So recently, my father cut off all contact from me, blocking me from everything, and presumably telling everyone else in the family to not talk to me, so effectively I lost my family. He did this because, in his words, I'm too bizarre, but this goes deeper in that I don't meet his standards of what his son should be doing with his life.

Well, y'know, I have an educational art project where I've directly worked with a good number of troubled, inquisitive, curious, and wanting to be better people, as well aa produced what I estimated was three million words worth of edutainment that is all available for free that I know has reached millions of pairs of eyes because over the years, I figured out how to generate 100k-250k views on a social media profile per day, but I don't make a million dollars a year like he does as vice president of his architectural firm, so when we have no food and ask for twenty dollars for milk and shit, this is literally the same as spitting in his face, or whatever.

I never heard the end of his vile sarcasm when I sent him these messages amongst some very good progress we made, reconnecting over these past two years. It boggles my mind. He says he loves me, and we'll have a great exchange, but then not even asking money, I'll say something NOT EVEN IN FAVOR OF TRUMP BUT JUST SUGGESTING, Y'KNOW, MAYBE EPSTEIN IS ALIVE BECAUSE THIS IS A POLICE STATE AND TRUMP IS DEFINITELY A COP AND THIS IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND TO THINK OUTSIDE OF THE CULTS OF TRIBAL IDENTITY POLITICS, but because I trigger his identity problems (he hates his parents SO MUCH he cut off contact with them decades ago, also, but he's just like them, like 100%. He has done zero spiritual work in his life to recondition himself to change anything about himself), but like I'll say a low-level conspiracy theory and suddenly I'm the equivalent of MAGA, and that's enough to ghost me for a week, regardless of what is going on.

But that's just who he is, that awful voice in his head that can always shut someone down with how absolutely savage and cutting his words can be, and I say this in a quasi-hell myself, as this is the daemon in me that comes out when I have no recourse against my life partner who is so wonderful but makes life unnecessarily difficult. But, that's just his personality. His sins? Oh, that's a fundamentally different list.

I mean, you know how you were thrown into your bookcase when you were four, which made you happy when the police took your dad away and you could play your Super Nintendo on the weekday now? Wait, didn't you get your SNES at age five, distinctly because your mother went into the hospital because her gallbladder exploded when you were in kindergarten? But, didn't your mom's gallbladder explode when you were in first grade, which you remember because you waited on the stair waiting for your mom before Mrs Kowalski's first grade, to be told by your dad that she went into the hospital overnight, but in present, you realize your parents would have never left you home alone overnight?

You all know what it's like having your past be a shattered mirror of contradicting memories, right? You've had extreme childhood trauma, all of y'all, yea? Fuck me man. My first memory is of Hawaii, which we went to when I was two because my mom found out she had HIV just two months after I was born, and that's where they honeymooned. But then my next memory is of my mom driving through the garbage door after a huge fight with my dad, where he slapped her because she hated the medicine she had to take and she went berserk because of that.

Wait! I guess technically, I remember my dad, who did not get HIV from my mom just as I did not despite testing positive for it three times between two different types of tests (it was 1990, what can I say about medicine at the time?), but I remember, in my primordial memories, the archetypal idea that my dad being sick with a cold meant my dad was a monster, with their room being off-limits when he had a cold because my life would be threatened. I don't know directly, because my dad denies this ever happened, but I believe that me getting thrown into the bookshelf involves him having a bad day because his car loan got turned down.

The “car” part of that has been inserted, but I remember early in my life, my dad got into an accident, and this was a serious thing because I cost too much money, so, like, I don't know what to tell you, but I have this vague concept of being hurt because I wasn't good enough and it is connected to this mesh of ideas. This is the foundational apex of my being. Something is wrong and I am never good enough, and now I'm not good enough for my father to even talk to.

When I was seven, I remember bringing my drawing notebook home, where I doodled all my creativity, but on the back I wrote “I am a failure,” which my dad changed into “I'm a farter” and then bullied me about being a farter. Like, this was a household meme that lasted a week and got brought up a month later or some shit. That's just how things were in our house. Likewise, I remember my dad was a hardass beyond hardass. My mom dove in front of my father to stop him from killing me when I booed at the first grade assembly because I didn't know that the French horn was a hard instrument to play and I thought the girl did a bad job and I thought you booed because that's what Hey Arnold said you should do.

Our fourth grade teacher wrote “love notes” when we had missing assignment or you got in trouble. My dad sensed something was up one night and went systematically through my backpack and room to find a love note I got for playfully kicking my friend Jarrett that he smiled and kicked me back, and I got all my Lego's broken apart as the Flavian Roman emperors had all the bricks of the temple of the Jewish rebellion taken apart so no brick stood on another brick.

Nothing was sacred in our house. I would get in trouble for things I did a thousand times before but suddenly it mattered because my dad had a hang nail. It boggles my mind, how my father would turn into a feral beast when he had a head cold, yet my fucking mother had HIV and was going in and out of the hospital. The night the ear infection spread to her brain and reduced her to a toddler-like state, my father would come to my room to vent, then disappeared while my mom was calling out for her mommy, meaning he was not anywhere in the house for over an hour, so I went in to my mom's room, saw her scabbed boobs and couldn't help her in the slightest so I ran away from her and kinda just zoned out in my bed until my dad said we were taking her to the hospital.

This was after he literally physically fought my grandma because he didn't want her there while her daughter died, to then have the audacity to come in my room while my grandma told me in tears we will always have each other and throw her out and then shit talk her while showing me that she scratched him, and that was the important thing that he talked about the rest of the night. And he doesn't acknowledge any of this because he can throw away people, yet for years after, I was subjected to having to be scaldingly reminded that I chose to play video games instead of play with my mom one last time just before this all went down.

Also in the years after: five new mothers that I would also lose and never hear from again, but no therapy. The first of my new mommies was eighteen years old and was procured within months of my mom dying.

…

Vic steps up the stairs to enter into the crowded second floor of the Meyer building. The hallway was packed with youth, most being freshman waiting for their philosophy 1000 course, taking place in the classroom whose previous class was taking a second too long. Having just celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday, Vic felt a natural tension being the older student who returned to school, but it dissipated as Vic hadn't simply grown old. He lived a unique life, and in overhearing a couple young over-achievers battle the wits they had over the nihilistic philosophy of a man Vic had never heard of; Nihetchetsskey, who apparently had a great mustache much like the philosopher Vic did know and laughed at, Nietzsche.

There was a minute to wait. Vic stood there, to the side, looking, not directly down at the polished faux-granite floor in front of him, but a few feet in front of himself where no one was standing. Even though his pupils stayed locked in place, a skill he had learned since he was last in college, his attention soon noticed a young man in his peripheral, whose eyes darted every which way, and since Vic was a Homo sapien, he noticed where the boys’ eyes fell to; frequently to this low-cut shirt and to these various butts and pairs of thighs. Vic, being a conscious and knowledgeable individual, also noticed a young woman with a lower case “t” around her neck notice this young man as well.

The previous class lets up, with the other philosophy professor telling her students to read a handful of pages of words Plato wrote in the voice of Socrates. The flocks shuffle, and Vic enters the classroom to find a desk in the front, but off to the side. The students file in, to be followed by the professor with esteemed goatee and pressed suit, who hands out index cards, to be passed from front to back and then filled out by each student in a specific way, with Vic filling his out with:

Victorious Phoenix I govern men (and more). The shit I teach at a thirtieth grade level.

These index cards are then collected, being passed up, before being shuffled by a man Vic would consider his contemporary six years ago, and then the professor begins reading them out loud.

“…Jeanne Fischer. I am a psychology major. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Very good.” Vic listens intently as the professor talks about etymology and why Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. The professor continues on with a few more names, some similar, one stating they were in a band, another being the cadet who had already decided on a life in the military. He then gets to a “Craig Devuits.”

“...I'm just saying it's insane and immoral that we hold onto these things bronze age goat herders believed from getting high off mushrooms.”

which he pauses at before laughing jovially.

“So who here is Diogenes?”

And Vic proudly replied, knowingly, “That would be me.”

“Well, would y

…

I remember who I used to be, and that is enough to make anyone drink. I wasn't the devil; I was a fool and then some, but how does one get so broken? The world traumatizes us all, but what of Moses? Abandoned as a child to float in that basket down the Nile to be found and cared for. The loved unloved child; blessed they are by God. But what of Jesus? Our lord's stepdad wasn't good enough to get his own wife, so he registered for a used one, and if he's not good husband material, what makes you think he was good to the child that wasn't his?

My life started with me losing my family. It was a slow burn, but kicked off immediately as it was my being born that alerted doctors that my mother was HIV positive. My father has never told me about those early years, but I saw my mother's innocence in my baby book, talking about how I tested positive, but it was a new test and the doctor said not to worry, and then she goes on to write about some new clothes someone in my family got for me.

I have no family now, besides the love of my life. I don't believe my father will ever speak to me again. I'm “too bizarre” in his eyes. Well, being naturally autistic but never diagnosed and never getting any therapy until after my breakdown in college when my mom passed in a horrifying manner I was nine, and with…trauma with my father who is a man that threw away the rest of his family because he didn't want them anymore, and so neither could I.

We set out on our own

1st time away fr. home

Lotta faith on our parts

Wat helpd set us apart

Certain type of nativity

Not knowing th’ reality

Of the world occupied

By liars; how they lied

And how fooled one b

Falling into spirituality

It was October 25th, if I remember correctly. The year…well the years all blend together at this point. It lasted from October to June, what I tend to dub my experience with the cult, having flown across the country with my ex-girlfriend, Awen, to start a new life to instead find a whole new world where I saw five lights when told there were that many.

There's some backstory, but to set the stage, they went by Earth Nation for my period with the main group, but there was a schism - clearly planned, I see in hindsight - that rewon our loyalties and we went with a tentacle group, calling ourselves Lovecycle, where we were controlled by one highly eccentric, yet masterful manipulator: Daniella.

Before this, I believe I first encountered this group a year prior, before they branded as Earth Nation, going by the title of the Awakening Sovereignty Collective. This will take some explaining. Going back two years from taking that trip from our hometown of Syracuse, NY to Eugene, OR, all of this tale can ultimately be said to be the result of a fateful acid trip whilst being as neurodivergent as can be.

Because of this and events that followed, I entered into a cognitive state I came to learn and call the Synchronicity Slip Stream or SSS. I was in this state proper for six years, feeling like God was leading me on a cosmic mission via synchronicities, as Carl Jung called the phenomena - burning bushes in the Bible, or what white rabbit was to Neo; these seemingly impossible coincidences that plant ideas or make suggestions - and in this state of mind, these whispers of God are always waxing and waning, spelling out any number of messages in chains of self-constructed meaning, often with false positives.

I am diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (bipolar subtype) and PTSD, and while it's not part of my official diagnosis, doctors have talked with me about being on a spectrum before, but I know from having examined what is going on with me and what has happened that this all revolves around how my brain pieces together the narrative I uphold and believe is true at a given time, becoming more malleable and dependent on free association in each contextualized moment.

Mental health care professionals will certainly understand the term “objects of reference,” and how the right set of seemingly random circumstances can turn into a storm in that regard. What's in my short term memory plays a major role, yet relies on long term memories too, referencing this or that which I extract intention from why these symbols appear at these points on my path. This was a considerable factor in how these people were able to sink their claws in me so thoroughly and reduce me to the point where I was “earning” two hundred dollars a month to give back to the community, and I was praising them for this!

But I didn't join a cult. That wasn't my intention nor what I even thought until the end, well after a talkative couple with a dog we encountered outside of Lakeport, California regaled us with how they had been taken advantage of in their own cult mishaps, me nodding along, saying to myself, “wow, how could anyone let that happen to them?” when they were describing almost exactly what we were going through.

No, I thought we were joining a revolutionary environmental nonprofit that was making their own cryptocurrency and software suite for ecovillages, conscious businesses, nonprofit organizations, and independent change agents. It started with unicorn poop. The short of that story is, I believe, they had picked up that I was in this vulnerable cognitive state while I was posting on some fateful friends’ subreddit, r/ShrugLifeSyndicate, having come to believe a job would be waiting for me if I simply wrote every day. Hence, when an email arrived saying I was hired by Earth Nation the same day I was solicited to write advertisements for unicorn poop, I made the connection that these two things were related.

In inspecting the email and what it contained, I found my way to the Awakening Sovereignty Collective's website. I remembered seeing this group early-ish on in the disorienting pull of SSS while finding explanation for it on the SLS. In all likelihood, I signed up with my email and filled out a questionnaire then on their now defunct website, and I believe this as there were synchronicities that bled from prior, believing I was a messiah candidate on this online Reddit community throughout the year and a half or so before we “found” each other which crossed over into the first days there in Triangle Lake; what they claimed was “their” eleven million dollar property that I would later find they were just renting from the board.

But this should be explored, my mental state in this time and throughout. As said, the narratives I believed shifted over time. In the beginning of our time in Oregon, we were preparing to be on a reality TV show. Then we were joining the Illuminati. Next it was the Free Masons. We just WERE the CIA at one point while we stayed on the property of a metal sculptor who did controlled burns on his land, but the idea that there are these Crazy Indigo Aliens messing with me was the seed that SSS had initially stemmed from and is what has really fueled so much of my delusions where I thought I was being trained for a mission.

This part happened when I was 24 or 25; the fateful experience on LSD. My girlfriend and I were trying it together, her brother having procured some, and we were doing our parallel play in our own worlds, side-by side; me juggling and her fingerpainting on the floor in front of her altar while the emanations of my Spongle Pandora station filled her room in her mom's house, safely encapsulated by robin's egg blue walls. She had cleaned up, masterpiece finished, before joking that we were being watched through my webcam. And it clicked.

“Oh…oh, OF COURSE they're watching ME!”

Narcissistasia aside, I was a troubled, unsocialized kid that got suspended at age fifteen because of a bomb-related joke, with a tragic backstory that involved my mother finding out she had AIDS two months after I was born, multiple stepmoms, a breakdown in college involving a lotta lying because I judged my father's wrath more of a threat than the US military. Y'know, if you don't know anything about the police state we live in, I just said some ish. And I realized that night how my name must be on some lists, which I didn't even know then what that actually meant in concrete terms, but I know now that the reason Eve first gets Knowledge to give it to Adam is because our intuition will figure out fundamental truths about reality before our logical mind.

And I HAD figured out hidden truths in that moment, shifting something major in me, as if my mind reached a point of criticality to make innumerous deductions all I once. My immediate instinct was to type a message in my URL bar, to which I would receive a strange pop-up upon hitting enter, which led to what in the moment seemed like a clearly coded blog post. They were watching. Images spawned in my head about joining some CIA-backed terrorist group in the Middle East, and at the bottom was a binary choice: two links. These were the red and blue pill, which I instantly understood then were an ancient trick question to see whether I trusted authority (God) or not (the serpent), and I chose the third option of calling out the test taker.

And I yapped some madness for a minute or ten. I would look up at some point, lost in my newfound awareness (delusions?) that there was so much more to this world of the occident than I had thought I'd known, to find a confused, concerned Awen watching along on her bed. Wishing to alleviate all the weight on her shoulders, I leapt up, eager to explain the obvious, oblivious to how looney I sounded, but there, together, hearts connected, we did not need words, as we would find we were telepathic.

It started ever so subtly, staring into the other's eyes as we did, this sense something was different whelling inside, and I noticed her noticing me notice it in her, which she noticed in me and I caught that, snapping everything together between us. We then found ourselves exchanging entire stacks of syntax and semantics with the smallest expression. We asked each other if we should test it, silently. And we tested it without a word. We were amazed. I heard her voice as well as my own voice in her head, almost exactly in the same groove of the same record as our minds bounced around the room and saying so much with an eye twitch or a microexpression. It lasted maybe five minutes.

It faded. Then nothing. We tried getting it started again, but to no avail. The magick of the night ceased with that, and while my cup was full then, reminiscing in the miracle of God revealing Themselves, that was only the beginning. The next day, I found myself invited to a freshly created subreddit, the SLS, where I would find posts about how the CIA accomplishes things with technology and a scientific explanation about the telepathy, which I would find was not literal telepathy, but rather a vestigial mode of attention coordination.

Coincidence? Well, God doesn't roll dice, I now know, and so I went on to think this gaggle of characters, whom in the present I believe were just two guys - Vince and Jux - which I would come to believe and treat as my handlers in the CIA. I met these two during the first annual Shrug Life Syndicate Gathering at Vince's place in Tennessee, having been picked up by Jux who was coming down from Canada. They definitely fooled with me, wherein I learned about how to direct internet traffic and more, as well as starting to learn Norwegian because a well-timed picture of a cat led to me giving advice to my past self and being told this would aid my coming mission, indirectly. Created a very intricate profile history, too.

My time spent being afraid of the Duolingo owl did, in fact, aid me in my coming quests of perpetual self-improvement; learning a language really unbinds you from your old way of being, assisting in helping the brain be more neuroplastic. If anything, this year and a half writing schizoposts on the backwoods of the internet with highly personalized, semicovert feedback helped make me such a capable writer and communicator today. By that, I am implying that Vince and Jux manipulated me to some end, with some positive benefits to myself, but I always fear the other shoe will drop; an effect of what has happened.

As stated, this went on for about a year and a half, learning and improving much, motivated by thinking I was going to save the world. Then the unicorn poop happened, and a number of exchanges happened, meeting some team members as I attended to go on and host meetings. I started learning things like Trello and what a Thunderclap was, how these were being used by this group that I was likewise learning all about, and I began making money. Real money. They paid me (seemingly) good right in the beginning, to a naive person desperate for work in an inhospitable culture for the neurodivergent, at least.

This was the business plan of the future, they said, this being right before the Bitcoin bubble, at a time when I was fascinated by the architecture of CEPTR and similar as it related to what I'd seen in myself on drugs, enough to where I was able to hold a basic conversation with a layman but not enough to say or understand anything meaningful. Naturally, this led to me being easy pickings, as I remember the man in charge of the tech team, Dakota Fuller/Kaiser, getting on cam to drink some moringa and seemed trustworthy, to then be lied to about everything under the sun, I now realize.

Pay included a two hundred dollar stipend for everyone involved in the project, plus whatever you earned per job you did. Tasks were open to whomever completed them, and there were many I could jump on, very much as if they were tailored for me. In the beginning this included everything from writing articles, editing, creating a bunch of fake Twitter bios, and updating the education team's website, which proved to be a learning exercise in itself as I had to learn from the modules what a decentralized autonomous organization and more was.

They literally said they were a company with no CEO and everyone owned part of the business, voting on major decisions, and we were mainly paid in the cryptocurrency - what was Equality Keys was rebranded early as Sovereignty Keys - which I definitively know in the present was just some numbers on a screen that they let us trade in for four dollars instead of the normal two at points while insisting we keep as much as possible as we were going to be rich as the value, based on things like “their” properties, would just keep going up n up n up.

I think I still have a few hundred we never got to turn in before the planned schism. But they didn't have the hardware to run an actual cryptocurrency; we worked out of the one building that had wifi, the loud-colored yellow office. Dakota coded from his laptop. As you will learn, these people were clearly scamming investors hyped about Bitcoin. One Australian woman supposedly gave 600 Ethereum, but the conference call with her was clearly staged to be pedagogical for my purposes, I think. Evidence for this includes how she typed the name of her charity, which I recall started with a “P,” and I remember this because the first things that popped up were a bunch of PornHub sites.

This tied with synchronicity, as like Vince and Jux pinged my attention all over the place and got me thinking different things to facilitate my spiritual work, I was led via synchronous inputs while living in community with these people through oil changes and cheese cloths; operant and classical conditioning I deduced. They kept some consent going throughout this by semi-informing me about what we were doing through cross-talk and planting things to say something upon my noticing, to having a “random” guest say the most scripted lines ever to remind us about our mission of the moment.

And they sunk their claws in early, and we worked, thinking we found our way out of the matrix to live more spiritual and authentic lives. We had a big yard sale to help pay our flight. I had quit my job disgracefully as a dishwasher at Wegman's during the SLS phase. Packed everything up and she came over to stay the night before our flight, having never been to my house as I didn't want to disturb my father with guests at that point. I showed her my treasure chest from childhood full of my rock collection, autograph book from Disney World, and many other things, to include a baggie full of Pogs.

There was one my mom made with me when I was real little from one of my Sesame Street books. It had Grover and his mom, a message of “I ♡ MOM” clearly on display. It made me tear up. She wasn't there, again, to see me. To be proud of me. Awen was there. She hugged me, held me, helped me. I was so broken AND lost. I thought so many crazy things over my life, but it was all due to ignorance. We flew out on a red-eye flight the next morning starry-eyed with wonder and amazement, sharing a pear ale upon landing, toasting the brave, as we were. Just like the pilgrims. Half of them died the first winter, if you didn't know.

…

We landed in Eugene mid afternoon, and I was rather relieved to take in the airport's dedication to Steve Prefontaine, a hero of mine from my track days, whom I had forgotten ran for the Ducks, so his mustachioed visage was a nice surprise while waiting for Teanha, the leader of the writing team and my direct “boss,” as well as Prism, leader of the education team, who picked us up in his van.

Awen and I each had our own suitcase as well as our backpack and bag to carry. She was giggly, I remember, eyes alight with a wondrous joy. I, too, was elated, especially after seeing the rather large bubbler in the mesh pocket hanging on the side of the sliding door as we sat in the back, on the bed. I remember who I was then, forebrain just reaching fully developed but with a mass of malaised maladaptations from a lifetime of trauma and not much good parental guidance after my one died at age nine from an AIDS-related ear infection.

But chit-chatted with them while we drove through the fireworks of the autumn leaves on the forty minute drive to Triangle Lake. Much of learning about each other would go on in these early days, which I would come to realize well after the fact was a means of determining how they could manipulate us, as I likewise now know they were gathering information on me from my rather forthcoming Reddit posting where my attention was frequently flung around. They seemed like good people, which is of course how it all works.

I thought I was a good person back then, too. I wasn't the devil, but I was far from objective goodness. Being a divergent, traumatized, and unsocialized soul, I had yet to be exposed to the full breadth of the human condition. I certainly have only seen and lived some corners of America where I stand now, and then only for the slice of time as analog faded out into digital, but being naive is both a boon and a bane, as it is faith that moves the flesh far more than any knowledge can, so as it stands, I can say that this year was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and yet it was hell here n there n everywhere with sprinkles of happy chaos throughout.

But then we were there, turning right, opposite the lake itself, and I saw the sign for “The Circle of Children,” when I was regaled with a story about Black Horse, who I would learn was the previous leader of the previous community that used these lands, whose tenure ended unceremoniously for unspecified reasons, seeming dire but likewise tied together with notions of how he wanted to create a truly spiritual community without things like drugs n alcohol n sugar.

That last one shook me a bit more than I was even aware of at the time. It was alien. Sure, I was fully aware of spiritual people who sustain themselves on odd diets (there was a fruitarian on the SLS) and all sorts of ritual and restrictive ways, but this was not one of those silly groups! These were the leaders in their fields, hand selected to become part of the OBVIOUS way to do “work” WISELY, which is of course why they were getting my talent with a pro rate, because I knew how great these people were and what would come, my judgment perfect in all ways.

How could I explain to past me what he was getting into? And it wasn't just me! I doubt my ability all the time; part of why I am so agreeable! But there was Awen, too! Surely she couldn't be wrong too! And you let go of caution in the quasi-certainty of how the devil doesn't look this way, which is what they preyed on, and what allowed my reality to get so warped. It was not so strange in the beginning. These weren't cultists. They were like us and were totally on the same wavelength, which is why Awen and I KNEW we were home when we got to share a joint behind the kitchen that night.

Besides Grizzly, I forget who we shared those first puffs of weed with then. They stayed at the nurse's station, which was across from the bright yellow office where we met Dakota and Lila and Doren in person and Tuva for the first time. The kitchen was a large building even further away from those buildings, and that had a large dining hall and commercial-sized kitchen in back. There was also a gymnasium with stage that likewise hosted the washer and dryer of the community in a separate room. Between the kitchen and gymnasium were a set of stairs that went down to the significant garden that was already whittled down by the cold autumn air creeping in.

We would pass this garden when coming in the back entrance, which was further down from where we came in and would additionally be where we exited to access the docks of the lake. The main entrance passed by the route that led to the back of the kitchen, and on the way was a hollow where a few recreational vehicles were stashed, that they said they were repairing for future members of Earth Nation to use for their personal projects, and this sparked imagery of what Awen and I could do with her art and my juggling at festivals.

The main path, though, would go between the office and nurse's station to continue on to the dorms, and then beyond that there were even more buildings and this and that. The land was actually designated as the emergency evacuation center for the Eugene area. We mostly hung out at the places I've laid out so far, and there were two dormitories; the one the majority of us stayed in and then the nicer one where Dakota and Lila stayed.

Awen and I walked up the hill to this dorm quite high to make it to the wooden walkway of our dorm which we were shown earlier and dropped off our stuff in our room, off in the corner where something was chewing a big hole into the wall from the inside. But, the building had red carpets and yellow-tinted walls with two main hallways branching off at the entrance with a ginormous common room and tiny kitchen that only had utensils and mouse droppings in it.

The common room had many tables, chairs, sofas, bookcases, a fireplace, and a television. Wrapped around this common room through a long n tall window and connected to the hallways on the ends as well was a deck that looked out over into the slight valley with all the wildlife contained therein. It was dark though, so the lights inside were bright, as did seem the hearts of those we shared the space with.

I remember Doren and Daniella were there that night, though there were more. I remember them because we participated in a community social game of eye gazing, where I would stare at Doren and he me until we thought of a word that struck is, and I recall saying “brother” with him. Then, I did the same with Daniella, who had a light directly behind her head, so I only saw the silhouette of her big, frizzy hair to which I reached the conclusion of “healing” from her.

This perspective would be furthered for both of us after, when Daniella would do a crystal pendant reading on us. Awen was awestruck by how skilled Daniella was at reading her by dangling a pendent so it rocked back and forth, giving Daniella an opportunity to speak of those things she had picked up in her intuition about us. This is something I had learned from Jux before, who had a rational explanation for why it worked as a means to communicate. In the present, I am also aware that nothing is truly random in this universe, and sometimes higher beings do speak through “randomness.”

But there was not much that was truly random in these moments, I would realize in hindsight. For instance, they had already begun “testing” me before we even departed. For instance, I had my attention placed on the r/advice subreddit on a couple occasions where each post that was made, one after another, seemed like they were directed to me from my past self, asking for advice. One such thing involved trying to get me to break up with Awen, which I defied, but another said something about how a new lover would wear a plastic bag.

This would turn out to be Doren, and as you will find out, they played with me still being in denial about my feminine side. Because of my traumas with my mother dying and father being a strict narcissist, I felt I had to be an indestructible turbotank, and they played with this wistful longing within me, because while I would not cheat on Awen, I was open to whatever foolhardy idea of “the counterculture” that I had at this time in my ignorance and maladaptations, where these new people I thought would be lifelong friends and comrades would open up in other ways.

When I was in college, I cheated on my first girlfriend with a trans woman to see I enjoyed it as much as porn of such things excited me. I knew at the time of this story that what I did was wrong in all capacities, but there was still yet a childishness - perhaps “boyishness” is a better word - in myself that was ruled by my serpent. I wanted all manners of things, and this they knew and this they used against me as but one part of sinking their claws in me.

Really, it came down to trust, and I came to trust them with my life, as certainly, if I were in the right state of mind with knowledge of how this world works, I absolutely would not have gotten as far out there as I did in my belief that these people had my best interest in mind. In reality, they cared about money, and slavery and scheming and ripping people off is still a viable way in which to extort much value out of this country and world.

…

I don't know where to begin this part. I didn't sleep last night. My narcissistic manipulator life partner has set me up, I feel. Maybe? It's possible this entire Earth Nation thingamajig was a secret government reconditioning program casually referred to as Love School where they gave me oil changes n cheese cloths - operant and classical conditioning - which they let me know because it kept me marching forward as they told me what to do. Same as my life partner. Is that what he is? Is that what any of this is? Is this all CIA propaganda I'm writing? Counterintelligence? I don't know what reality is.

But I remember this first morning there in Triangle Lake, waking up excited for the ten o'clock meeting, filled with wonder as we took in our new world. It was serenely quiet yet loud thanks to all the frogs creaking n croaking all around us. I remember one of these early days, there was a dense fog and a fawn was waiting for us on the hill. Deer were plentiful. We were warned about wolves and the rare bear being seen in the area. Lotsa birds.

But we got down there early so we could have breakfast, which I would come to find upon inspecting the large walk-in freezer that much of the food was going bad. Much was still alright, with some abundances of good filler food like a 50lb box of almonds, and I believe I had some yogurt with granola and some dates. Definitely the yogurt, as Doran would get his own to make his own concoction that Daniella and Lila would comment on how he ate as he did.

This, I would later realize, was a skillful means of slowly breaking me down, how they would use Doran as a parallel to me to cross-talk in ways I didn't initially perceive as modifying my behavior, but these little incidents where, say, Daniella inspected Doran's beard and made comments about his hygiene negatively that directly paralleled a conversation she had with me earlier would impact my self-esteem or perhaps make me aware that community life was different than I was used to and I had to toe the line to fit in.

I want to mention here, also, the clever means to get me to conform to being the ideal community member, in their eyes. Early on, I started to notice that glasses and cups started accumulating around the property, one even in a tree. I thought that was weird until Daniella made a quick-witted comment outloud, wondering whose job it was to pick all them up, making me realize it was my job.

Likewise, there were a statistical aberrant number of dimes around the property. Naturally, I picked them up, until I found a bunch outside the office one day when Dakota and Lila walked out, saying something to the effect of “if he's busy making money all the time, when's he got time for the mission?” This made me stop caring about the reward aspect of doing these jobs and doing things selflessly, cuz we were going to be rich and famous eventually, right?

So then that meeting happened. Pretty standard meeting, where we go over all the things each person is