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Inside the church office, the lights had been turned off, except for a small desk lamp on the front desk.  Mike Mueller sat in a desk chair that had been moved to the front of the desk.  He wore all black with sunglasses.  Next to him were two small bowls, one full of red M&Ms candies and the other full of blue ones.  Behind the M&Ms was a stack of envelopes, each stamped with the outline of a running rabbit.  Five others were in the room.

“Good evening,” Mike began.  “I am Morpheus.  One of you is The One.  I’ve spent my whole life looking for you.  What is the Matrix?  It is everywhere around you.  But you have to see the way things really are for yourself.  There is no turning back.  Follow the white rabbit.  Now you must choose the red pill or the blue pill.”  Mike motioned to the bowls of M&Ms as he said this.  “Which pill do you choose?”

Great, I thought.  If I chose wrong, my team might be eliminated right off the bat.  When I heard that the college and career group at church was doing a car rally based on the movie The Matrix, I hoped that it would be no big deal that I had not seen it.  But had I seen the movie, I would probably know which pill to choose now.  I tried to see the movie in the theater, back in the spring when it was first out, but when my friends and I got there, the only showing left that night was already sold out.

Mike called each of the six of us, the drivers for the participating teams, into another room one at a time, asking, “Do you want the red pill?  Or the blue pill?”  He had been speaking more slowly than usual, probably because he was in character as some guy named Morpheus from the movie.  I still had no idea which pill was correct, but the first thing that popped into my mind related to either of these colors was the California Blue Waves, the baseball team that I absolutely detested.  Blue was not going to be my choice.  “Red,” I said.  Mike handed me one red M&M and an envelope marked with a red dot, with instructions to eat the M&M and keep the envelope sealed for now.

After all of us had chosen our pills and received our envelopes, Mike explained, “Now  find your teams.  Open the envelope when you get to the car; it will tell you what to do.  Go!”

I ran back out of the building, where my team waited for me.  We formed teams while we were waiting for the event to start, and I had Lacey Kilpatrick, Jen Aldrich, and Jen’s boyfriend Kevin Reed on my team.  I got excited earlier when Lacey asked me if my team was full yet; a fun competition sounded like a great night, but hanging out with Lacey at said fun competition sounded even better to me.  I was a little apprehensive, though, because my one previous experience with a car rally, four years ago, had gone badly.  None of us on my team then were able to decipher the first clue, so we drove around for an hour and a half, accomplishing nothing.  It did not help that the clue had a typo.

When we got back to my car, I opened the envelope.  Inside were about a dozen small squares; a message had been typed on a piece of paper, which had then been cut into pieces.

“Have you ever had,” Lacey said, reading from one of the papers.  “This one says ‘a dream that felt,’ maybe those two go right next to each other?”

“Pines that grow lemons,” I read.  “What does that mean?”

“This one says ‘go to the grove of,’” Jen pointed out.  “Maybe these two are next to each other?  Go to the grove of pines?  That makes sense.”

“But how do pines grow lemons?” Lacey asked.

“This one says ‘Blake Lo,’” I said, pointing at another piece of paper.  “Blake Lowry lives at Pine Grove Apartments, which is on Lemon Court!”  With this breakthrough, we were quickly able to put all the papers together in the right way and read the whole message:

Have you ever had a dream that felt real?  Can you wake up?  Blake Lowry can help you wake up.  Go to the grove of pines that grow lemons.  Be ready to make a splash!

I pulled out of the church parking lot and drove south on Andrews Road, turning right on Eighth Street past Maple Drive, then zigzagging through a neighborhood of student-oriented apartment buildings until I reached Lemon Court.  Blake stood outside his apartment near the swimming pool, next to a chair with a pile of bath towels on it.  Three other teams arrived around the same time.  “Welcome to the real world,” Blake said mysteriously.

“The clue said ‘make a splash,’” I said.  “Is there something in the pool?”

“Look!” Jen exclaimed, pointing at gallon-sized plastic bags in the deep end of the pool, each weighed down by a rock inside, and also containing a folded piece of paper.  “Someone’s gonna have to dive into the pool.”

It was late October.  It was starting to get cold at night this time of year.  As I was thinking about how much I did not want to dive into a pool and be wet all night, Kevin began taking off his shoes and emptying his pockets.  “I got this,” he said.  He dove into the deep end before any of us could react; I watched his distorted underwater body for several seconds, slowly moving toward the bags with our next instructions in them, then slowly surfacing until his head, wet but less distorted now, broke above the surface of the water.  He took a deep breath, tossed the clue to me, and shouted, “Let’s go!”  The three of us cheered as he got out of the pool and dried himself off with one of the towels on the chair.

“Thanks for taking one for the team, Kevin,” I said.

I opened the clue.  At the top was the same rabbit stamp from the first clue, then below this was a picture of a gravestone, with “R.I.P.” written on it, and the Grim Reaper standing next to it.  Beside this was a large five-pointed star.  At the bottom was typed, “ESCAPE THE AGENT BY DODGING THE BULLETS.  EVERY OTHER UNUSED LETTER.”

“Every other unused letter,” I said, quietly enough that Lacey and Jen could hear me, but not loud enough for any other teams to hear.  I tried reading every other letter of the message on the page, but that did not spell anything coherent.  “It’s not every other letter on this clue,” I said out loud.  “We have to find something else.  Something with unused letters, apparently. And the gravestone picture must be a clue to where.”

As we jogged to the car, Lacey asked, “Is there a cemetery in Jeromeville?”

“Yes,” I said.  “On Eighth, past Power Line Road.  I guess that’s where we’re going next.”  I drove back to Eighth Street and headed east, across Maple Drive, across Andrews Road, and eventually into the grid of lettered and numbered streets in the oldest part of Jeromeville.

As I slowed down to stop at a red light at G Street, Jen said, “I’m glad we’re in your car.  You know your way around Jeromeville so well.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“What do you think the star in the clue means?” Lacey asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered.  “There’s something we’re missing here.”

“Maybe a gravestone with a star on it?  Isn’t that a Jewish thing?”

“If it was, it would be a six-pointed Star of David.  Hmm… star… grave star… Grim Reaper star…” I contemplated.  Then, at the same time, Kevin and I said, “Death star.”

“Shit!” I screamed.  “We’re going the wrong way!  Sorry, didn’t mean to swear at a church activity.”  After the light turned green, I pulled over as soon it was safe.  “The Death Star building on campus.  That’s probably where we’re supposed to go.  Not the cemetery.”

“Oh my gosh, I bet you’re right!” Lacey exclaimed.

“Does the whole car agree?” I asked.  “Abandon our trip to the cemetery and go to the Death Star instead?”  Kevin and Jen answered in the affirmative, so I zigzagged my way on the grid streets toward campus, avoiding areas that would be heavy with pedestrian traffic on a Saturday night.  I parked on A Street across from the Social Sciences Building, affectionately known as the Death Star because its concrete and metal canyons reminded people of the Death Star from Star Wars.  I jogged around the perimeter of the building, and the others followed me.  We saw Randy Smith, Marlene Fallon, 3 Silver, and Morgan King running toward the parking garage on the north end of campus; they must have completed the task already.

At the far end of the Death Star building, a girl named Heather, whom I had seen around church but did not know well, stood under a streetlight, wearing all black with sunglasses.  “Hello, Mr. Anderson,” she said to me in a deadpan voice; I figured this must be a quote from the movie.  She handed me a folded piece of paper and a pencil; I noticed that she had two more papers in her hand.

“It’s a word search,” I said.  “There’s a list of words to find at the bottom.”

“This shouldn’t be too hard,” Lacey added.

After a few minutes, in which we saw one more team arrive, we had all of the words circled.  “Now we read every other unused letter,” I said, referencing the previous clue.  I wrote down all of the unused letters in the puzzle at the bottom of the page, then I rewrote them, only including every other letter.  YOURTRAININGISATDCCXKST, it said.

“Your training is at… where?” Jen asked, reading the letters.  “Did you skip a letter there at the end and write the wrong thing?”

I thought about it for a few seconds, then shouted, “Got it!  I’ll explain in the car.”

We jogged to the car just as we saw Jen Powell and her team arrive.  If Heather had printed exactly one word search for each team, then the other Jen’s team was in last place, which would put us in fourth place out of six.  Not great; I had cost us precious minutes by heading toward the cemetery instead of going straight from Blake’s apartment to the Death Star.

“Where are we going?” Lacey asked.

“D-C-C-X.  Roman numerals for seven hundred ten.  And K-S-T is K Street.”

“Oh!” Kevin exclaimed.

“You’re good at this!” Lacey said as I pulled up to a stop sign.

“Thank you,” I replied, looking over at her, smiling.

We arrived at 710 K Street and parked a little ways past the house.  It was a nondescript one-story house in an older neighborhood with a relatively large front yard.  Randy’s team, the ones we saw ahead of us at the Death Star, was still here, searching for something in the yard. The house was dark, as if no one was home.  A sheet of paper was taped to the door; this one had the same rabbit stamp as the other clues, along with a picture of Woody, the cowboy sheriff character from the movie Toy Story.  Great, another reference to a movie I had not seen.

“Huh?” Lacey asked, whispering so the other team would not hear us.

“This is definitely the right place, but what are we supposed to do?” I asked.  “Any ideas?  I never saw Toy Story.”

“I did, but I’m not sure what it has to do with The Matrix, or the clue,” Kevin explained.

“Yeah,” I said.  “All we have to go on is this picture of Woody.  That’s his name, right?”

“Woody, yes,” Jen said.

“And what are they looking for over there?  Or are they just looking–”  I paused and whispered intensely, “Follow me!” I had gotten an idea mid-sentence.  I pretended to look around the yard for clues, as the others here were doing, but once we got to the sidewalk, I headed back to the car and motioned for the rest of the team to get in.  I drove off, hoping that the other team would not be able to follow us.

“Where are we going?” Jen asked.

“Woody!  Woody’s Pizza!” I exclaimed.

“Yes!” Lacey agreed excitedly.  “And we left before Randy’s team!”

Woody’s Pizza was on G Street downtown, in the middle of the crowded area I was trying to avoid.  The streets were filled with people visiting various restaurants and bars nearby.  I drove the entire length of the block without finding a place to park.  “Maybe someone can get out and find the next clue while I drive around the block looking for a parking place?” I suggested.

“That’ll work,” Jen said.  “Kevin and I will get out.  If we’re done before you two find a place to park, we’ll stand on the sidewalk and wave at you when you come back around.”

“Sounds perfect,” I replied.

After Jen and Kevin stepped out of the car, I drove down to the end of the block and stopped at the four-way stop at Second Street.  “Is that Darius?” Lacey asked, pointing out the window at a guy sitting on a bench.  He held what looked like a cell phone, something not many people had back in those days.

“I think so,” I replied.  “He must be working this event, doing whatever this clue is.”

We drove around the block, coming back around to Woody’s by way of Third Street.  Jen and Kevin were standing on the corner waving; we got as close to them as we could and let them back into the car.

“‘505 Angelina Street.  That’s your exit,’” Kevin said.  “That was our clue.”

I worked my way to First Street and turned on Cornell Boulevard, headed under the railroad tracks toward south Jeromeville.  “I’ve never seen a pay phone ring before!” Jen exclaimed.

“What?” I asked.

“That was how we got the clue,” Kevin explained.  “We were looking outside, and the pay phone rang.  I answered, and a voice said ‘505 Angelina Street, that’s your exit,’ and hung up.”

“Pay phones have phone numbers on them, and I’ve heard you can call a pay phone, but I’ve never done it myself.  Lacey saw Darius Curtis sitting on a bench with a cell phone, so he’s probably calling the pay phone whenever he sees someone from our group approach.”  I turned onto Highway 100 eastbound toward Capital City.

“Where are you taking us?” Jen asked, suddenly noticing that we were on the freeway. “Capital City?”

“No,” I said.  “505 Angelina Street.  A family from church lives there, I forget their names, but Liz Williams is renting a room from them. She was my year, she went on a year-long mission trip to an unreached people group in rural Russia after she graduated, and she moved back this summer.  I went to her house for a presentation on her mission trip, and I’ve been there on a bike ride too.”  I took the Bruce Boulevard exit and turned back onto Cornell Boulevard, having avoided two and a half miles of much lower speed limits, then turned left on Angelina Street, in a neighborhood that was just built last year, at the easternmost extreme of Jeromeville.

The four of us ran up to the porch.  I knocked, and Liz answered the door.  “Hello,” she said, wearing all black.  “My name is Trinity.  This is your final destination.”  She handed me a folded piece of paper.

“Thanks!” I replied.  We ran back to the car, and as I started it, I gave the paper to Lacey and asked, “What does it say?”

Lacey read, “‘2121 Buckeye Lane.  Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.’”

I started the car and drove north across the freeway, then west on Coventry Boulevard until I got to Buckeye Lane.  I had been to this house many times before.  Several people from church lived there, including Adam White, the youth pastor; Mike Mueller, who had played Morpheus tonight; and Colin Bowman, who had hosted the Bible study I was in last year in that same house. Colin was a driver in the car rally tonight; I had seen him at the church earlier.

Adam answered when I knocked.  “Everyone is in the garage,” he said, pointing to a door off the kitchen.  “I think you guys are first.”

“Really?” I said excitedly.  “We weren’t first for most of the night.”

“I haven’t seen any other teams get here.”

The four of us walked through the door to the garage.  “Congratulations,” Mike said, still in costume as Morpheus.  “You won.”  Blake, Darius, and Heather, now finished handing out clues, were also in the garage.

“Nice!”  I said, visibly excited.  I high-fived everyone else in my group.

“Great job, Greg!” Lacey exclaimed.

“How did you get here so fast?” Darius asked.  “Your group was third to get my clue, and you got here first, and it’s not even close.  No one else is here yet.”

“Greg knew right where to go when he got your clue,” Lacey suggested.  “Maybe other people didn’t know where Angelina Street was?”

“That could be,” I said.

About five minutes later, Colin arrived, with Brianna Johns, Chelsea Robbins, and Tim Walton.  “How did you beat us?” Colin exclaimed. “We were ahead of you the whole night!”

“I told you, it’s because Tim stopped to ask for directions,” Chelsea said.

“Well, how else were we supposed to find Angelina Street?” Tim asked.  “And it’s not my fault none of the first five people we asked knew where it was!”

“It’s a good thing we found that guy at Kafe Misha using the Internet, so he could look it up for us on Mapquest,” Brianna said.  “Otherwise it might have taken us even longer to find.”

“So after all the teams get here, we’re going to watch The Matrix,” Mike explained.  “Adam brought the projector from church, and we hooked it up to my brand-new DVD player.”  A white sheet hung over the closed garage door to act as a screen.  The projector sat on a table about ten feet from the sheet, with couches and chairs set up on either side.  I walked over to the table and looked at the DVD player connected to the projector, the first DVD player I had ever seen.  I wondered if these new DVDs would soon replace VHS tapes as the primary medium for home movies, as music CDs had supplanted cassette tapes.

The other four teams trickled in over the next half hour, as did Liz. Apparently Angelina Street was the sticking point for all of those teams as well.  Two teams bought street maps of Jeromeville to find Angelina Street, and one of those maps did not have Angelina Street on it yet because it was a new neighborhood.  My apparent superpower of knowing my way around scored a victory for my team.  Jen Powell’s team finished last; I heard her say that they took the blue pill at the beginning, so when they assembled their cut-up paper, it told them to go back and take the red pill.

I sat on one of the couches when I first got here, and as the room filled up and couch and chair space ran out, it became evident that we would need to seat more than three people to a couch.  My left arm rested on an arm of the couch, with Lacey sitting to my right, and when more people began squeezing onto the couch, she scooted up close to me, so my right arm felt uncomfortably squished. I raised my arm and extended it along the back of the couch.  “Is that okay?” I asked Lacey.

“Yeah,” she replied, smiling.  I looked at her and smiled back.

Mike turned the lights out and started the movie.  The opening sequence showed lines of random green letters and numbers on a computer screen, reminiscent of the word search we had completed earlier.  As the movie played, I recognized other elements of the movie that had been present during the car rally.  Trinity and Morpheus showed up early in the movie, with Trinity disappearing in a phone booth. When Neo, the main character played by Keanu Reeves, first appeared, he was told to follow the white rabbit, just as Mike told us at the beginning.  A few minutes after that, Lacey stirred a little and leaned closer against me, resting her head against my chest.  I turned my head to look at her; she was smiling, and I smiled back.

In the movie, Morpheus showed Neo that everything he knew about his life was fake, a virtual reality world called the Matrix resembling human society at its peak in 1999, planted there by artificially intelligent machines.  He explained that humans and machines had gone to war hundreds of years earlier, destroying the world.  Machines had enslaved the human race to use their bodies as energy sources, living batteries.  Humans were unaware of this, because in their minds, in the Matrix, they were going about lives that were normal by 1999 standards. Someone long ago found a way to escape, starting a group that was now on a mission to free others.  It was prophesied that Neo would destroy the Matrix and bring freedom.  Wow.  Deep.

I tilted my head to the right a little so it just barely touched Lacey’s head, my dark hair touching her strawberry-blonde hair.  She smiled as she felt me move.

This movie messed with my head.  How did one truly know what is real, and what is not?  Neo’s experience of being freed from the Matrix to see the world as it really was called to mind the experience of coming to Jesus.  Jesus Christ freed us from sin and brought a new understanding of the meaning of life and spiritual reality.  The world said a lot of things, but the Word of God and God’s love were real.  I was twenty-three, I had just begun my career as a teacher, and a lot of things were changing.  Many of my oldest friends here in Jeromeville had moved away, but other new friends had taken their place.  Would they stay in my life forever?  I did not know.  But right now, at least, I was part of this church community, and I had people who cared for me and welcomed me into their lives.  That was real.  And, far more exciting from my perspective, an adorably cute girl was almost cuddling with me right now.  I could feel her against my side.  I was a little apprehensive about the age difference, considering that she had just turned nineteen this month, but that was not necessarily insurmountable.  Was this real, or were things not what they seemed?  Either way, maybe it was time to take the red pill and see where this rabbit hole would lead.

Readers: Now only 11 episodes left! (This number is subject to change, because while I have a broad outline of the rest of the story, some of my ideas may get edited out, and I may find a need to add another episode or two.)

Have you ever seen The Matrix? Have you ever done a car rally? Tell me about it in the comments.

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[Foo Fighters – Everlong]