Goliath (short story)
Gaiman, Neil. "Goliath." "© by Warner Bros Studios, a division of Time Warner. First published online at www.whatisthematrix.com. Based on concepts by Larry and Andy Wachowski. Inspired by the motion picture The Matrix, written by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski." Collected Fragile Things." London, UK: Headline Review, 2006. For translations, reprints, awards — and our source here for bibliographic information — see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of May 2024, here.[1]
From Matrix Wiki for the title "Goliath," original formatting retained:
Goliath is a short story written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz and Gregory Ruth for The Matrix Comics Series 1. It was then re-illustrated and published in The Matrix Comics Volume 1, and was later included in Neil Gaiman's short story anthology "Fragile Things". Twenty years after the first Matrix film (The Matrix), it was also republished as part of The Matrix Comics: 20th Anniversary Edition. The story was about a genetically engineered man trained and sent on a mission to destroy a ship of attacking aliens.[2]
The story is summarized on the Matrix wiki:
In an unknown date in the Real World, an alien spaceship attacked the Machine-controlled Earth by hurling asteroids at the planet. One of these asteroids struck a central processing unit in London and killed the 200,000 people it contained. The explosion briefly disconnected London from the Matrix and allowed an unnamed man to have a redpill experience, conversing with some sort of Agent-like program during the disconnection, and [...] learning some truths about the Matrix. Upon reconnecting to the Matrix, the man started to experience a Déjà vu [, which] the man increasingly experienced [...] as the invasion of the Real World [...]. He would later learn, from the same Agent, that he had been living in an overclocked Matrix and that only minutes have passed in the Real World in the years that had gone by in the Matrix.
The Machines retaliated by producing a spacecraft to destroy the aliens, which the man learned to fly in his latest reincarnation as a pilot. He was soon woken up from the Matrix, given the spacecraft, and ordered to destroy the alien ship. He completed his mission only to be told that there was no return to Earth. Granting his final request and on his final hour, he was reconnected to the Matrix, allowing him to live out fifteen more years of a simulated but happy life.[3]
See for the mechanized, computerized "brain-in-a-vat" motif of THE MATRIX series and some of the works cross-listed at our citation there. Note nested inclusions in artificial environments both protective and imprisoning with the image of the astronaut "in" the Matrix, in a spacecraft.
See also publication information and fuller plot summary ("History") in the Matrix Fandom wiki under "Goliath (pilot)," as of May 2024, here.[4]
RDE, with thanks to Cait Coker and Lisa Yaszek, finishing, 26May2024
