How Do You Know When You've Entered the Matrix?

There is a great scene in the 1999 classic sci-fi movie "The Matrix" in which Keanu Reeves, who plays the protagonist, Neo, who has taken the "red pill," now sees the world for what it really is and not the artificial "Matrix" or computer-constructed dreamland designed to keep human beings from realizing they are nothing more than bio-batteries used to fuel the needs of the artificial intelligence and robots.

There is a very short sequence in the movie when Neo is on a secret mission with several of his revolutionary colleagues trying to disrupt the operation inside the artificial world of the Matrix without getting caught.  As their small group runs through the streets and back alleys, Neo is the only one to notice a small black cat that runs across the pathway.  He notices that the same black cat appears to have done the same action twice.  This would be a physical impossibility - running to the right side but reappearing again on the left side.

In the film, this sequence happens very quickly.  It is like a very subtle glitch.  It happens so imperceptibly that most people wouldn't notice it.

I am finding in the last several weeks that there have been several such repetitive-seeming glitches in my life.  This has led me to the sci-fi - but perhaps rational physics - explanation that something is being weirdly "adjusted" to our time line.  This has resulted in some odd glitches that should be there.

The first glitch occurred about two weeks ago.  I decided to take my normal walk outdoors and around the neighborhood.  It is a very suburban area and since everyone here in New Jersey is under orders to Shelter in Place since March 19, 2020, most of us don't have much to do in the way of physical exercise except to go outside and walk or bike.  Lots of people were out walking on that sunny day.  A thin gentleman with white hair passed me going the opposite direction on a bicycle with rather thick tires - kind of like a mountain bike.  I didn't know him but we both waved a friendly hello as we passed each other.  I continued walking and approximately one minute later, it appeared that the same gentleman with white hair on the bicycle passed me again - from the same direction!  This would have been an impossibility unless he had turned around, cycled past me from behind me, then turned around again and came towards me a second time.  Clearly, there hadn't been enough time for that and I would have noticed a bike coming from behind me - and there hadn't been any at all!  I

It disturbed my sense of reality so much after the second seemingly identical white-haired man rode past me on his bicycle, also with thick tires, and also waved at me and smiled, that I made a mental note in my head that he looked just like the (now deceased)character actor James Rebhorn who played roles in movies like "Meet the Parents."

Unless this neighbor (?) of mine had a twin, I don't know what could have explained this curious sensation that time had suddenly glitched in my reality!  As a weird synchronicity, the movie "Meet the Parents" played on TV that night and I saw the actor I had imagined as looking like the man on the bicycle.

So, what to make of this strangeness?  

For four days, I noticed there was an ant in the second floor bathroom.  Nothing particularly unusual for springtime in a house in the suburbs.  I felt oddly sorry the ant that seemed to be aimlessly wandering around in circles in the center of the room.  Unlike most other ants I have observed, it did not seem to have picked up on the scent of other ant trails and had no obvious sense of purpose.  I picked it up on a piece of paper and put it outside.  There were no other ants visible in the room.  The next day, there was another ant in exactly the same location with the same behavior.  And again, the next day.  And next day.  There was one additional ant.  They both walked aimlessly on the same tile as the first one.  I wondered if I had actually dreamed taking the first ant outside!  These ants were not behaving normally and simply seemed to "replace" the first one.

There have been other instances somewhat like these recently that have made me wonder if - while we are all safely out of the way and without prying eyes and isolated - that someone or some entity has, in fact, been playing with our spacetime fabric.  The telltale signs may be nothing more than a mundane black cat, a man bicycling, or an ant wandering around on the same tile in my bathroom for days.

I just don't know.