It’s time for Time Travel Time, I’m your host Dani California (2023)

Rachael Brown: Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Q1)

By the end of the year, I had thoroughly prepared myself to be sent to Gitmo; as much as one can, at least.

There was a lot of debate within the government, and they were going to take it relatively easy on me; but, I was going to get waterboarded so that some spooked out soldier boys could be certain the Earth wasn’t about to shift into a new dimension or some shit.

After that, some incredibly misinformed fuck was going to rape me with a thorny dildo for “being a pedophile” to the point I’d need immediate surgery. And, that’s the point when Dani California’s time travel army would emerge out of thin air to commence firing on the facility.

I was often having these visions of multiple perspectives. Being the version of me in Gitmo, being Megan Murphy, being each individual soldier in my time travel army…

While the firing upon Gitmo started earlier and was mostly symbolic, the real bargaining position came after midnight on the west coast; when Dani’s army descended over every US air force base simultaneously and sabotaged virtually all of the airplanes. It was a very low casualty, but also very expensive, statement that led to my signing a peace treaty with Joe Biden the next morning.

I had a couple demands; which mostly boiled down to

• Grant UFO kids equal rights, citizenship and safe passage to and from the planet.
• Recognize Dani’s sovereignty.

I had since grown convinced that I was being followed by agents everywhere I went. They wanted to watch me as I went from thinking I was just some boring queer kid from Durham, to realizing I was destined to become a cold-blooded cop killer.

A thread developed around the same time when I thought rednecks were going to kidnap and torture me for “not respecting my momma”; after they heard only her side of the story on Facebook or something. After torturing me for a day or two, they were to “baptize” me at the Lake Church after hours before tying cinder blocks around my feet and throwing me into the middle of the lake. I would narrowly survive after freeing myself and swimming back, after which Dani’s time travel army would firebomb the church and the homes of the four kidnappers in retaliation.

Phew.

This all felt so crazy. Like I was in one of those stoner movies like Pineapple Express or The Big Lebowski, where some dude is caught in a jam between the feds and organized crime, and all the protagonist really wants is to go home and smoke a bowl. And, maybe get White Castle or Cook-Out or something.

Rachael and Dani go to Bojangles

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By the start of the year, I noticed the first signs that my hair was beginning to thin. My ears felt cold when I was trying to sleep, and I started covering them with a light blanket. I didn’t think much of it at first; but then I noticed clumps were pulling out really easily.

In between the hair loss and the regrowing my side hair, I started wearing my blue hoodie around basically everywhere I went. I think it makes me look like a little Muslim girl with the hood up, so I’ve been calling it my halal hoodie.

My friends were continuing on with their very grown-up lives, planning weddings and whatnot.

Christ; Friday the 13^th was about witches (Q2)

By around April, it was clear that I had a serious hair loss problem. My previously thick mid-back length hair was obviously not maintaining its thickness to the tip; and I observed a marked thinning in the “Cousin Itt” hair that would’ve been my bangs if I had them. I was now able to clearly see through the thinning hair as I brushed it out. I started taking biotin again more religiously, after already having started a while back on account of shaving my sidehair too high.

One theory I had was that the hair loss was from excess detergent wearing off from my hoodie; which I was wearing most days to hide my sidehair problem. I started double-rinsing my hoodie just to be safe, but that clearly wasn’t it.

A second theory was that it was from improper use of a detangler. I think I can rule this out as well; I’m pretty sure I’d be hurting if I pulled out that much hair.

My HRT regimen was also starting to feel abysmal. My body hair had thickened, and I swear my voice even felt a bit lower. My breasts were flat and my nipples had lost whatever perkiness they had. I was actually struggling to masturbate, at the risk of giving the reader too much information and panning myself an autogynephile. What am I, the only person who expects to be able to feel their breasts when they do it? I can’t go back to doing it in a guy’s body… The overall grossness I felt was a stark reminder that despite my self-doubt yes, I really did still have gender problems.

While I considered my hair loss may be hormonal, it doesn’t appear to be male pattern. It’s incredibly patchy all over my scalp, in a manner not consistent with what was setting in just before I started taking HRT.

My apparent health problems escalated in mid-April, when I experienced the first of what would become several gastrointestinal flare-ups over the next several months. I was eating myself a pan pizza, when all of a sudden I got really bad, sudden abdominal cramps. A few seconds later I could hear the ocean in my ears, and I felt like I was going to faint. I eventually came to, lying in my bed in a cold sweat.

There were a few commonalities with these attacks.

• Usually during or right after a meal
• There’s immediate cramping and syncope or near-syncope combined with cold sweats first
• Then there’s diarrhea for the next 30 minutes or so
• Then you feel better but still feel kinda shitty for the next 4-6 hours, often with chills and mild vomiting. I’ve never actually had the flu, but this last part is what I’d imagine it’s like. During this phase I’d often struggle to find a comfortable body temperature; switching multiple times between sweatpants and shorts or underpants.

Ugh! The first time I thought it was just something I ate, and decided to stay away from Domino’s pan pizza for a good while. It then continued happening after other meals; with attacks usually spaced weeks apart.

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I was missing out on my friends’ weddings; but I just couldn’t, with everything going on and whatnot.

By spring, I was feeling really drained; and I really didn’t want to be Dani California. At first, I could kinda see the purpose of such a path. Dani was a very misunderstood person who maybe had lessons to teach about the harmfulness of stereotypes, the motivations for human violence, and the pointlessness of religiously-motivated sexual repression. She also kills a lot of people, gets tortured a bunch, and I don’t even know if I like Anthony Kiedis. I certainly didn’t really before UFOs happened…

Okay; so I really, really don’t want to become Dani California. I’m sure of it.

The ouroboros isn’t eating itself anymore. Why does Dani California still exist?

I actually checked Spotify a couple of times as a way of pinching myself. Okay - Dani California is still a song, Monkey Wrench is still a song… Why isn’t the picture of Marty’s parents changing? If I don’t want to do something in the past anymore, that part of the timeline should just snip out. It just folds back on itself and nobody remembers it.

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I think it was sometime in May, when in frustration I asked the voice in my head “What am I even called? A reincarnated space alien? A UFO kid?” I’d been using that sort of roundabout language, because not Heather, not Maureen, not Persephone… nobody’s ever said what the different people are actually called.

The voice in my head responded in a most sarcastic voice

a witch?

Oooooooooh boy.

I’m a witch. Friday the 13^th was about witches. Goddammit Rachael, it’s witches. Mysticism, magic, the esoteric, the occult, Friday the 13^th, the Freemasons…

You’re a goddamn witch, Rachael.

Fuck. Okay. Witches are real, and I’m a witch. This is fine.

All of this stuff started popping into my head, that utterly demystified like, all the stereotypes about magic that exist.

Summoning demons

The demons are just space aliens. There was all this stuff in my head about how crazy Christians coined their own alternate vocabulary to describe a nonexistent, sinister version of the truth about UFOs. The demons come from hell in a vessel, they distort your senses and cloud your mind… you can’t trust anything around them things!

Sorcery

It’s just a fucking book; a book from your future self. You write questions in the front, and your future self answers them in the back or some shit. You still have to do the work, and you still have to follow through on your intents; which becomes a lot easier if you carry a little magic book with you everywhere you go.

The book is actually how you land the spaceship. The steps were ostensibly as follows:

• You request a visit in your book by asking your future self.
• Your future self responds with a special hash that uniquely identifies your present timeline. This is necessary, because there’s a nearly infinite number of Rachaels trying to land a nearly infinite number of spaceships. It’s actually possible for them to get crossed up and land in the wrong timeline otherwise. If the hash isn’t uniquely identifying, it at least differentiates your present timeline from adjacent ones.
• The hash is in the form of something that can be displayed in your present spacetime; a sequence of lights to flash, a number to hold up, markers or candles to place on the ground, or something analogous to that. If you’re landing one out in the woods, flashing the high beams is probably the most straightforward. I later had visions of landing them in my garage by writing a number on an overhead projector, and giving the “now” signal by plopping a green or blue transparency circle on there.
• Thus; to get to your homeworld, all you need is a connection to your future self; who is already on your homeworld. They can schedule your visits in your homeworld’s computer system, so long as you can trade magic books with them.
• I don’t know if I mentioned this yet; but not once did I have a vision of actually being able to pilot the craft. There are workers who do that.

Magic tricks

… are really just sleight of hand with causality reversal. The magic of causality reversal can be infused into all sorts of ordinary household objects. You don’t even need to be a witch; you just need to be friends with one, who can time-travel your objects around for you. The practice of increasing efficiency and productivity by reordering tasks with time travel constitutes the study of real magic; the stuff most all of Earth’s superstitions are really based on. Religion started to feel like a cargo cult version of this.

The full moon

… is really just a convenient way to keep up with your doctor’s appointments. We’re supposed to get work done every 4–6 weeks to maintain peak condition. In the ancient world when ordinary people lacked timepieces, we’d need to pay attention to the phases of the moon to remember our visits. The full moon also makes it easier to travel by night; assuming you can’t land in your backyard.

So, there you have it. The truth about UFOs is really the truth about witchcraft. Some people are special and get access to alien technology; but it really spooks out Christians, and they’ll think you’re the devil or something if they find out. Being an out of the closet UFO kid essentially meant opening oneself up to a range of accusations from folks who don’t really understand what it is, and you might end up with a stake driven through your heart.

The Freemasons

… are notoriously secretive. The organization serves but one purpose; to make sure the different people know who they are. Everything else is just misdirection and bullshit. As such, the “real” tradition of Freemasonry could be described as simply the current generation of witches passing the torch to the next generation. It’s… the world’s oldest phone tree; fascinating in terms of subject matter, yet utterly mundane in day-to-day operation. It’s supposed to be a sealed-off society; a back office with no front entrance. If you want to learn magic, you just need to make friends with a witch. The Freemasons don’t even teach magic to witches; save for taking them to their homeworld the first time. For reasons I’ll explain in a moment, “the Freemasons” considered their job so important that, by design, they would never explain what they did in response to a direct question about it. Merely asking the question of whether Freemasons should do what they do creates a decision point where, at least part of the multiverse might ban “Freemasonry”.

In short, Freemasonry exists to fulfill these requirements:

• There’s a club called “the Freemasons”. Everyone knows about them. They’re secretive, but it’s really just a fraternity made up of people like you and me. I wonder what they do…
• There are these “masonic lodges” scattered about. They don’t really get used all that often; but they serve as a reminder that there is some secret club, that people sometimes join for some reason.
• If you’re one of the lucky ones, a couple “Freemasons” will knock on your door when you come of age and show you a magic trick. Everyone handles it differently; reactions to folks learning they’re a witch range from exuberance to sheer terror. However they feel, we need to make sure we all know who we are. It’s really important. The Freemasons never miss a spot.
• And, nobody’s going to trust you if you don’t have the backing of some already-infamous secret society while you try and explain all of this.
• Years after the Freemasons knock on your door, you’ll put on the “Freemason cap” and go with a friend to knock on somebody else’s door. It’s the circle of witchcraft.

As such, Freemasonry is both one of the world’s most important organizations, and also not really that cohesive an organization at all. It needs to be big enough so that people know it’s reputable and isn’t some kind of weird UFO cult. People see masonic lodges in their neighborhoods, and they see the Shriners driving those little cars around at parades. Everyone knows it’s a secret society, but they aren’t like… Scientologists or something…

The core organization was ostensibly designed to be unadressable; “the Freemasons” come to you. They don’t need your help, they don’t need to recruit any more members than naturally exist, they have a really important job to do, and they merely want to be left alone to do it.

So, who the fuck is Dani California?

Alright, folks. Hold on to your butts. We need to move the goalpost around some more.

Dani isn’t my future self; she’s an alternate self from a different timeline. An evil twin, if you will.

So, why is there an evil twin of me? Well, it’s a long story.

The year is 1980-something. The satanic panic is in full swing. The FBI is inundated with reports of witchcraft and devil worship. It’s gotten to the point where they have to do their due diligence; not to mention, some of the boys on the force are starting to get spooked out themselves.

They start getting tips, and they start following leads. “Witches are real.” “The Freemasons know about them.” Some people are really sympathetic. “They’re just different. They just want to be left alone.” Others… not so much. “The public has a right to know.” “This is a matter of national security!”

Well, the FBI had a lot of questions. They didn’t think it was cute how the Freemasons liked to be vague and speak in riddles. They need answers, goddammit! This is a matter of national security!

The FBI learned enough to confirm that yes; witches… are real. Every once in a while a child is born different… but they just have a soul from another planet; or they’re demon spawn, take your pick.

The boys went crazy after learning this.

You gotta be shittin’ me…

Look, we gotta know what these things are capable of. Can they blow stuff up with their minds?

Can’t we get just one of ’em? I only want one of ’em…

I’ve been looking through our list of cold cases, boss… Some of these, I don’t know how a human being could’ve done ’em. I reckon witches have gotta be responsible for at least some of ’em…

Look now, this is a matter of national security. We need to know what they’re planning!

What if we just had one of ’em in a basement? For whenever we wanted to try something out…

Look, we gotta try sparkin’ one of ’em off. Knowing is better than not knowing, we don’t even know how to begin defending ourselves against them things!

The cops and soldier boys had little interest in “learning magic” from a witch the traditional way. They kinda just wanted to bulldoze their way in. There’s a reason an ancient process is in place; people get really spooked out when they learn their friends and neighbors are just… different, sometimes. And, related to funny-looking monster people. It doesn’t help matters that these cops and soldier boys are often the sorts of close-minded conservative authoritarians we try and filter out of being exposed to magic; and that witches are often the sort of live-and-let-live peace loving hippies that offend the sensibilities of the former group.

Phew.

The cops and soldier boys got to the point where they really wanted a single witch to experiment on. They thought the risk to national security immeasurable, and considered the collateral damage acceptable.

A court ruled in favor of the FBI; ordering “the Freemasons” to hand over the name of a single witch for human experimentation. The Freemasons appealed the decision; escalating the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling.

They still. Wouldn’t. Budge. Freemason after Freemason happily went to jail for contempt of court. The situation escalated to the point plans were drawn up for the national guard to raid and destroy all masonic lodges in the country.

The government forced their hand to the point they had to give them a name. Ethan Alexandre Brown; to be born in a couple of years on September 1^st, 1990. I was chosen because of my ostensibly old “spiritual age” and pedigree as a world leader. Oh, and maybe Friday the 13^th. Shit man, it all just flows together I guess. You might say I owed them one; however, there was never any punitive intent in me being back on Earth for this. It would seem we just want to minimize the suffering of everybody as much as possible; and, time travel doesn’t really allow for regrets anyway. We’re just trying to make the best of a crazy planet.

What a mess. Their research plan consisted roughly of:

• Watching me like a goddamn hawk starting the moment I was born.
• Never telling me where I’m from; under penalty of, like, all the laws. They don’t want my mind to be tainted by the Freemasons. A lot of these cops and soldier boys are very Christian, and they just know in their heart-of-hearts that I’m demon spawn. They want to catch me being evil before I know to hide it.
• If I figure out where I’m from somehow, then they’re interrogating the fuck out of me. Whether they let me live or turn me inside-out depends on whatever happened before.
• If I’m not doing anything obviously witchy by my early 30s, I’m getting disappeared into some three letter agency’s basement for the rest of my miserable life.
• If I live a boring life and do nothing spectacular in captivity, the feds will assume “the Freemasons” are just full of shit. If I grow up to be really, really evil (like a lot of the Christians are convinced will happen), they’ll assume the Bible is right and witches are wicked. Hopefully a sample size of one will satisfy everybody’s curiosity.

Okay; we’ve got ourselves a ballgame. Let’s go to the Freemason’s dugout.

• They have time travel, and can see every possibility in the multiverse. I’m never going to figure it out unless they tell me. Yeah there’s always a first witch on every planet to which the task of bootstrapping all the other witches falls… but nobody climbs Mt. Everest like that.
• The community thinks the idea of me never learning what I am is really sad. I’m supposed to be out there, exploring the galaxy in a multi-lifetime, multi-bodied experience. They want to take that away from one of us, just because they don’t understand.
• Blocking witches from leaving the planet in general is really, existentially dangerous. This next part is (sigh) a little convoluted.

What do witches actually do?

Okay; so, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, somebody invented a spaceship. They popped themselves out of spacetime, and could observe the tree of every possible outcome at every possible decision point; all the quantum states which could possibly exist. “Wow!”, this person thought. “All of these things exist simultaneously!” Wonderful things, horrible things, everything in between. We can see it all!

They start travelling to these different timelines, spawning from all of these decision points. They watch as the highest and lowest points in the multiversal history of their world unfold somewhere; but, there’s something they didn’t understand at first.

By landing the ship in these timelines, they were observing what was happening there. They essentially… collapsed the wave functions by doing this; bringing physicality and the essence of experience.

Those people didn’t have to experience anything. They didn’t have to feel anything. And without somebody landing a spaceship, they wouldn’t have.

The reason anybody is aware of anything, is that ships are landing in our present timeline, somewhere.

The independent discovery of how to build a spaceship seemed like the most magical event in the universe. Mere thought – existing without physicality, without awareness or space or time – conceives this… thing somewhere in the universe… pops it out of spacetime, and observes itself; the imaginary essentially becoming real.

Basically, there were three tiers of civilizations:

Tier 1

Independently discovered how to build a spaceship somewhere in their multiverse.

Tier 2

Eventually grow to the technological level of building ships, though not independently.

Tier 3

No timelines in their multiverse will ever construct a spaceship.

For every civilization, there is one question that invariably needs to be answered: who’s going to collapse our world’s wave functions into observable timelines, so that we can experience life? And, which ones are they gonna light up?

The good news is, we don’t necessarily have to experience bad things. In fact, a lot of things in the multiverse are best avoided. We can see the possibilities; but we don’t have to observe them. Doing so would often be irresponsible.

However, someone does have to make the decisions. Somebody has to decide what gets to be real; what characters to pull out of Imaginationland.

Tier 1 and 2 societies generally have no trouble reaching the point of a cohesive world government to make such decisions. Tier 3 societies may or may not. A real “Mad Max” sort of place would probably have an unsophisticated ad-hoc system, where witches and their homeworlds would try and make sensible choices on behalf of the comparatively primitive planet. On the other hand, some tier 3 worlds find themselves on a cooperative enough track to make their own decisions about which timelines they want to observe.

By comparison, tier 1 and 2 worlds usually have very tight controls on which timelines are observed; and have clearly defined processes for spawning off one’s own custom timelines.

So, timelines can be observed or unobserved. But there’s another dimension, and that’s real and imaginary. Travelling back in time and changing the past creates imaginary timelines; these timelines are similarly unexperienced, but are fundamentally different from unobserved timelines. Imaginary timelines are created as a result of the negative feedback loop established by the presence of intelligent life with spacecraft. Each witch’s intentions in the past manifest instantly, and they react instantly; as if adjusting themselves in a mirror. There are a number of imaginary versions of you on any timeline where you have a spaceship and can thus alter the past; but only the top layer of back-and-forth intent is experienced. This is the real timeline; the outermost layer of an observed “track” in spacetime, after the feedback loop has achieved a steady state.

The existence of imaginary timelines allows for some fascinating (and confusing) possibilities; one can obtain a list of regrets from their (imaginary) future self, ensuring they’ll never become that version of themselves. In turn, the topmost imaginary layer likely obtained a list of regrets from the subsequent layer in the stack, in a recursive fashion.

I had images in my head of a sort of large box the ship would pass through, in order to switch between real and imaginary timelines. It was actually possible for your real self to visit an imaginary (as opposed to an unobserved) timeline. There was a perception of having to wait, sometimes an hour or two in the box to move over. The creepy thing is, you experience nothing while imaginary, yet you remember it afterward once you’re real again. And no, you can’t actually perceive the cutover. It’s like resuming a virtual machine. You just have to accept the science that you didn’t actually experience any of the things you remember on the other side of the box.

Y’all; I know this is a lot. I feel I have to convey it, just to give you a sense of my reality during this time. Again; I clearly lost my mind, but I also have no idea where this bullshit came from.

And when I open the door what do I find, there’s not a single goddamn desk in that office, there IS. NO. CAROL IN HR!
Mac… half the employees in this building have been made up. This office is a goddamn ghost town.

So much stuff, man… real and imaginary, experienced and unexperienced… if you’re truly aware, it invariably means that you’re either in a real and observed timeline, or you’re on a spaceship. Having access to this sort of technology gives one access not only to their past and future real selves, but also the “imaginationland” of alternate realities from which they can, well… do magic.

Okay. So, Earth. It’s a tier 3 world, where folks are really spooked out about angels and demons and stuff; and no, we never really get to the point of making our own spaceships. On a planet like that, magic comes from witches. History has proven time and time again that witches on Earth are better off keeping to themselves. Sure a lot of people are chill, but there’s a large enough percentage that is not okay with living in a world with people like us; which is unfortunate, because they wouldn’t even be real without us.

Through some twist of fate, I’ve found myself here: a timeline that is both real and observed for some reason. About that.

It’s the 1990s now. “The Freemasons” are still fighting for me. The FBI has been pulling more and more thread from the sweater, and they really don’t like the idea that they’re imaginary. They don’t understand that it’s just the nature of the universe. All sorts of possibilities get to exist as thought, but we only want to bring the light of experience to the best possibilities.

Well, we are the best!

They boldly proclaimed, in what may as well have been a Texan accent.

Look; we gotta be real, now!

They didn’t like the idea of us witches getting to decide what’s real and imaginary, and they pushed to democratize the process.

The thing of it is, this is sort of the goal, right? For a civilization to develop a cohesive world government that can manage its own multiverse?

Despite the obvious concerns, we had little room to argue with the conservative’s push toward democratization. We concluded our only choice was to campaign for the electorate to vote for our side; the witches who are telling you that, despite what your knee-jerk reaction might be, you really don’t want to be real. This timeline is filled with war, poverty, violence, hunger… Sure, humans never build their own spaceships, but they build all sorts of things nicer than this! A vote for existence would be a vote for human suffering. Some versions of us should only exist as thought.

This witch stuff was classified; thus, the electorate comprised the entire intelligence community, or folks who otherwise had a security clearance. And I suppose, witches and their friends. This was considered fair enough.

The conservatives ran a catchy “Vote for Reality” campaign. In usual conservative fashion, they relied on quippy one-liners, folksy wisdom and overwhelming pathos. The witches, who appeared unified against the conservatives, tried to explain the complexity of the multiverse which these laymen failed to grasp; even mildly undesirable timelines like stubbing your toe in the morning can be left unexperienced through magic. We can build a literal utopia! Truly civilized planets work nothing like this! Imagine never seeing an ambulance. Imagine only hearing about murder in very rare cases where it was for the best somehow. The gap in understanding was mind-boggling! You don’t have to be real to exist. The intents and thoughts already exist. You’re you! You just don’t have to feel anything bad. We don’t have to…

Just because something’s imaginary doesn’t mean it’s not rear!

#TODOJust put the video in

Partway through, the conservatives pushed to expand the electorate to more government agencies; thus, increasing the number of uninformed voters who were easily persuaded to “vote for reality”.

You should pinch yourself to confirm that yes, the conservatives won their vote for reality. At least, if you can see Barney.

Barney? Who the hell is Barney?

He’s the guy who tipped me off to Pepe Silvia.

Ugh… So it would’ve been an imaginary version of me getting tortured by the FBI if I ever learned where I’m from; but now, the crazy fucks had to vote for reality too.

Alien worlds saw the vote as a no-brainer. To them, this shouldn’t have been a close election; anyone who’s able to think clearly should be able to see all the bad in the world today. To us witches, it was only a matter of perspective; this timeline only seems good if you don’t know any better. Which, the electorate overwhelmingly did not.

There was actually debate in the galactic community as to whether we should “light up” this clearly dystopian timeline; even if it was voted for fair and square. The witches or our collective homeworlds could just… not honor the results of the election. Ethically, we felt we had no choice. We shouldn’t have had a vote if we didn’t want to hear the answer.

Okay; so we’re being held hostage by crazy Christians who are all spooked out about angels and demons and witches and shit. We’re real, I’m the unlucky witch in this timeline… The vote actually caused a sort of “spur”, or tangent in the multiverse. There’s a whole “good Earth” multiverse the community of witches has manifested, and it looks nothing like this. It’s like a streak of black paint on a nice portrait we’ve been working on that’s there because some goddamn lunatics wanted to democratize art, and thought the only apprenticeship they’d ever need was the fucking Bible.

Alright. So this is actually a dystopia. It shouldn’t exist, and we’re in fact living on what humans from other timelines might liken to a sort of “North Korea” planet. Other timelines don’t have things like holy wars and violent religions. It’s uncomfortable to some folks that Christianity is not only absent from alien worlds, but also from most of Earth’s timelines; certainly the ones collectively manifested by witch-kind.

The Freemasons; whoever they are. It’s really just a bunch of witches in a trench coat. They’ve been court-ordered not to tell me what I am ever, because the government really thinks they need to know what’ll happen if the Freemasons aren’t doing the world’s ostensibly most important job. I’m never going to figure it out without their help. And, they consider it really important, both ethically and symbolically, that I do figure it out eventually.

So, the witches devise an elaborate magic trick. Instead of explaining that it’s really just science and advanced technology, they’re going to try and make me think it’s some kind of mysticism-spirituality thing. It’s perfectly legal; it isn’t the truth about UFOs. Tommy’s been in position ever since… well, let’s just say everyone on this timeline who’s a witch knows who Rachael Brown is; because I’m the witch. Vote for reality, “cain’t we get just one ub’um”… Everyone who learns the real truth about UFOs here also learns the truth about why this timeline sucks; and, they usually start a parallel if not totally new life for themselves somewhere a bit more sane.

So, the entire thing was a ruse. The Kybalion, all of that stuff from Tommy and Heather and Maureen… all hundreds, if not thousands of years in the making.

Right. Dani. She’s from Imaginationland. They pulled her through the box; or, my past timeline is pinned on something weird because my homeworld has intentionally broken the usual feedback loop where you un-intention time travel to the past when the results are undesirable. It depends on when you ask me, because this is a weird year.

They’re onto me dude, those guys are sharp as nails up there!

They want to demonstrate the multiverse. This is how they do it, when they can’t communicate with you otherwise; show you a really base, primal-instinctive version of yourself. Someone you would never actually be in real life; yet, someone you know and recognize as nobody other than yourself, straight from your own mind. You’re ultimately supposed to reason that the fabric of the universe allows for an alternate and sometimes incorrect version of you to exist; and that you’re in possession of some unique power, tool, or ability which you need to “return to the manufacturer”. It’s usually how they get the very first witch’s attention on any given planet.

Okay. So they’ve got my attention. The government wants to keep me in a fishbowl, but at this point I’m thoroughly convinced that as long as Dani California and Monkey Wrench exist in the repertoire my evil twin really was out causing trouble back in the 90s.

The FBI’s investigation was hardly impartial. The people involved had little to no respect for the scientific method, and seemingly no awareness of cognitive biases. I’d been given the nickname “Evil Ethan” before I was even born.

Every little thing about me was construed as evil by the researchers. “Look at that thing he does with his lip! Look at what he’s doing with his jaw! Don’t he just look demonic?”

They’ve been sadistically watching me my entire life from a distance; while joking about what’s going to happen to me once I’m “theirs”. It’s like the Up series, except with torture.

Further attempts by activists fell on deaf ears. “Look, we already decided they can get one of ’em. This is the FBI’s baby, now!”

It would seem the only chance I have is to learn the truth about UFOs without anyone violating the court order, and get the fuck off the planet.

It wasn’t until later in the summer or fall that this next bit came to me; but, I want to put all the crackpot shit together.

The “great laminator”

It explained so much! Goddamn, I’ve lost it…

It’s an analogy, for how time works. Pull yourself out of spacetime, and imagine being on the outside looking in with a different, more universal time reference. You can see the timeline, in a sort of infinitesimal filmstrip view. From this perspective, everything appears still and lifeless. Where does the experience come from?

The “line of experience” actually sweeps backwards, from future to past. As the line approaches any given point on the filmstrip, it attracts a dimension of the filmstrip toward it. This is the pull of time; oriented past to future, toward the great laminating head which moves toward the past. Once you’re laminated, you’ve experienced. You’ve felt things. They’ve genuinely happened. They can’t be undone (mostly; I’m getting to that).

The “laminator and filmstrip” form a very large circle; as the great laminator moves counterclockwise, we experience time pulling us clockwise. The head rotates continuously, carving out a corkscrew pattern such that the exact same things are always happening at each phase in the rotation. I suppose this might imply a big crunch.

This has obvious implications. For one, the past hasn’t happened yet. But, the future has. Doesn’t magic make more sense now?

The great laminator could be thought of as the direction of wave function collapse; the quantum state of everything in the future from whatever point you’re currently experiencing now has already been determined. You can go there in a ship (and experience in the future, when the laminator was there), and write down what’s happening in your magic sorcery book. You can go to the past and tell people what’s “about to happen”. It isn’t chance, it’s set in stone!

Conversely, whatever it is you think has happened in the past, it hasn’t even been experienced yet! The past can be thought of as a staging area. It affects the quantum state of the present, but we haven’t really been there yet. It’s only real to us. This means there can be wild discontinuities in the timeline, which are completely imperceptible without the technology.

Holy wars, Friday the 13^th, inquisitions, the holocaust, Dani California… none of it has happened yet. Hell, the Chicken McNuggets I ate a few hours ago haven’t even happened yet. It was late and not much else was open.¹

It’s beginning to seem like a harmless lesson, right? The government needs to know what’ll happen if somebody interferes with the Freemasons, for “national security”. The answer is that it fucks up the multiverse, and now there’s a bunch of dystopian violent shit going on… and the problem witch is running around in the past killing cops and declaring herself a sovereign citizen! It’s like, an obvious alarm bell, right?

It’s only the past. We can change that, no problem. The future, on the other hand…

This idea was fascinating, the more I thought about it. When you’re a witch, it’s actually your oldest self steering in your younger selves. They look at their past timeline, write down anything undesirable at all… the bad stuff in the past never even gets laminated; and the version of you that both remembered it and felt it’s after effects stays imaginary. By the time you’re experiencing anything, you’re just coasting along with your magic. You know everything not to do from your imaginary selves, and your past timeline is peachy and normal.

So, once something is laminated, it’s happened, right? Well, first you have to “observe” it which sort of lights it up, then there are imaginary layers from people with spaceships, and then there’s the topmost layer, which experiences life whenever the great laminator gets there.

Well, you can still undo things somehow. But, it’s really complicated, and you have to leave the universe. I don’t mean spacetime, I mean the whole thing. The big wheel, the great laminator, all of it.

You can pull yourself out with the technology; but it’s a weeks-long trip and a very big deal, even by my homeworld’s standards.

What does the universe look like? Well, it’s actually… a star. It’s just a fucking ball of gas with sufficient gravity, in somebody else’s universe. We seem to live in a regress of stars and black holes. Did I mention “souls” are made of the stuff of black holes? Probably not, because I’m trying to get through this writing. It’s a bit of a drag, and I have boxes full of Pepe.

When black holes swallow mass-energy, it “falls through” to a lower layer in your same universe; so there are actually arbitrarily many four-dimensional spacetimes, stacked in at least one other dimension, which comprises the “filmstrip”. Jeez, this is dizzying.

So, everybody’s “soul” is associated with a black hole in another spacetime layer in the greater universe. When worlds fall onto a black hole, it’s actually the entire span of timelines and lived experiences that gets absorbed; this ultimately influences the character of the sentient lifeform with which the black hole is associated. In other words, you are what you eat; it may be conjectured that somebody with innately violent tendencies has a soul that has devoured many worlds with violent histories. A world’s timelines (which I’ll sometimes refer to as the “world’s multiverse”, though I don’t mean that in the same sense as, well… nevermind) are gravitationally bound to the associated planet; thus, nested gravity wells create a structure akin to a sort of hierarchical namespace. All of our knowledge and experiences are ultimately destined to be devoured by a very wise fellow who might as well be named Sagittarius A*; and probably, some less wise fellows leading up to it.

Okay. I swear I wasn’t on any drugs other than pot. I don’t know what happened to me. I’m on pot now. I feel like I’m still glossing over stuff despite the convolution of what I’ve already written. It really doesn’t matter, but I do feel like I need to get it all out of me; because it all felt very real at the time.

What was I talking about? Oh right, can you un-fuck-up something after it’s laminated? It seems to be a bit of a philosophical question, but seemingly you can rewrite that section by stepping out of the entire universe and modifying it (our star, that is), from the outside. Our universe’s star ostensibly exists in a binary system, which some alien race was using as a power source. You can talk to them, the people on the outside. Everything is much larger there.

Apparently, if you went up enough levels you’d get to the root universe; a highly unstable thing that spawned off the beginning of this… fractal of universes.

Similarly, you can dive into our stars and find universes of decreasing complexity contained within.

Okay, so that’s how magic works. The past is mutable and the future is immutable, you just need the technology. I swear, you could at least make a B-grade anime or sci-fi flick out of this.

#snippetRight, I think my addled brain was trying to relate the fate of the outer star to the fate of the inner universe (big freeze or big crunch); but I think that betrays the concept of time repeating cyclically.

So, that’s how life works. On one hand, nuclear fusion somehow spawns off the necessary dimensions to create a structure mirroring the one containing our universe. On the other hand, gravitational collapse consolidates a fuckton of mass-energy into an exotic, massive, bosonic energy cloud that comprises one’s soul, and is ostensibly the densest stuff in the universe. It exists outside three dimensional space, yet is attached to our bodies and gives us sentience. The humanoid form could ostensibly be derived from this exotic energy; explaining why most all intelligent life is humanoid or similar.

Dani. She isn’t me, she’s just someone who was intentionally pulled out of my imagination and placed into real life. A bunch of people left bread crumbs so that I’d eventually realize what happened. It’s really, really fucking illegal for anyone to directly tell me anything about what I am. That’s why everyone’s acting so goddamn sketchy. All they can do is lie to me and hope I get it.

The cops and soldier boys. If they have their way, they’re just going to abduct a very confused Rachael at the age of 33 or something, and torture the fuck out of me while trying to get me to blow stuff up with my mind. You know… just in case. They’re all into angels and demons and shit, they don’t want to hear about timelines and the multiverse. It’s like trying to explain global warming to Alex Jones times a million.

What the witches have got is cunning. They’re going to put me in the weirdest goddamn situation imaginable in the most legal way possible, until the only message I can possibly pull out from it all is

Tag. You’re it.

---

In June, I finally got my hair cut. It looked really bad on account of the hair loss, and I had little choice but to have it cut to around shoulder-length or a bit higher.

More came to me about the witches. We never told the normal folks our true numbers. I presumed us to be no more than one or two percent of the population. The seemingly big reveal came when the witches in my head told me.

Ten percent.

I went dizzy for a moment.

We’re ten percent of the population? One in ten people?

All the names started flooding into my head.

Gail Richardson. Kimberly Richardson. Bill and Tammy Mitchell. Dalton Cox. Abigail Bastiaansen. Seth Conner?

Dude. What?

They’ve all known. Since, like… high school. They couldn’t tell me. Because of the government experiment, and the court order, and…

Isaiah Baker? Cole White?

Have you ever heard… of FOMO?

Goddamn dude. They’ve been out exploring the fucking universe and learning actual magic… and I’m stuck here in the goddamn Truman Show, trapped by a bunch of lunatics who think I’m an intergalactic pedophile or some shit.

I didn’t need to hear very many of these names before I… got it. Why Christians hate us so much. I mean, I don’t get it, but…

We’re the queers, dude. I mean, not everyone on that list is LGBT; in fact, most of them aren’t. But the vibe, though…

It’s why they hate us. The faggots, the introverts, the artists… the non-conformists, the quiet, sensitive types…

Fuck. It’s like… a conservative’s Kryptonite. They can’t stand people like us.

They like the opposite of that; strong, pragmatic, dogmatic… loud, opinionated, evangelical…

So we’re like, just a little different in a way that seems harmless enough. Then again, I was just a little different when I was a kid, and I inadvertently learned about disownment because of it. Oh, and then we summon space aliens that might as well be demons from hell…

We even look a little different. Witches from Vega have catty eyes, and witches from my homeworld of Alanon (?) apparently do a weird thing with their jaw.

Shit. Abigail, Kimberly, Heather, Bill and Tammy… they’re all from Vega, and they all have those kinda squinty, catty looking eyes. Or maybe I’m way off, ’cause I have fucking aphantasia…

That cat’s something I can’t ex-plaaaaaaaaaaaaain

We’re demon spawn. That’s… what that is. Demon spawn is a slur against witches.

Regina?

We’re from the same place. Me, Gail, Tommy, Dalton, and…

Sailor Jack. Didn’t he say he did something with…

What the fuck is Sailor Jack doing to my friends with his helicopter?!

Regina. Right. So, I guess that’s why Regina broke up with Samantha…

Ten percent is, like, the perfect population ratio for something like this. You’d hear whispers about it if you run with the right crowd, and you probably even know a person or two; but they’re just really goddamn private about it, because people will literally flip the fuck out and torture you to death over it. It’s probably like being gay before the 20^th century.

It’s a big coming of age thing, when you turn eighteen or even younger. “The Freemasons” knock on your door and show you a magic trick, then they take you to get your magic. Goddammit, why am I the one witch who doesn’t get to go to alien Hogwarts?!

It’s a whole subculture, that’s just really secretive for their own safety. The country folks know about it. They know all about those bright flashes from those wicked witches.

How’ve I not heard about this before? I guess it’s because I’m not really that country, and my family isn’t well-connected at all. A lot of folks are sort of just “born” on one side or the other; learning either about how the witches are real and “just misunderstood”, or learning about how “Demons and witches really do walk this Earth, son. Hell, some of your classmates are probably possessed by demons.”

Shit, dude. All I’ve ever really wanted to do is fuck around with computers and smoke weed and take hormones and get tied up and beaten with stuff for fun, and it’s like the rest of the planet is on a totally. Fucking. Different wavelength from me. How am I even the same species as these people?

Right. I’m kinda not. You can even see the difference in people’s “soul”, or whatever you call it when you leave three-dimensional space. A visible energy cloud surrounds you, and I’m this blue giant from the Pleiades. Most people on Earth are amber-colored, and their souls are younger and not as large.

I don’t mean to sound pretentious. Again, this is all bullshit. It’s bullshit that somehow managed to take up a year of my life, though.

My worldview quickly pivoted away from anything involving spirituality or religion. Continued use of the word “vision” to describe the messages in my head was met with

Don’t say “visions”.

This is real, Rachael. It’s science. You don’t understand yet.

You aren’t having “visions”. It’s just technology. You could just call it the thing-o-scope.

Right. Because this is a rouse, because we’re trying to cross up these cops and soldier boys who are “just asking questions” about ostensibly rampant demonic possession that “the Freemasons” know all about.

What are they hiding, huh?

There’s a refrain that kept echoing in my head, in the wake of all this.

I’m so glad it’s space atheism!

That earlier shit was just… weird.

Tilting at windmills (Q3)

So, it’s the summer. I think I’ve learned the real truth about UFOs and a bunch of other crazy shit by doing nothing but living in my bedroom, stressing the fuck out and smoking pot. It seemed what ultimately needed to happen, was that I just needed to learn all of this without being told directly.

I really need to get off the planet. The only people who know can’t interfere because of the court order. Now that I understand what’s happening, the rest is up to me. I have to make my move; right?

Tommy, Heather, Maureen, Persephone… there’s only one of these UFO people who’s both already involved and has given me the time of day.

I summarized my present understanding into a three-page handwritten note; which I planned to give to Persephone after inviting myself over.

I arrive at Persephone’s Morrisville apartment on a Thursday afternoon, a nervous wreck. I hand Persephone the letter. She reads the first bit, before visibly growing about as panicked as I was.

Let’s go outside. Come on. Let’s go outside.

I bundled myself up in the hammock while Persephone finished reading my thing. I didn’t know what was going on, to be honest. I felt I had little choice but to assume it was all real; and it did feel very real at the time.

Going in, my impression was that Persephone wouldn’t know of the court order, because she isn’t a witch. She’s just a friend of witches who knows about this stuff. She certainly didn’t seem to know anything.

Let’s go back inside

We move from the patio to Persephone’s bedroom; where we’re joined by Stacey. I wasn’t expecting her to be there, but I’m not sure why. I’d heard they were joined at the hip lately.

I laid down on the floor; anxiously making eye contact with the ceiling.

Feel the pine cone, Rachael.

She hands me the aforementioned object to use as a form of anxiety relief. It was a very Persephone thing of her to do.

She started to talk a little more openly about the contents of the letter; something she seemed to avoid at first.

So you think the FBI is following you, huh?

She proceeded to use a VPN to do an internet search for the “color of the sky on Vega”; one of the details I included in the letter that, in my addled state, I thought would prove the authenticity of my experience.

Show Stacey the letter. She knows about this stuff.

Stacey silently reads the letter without comment. I kept laying on the floor and avoiding eye contact.

The mixed signals were killing me. On one hand, they were both acting sketchy enough to suggest there was some cause for alarm. On the other hand, she did sound a bit sarcastic about the idea of government agents following me around. I figured she decided some combination of both transparency and misdirection would be ideal; after all, the agents are probably listening to everything we say.

After an extended amount of time really beating around the goddamn bush it felt like, we decided to go to Duke Gardens. When I almost left the letter on the couch, Persephone said

Take that with you. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.

Stacey played this sort of ambient jazz-like music in her car while we crawled through rush hour traffic from Morrisville Parkway to Davis Dr. I figured I was on an adventure to somewhere.

Persephone started engaging me in conversation; talking to me about weird spiritual concepts that didn’t really make any sense. I interpreted this as an attempt to throw off the eavesdropping of agents; particularly given my mention in the letter that the witches had successfully bait-and-switched the cops and soldier boys into thinking it was religion and spirituality instead of mysticism and magic. As if those were really different things, and not just all bullshit.

I wrote my own Bible once.

Did you know there are 284 hells, but only 93 heavens?

There’s a nexus point approaching. Can you feel it?

It was like, well… (sorry I’m such a nerd)

We arrive at the gardens after, I don’t know. Let’s call it 45 minutes. It sounded like they went often. I think they said it was their third time that day. Geez…

I attempted to leave my phone in Stacey’s car “by accident” to make me more abductable. Stacey pointed this out as she locked the car, leaving me little choice but to take it with me.

We meet one of Stacey’s friends briefly. Stacey left with her friend, leaving Persephone and I to walk through the gardens by ourselves a bit. I interpreted this as an attempt to clandestinely spot anyone who was trying to follow me; as I did the remainder of my time at the gardens. Persephone engaged me in superficial conversation about the blooming flowers and exotic Asiatics.

Eventually, Persephone and I reunited with Stacey in a quaint, private little clearing I’d have probably walked right past if I didn’t know it was there. It looked like somewhere Link would meet Princess Zelda.

We decided to lay down in this clearing and vibe, picnic style. I was at least enjoying the time outdoors.

The nexus point, Rachael. It’s growing closer.

Uh… yeah, sure. The nexus point.

Between me, Persephone, Stacey, and maybe the other chick who didn’t really stay with us, I got the distinct impression that we were methodically checking to see if anyone was following me. First Stacey and her friend walked around, then they left me in the clearing by myself for a time, and at the end Stacey and I walked around while Persephone stayed in the clearing. It’s… exactly the sort of experiment I would’ve devised if I wanted to test if the government was secretly following someone, and had multiple bodies to assist. It felt like we were trying to kite the agents around like zombies in Call of Duty.

As we were laying in the clearing, Persephone continued to engage me with pseudo-spiritual bullshit.

The third level of attainment is object permanence.

This appeared to be a reference to my letter, where I accused the agents of lacking “object permanence” for failing to understand Dani California was a result of their experiment. She didn’t actually call it “the third level of attainment”. I don’t remember exactly what it was; but she kept saying bullshit like that.

The nexus point. It’s here. Do you feel it?

It’s passed. I feel it slipping away…

We left not long after Stacey and I made our loop around. At least at the time, I had the impression Stacey’s friend was enlisted to help with the experiment.

We went back to Persephone’s apartment. It eventually became clear I wasn’t going to find the answers I was looking for that evening; and I really just wanted to go home and smoke a bowl.

The next morning, she… basically did the same thing as my therapist; after spouting what I interpreted to be pseudo-spiritual word salad. Although, she might’ve just been telling me I was a pothead.

I felt I had little choice but to double down.

---

After avoiding Dr. Reid for the last year, I finally had to face the music. I couldn’t phone in any more refills until I showed up for my annual physical. This happened to be the following Monday.

The reduction in my dosage of spiro over a year ago was a real drag, and there’s no way I’d have ever gone this long without complaining if I hadn’t been dealing with the crisis of the entire fucking timeline. I could feel all the little things I loved about being on HRT slipping away.

I had recently started cutting the spiro in half and taking it twice a day, which I think made the best of the low dosage. Though it seems wise considering I’d always taken it twice a day before, the prescription was for once a day, and they make 50mg pills for that if she wanted me to spread it out.

I was nervous; though all the bullshit that’d happened to me in my head over the last several months numbed the fear. Nothing about Freemasons or UFOs was mentioned; much to my relief.

How’s the medication working? You’re still taking the 6mg/day estradiol and 100mg/day spironolactone?

Yeah! Uh, so I can tell I definitely need more spiro…

I was hoping to take you off spiro.

Oh, really? I’ve got way more body hair and skin oil lately, I really feel like my T is too high.

So, after a couple of years your gonads down-regulate, and you don’t need spironolactone anymore. You could still take it, but you don’t need it.

Well, I’ve heard of monotherapy. Most of my friends who are doing that are on injections…

Okay. Well, we’ll check you’re levels today and the front desk will call you if we need to change anything. Does that sound good?

I was highly skeptical about the idea of just being pulled off spiro, but I wasn’t about to argue with my doctor over it any more than I already had. I figured I’d just wait for the numbers.

I also brought up my inordinate amount of hair loss; something Dr. Reid didn’t seem all that concerned about. She suggested I try using minoxidil and a dermal roller on my scalp. I never followed through with either.

She asked me if I’d experienced any unexpected weight loss; maybe because I’d been taking the stimulant medication in the past. I said no because I hadn’t thought much of it, but it made me reflect on the fact that I had lost a lot of weight. There’s been a lot going on; I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not eating right, but I’m fat anyhow.

After the test results came back, I got a voicemail from the doctor’s office. I listened to the first few seconds of it while reading the poor speech-to-text transcription; enough to tell I’d been taken off spironolactone and progesterone.

With everything going on, I felt I had little choice but to see how bad things could get on monotherapy.

---

I forget if I told Dr. Reid about the GI problems I’d been having or not, but the sudden attacks that started in April continued to the point that I knew it wasn’t just something I ate. It really wasn’t normal; I woke up on the bathroom floor with my glasses all bent out of shape once; and had the less dramatic version of that happen to me after making it to my bed a few other times. It reminded me of what was happening to Walter White at the beginning of Breaking Bad; and I may’ve been more on top of it if it weren’t for me thinking the entire history of Earth was fucked up because I was the subject of a government experiment.

My hair loss at this point was really bad. It clearly wasn’t the hoodie, or careless detangling or anything like that. It was getting worse. I supposed I couldn’t rule out stress…

You wanna talk about stress, you wanna talk about STRESS?!

I felt like shit all the time. I felt like I was 70 years old, and was starting to look it too. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror one day, and I looked like a fucking ghost. I could hardly catch my breath, and was ready for a nap as soon as I got out of bed. It’s how I imagine being anemic would feel.

The witch goes
“Pheeeewwww”

It was later in the summer when I got mail in my head again.

You’re on chemo.

I’m on what?!

The agents. They replaced my hormones with chemotherapy. It’s why my hair’s falling out, it’s why I keep getting sick after meals and losing weight…

God. Dammit! I’m on fucking chemo! This is fucking America! What gives them the right to put me on fucking…

It’s standard procedure to fuck with the pedophiles, Evil Ethan…

Right. They think my future self is running an intergalactic child sex trafficking ring in the 90s.

God. Dammit!

They’ve been fucking with all sorts of shit. They’ve gone to all the restaurants I frequent and told them I’m a huge pedophile, and to fuck with my food. The agents interview nearly everyone I come into contact with in my day-to-day life, so most of my friends and co-workers think I’m a pedo, too. It’s probably why I struggle to make friends. Jizz, laxatives, chemo, WD-40… How long have they been doing shit like this?

Since I was a kid. Right. Evil Ethan. They’ve just been waiting for me to grow up and realize who I am; at which point I’ll realize they’ve already gotten their revenge.

This is when I really started losing it. I went out for a drive late at night, and went crazy down a lonely stretch of highway.

You don’t FUCK with my FUCKING MEDICINE

Punctuating my words with the horn, I aggressively pulled into a Sheetz; where I hoped to grab a modest pre-packaged meal the agents would need magic of their own to fuck with.

I don’t like agents
Mob of crooks, that’s all they are

Everything about my life. I was a “submissive” while exploring the BDSM community. “Evil Ethan is just stalking his prey…”

Dana. Remember, you used to go to her house for ponies? She was a government agent, Rachael.

Most people who’ve been “nice” to me throughout my life were probably agents.

Goddammit!

By the time I transitioned, they were more than certain about the monster I was.

Now, we know some of these people might really be transgender, but a lot of folks are worried about predators posing as women to lure ’em in. We all know Evil Ethan has a history of this, now…

They continued following me around while conducting their unblinded study with utter lack of scientific controls; basically just looking for evidence of my being evil. Surveying the bathroom stall to make sure nobody beside you can see uncomfortable shadows or whatnot? “There goes Evil Ethan again, peekin’ on ’em in the ladies room…” I could tell I’d be in for a gish gallop if I’d ever even meet my accusers face to face.

You don’t FUCK with my FUCKING MEDICINE!

I looked through my stockpile of estradiol, to see if I had anything old that the agents might not’ve gotten to. I didn’t have much left at this point; but I did find one bottle from 2021. I switched over to it in the hopes I would stop getting sick.

---

This is about the time when I really started losing it. I devolved into bouts of road rage over the government agents I knew were fucking with me and following me around. I was convinced they were putting laxatives or cum or worse in basically everything I bought. I became more and more frazzled as I attempted to procure meals and household items that the agents hadn’t fucked with.

Peak insanity may’ve been reached when I drove all the way out to Mebane in a desperate attempt to get unadulterated Zaxby’s. When my meal added up to exactly $13 even, I was convinced the agents put them up to it as a gesture that they’d made it there before me. I pulled off to wait for my food for what felt like an excessively long time even for Zaxby’s, before driving off to circle the parking lot while honking the horn in a fit of rage.

I FUCKING HATE THIS COUNTRY!
FUCK AMERICA!

I got behind somebody with an “In God We Trust” license plate, and I just fucking lost it.

GOD DAMMIT I FUCKING HATE CHRISTIANS!
Aaaaaa (static)

I ended up passing them aggressively on 40 while flipping them off.

This person did nothing to me. I really need help.

I was going on spiritually racist tirades about the “amber coloreds”; calling them “amber swine”, “the scourge of the galaxy”…

You people NEVER loved me!
I’ve been unloved since the DAY I WAS BORN!

I’ve been unloved since the DAY I WAS BORN, and I’m gonna hate you amber fucks until the DAY I FUCKING DIE!

I hope the neighbors didn’t hear me.

I started throwing things at my walls. Broke a glass mug and a bathroom tile when I “learned” amber coloreds in Africa enslaved the first witch.

Dude. I need help.

---

The things in my head grew more morbid in the second half of the year.

It wasn’t just me they’re after. They’re after everyone. Anyone, really, who’s spent a non-trivial amount of time around Evil Ethan. Evil Ethan is the most wicked witch ever, and we’ve gotta stop ’eem at any cost!

The FBI has a term for anyone who becomes friends with “Evil Ethan”.

Collateral damage.

The Johnsons, the Whites, Susan, my classmates… hell, even the actual IEEE robotics team.

They couldn’t just interrogate them. They had to torture the piss out of everybody.

They assumed anyone who had anything nice to say about me was under the influence of demonic mind control or some shit.

There were so many people to torture, they had to open an enhanced interrogation facility in Rob-co. It’s legal somehow. Something about domestic terrorism. The Bush administration had it rammed through.

They’ve used it on so many people. BLM, MeToo… they’ve all been secretly classified by the FBI as “domestic terror fronts”.

They increased the maximum amount of time you can be held without charges from 24 to 72 hours for suspects of domestic terrorism; as well as authorizing “enhanced interrogation”. They make you swear secrecy before they let you go, and they will kill you if you tell anyone. They make you go to their Nazi doctors for any medical care needed as a result of your interrogation; who may or may not give you an anesthetic, depending on your classification in the system as a “domestic terrorist” or “collateral damage”.

What they do to “domestic terrorists”. They round up all your friends and family whether or not they have any intelligence value, they torture the piss out of them on camera… and at the very end, they make you watch it. It’s supposed to act as a deterrent… or “yee-haw justice”, or something. The entire program is highly classified.

And, highly controversial. I thought Sandy Hook happened after a gun enthusiast was misidentified as a domestic terrorist. Changes were made to the program, but it wasn’t eliminated. There was always one super villain the treatment was made for.

So, they’ve been torturing the piss out of all my friends and family (what exists of the latter), so that they can get revenge on me “America style” for all the little girls I’m going to rape. Or… something.

Dude. Fuck them.

There’s magic, though. Can we fix this? Do we have to experience any of it? Do they have to experience it? This is outrageous, even for Imaginationland!

---

So, it’s almost September. Dr. Reid’s monotherapy thing is going abysmally, even with me taking the maximum sane dosage of 8mg/day estradiol out of my stockpile. I considered ordering DIY, before thinking to myself “Oh come on, that’s ridiculous! I’m a full-grown adult!”

At any rate; I hadn’t actually picked up my new prescription since I last saw the doctor, because I knew it was just estradiol and I had a stockpile of it. It wasn’t until now that I decided to take a few minutes away from witches and government agents to open the CVS app and fill my estradiol. And, that’s when I saw it.

Woah, those are purple!

Wait… 1mg?

I had an unfilled prescription in my CVS app for a bunch of purple 1mg estradiol tablets. I always get the teal-colored 2mg ones. Everyone gets the 2mg ones.

I scrolled through my voicemails to find the last one from my doctor.

The doctor said you, uh, your estradiol is very high.

Your testosterone is within normal levels…

You are to stop taking the spironolactone, and the progesterone.

She’s cutting your estradiol in half, to 1mg twice a day.

First of all, she had me on 6mg/day. Half would’ve been 3mg/day, not 2.

This took me from suspicion to outright disbelief. I would consider 2mg/day of estradiol with no antiandrogen to be… a fuck-you dose of HRT. That’s… not an adult dose of hormones.

Shit. My therapist gave me obviously bad advice, my primary care doctor is giving me obviously bad advice… Fuck the government, dude.

So, the agents just want to watch from a distance as they force me to detransition? Fuck them.

Alyssa Jones and me (Q4)

The character of the bizarre experience in my head had changed a little since the beginning; but only slightly.

At the beginning, the origin of the messages and things in my head seemed more vague. Over time, the feeling emerged that these were specific people, who were able to see life through my eyes. Famous people, boring people… people from history, people from the future… It all seems highly unlikely. I’m probably mentally ill. I suppose at this point, it felt in general like “the witches” and their friends were in my head; trying to guide me through a game of charades, where they couldn’t merely blurt out the answer.

I skipped ahead earlier, but I don’t think it was until the fall that I started getting all that stuff in my head about the “great laminator”. It’s probably not that important if you missed it. It offered hope that maybe we don’t all have to experience getting tortured for national security. Maybe we can “magic it out”.

That’s a phrase I often said to myself during this period. “Can’t we magic it out?! Can’t we magic that out?! We have time travel!”

For a while since the beginning of this process, I had a deep feeling I just wasn’t cut out to be an engineer. Sure, I like dicking around with computers. I was starting to think it should’ve remained a hobby.

Science Olympiad, robot team, high school, college, CrystalSoft, Avalon… I’ve had so many chances to hit a home run, and I just can’t get anything on the score board. I feel like I peaked in 4^th grade when I got my ham radio license. I’m pretty sure everyone just thinks I’m smart because I wear glasses and use Linux.

I started having visions, or thing-o-scope messages, or whatever you’d call them, about my future at the conclusion of all this; which was not going to end without at least 72 hours of government-mandated torture. After everything they’d done to my friends, I didn’t even care.

I was so done with computers. That wasn’t even me! My real future self…

Her name’s Alyssa Jones. She went back to an alternate timeline in a new body to get a better childhood. We lived in Mordecai Village with a bunch of witch gold we pulled out of the time travel bank, with Gail Richardson as my adoptive mother and Kimberly as a sort of step-sister. Terry was amicably not in the picture anymore for some reason. I learned I was a witch young, stayed away from computers, had generally very different life priorities, and graduated from high school to become a basic bitch at Peace College.

I drove a while Mini Cooper with black racing stripes. It felt so real. Just like all the other bullshit. You probably don’t want to waste your time reading it, but here I am writing about it anyway.

She was a kinkster. I met her. Wait - I guess that makes this not an alternate timeline. Oh I remember, She lived her childhood in an imaginary timeline and came back through the box. So she never really experienced it in present tense, but she remembers it and experiences the effects from it now. So it’s… a real history, indistinguishable from any other…

Sheesh.

I’ve met my future self. I went to play parties with her. She did stuff with Ian, in fact.

Lol, what?

Okay… whatever. I’ve met her.

I thought I remembered her. Ian girl, drives the Mini Cooper… whether or not it was real (and I presume it not to have been), I seemed to remember my actual future self hanging around me when I was younger; unable to say who she really was.

She went to your apartment, Rachael…

Goddammit. Do I remember one of the Peace girls looking like someone from TNG, and brushing it off as coincidence?

Alyssa apparently had a… complicated relationship with Josh Johnson.

Okay, I did not see that coming. The dude who wanted to tape up his asshole around me in high school?

Alyssa was in a biologically normal female body, and couldn’t immediately explain what her deal was. Josh was destined to get tortured by the government for being my childhood best friend, but we were going to get him through it. And… partially out of it.

There was a plan akin to breaking Dani out of Gitmo, except on a much larger scale. I had a real time travel army, not some amateur hour bullshit like the last fever-dream iteration. Incarnations of me studied at West Point and shit. We were clean and professional. And yes, we used flying saucers. Or really, just one flying saucer. You only need one flying saucer. Entire civilizations get by with just one flying saucer.

There was a point where the agents came for Josh a second time (or so), where we just weren’t letting it happen. The agents came in a relatively simple van, which we jumped before it left town; detaining the agents and springing Josh. The feds returned in waves, with much more firepower; The Akasha guard continued matching their strength. That was apparently my, uhh…

I guess all the “me”’s have a name, collectively? And, it’s not some weird karmic destiny bullshit.² It’s space atheism, I was born different, but I can procure an essentially arbitrary number of new bodies for me and my close friends. You want to guess how many of me there are?

Like… hundreds of thousands of me. At least. I’m going to be all of those people; starting, apparently, with me, the person who I am now. Supposedly, the brief amount of torture is going to be all worth it.

How many people am I? How many people… are Akasha?

I’m not Anthony Kiedis; but I am Dave Grohl. We had to do all that crazy stuff in the 90s, to get the government’s attention. We needed to demonstrate the absurdity of conducting human experimentation on a witch; but, we also saw the opportunity to end this domestic terrorism program that would otherwise continue on for several more decades.

I was just going to get locked up and experimented on for the rest of my life, if it weren’t for this Dani California ruse. We pulled this weird shit with me being really crazy in the 90s, to distract them from experimenting on me and goad them into really making asses of themselves, to the point of getting their program shut down entirely.

The Akasha guard shot down a helicopter into a golf course, while Josh was still living in east Durham a couple years ago. They were really quick to cover it up. Guardsmen courteously directed traffic, to the point folks just assumed the road was closed for some mundane reason. We were prepared to deal with the cops when they eventually had questions about what the fuck we were doing blocking off Lumley road on a Tuesday afternoon.

One of the operations involved using a nearby storage unit as a very high traffic spaceport.

I had an entire “lifetime”, as a humble Portuguese forklift operator. Eventually, you’ve just done every job there is to do, to the point that there isn’t much left to experience but the mundane. This dude’s entire life (or my entire “thread” as this guy) had but a single purpose: landing a fuck-ton of Akasha guardsmen on one fateful day, then just disappearing. The forklift made for a good excuse to own a giant storage unit, although the unit was still vastly oversized for this ostensible purpose.

Dude. There’s so much bullshit. It doesn’t matter.

I was so many people. I was Dave Grohl. I was Steve Schewel. I found this hilarious, if not dizzying. I don’t know why I’m focusing on the famous men I was; except maybe that I found it easier to wield power and influence that way.

I seemed to have found the cure to gender dysphoria; which might just be magic. I could go back to being Alyssa at any time; it was just a flying saucer away. On some level, it was like having hundreds of thousands of bodies in the garage; all with their own threads that you can start or resume.

Netflix is boring. This is real life (except it isn’t).

While this all felt very real at the time, I struggle presently to believe I wouldn’t mind living all of those lifetimes as dudes. I kinda feel like I’d just be various women over and over again if I had unlimited extra lives. Granted, the Akashas did ostensibly have something like a 75/25 gender ratio.

---

Shit’s pretty bad with my hormones. I’m still taking as much estradiol as I can every day, but I really need the spiro.

Body hair, facial hair, hair and skin oil, male BO…

I saw a man look back at me in the mirror, for the first time in years. This must constitute some emergency for a trans person. What’s a girl gotta do to get some spiro around here?

I was cautiously optimistic that some reprieve might come on Friday, October 13^th. Once it did not, it was a very short throw toward…

I need to order DIY.

(website redacted). Looks different, still exists. Still has spironolactone. That’s good.

Shit, looks like they’re out of estradiol. At least the 2mg generic. I waited a week for the E to get back in stock, before I found an acceptable substitute; sublingual estradiol valerate, sold in other countries by Bayer under the brand name “Progynova”. I… didn’t know valerate came in sublingual form. We have valerate injections in America…

Some quick “I do my own research” confirmed my suspicion that there was no gotcha with substituting sublingual estradiol with sublingual estradiol valerate; save for the valerate part adding extra molecular weight, resulting in a 2mg Progynova being the molar equivalent of only about 1.5mg plain estradiol.

I quickly ordered 400 tablets of spironolactone and 336 doses of Progynova. The highly variable shipping from Vanuatu only took three weeks this time.

A new message arrived in my head, just as my order was about to ship.

It was… an experiment. To prove that I was really transgender.

They gradually replaced my hormones with a placebo; before finally replacing them with something that would actually make me sick.

If I really had gender dysphoria, I was supposed to go to the doctor and talk about how my hormones don’t work anymore. The UFO situation short-circuited this, and isolated me from my doctor. Then, I self-medicated from my own surplus out-of-order; defeating the gradual dilution I was supposed to experience as the months went on. Finally, I started taking the poison pills as I randomly grabbed from the pile of surplus medication; never realizing they were making me sick while they never made the connection that I was still trying to take my medication in earnest.

I was pissed off; especially since this apparently couldn’t be revealed until I ordered DIY; a choice that I hoped would end this experiment one way or another.

I’m about to go H.A.M.

The thought occurred to me that I could ramp up my spironolactone; but only the thought. The louder voice in my head was yelling

FREIGHT TRAIN!

The risk of serious consequences seemed to be non-existent. It just makes you feel shitty, potentially. You should ramp up your meds, though.

I did take a half spiro to start, but I got on the 200mg/day freight train over the next 24 hours or so. I planned to take 8mg/day of Progynova in a similar freight train strategy; the molar equivalent of about 6mg.

I woke up for day two of Progynova. Took one of them, ate a handful of peanut butter-filled pretzels, and right after “the thing” happened. The full-blown cramps, the ocean in my ears… I rushed to the bed before coming to in a cold sweat. I’d never had it happen with that little food before.

Alright, you fucks. I get the message. I’ll call Dr. Reid.

I scheduled another appointment with the doctor; hoping I just needed to be really crystal clear about the hormones not working, and that they might actually be making me sick, in order to call off this wayward experiment.

I showed up to my appointment, probably looking dreadful at this point. I was thrown off when I sat down in the exam room, and the nurse asked me in a most sincere tone

Are you still taking the 1mg estradiol twice a day?

I didn’t even know what to say to that. It’s a yes or no question.

Uh… yeah, sure.

I eventually saw Dr. Reid; hoping to blow the lid off this whole ridiculous charade.

I feel like I’m in the twilight zone with these levels, doc! I was actually taking my previous dose and sometimes a little extra, it still wasn’t working, and when I opened my CVS app and saw my new prescription was for 1mg tablets I was like… that’s a joke, right?

My hopes that she would recognize this as a clerical error and give me an adult dose of hormones were crushed in an instant.

Woah, how much have you been taking? You could really hurt yourself!

Uh… okay. But like…

She remarked on how high my estradiol ostensibly was at my last blood draw. I once again tried explaining that I’d had problems ever since she lowered my spiro a year and a half ago.

Oh, you’ve been on hormones so long don’t need spiro anymore.

I reiterated that I haven’t had SRS or an orchi yet. I thought there was a chance she might be confused, because I did get a WPATH letter from them with good intentions of getting SRS before all this space alien business started.

It wasn’t that. She just earnestly seemed to believe I no longer needed to take spironolactone, despite still having functioning testicles.

Like, dude. I’ve been learning about hormones since I was a kid. Yeah, down-regulation is a thing, and so is monotherapy. But like…

So, monotherapy is historically something trans women have had to fight their doctors to get. The reason is that one usually has to take an excessive amount of estradiol, usually administered through intramuscular injection for reasons of safety and practicality, which makes one’s blood clot more easily to the point of making DVTs and shit a real danger. Some people think it’s reasonably safe, a lot of more conservative-minded doctors are a bit freaked out by it… some trans women insist on monotherapy, out of a belief that spironolactone hinders breast growth or is otherwise unnecessary; lack of FDA approval makes the widely used alternative cyproterone acetate unavailable unless you’re going to, you know…³

Order it from Vanuatu or some shit.

Anyway, I seemed to be getting nowhere. She had me go in the other room for blood work; I think a little frustrated I didn’t bother to get labs done beforehand. I was left hoping “the numbers” would be in my favor this time; and had the impression that Dr. Reid must be a really good actor if she wasn’t serious.

I anxiously watched the portal for the lab results. Something that bothered me ever since the summer was, I couldn’t figure out how to get the lab report on the actual letterhead from the lab company. You could do this with Quest by logging into their portal; Dr. Meier and Dr. Reid’s quaint little Triangle Comprehensive Care had been bought by Avery Primary Care, and they got switched to LabCorp. I presume that’s why the process is different, and I can now only find my lab results on the Avery patient portal; where I hope the numbers are being entered either by a script or a very steady hand.

Dude. If you want me not to think there’s a fucking conspiracy, at least show me a piece of paper from LabCorp saying “You don’t need grownup hormones, you increasingly hairy smelly tranny you!”

I was relieved to find that the results agreed with me this time; my testosterone was in the hundreds and my estradiol just wasn’t there.

My relief was very short-lived, after reading that she simply blamed this on the fact that I stopped taking my meds after I got sick. Also confusingly, she told me to “[p]lease restart at the 2 mg 3 times daily”, but I don’t think she ever wrote a prescription for this new dose. I guess she expected me to keep using my stockpile, but I didn’t really have much of one by this point. Well, except for the…

She also commented on my once-again low level of vitamin D. I knew exactly where to find the bottle of Target brand vitamin D I wasn’t taking, and took a few thousand IUs. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I was also amused to read that she wanted me to start taking vitamin B12 again at the same dose I was taking a couple of years ago, seemingly unaware that she previously chastised me for taking it. I still had a bottle of that too, I think unopened.

Looking through my past and present lab results, I noticed for the first time she’d complained about my vitamin levels previously.

Lab results

November 2023

Name	Value	Reference range	Notes
Testosterone	826  H	8-60 (ng/dL)	High testosterone level. it is hard to say what it would have been if you had not stopped the estrogen for 48 hours. . Please note that this is pretty normal range testosterone for a cis-male. I presume it will drop back down into the undetectable range when you restart your estradiol. Please restart at the 2 mg 3 times daily and then we will check labs again at 12 weeks.
Estradiol	27.6  (pg/mL)	BN	low estradiol level. Again, hard to discern what this would have been high do not stop the estradiol for 48 hours. Please resume your estradiol medication and we will repeat labs at 12 weeks
Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy	15.3  L	30.0-100.0 (ng/mL)	very low vitamin D. Please purchase over-the-counter vitamin D3 and take 5000 IU by mouth daily. Goal level = 50+. This could very well be causing some of your current symptoms
Vitamin B12	435	232-1245 (pg/mL)	low normal vitamin B12. While your vitamin B12 level appears to be normal here, it is a bit low. We prefer to keep the vitamin B12 level = 500+. Vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to brain fog, fatigue, headaches, and other neurologic symptoms. Please purchase over-the-counter vitamin B12 liquid. Please place 2000 mcg under the tongue daily for 1 month, then decrease to 1000 mcg under the tongue daily. Please plan to stay on the 1000 mcg dose indefinitely. We will recheck the levels at your next lab draw and will adjust the dosage as needed.

July 2023

Name	Value	Reference range	Notes
Testosterone	18	8-60 (ng/dL)	normal testosterone, appropriately suppressed
Estradiol	492.0  (pg/mL)	It’s complicated (methinks green/yellow/red 150/300/500)	very high estradiol level. Goal = 100-200. Please decrease your current dosage by half, so it will be 1 mg by mouth twice daily. I have sent a new prescription. I would like to please check labs again at 12 weeks. My staff will call you to get that scheduled.
Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy	15.0  L	30.0-100.0 (ng/mL)	Low vitamin-D. Your vitamin D level is quite low. We prefer to keep the level = 50+. A recent study suggests that vitamin D may not be as helpful with bone health as we had thought, but it does help with balance and energy level. Please purchase over-the-counter vitamin D3 and take 4000 IU by mouth daily. Please plan to stay on this indefinitely.
Vitamin B12	378	232-1245 (pg/mL)	low normal vitamin B12. While your vitamin B12 level appears to be normal here, it is a bit low. We prefer to keep the vitamin B12 level = 500+. Vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to brain fog, fatigue, headaches, and other neurologic symptoms. Please purchase over-the-counter vitamin B12 liquid. Please place 2000 mcg under the tongue daily for 1 month, then decrease to 1000 mcg under the tongue daily. Please plan to stay on the 1000 mcg dose indefinitely. We will recheck the levels at your next lab draw and will adjust the dosage as needed.

February 2022

Name	Value	Reference range	Notes
Testosterone	20	8-60 (ng/dL)
Estradiol	116.0  (pg/mL)	It’s complicated (methinks green/yellow/red 150/300/500)
Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy	18.0  L	30.0-100.0 (ng/mL)
Vitamin B12	1507  H	232-1245 (pg/mL)	Hi Rachael, I know we have a visit soon, but thought you’d like to see your labs in advance. Labs all look pretty good, though we need to tweak your vitamins a bit. I will look forward to discussing these in detail at your visit. Thank you, S. Reid, M.D.

This all just seemed so crazy to me. I keep going to the doctor trying to get more hormones, and I keep coming away with less somehow.

Like, is she doing this with all her trans patients? I can’t imagine she’s very popular if that’s the case. Then again, if I’m to trust all this crazy stuff in my head, there’d seem to be a motive; the government’s fucking with me, and for all I know Dr. Reid thinks I’m a child sex trafficker posing as a woman.

Shit, dude. Well, I thought it was kinda dumb that she wanted me to stop taking B12 to begin with, so that’s going back on the list; and, it’s true that I didn’t spend enough time outdoors before magic and witchcraft turned me into a recluse, so a few thousand IUs a day of vitamin D shouldn’t hurt either. Hell, maybe I should take a multivitamin.

One thing’s for sure - I’m through with Dr. Reid. I figured I had a better chance of getting un-tampered with medication at the correct dosage via the DIY route.

---

My self-confidence was at an all-time low. I had no idea what was going on, and I was really starting to doubt everything. What do these people even still want from me?!

Presuming at least some of the mail-order hormones to have been replaced with chemo, I set about cautiously and systematically trying to narrow down what it was, exactly. “It would be nice if I could at least take the spiro”, I thought.

This same week, my mother was on a tear to try and “see her child” for Thanksgiving. Some back conversation is added for context.

Ugh. Goddammit… who knows what kind of stunt she’s about to pull. Just… no.

It was now, with me trying to get hormones and dodge Susan, when Tommy sent me his first text message in over a year.

Right. On. Time. I guess we’re still doing 12:26pm, huh?

Goddammit. This has to be the most frustrating game of charades ever played.

First of all, I’m almost positive the Whites bought those. I have one from either Cody or Edward. It’s a commemoration of when the church youth group went to Ft. Caswell during the off-season, and we scared the little kids by constructing a costume of a Tusken Raider.⁴

Whether or not it was Tommy’s intent (and I’m assuming it wasn’t), it led me to think about how, despite Susan’s obsessiveness and incessant giving of petty gifts, she wouldn’t buy anything so thoughtful. Susan doesn’t even know what a Tusken Raider is.⁵ She has bought me generic Star Wars gifts over the years in the wake of this; presumably under the assumption that I “like Star Wars” now. This is how her brain works; it’s like trying to be friends with the Youtube search algorithm.

She doesn’t really adapt, or understand more than bullet points. It’s like every once in a while, she’ll just go memory updated and it’ll be our thing now. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my (maternal) grandma found out I liked Toad from the Mario universe. I must’ve gotten mushroom-themed Christmas gifts for the next ten years, long after my favorite Mario character had shifted to Yoshi, and finally to not really having one at all.

Anyway, continuing on…

I managed to avoid the dogs this round. Out of paranoia, I parked my car in an adjacent neighborhood in the hopes that she wouldn’t camp outside my house in protest or something. I thought I at least might be able to slip in and out the backdoor that way.

I drove by the same hotel I picked her up at for us to meet Tommy a year and a half ago. She’d left her car parked in a handicapped spot with her thing on the mirror from when she fell. This frankly bolstered my suspicions of her malingering; there was plenty of non-handicapped parking within a very reasonable distance to the door. It seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to get me to drive by the hotel and see how frail my old widdle muver was; but it kinda backfired on account of its own transparency, just like a lot of her bullshit lately.

Dude. There’s something wrong with that woman. I’ve known it most of my life; I just haven’t known what to do about it. What was I, not going home for the holidays anymore?

---

Seeming to lack other options, I attempted to cobble together a workable HRT regimen with what I had, while continuing to systematically determine what was safe and what might be making me sick.

The first order of business was the spiro. I got up to speed with it, and I could tell I had at least one clean bottle of it. I never imagined I’d be clamoring for spironolactone this late into my transition, but there I was. Once I knew one bottle was good, I switched to a second one halfway through without changing anything about my estradiol, to make sure there was nothing qualitatively different about any of the four bottles of spiro.

I got another refill of those bullshit baby estrogens, ’cause I figured hormones were hormones at this point. Inspecting them carefully, I observed subtle differences in shading. There seemed to be light ones and dark ones, and I took to tediously sorting the bottle into the two groups; theorizing that one could be chemo while the other might be unadulterated estradiol.

What am I, a fucking lab rat? Of course, I think I was just chasing ghosts now.

For a time, I thought the “dark estradiol” was the good stuff, before ultimately concluding that there seemed to be no correlation.

---

My belief that I was being subjected to an experiment evolved into something else. Something… that almost made sense.

I’m blackballed.

You know. It’s a thing that can happen to you, with the Freemasons. Granted, I didn’t know I was trying to get white-balled. It’s, like, one of the few things about the Freemasons I can verify is a thing.

Okay. So, for a witch to get their magic, they have to basically be convicted innocent by a jury of their peers. Because this “reverse-trial” is held as a ceremonious coming-of-age in adolescence, it’s usually more of a formality; there generally isn’t much dirt that can be dug up on a teenager. It’s meant to instill trust that witches aren’t running rampant, doing unethical or immoral things with their technology. Every once in a while a kid won’t get all their white balls, and they’ll issue a re-trial after a few years’ time. After so many blackballs, one is eventually blackballed for life.

In most countries, the jury process is a closed-off form of self-regulation. This is not so in America. Did you know a number of the founding fathers were Freemasons? I’ve heard that before, and I’m not going to fact-check it. It sounds right, though.

In America, it’s a jury-jury. A jury of laypeople, after being screened and sworn to secrecy, is told the truth about UFOs and magic and shit, and they get to vote on whether little Harry Potter gets to have his magic. They can ask any question they want, no matter how silly, and “the Freemasons” will use magic to reveal the answer instantly.

Okay; that’s cool.

It’s the mid-2000’s. The names of all us Bladen County witches are coming up. Me, Dalton, Seth, Abigail…

Ethan Alexandre Brown. I get randomly assigned to a district in Baltimore, where a jury is convened to hear my case. Despite attempts at a diverse mix, the jury is mostly black people.

Already knowing with time travel how they would vote, my legal council advocated unsuccessfully for the right to inform the jury I was transgender. This fact was deemed irrelevant by the presiding judge, as the process is supposed to be highly anonymized.

They were encouraged to ask questions in order to get to know this faceless, adolescent male witch. After learning they could ask any question, a young black juror jovially asked a most innocent one.

What kind of porn’s he look at?

BDSM porn, folks! I look at BDSM porn!

They oblige the jury with a sampling of my taste in pornography. It’s all bondage porn of men topping women with a clear emphasis on forced fellatio.

A number of female jurors are immediately “concerned”. They’re worried I might grow up to be the BTK killer or something.

We wanted to explain to them that I was trans. We couldn’t solicit answers to questions they didn’t ask, and thus campaigned for the right to tell the jurors I was a “teenage girl” instead of a “teenage boy” so that they’d ask appropriate questions and interpret the answers correctly. Our request was denied, and I was subsequently blackballed.

That’s okay. I have another two strikes, or something.

Round two. I’m assigned to the Memphis district. It’s mostly black people again, coincidentally. We still can’t tell them I’m trans, but we can at least tell them that I’m now actively involved in the local BDSM community, and that I’m actually a submissive. See, I’m not the BTK killer! It’s the other way around!

The jury was heavy on conservative old folks, and they still weren’t so sure about my “lifestyle choices”. They decided they’d feel more comfortable if we “waited until I was married”.

Sheesh. I’m not even gonna fucking get married. Unless someone just decides to sweep me off my feet, and ugh! This is so annoying!

Round three. At this point, my council is really pushing for what we would call “a fair trial”. The new jury is carefully hand-picked and brought up to speed.

Am I married? Hell no! But I am…

T r a n s g e n d e r, now.

They’re told everything from the beginning; and asked to vote, finally, on whether I get to receive my magic, fifteen years late.

Two of the jurors were TERFs.

Goddammit!

Things seemed bleak. The TERFs eventually agreed they would whiteball me; if I passed an experiment of their own design, to prove I was really transgender. My hormones would be replaced with a placebo, before being replaced with something that would make me sick at the end. They theorized that I wouldn’t notice the placebo, and wouldn’t complain to the doctor until I was taking poison pills.

Their experiment didn’t really allow for enough time on the placebo for me to catch it. Instead, we created the wildest distractions imaginable to occupy me for well over a year, causing the experiment to end in me avoiding my doctor and ordering DIY instead.

This was the thing we needed. We’d been magicking it out. The TERFs blackballing me despite the fact I was making an effort to stay on a working HRT regimen was enough for us to successfully argue this to be a mistrial.

Which brings us here; wherever this is.

I began thinking about what Bill said, when he pulled me aside a long time ago after work. I almost forgot about that.

For all the people who seemed to know something I didn’t, Bill is the only one who suggested the problem might simply be that I look bad to anonymous strangers. I remember him asking if I had any “political signs” up at my house, and it seemed like the most peculiar question to ask. Could it really be that simple?

---

It’s late in December. Most people are out buying gifts for their family, but there’s only one thing on my Christmas list. Well, other than an end to these shenanigans…

I need more hormones.

I was relieved that I at least had spiro that didn’t make me sick; and, I also had a bunch of the Progynova still that I’d been too squeamish to start taking again after I got sick that one morning.

I could already tell I was not okay with my body remasculinizing; I remember thinking the gender problems were worse than I’d have thought with everything else going on. I had to try something, even if it was a complete “Hail Mary”.

I hatched a plan; albeit, a far-fetched one. I was going to rent a PO box, order the meds over public Wi-Fi with a VPN and a fictitious name, and pay for them with a money order purchased in cash.

First, I needed the PO Box. There was no good time to go to the post office in mid-December, and I was just going to have to wait 15 or 20 minutes even as an unemployed UFO chaser with a flexible schedule. I eventually accepted this and bit the bullet.

I opened the box with my new key before I left, testing that it worked. There was a piece of hard orange plastic covering the rear of the box, which being new to PO boxes I didn’t think much of. I mailed myself two test letters; one addressed to Rachael Brown, and another addressed to the very real Dani Elizondo.

I was surprised to find both of these letters returned to sender; as if my mail person doesn’t think I’m crazy enough.

Dude, what? Am I not the proud owner of PO Box 51009, Durham, NC 27707?

Thinking maybe I needed to wait a day after getting the keys or something, I sent myself another pair of test letters; this time to Rachael Brown and Alyssa Jones. I left off the return address.

I kept checking the mail, and there was dead-ass nothing in the box. No junk mail, nothing. Just an empty box, with that same orange plastic at the other end.

Mister postman
do you have a letter for me?

Finally, about a week later, I checked the mail to find the orange plastic removed, revealing the work area behind the wall; and a single, well traveled letter, addressed to Rachael Brown. Hardly a confidence-instilling amount of packet loss.

My attempt to ensure I could receive mail addressed to a fictitious name fell surprisingly flat. Considering how much misaddressed junk mail I get, I considered that part of the experiment to be a formality.

I found myself at a crossroads. Do I send Alyssa Jones or Dani Elizondo another letter? Or, should I just YOLO it? This attempt at getting unaltered medication is already a long shot, right? And, this is the fucking postal service we’re talking about. They just put the mail in the goddamn mailbox. They don’t give a fuck; as long as I don’t get myself in a situation where I need Alyssa Jones to show her ID. While legally possible, this seemed unlikely with the combination of parcel lockers and the already-large-enough mailbox size.

I didn’t exactly have the smoothness of James Bond as I struggled to find public Wi-Fi stable enough to complete the task. Isabella Costello eventually ordered a bunch of spironolactone and estradiol off flaky Wi-Fi I picked up in my car from the ATC. I added “Don’t fuck with me” to the delivery instructions that get printed on the label, to at least give them the middle finger if it came to that.

Around the same time, I decided to hedge my bets by trying to get up with my previous physician, Dr. Meier; and planned to involve Kat C. if I got nowhere with her.

#TODOInsert or put in appendix