By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing - The single most iconic moment in late ‘90s cinema is arguably Neo’s choice in the first Matrix film. The Matrix, for those with a leaky memory, posits a future where humans live in an envelope of illusions; a dreamworld of everyday normalcy. In reality, each floats in a narcotic bath managed by sentient machines. Humans created the machines and gave them intelligence. The machines then enslaved the humans. They now use their living, anesthetized human creators as battery power.