-Agent Smith

"The blue pill will eliminate any knowledge of the choice he has made, and will leave him in the world of illusion. The red pill opens the gates to a world which offers nothing but the truth."

In the recent sci-fi movie The Matrix, it turns out that what is apparently 1990s America is in fact a computer-generated illusion. It is actually late in the 22nd century, intelligent machines have won a war against humanity and millions of humans lie in life support pods connected to one another by a vast computer-controlled network called the Matrix. Within this virtual world they can interact with one another and apparently live meaningful late 20th century lives, but in fact they are kept alive in their cocoons purely to serve as a source of electrical energy for the machines which now rule the earth. A small number of humans have escaped the Matrix and occasionally manage to awaken one or other of the cocooned humans.

Thus the hero, Neo, is offered a choice, between the familiar world he has always known, and a world of which he has no knowledge, a world which turns out to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, grey and desperate. His world, however, is a world of illusion and he is being offered the chance to wake up. The enigmatic Morpheus offers him two pills - a red one and a blue one. The blue pill will eliminate any knowledge of the choice he has made, and will leave him in the world of illusion. The red pill opens the gates to a world which offers nothing but the truth.