I called Emily when I reached my car and gave her a heads up on when I would get home. Upon arrival, the sun had already set. There was just a remnant of afterglow in the mountains behind our home. I pulled “the tank,” what I called my car, into the garage. The dang thing had more mileage on it than Methuselah, and you couldn’t kill the beast.
A new car was not in our plans. I was happy the darn thing still worked properly. With the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency, interest rates had skyrocketed, as well as the prices of vehicles and everything else under the sun. Apart from that, for almost two decades there had been a fight for the dashboard. The major electronic players—Sony, Google, Apple, Microsoft—wanted to control the flow of information on vehicle dashboards.
The government also saw this as a source of invading and amassing additional private info for their National Security Agency (NSA) computers. Things had come a long way since 2014 when it was revealed that Samsung’s new “smart TV” could watch you as you were watching it. All TVs had advanced microphones similar to the noise and wind reduction ones that motorcycles riders use to communicate. Some viewers erroneously thought that by raising the volume, the NSA would not be able to hear if they wished to discuss something privately. The government selectively granted consent, like a king bestowing knighthood, on only those corporations who would comply with government “requests.”
The newer dashboard monitor displays fed the government real time location of your vehicle whether you had the map feature turned on or not. And all the late model vehicles had a LoJack chip installed that the government could use to govern and slow your car to a stop if it wanted to. And most new car owners didn’t realize that the onboard computers can also be remotely hacked to totally take control of the vehicle away from the driver.
Bluetooth devices incorporate the perfect mike and receiver that the various agencies tune into to listen to people’s conversations live. All speech in your vehicle, as well as your travel destinations, are being fed and logged into the massive NSA computers in Maryland, Utah, or other undisclosed facilities, to be used against drivers and their passengers.
The public begged for this monitoring because they still could use their cell phones to call their carrier to unlock the car door if they had left the keys inside. They also could notify authorities if their car was stolen so they could activate the LoJack system and retrieve the vehicle.
During our dinner, which was ravioli with meatballs —what more could one of Italian extraction want—Emily and I spoke at length about Father Ed’s proposal. She was all for it.
“You’ve put in over thirty years into the emergency room,” her eyes dead-focused on me, “and it’s taken its toll on you. This sounds like a great opportunity, take it!” she said.
Chewing on a meatball, it took me a couple seconds to respond. “Yeah, I like the idea, but—”
“But what?” she interjected.
“Okay, but I haven’t taught in years,” I replied still masticating my meatball. “Besides, I don’t know what title to give the dumb course.” I was getting frustrated with her, and a bit with Father Ed.
“I’ll help you develop the name. Okay?” Her voice was sweet, and she looked at me lovingly, meaning what she said.
I avoided the topic for a while and asked her how her day went. She said she was worried about her raised-bed vegetable garden that she had just recently finished putting in.
“All I saw today were chemtrails crisscrossing the sky, pumping out their trailing clouds of heavy metals. How many more dead plants will I have this year? And the deer and raccoons seem to eat the good ones just as they ripen before I can pick them,” she stated in a very frustrated voice.
“Crisscrossed?” I repeated.
“Yes, crisscrossed …” As she pronounced the second syllable slowly, she looked at me. I was still looking at her as we both smiled at each other, clinked our wine glasses and said at the same time: The Matrix. We promptly proceeded to give each other a quick kiss as we laughed.
Over the next half hour we worked out the particulars, calling the course The Matrix Exposed 101 and 102, for the fall and spring semesters. The Matrix Exposed 101 would be a required pre-requisite before a student could take 102 in the spring. It would be a three-credit course per semester. We’d meet three times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—for an hour each of those days. In the course, I would detail the how and why the Matrix we currently live in was formed. I would explain how science, religion, and politics had created it; and that all three would be needed to unveil and dismantle it.
By then we had almost polished off the bottle of Merlot and were feeling very happy with ourselves. I grabbed for the bottle and looked at the label. “Huh, Yellow Tail from Australia no less. Those Aussies can make a pretty good wine,” as I took my last sip.
“Kroger,” my wife added. “And we get the gas points.”
I called Father Ed as soon as we finished dessert, which was a scrumptious chocolate pecan pie with whipped cream on it.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked him after giving him the skinny on what Emily and I had concocted.
“Praise be Mary and the Saints, you’ve really nailed it, Joe. I believe the topic will be something the kids will gravitate to. The Matrix film trilogy has always resonated with them. As a matter of fact, the student union showed it last year as part of their classic film festival.”