REVERSE BIRTH: The Battle Against False Consciousness in the Age of Moloch

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light bulb. The chamber was suspended in a big dark room that was filled with stage fog. Blue looked around but there was nothing to see. Alicia watched her heat signature from a thermal imaging camera. She was crying as she crawled around the bottom of the bulb, looking for a way out. Alicia let her stay in that panicked, confused state for awhile.

The dark, fog-filled room had been outfitted with a Phantom-Image Digicustic 3D Surround Sound System, and over a thousand LED fan displays —each capable of emitting 15-700 watts of light in the full range of human color perception.

The sequence began with audio. Whispers and insect noises, clicking thoraxes and wing buzz that moved around the room. Blue was still on her hands and knees when a loud pop coincided with a bright flash of white light. She froze, then sat back as colorful lights strobed across the room, up and down and around the little chamber. As the light show continued, the audio brought in a low growling drone with a granular filter that moved around the space.

The LED fan displays were layered seven to fourteen deep and they began to spin. The fog allowed the projected images to move three dimensionally, as close to a hologram as they could get without breaking the bank.

The light pattern settled into a field of flickering sepia fireflies above a spinning vortex beneath Blue's chamber and the sound-sequence began a loop that picked up volume and distortion little by little with each repetition. The vortex was adding colors and variation as it spun hypnotically under her. When the sound got up past a volume that would cause physical pain, it broke apart and the lights went supernova and rushed upward. Blue jumped and flung herself backward. There was no visual frame of reference for her, so the illusion that she was falling was complete.

She was on her hands and knees as she fell past reverse cascades of colorful streamers that went on and on as the soundscape crackled into a disjointed industrial noise collage. Eventually, the rainbow streamers settled into unearthly elongated tendrils of blue and white fire.

The room stayed in that hallucinatory configuration for nearly 12 minutes. "Her heart rate is stable now." The med tech said.

"Okay," Alicia said. "Let's wrap this up."

A life sized Serena Michaels walked through the fire tendrils up to the chamber and the image fooled Randi Blue. She got to her feet and banged on the plastic. "Hey get me out of here!" She shouted.

Alicia spoke into a microphone and her voice changed to Serena's as it came out of the LED reporter's mouth. "I would if I could, I'm not really here." Another Serena, this one larger than life, walked up next to the first. Alicia's voice was multiplied as she continued to speak. "The world is not what it seems. I need you to use your platform to tell people that. It's very important." Two more Serenas, both massive, came up on the other side and looked down at Randi Blue, who seemed intimidated by their size. Alicia was a chorus now, with the pitch of each voice altered to fit the size of the Serena. "The world is a simulation inside a simulation. It's designed to make us do what we're programed to do. We have to understand where we are if we're going to free ourselves. I'm part of a trandimensional liberation movement, and we're recruiting you Randi. But it will require that you see beyond the artificial world you're in. We need your help to infiltrate the overworld, do you understand?"

"I... I think so..." Blue said.

An even bigger Serena appeared. They all spoke in chorus: "I'm breaking through five realities to bring you this message Randi. You have to tell people where they are. My book will explain it in detail, but you have to make people aware of the idea ahead of time in order for my book to have the correct impact. Can you do that?"

"Yes." Blue said.

"My book will be called The True Message of Sarah Mann." The many Serenas said. "Don't be fooled by false texts." Alicia switched the mic off as the biggest Serena opened its mouth and moved in, swallowing the plastic bulb. The room went dark. "Knock her out now." Alicia said to the med tech. The small chamber was filled with desflurane gas. Blue slumped and then fell. After she'd been unconscious for a few seconds, they pumped oxygen back in and began lifting the bulb out of the room.

Alicia, the med tech, and Henry Golding got off the elevator as two PANICroom workers opened the hatch to get Blue's body out of the chamber. The reality that the woman had shit herself was obvious to everyone who was nearby.

She was put in a wheelchair and taken back to the elevator and down to where the control van was parked. The guy who had moved the sign at the Trader Joe's parking lot was waiting in a white SUV to take Alicia and Randi Blue back to her apartment. He helped get Blue laid out on the back seat, frowning at the smell and checking to make sure there was no possibility of staining his seats.

A member of the team had taken Blue's real car back to her apartment and he was in radio contact with Alicia as they drove. Once they'd arrived, he told them they were all-clear to move the body and the driver draped the thin woman over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs with ease.

"We can't leave her like that." Alicia said to him after he'd laid her out on the couch.

"She'll wake up in a half hour or so." The man said. "She'll be fine."

"No, she soiled herself." Alicia said. "I don't want her to wake up in that state."

"Why not?" He asked.

"Because knowing that you lost control of your bowels while having a religious experience might somewhat dampen your impression of that experience." She said.

"Well I'm not cleaning up shit." He said. "That's not one of the services I offer."

"Okay tough guy, I'll do the dirty work if you're too dainty for it. Just help me get her dressed when I'm finished." Alicia got a trash bag and found a pack of baby wipes under the sink in Blue's bathroom. When she returned to the living room, the man had taken off the unconscious woman's shoes and unbuckled her belt. Alicia opened her jeans and carefully pulled them down over her hips. Some shit smeared down the back of her thigh and Alicia cleaned it with a baby wipe and then tossed the dirty wipe into the pants. She pulled the jeans off, folded them up, and put them into the trash bag. The man stood there and looked at Randi Blue in her soiled underwear and Alicia suddenly felt annoyed by his presence.

"Go get her some clean underwear and sweatpants." Alicia said to him. After he turned and left, Alicia put Blue's feet on the ground and went back into the kitchen and got a pair of scissors. She pushed Blue's knees up, braced them with her left forearm, and used the scissors to cut through the side of her cotton underwear. She reached around awkwardly and cut the other side too. She put the scissors down and used the underwear to wipe as much of the shit down from Blue's vagina as possible while removing them. She got a baby wipe and cleaned off woman's ass cheeks and upper thighs, then threw it away and repeated the process. The man came back holding sweatpants and underwear and stood at a distance while Alicia finished. She took one more baby wipe and cleaned Randi Blue's vagina and asshole out.

The man lifted her body up as Alicia pulled Blue's clean underwear and then sweats on. He straightened her out on the couch and put a cushion under her head. Alicia put the scissors and the unused wipes back where she'd found them and washed her hands in scalding hot water. She cracked a window and picked up the trash bag on her way out. The operation was complete.

The next day, Randi posted a video titled: Transdimensional Liberation: The Coming Revelation of Serena Michaels. The idea that Serena Michaels had broken through our reality simulation found purchase in the conspiratoriat, and was taken up by an influential website called Self Education. The story was repeated by YouTuber Lorne Carter for one of his Paranormal Investigations videos, and from there it spread across the internet. There was a popular theory that the frequency of Serena's eye blinks was not natural —which supposedly proved that she was an artificial human. The following week, there was a joke on Jimmy Kimmel Live about Serena-truthers who believed that reality was a simulation.

The operation had been a success, but there was a young Human Resources agent in Jersey who was pissed. "Whatever you did made her completely useless." He told her. "She's isolating now, and going downhill fast. She used to argue with neighbors and stand on the sidewalk and yell at certain makes of cars when they drove by. Now she stays in the house all day. She's turning into a vegetable."

"It was necessary." Alicia told him.