voice. This makes it clear that machines are not solely responsible for their evolution: humans are helping them along in the process by offering creativity and inspiration that is perhaps not possible for machines. Knowing this is what I believe irritates Agent John Fine.
Agent John Fine offers for Fria to finish climbing Mt. Everest. Supposing him to be the devil wanting to make a deal for her soul, she refuses. When he walks away, her painful injuries return 100 times more painful than they were before, and Agent John Fine says he only wants something she would have done anyway: to finish writing the new AI program she began before leaving for Nepal. She accepts the deal, and with "no sense of transition," she finds herself back on the surface of the mountain at the base of South ColA mountain pass: the highest local point of a path, usually sandwiched between two mountains, resembling a saddle. within sight of Camp FourThe last camp before the summit of Mt. Everest. This is part of the "death zone" in which climbers have a maximum of two or three days left before they must turn around to avoid death from high altitude (lack of oxygen). The summit of Mt. Everest is 10-12 hours from Camp IV.. Fria concluded that her correspondence with the agent never happened: after all, she was climbing without bottled oxygenMost expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks above 8,000 m (26,246 ft). Everest can be climbed without supplementary oxygen, but this increases the risk to the climber. Humans do not think clearly with low oxygen, and the combination of severe weather, low temperatures, and steep slopes often require quick, accurate decisions.
The use of bottled oxygen to ascend Mount Everest has been controversial. George Mallory himself described the use of such oxygen as unsportsmanlike, but he later concluded that it would be impossible to summit without it and consequently used it. When Tenzing and Hillary made the first successful summit in 1953 they used bottled oxygen. For the next twenty-five years, bottled oxygen was considered standard for any successful summit.
Reinhold Messner was the first climber to break the bottled oxygen tradition and in 1978, with Peter Habeler, made the first successful climb without it. Although critics alleged that he sucked mini-bottles of oxygen - a claim that Messner denied - Messner silenced them when he summited the mountain, without supplemental oxygen or support, on the more difficult northwest route, in 1980. In the aftermath of Messner's two successful ascents, the debate on bottled oxygen usage continued., concluding that her brain must have slipped into hypoxia. She arrived at Camp IV, where a Sherpa team had a dry tent and hot tea ready, and the next day she finished her climb, standing on the peak with "one foot in China and the other in Nepal."
Later, Fria is at home working on the new AI program. She can't concentrate on it, and for some reason, the code no longer makes any sense to her, perhaps because it brings back too many memories of her "hallucinations," or perhaps for some other reason. She concludes she cannot finish the program. Two days later, Agent John Fine knocks on the door and reminds her of the deal. She says she cannot work on her program, because it reminds her of... and then the agent finishes her sentence, "Of this?" Ice seems to come out of the agent's abdomen and mouth until she is completely surrounded by ice. The agent says, "We hate it when our batteries give out early," and Fria dies.
The final scene is a discussion between two coroners who are confused by the fact that Fria was found dead in her living room. The injuries are consistent with a fall that couldn't have taken place in her living room, and even more confusing, she died of hypothermia on a "perfect July day."
