Morpheus steps forward, coat brushing his legs like a pendulum.

He lifts a slab of rough, gray cement from a conjured table, its weight palpable in his hand.

Morpheus: “For millennia, cement has been regarded as inert structural material. Here, we challenge this long-standing perception by transforming cement into a ‘living’ energy device, ... through the development of a microbial cement supercapacitor.”

He sets it down with a resonant thud. Immediately, thin blue veins of light snake across its surface, the fluorescence of a living substrate.

Neo takes a half-step closer, eyes narrowing.

Neo: “You’re saying… walls could think?”

Morpheus circles him, slow, deliberate, his voice low and electric.

Morpheus: “Not think. Store. The very foundations of their prisons becoming batteries. Imagine—every tower in the Matrix, a living entity, feeding the machine’s hunger, while we believed them empty stone.”

The slab flares green, light coursing outward in a pulse. Neo instinctively shifts back, fists tightening.

Neo: “And you want me to believe we can turn their biopower into ours?”

Morpheus stops directly in front of him, their eyes locked. A faint smile.

Morpheus: “I don’t want you to believe it, Neo. I want you to feel it.”

Neo reaches, fingers splayed, toward the slab.

It dissolves into motes of red light, scattering into the infinite.