Unfortunately this is not the next chapter. After a lot of deliberation I am finally declaring this story dead as a doornail.

There are many reasons for this, though first and foremost is that I HATE the Matrix trilogy. The first movie sparked my interest but the other two just killed everything good that I felt for this verse in its entirely :(

Unlike other writers I'm not going to leave you hanging about what was going to happen in the story.

So here it is in a nutshell:

1;

A lot of you got this, the Oracle is Zotoh Zhaan. Consider her and the children with her to be timeless Ascended energy beings that are using the Matrix as a sort of training ground. Zhaan's actions as the Oracle have been all aimed at giving the human resistance hope as Crichton gave her and the others on Moya hope during their adventures.

2;

There is no complete happy ending for everyone, or complete action packed victory over the machines. Crichton's forces are superior in EVERY aspect but they don't have the resources to rehab several BILLION humans stuck in the Matrix. And killing all the machines would kill all those humans and be genocide, of the Humans and Machines. And Crichton does not stand for genocide even of the Machines, who are sentient creatures in their own right. An uneasy truce would be forced on all parties dictated by these circumstances.

3;

Crichton would enter the Matrix and Harvey would have reappeared and subsequently separated from him in the Matrix. As an independent entity in the Matrix, he would probably have had the only true happy ending of any of the characters in this fic.

4;

All the inhabitants of Zion would have been transported to a new world and set up a human colony among the Hegemony worlds. Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus among them. For the most part they'd have been happy but a part of them would also have been guilty over the humans they'd had to leave behind on Earth in the Matrix.

And that is the story in a nutshell, imagine it as you would, I hope you enjoyed what I have written.

As for the extended Crichton family that I portrayed here, I put a lot of effort into creating them so they will be appearing in some my other fics, though further down the line.

Thanks for the support over the years and the reviews that many of you have written but I'm sorry for the disappointment, Fate has been and always will be fickle.

The Sithspawn