I think if he would’ve been like “I’ve rally changed my mind. I can’t do this.” Neo and Morpheus I feel would’ve tried to help him re-enter the matrix.
The whole thing was about “give them a choice” and I think everyone would have at least understood how he fealt and would’ve tried to get him back into the matrix at his request.
I feel like he didn’t even try talking about it before he went to the agents.
I know it’s meaningless just wondering what other people thought.
So I just went and watched that specific scene because you do raise some good points here.
It looks like the machine that releases him is a different one from the usual Sentinels we see elsewhere in the films so I assume it’s just there to monitor the humans in the pods. It is probably programmed to just dispose of humans into the sewer that either wake up due to technical issues or that die in the pod by yanking their neck using the grabby arm and unscrewing the neural spike. Flushing the live/dead body down is just the last step in it’s process because even if they wake up alive in the pod, once they’re flushed down they aren’t going to be fed nutrients to keep them alive and these vat grown humans barely use their muscles so they can’t swim well and will most likely drown quickly. Why bother wasting energy making sure they’re dead when they most likely will die anyway?
I don’t think the machines knew he was The One at that stage because he was yet to perform any of the feats that the “prophecy” laid out. I don’t think I could explain the whole prophecy thing they go over in the third film well enough but from the sounds of it, until Neo can see the Matrix for what it truly is the machines don’t know if he’s the one or not so until he gets shit by Agent Smith and comes back to life to the machines he’s just another human that broke free and being a bit of a pest like the rest of them.
You knock my whole argument out with that sewer. Neos eyes couldn’t even adjust to the light when he first woke up. Thefomouters expect people to drown. That’s why the crew are in such a hurry to find him. No one can swim.