Knock, knock, Neo.

In The Matrix, Neo receives a series of strange messages on his computer: "Wake up, Neo." -- "The Matrix has you..." -- "Follow the white rabbit." -- "Knock, knock, Neo." Immediately after this last message, there are two knocks at his door, and he goes to answer it.

Neo lives in Room 101. The actual color of his door is not very clear, but the lighting makes it appear greenish. In "Green Door 101," I ran into a 4chan post emphasizing the gematria value of green door -- which is, in S:E:G:, 101. I even noted in that post that 101 is also the value of Neo, the One, but without remembering that Neo actually lives at No. 101.

Neo is greeted by a group of people, only two of whom have names: Choi and Dujour, apparently alluding to the French choix du jour, "choice of the day." (Choi's name is not pronounced as French but as the Cantonese for "vegetable," as in bok choy. This reminds me of something I happened to see on TV years ago: a white man with a Chinese tattoo that says jie lan, another Chinese cruciferous vegetable, saying "I do have a few things in common with a lizard.")

Neo and Choi have this little exchange:

Neo : You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?

Choi : All the time. It's called mescaline. It's the only way to fly.

Mescaline. Not any of the other hallucinogens he might have mentioned, but specifically the one that inspired Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception. As related in my post "'The Door in the Wall' by H. G. Wells," Huxley's references to that Wells story in The Doors of Perception were what led me to download and read it -- and the titular door turns out to be green.

Dujour is wearing a lot of unusual jewelry (neck rings), and at the end of the scene Neo notices a white rabbit tattoo on her shoulder. This, coming after the "Follow the white rabbit" message on his computer, is what makes him decide to accept Choi's invitation to go out with them.

In "Lewis Carroll syncs," I noted a reference to Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole in a novel called Green Doors.

After noticing all this, I went to a shop to pick up something my wife had ordered. There was only one other customer there: a woman with a lot of unusual jewelry (probably a total of 20 or more earrings) and a shoulder tattoo (not a rabbit). Dangling from her purse were two tiny stuffed rabbits (not white). On the back of her jacket were two big letter Ds -- not together like "DD," but sort of randomly located. No, I didn't follow her or anything.

After this, I went back to the collection of H. G. Wells short stories I have been reading (which I downloaded, remember, because of a book about mescaline). The next one up was "The Red Room." I thought the Red Room might have a red door, but the only specific door reference was to a "baize-covered door," and one gathers from Jane Austen and others that English doors of that description were typically green. Before entering the Red Room, which is supposed to be haunted, the narrator is told repeatedly, "It's your choice" (choix du jour). In the end, it is decided that the room is haunted not by a ghost but by Fear itself.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Room 101 is where you are subjected to whatever it is that you fear the most.