When we first meet Neo, he is asleep in front of his computer when a message appears that reads, "Wake up, Neo." This visually and verbally states the main theme of the entire film, which is that life is a grand illusion. As Neo tries to restore his screen to normal, the message goes on; "The Matrix has you," then, "Follow the white rabbit." There is a knock at the door, a customer named Choi, who buys an illicit disk from Neo. Choi invites Neo out with his small group of friends, and Neo initially refuses. Neo then notices that Choi's female friend bears a tattoo of a white rabbit, and he changes his mind. The story thus wastes no time in getting into the main action. This scene is also the first nod to one of the main thematic motifs in the film, that of the story of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and its sequel "Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass".

At the party, Neo meets Trinity, a legendary hacker, who gives him tantalizing hints about Morpheus and the Matrix. Neo awakes the next day late for work. At work, he is chewed out by his stiffly corporate boss.

The Call to Action (Page 16): Morpheus contacts Neo via cellphone at his workplace to warn him about the approaching Agents. Morpheus tries to guide Neo to an escape, but when he tells Neo to step outside of the building and make his way on a narrow ledge to a scaffold, Neo can't do it.

The Call to Action does not take place simply during this one scene, but is actually spread out and builds along several scenes from page 9 ("Wake up, Neo.") to a climax at page 19. This final scene gives us a sense that Morpheus possesses unusual and omnipotent powers, as he seems to be able to "see" both Neo and the agents. This scene fulfills an important step in the standard structure of the Hero's Journey, which is the Refusal of the Call.

Neo is then arrested by the Agents, and brought into an interrogation room. Agent Smith offers Neo amnesty from his hacking activities if Neo will help them find Morpheus, but Neo is combatively refuses. Agent Smith seems to magically seal up the flesh of Neo's mouth, and with the help of fellow Agents, inserts a writhing, evil-looking insectoid wire tap into Neo's navel. Now we really know that something weird is going on, and are tantalized by these events. The bad guys have also laid out their agenda for our benefit. We also see that not only are they not regular, but something far nastier, and they could probably kill Neo with no more than a flick of the wrist. The stakes have been raised.

After a jump in time to Neo's apartment, he wakes up screaming (waking up is a recurring thematic motif), which suggests the previous surreal scene might have been a dream. The phone rings, and it is Morpheus. He tells Neo to go to the Adams Street bridge. There, Neo is net by a large black car that carries several Resistance members; Trinity, Switch, and Apoc.

To his surprise, once inside the car, Switch aims a gun at him. When Neo complains, Switch tells him, "Listen, coppertop! We don't have time for twenty questions. Right now there is only one rule. It's our way or the highway." Neo opens the door to leave in another Refusal of the Call, and Trinity asks him to trust her. He grudgingly relents. Trinity aims a sinister-looking device at Neo's stomach which sucks out the wire tap, and she tosses it out the window of the moving car.

Finally brought to a decaying hotel, Neo is introduced to Morpheus, who tells him, "I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole?" Morpheus goes on:

                 MORPHEUS
      Do you believe in fate, Neo?

                 NEO
      No.

                 MORPHEUS
      Why not?

                 NEO
      Because I don't like the idea that
      I'm not in control of my life.

                 MORPHEUS
      I know exactly what you mean.

Again, that smile that could cut glass.

                 MORPHEUS
      Let me tell you why you are here.
      You have come because you know 
      something.  What you know you 
      can't explain but you feel it.
      You've felt it your whole life,
      felt that something is wrong with 
      the world.  You don't know what,
      but it's there like a splinter in
      your mind, driving you mad.  It is
      this feeling that brought you to 
      me.  Do you know what I'm talking 
      about?

                 NEO
      The Matrix?

This scene helps illustrate Neo's external goal, which is "to find the truth" (truth, in this case, represented by Morpheus and the nature of the Matrix). His internal goal is "to become the One". As the story progresses, his external goal for truth blends and meshes with his internal goal to become a search for internal truth that allows him to assume the mantle of the One. In fact, until Neo truly understands the great truth that the Matrix is an illusion, he cannot become the One.

• The Commitment to Act (page 30): Exactly on page 30 is the final scene in Act 1, which is textbook timing for such an act break. Morpheus offers Neo two pills, one red, one blue, and tells Neo, "Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more."

This scene again references "Alice", but also relates to another narrative motif, the biblical story of the Fall of Man, when Eve offers Adam a bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The other biblical story referenced in the film is the Coming of the Messiah. Neo swallows the red pill (the biblical apple), and Morpheus leads him into another room. There, the other Resistance members have set up banks of high-tech equipment, to which they hook up Neo with electrodes.

In front of Neo, a mirror begins to heal along a length of cracks, and when he touches it, his fingers disappear into its surface -- another Alice reference (in this case "Through the Looking Glass"). The mirror slithers across his body like a gel, and engulfs Neo as he panics. He screams.

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