Danny ChaiThere’s a theory going around that the Merovingian was the first One, and Persephone his partner. Much like Neo and Trinity. There’s a few things in the movie to support this, like when Persephone makes the comment that he (the M) used to be different, used to be more like Neo. So he used to be human but somehow became a program.
I personally don’t buy it, but I do find that philosophically interesting. Again, to me the man/machine equivalence thing. If we buy that men and machines are equivalent, just that one is biologically based, the other electronically, then there’s an interesting implication – that you could theoretically convert between one and the other. Most easily from man to machine, if you could copy the algorithm that is your brain / mind into electronic form.
That gets into a host of interesting issues about personal identity and memory and the soul and all these other things. But yeah, we accept that an algorithm (e.g. Agent Smith) can replicate itself, so why couldn’t a human, which is at its core, an algorithm, also replicate itself? Interesting.