.
Looking for that one movie ...
I tried giving ChatGPT a try with quite a bit of the info provided but it didn't seem to find any movies that fit. It's first guess was 'The Thirteenth Floor' but I saw that wasn't it. None of the other guesses it came up with seemed even close so I suspect this might be a movie not on IMDB as I've found a few that just don't show up there in the past. Much thanks to mtness and others here for providing so many other fascinating sounding movies to watch as Sci-fi and anything along the lines of the 'Matrix' are always fascinating to watch.
When I get the chance (a bit busy due to the holidays) I think it may be worth registering at some sci-fi movie forums to ask about this from some serious sci-fi buffs. These might be a source to help with this:
https://www.scified.com/
https://www.allsci-fi.com/
https://www.sffchronicles.com/