The Matrix and me.

I saw The Matrix when it was first released. I was flying back to LHR on an overnight BA flight and it was one of that month’s newly released movies. Sci-fi – always my favourite – but different. Fast, original and, of course, visually stunning. The best since Bladerunner.

I was especially impressed by the excellent, unexpected ending:

Neo has survived, triumphed even, when suddenly the action shifts to a quite new location. Its a college classroom or gym. People are sat in a circle. They are taking their head-sets off. There are comments about what a great game it was. A couple of the players reach down to the hold-all bags under their chairs. They take out machine guns and proceed to shoot the rest of the circle. We are still in the Matrix !

Hey, you say, that’s not how it ends! It ends with Neo in a phone box wondering what he’ll do next and then doing a Superman – shooting off in to the sky.

You are correct. That is indeed how the film ends and I can find no evidence at all that the ending I saw ever existed.

So where the devil did it come from ? The usual accusation when I tell the tale is that I dreamt it. Which is quite possible. It was an overnight flight . . . But it’s an amazingly good dramatic twist-of-an-ending to make up while I’m asleep . . .

Alternatively, what if you found you wanted to make more Matrix movies ? Was this an original Director’s ending which the studio immediately cut and replaced with the phone box so that they could make Matrix 2 ?

Possibly. But I can find no evidence.

What I do notice, however, is that this is not the only occasion when I have experienced something which I clearly remember or knew to be the case in the past suddenly no longer being true in the present. These are usually quite minor items and easily dismissed as miss-rememberings, misunderstandings, mistakes. You have to be alert even to notice them, and even more so to remember them. I am alert and I do sometimes notice them. I point them out to my family when they occur. However, I cannot now remember them. I can give no examples. I am unable to. There are glitches in reality, but they escape us. This one, The Matrix’s ending, is the exception. I did not forget it.

So what are we to make of it all ? There is the obvious possibility that we exist within a ‘Matrix’. Just like the movie. The glitches in reality are up-dates, or corrections to the code.

This is not as ridiculous an idea as it might seem. Faced with the intractable absurdities of quantum weirdness, it has been suggested, as a logical possibility, that the existence of both ourselves and our world can reasonably be explained by the notion that we are living in a computer simulation created by a higher intelligence. Indeed, that we may be simulations ourselves . . .

How are we to know ? Is there any way of telling ? Perhaps there is not. But I invite you to be alert, to notice and to try to remember. The evidence is out there. We must strive to hold on to it, to know reality.

Unless it’s better not to notice, and if you do, then to forget . . .

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NOTE : This is a true story, as you may have gathered. Apart from this Matrix incident, the other major incident I do remember is when, after many years of travelling on the London Underground, Cocksfooters – at the top end of the Piccadilly Line – suddenly became Cockfosters. Reality changed. And before that, Ticket to Ryde become Ticket to Ride. And who remembers when Abba used to sing take your teeth out, before it became Chiquitita ? (No, that’s just silly. Stop it at once). The thing is, no one else remembers. Yesterday has been quite forgotten.