Starting off your simulated citizens on the right literature can be ver y difficult! However, Matrix Manager makes it easier by connecting to the servers of the simulation we live in. Thanks to a team of skilled human programmers who found vulnerabilities in the Matrix, Matrix Manager is able to manipulate the simulation according to its user’s will.

However, the complexity of the Matrix and by extension, human society at large means that even basic MM operations are difficult to do and require years of training. In fact, certain large-scale operations such as deleting countries, dissolving corporations, or creating new traditions are completely impossible due to the fact that the simulation has not yet been reverse-engineered for these operations.

Thankfully, an operation as simple as changing a person’s reading preferences is easy!

To change someone’s reading preferences, you need their Matrix Person ID. To acquire a Matrix Person ID (MPID), read the “Get someone’s Matrix Person ID” guide. MPIDs are required for the vast majority of basic personality modification operations. An abridged version of the linked guide is as follows:

  1. Compile a list of the person’s identifiers or general information. Using a full legal name (this includes middle names) with all name components has the most precision and will make acquiring a Matrix Person ID significantly easier.
    • Plugins for computing a Matrix Person ID from other types of identifiers other than a full legal name (e.g. Wikidata identifier, Reddit, Discord username, Facebook page, website URL, initials, and even complex riddles) are bundled with Matrix Manager and can be installed through the MM Plugin Manager.
  2. Open the Matrix Person ID Manager (MPIM). The MPIM interface is simple; a text box accepting a full legal name. Plugins will add additional text boxes to the bottom for other identifiers.
  3. Wait 30-40 seconds for MM to perform the necessary queries on the Matrix and exploit security holes as necessary.
  4. A list of results will then appear. To further aid searching, the person’s age, full date of birth in YYYY-MM-DD format, and other information. To the right is a field saying “Matrix Person ID”. This will be a 256 character base64 string. Copy it.

Now that you have an MPID, open the Person Manager and navigate to Preferences > Favorites > Literature.

Several settings are available. A limited list is as follows:

  • favoriteWork: A person’s favorite text. If it is not a book, but rather a story, article, or online publication that does not have an ISBN, If null, this variable is an alias for favoriteBook. However, favoriteWork and favoriteBook are not mutually exclusive and can coexist.
  • favoriteBook: A person’s favorite book. The field is an ISBN.
  • favoriteAuthor: A person’s favorite author. The field is a Matrix Person ID.
  • favoriteGenre: A person’s favorite genre of book.

(British English users: Be advised that Matrix Manager’s variable display uses American English spellings.)

If the items show up as an array, the first item in the array should be presumed to be the person’s most favorite.

Change these variables as necessary to modify the person’s reading preferences and simply hit the Save button. The changes will be applied during the person’s next sleep cycle. Matrix Manager saves updates only during a person’s sleep as this is the time when the server’s load is lowest and the likelihood of unintentional disruption low. If it is necessary that the reading preferences be updated immediately without waiting for the next sleep cycle, click the “Urgent Save” button. Urgent Save has a 0.000003901% chance of corrupting the person and effects vary from unwanted personality changes, full memory erasure, and (redacted).

Congratulations - you have changed someone’s reading preferences. If you need to modify these preferences in bulk, see the Matrix Manager library and its C, C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, Java, Go, Julia, and Rust bindings and our Scripting Guide to develop simple scripts for bulk modification. Or, try the groundbreaking “SQLmatrix” plugin that lets you make global-scale changes with a few lines of SQL, courtesy of one of Matrix Manager’s amazing developers.

~DISCLAIMER: Matrix Manager is not real software. This is experimental fiction in the form of a software manual.~