A power plant[1] is a series of gigantic, skyscraper-like, cylindrical towers somewhere in the vicinity of 01. As the name suggests, power plants generate electrical energy for 01's inhabitants, the Machines.
Each cylindrical tower contains many thousands of pods. Inside each pod is a human, connected through a series of grafts, plugs, and wires into the circuitry of the pod. The human's mind exists in a living dream--a neural-interactive virtual world known as the Matrix, fully convinced in almost all cases that they are alive, awake, and living on Earth around the turn of the 21st Century.
Meanwhile, each pod generates heat energy that, collectively, is used by the Machines, in combination with a form of nuclear fusion, to power 01.
Each pod is tended to by a Docbot, a Machine entity that ensures each human stays asleep and working properly.
The massive power cables to the Machine world feed energy from the power plant to Machine city.
Each pod is connected to a waste chute. Many human bodies that have died are recycled into a gelatinous nutrient that is fed back to other pods. In the case of some bodies, the Docbot may be commanded to eject a human from the pod, where the body falls into the remains of the ancient sewers, conduits and other tunnels from the old, dilapidated human cities which cover the scarred surface of the Earth.
The early version of the power plant was created during the Machine war, in the form of giant floating mobile platform with attached pod and armed with energy weapons strong enough to vaporize a real world tank. Its base consisted of a series of protruding antennae served as an wireless energy transfers to the nearby Machine army, which fed its energy via a long antenna. It was created as an adaptation to Operation Dark Storm. Variants include a large cylinder where naked humans are bounded into it side by side, to feed energy without being submerged into a pod.
Behind the scenes
According to early scripts from The Matrix, the minds of the pod-humans are also combined as a form of biocomputing cluster. Each human mind within the Matrix is also a subprocessor for the virtual world. This information correlates to the detrimental effects of Smith, a rogue Agent that infects both Programs and Bluepill alike to form copies of himself. Smith's viral behavior greatly disrupts the Matrix and the minds that form it, leaving it in an imminent computer crash before Neo stops Smith so that the Matrix can be reloaded.
Gallery
References
- ↑ The term "power plant" is used at the start of the movie, The Matrix Revolutions, as the Hammer's operator searches in vain for Neo's carrier signal, but finding nothing but bluepills.