The Matrix: How to drag it out for as long as possible

In an unfortunate miscommunication between a director and the special-effects company, a request for a prop version of The Matrix got mistaken for a request for the real thing. The director's going to freak when he sees the final bill, but we'll deal with that later. The real issues is that the director expressed a desire for his series to last longer than the Friday the 13th franchise, which is to say, a really long time, and that means it's built for the long haul giving it plenty of time to perfect turning all of us into batteries (and solving the whole conservation of energy thing... we really do make poor batteries, don't we)

The SFX team took the director's desires to heart, and designed their Matrix to last as long as possible before someone eventually discovered that they're stuck in The Matrix.

My question is this: how should the SFX team design their Matrix to ensure it takes as long as possible for someone to actually discover the Truth, but at the same time make sure that someone eventually does.

• Answers should provide details of the "flaw" which eventually lets the hero of the story realize they're in The Matrix. The longer it takes for us to eventually discover the Truth, the better. (If clarification is needed, target the statistical expectation of how long it takes to discover The Truth, but creative interpretations if this clause are permitted)
• Humanity must eventually discover the flaw. This means we have to be careful, because humanity is pretty darn good at demolishing itself. If there's a WWIII, the flaw better present itself before we all die in the nuclear winter.
• The special effects team made "the real thing," so they don't get to do normal SFX hacks. In particular, anything which is preventing us from finding the flaw must rely on in-world logic to do so. No fair simply declaring "only humans whose ID number is above 10,000,000 can realize we're in the matrix." (If you believe in human freewill, assume that any human should be capable of realizing they are in the matrix, but make it so that its hard for the first few to realize it unless they're really determined)
• Solutions involving artificial intelligence are permitted. In fact, they're encouraged, since that makes for a more interesting storyline!

The best answer gets to present their bill to the director. After all, SFX companies need to get paid!

posted over 8 years ago

Cort Ammon - Reinstate Monica‭

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