Part Four: Spoiler, The Dream Did Not Disturb Her

…As I was saying, the dream did not disturb her.

Her name, by the way, was Samantha.

Samantha Slimm.

Of the Virginia Slimms.

Not related to the cigarettes.

But related to each other.

Samantha was not disturbed.

Her mother hadn't been very different from the mother in the dream, except that in real life she had actually had a body.

Samantha had gotten used to her mother's weird experiments.

Not genetic experiments.

Emotional ones.

Her mother seemed to think that to ignore was to show love.

And to love was to be suspicious.

And to worry was to accuse.

And to protect was to distrust.

And so on.

Then she sent Samantha to school, where the opposite was true.

Or some of it was.

Sometimes.

Depending on who was doing it.

This experiment continued for decades.

Love was irritation, resentment and anger.

Irritation, resentment and anger were love.

Cruelty could be concern.

Concern could be control.

Control could be protection.

Protection could be punishment.

And punishment, Samantha discovered, was very often for her own good.

It formed a feedback loop that left Samantha thoroughly inoculated against accepting things at face value.

This made her not a team player.

It also made her difficult to use.

Boy, was she in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That was what made the Hats so angry.

Samantha understood.

They were the Freedom Means Limits to Freedom people.

Freedom meant limits to freedom.

Safety meant being surrounded by guns and cameras and men in uniforms trained in gaslighting and well versed in microaggressions.

Privacy required monitoring.

Individuality required conformity.

And accommodations for the handicapped and disabled were perfectly acceptable, provided the handicapped or disabled person was elderly or a veteran.

Regular people were more complicated.

Especially nonconformists.

Those people were to be handicapped, disabled and gaslit as part of everyone's patriotic duty.

Samantha was deeply familiar with Patriotic Derangement Syndrome.

She'd seen it pass from actual military personnel directly into security guards, then spread by tizzy flies and mosquitoes to bankers and lawyers who suddenly all had to own thirteen guns and go hunting even though they didn't particularly like the taste of deer or duck.

Samantha was not infected.

She had been born with a uterus.

She had also been born with a brain.

More importantly, she had been inoculated by her mother's treatment of her.

Her mother had inadvertently taught Samantha one of the most inconvenient lessons a person could learn:

Do not go along with what people say.

Watch what they do.

The Hats had spent considerable time trying to correct this defect.

So far, treatment had been unsuccessful.

The dream was just a dream.

It was something Samantha studied in the way Samantha studied lots of things.

She wrote it in a book.

This was most inconvenient to the Men Who Wore Hats because they liked everything typed out and online.

Did I mention they were hackers and cyberstalkers?

Okay, back up.

They were all great.

They were all very patriotic.

They were all gifted psychics.

They were all great survivalists.

And they were all great hackers and cyberstalkers.

They also believed that if society fell, they would survive greatly because they had all understudied in prepping.

They had supplies.

They had plans.

They had watched videos.

Some of them had generators.

They were ready.

What sucked for them was that they didn't like being anonymous.

Hence the hats.

And masks sometimes.

And uniforms.

Anyway.

The dream had failed to do its worst.

Samantha considered it a reflection of her body insecurities and her mother's sometimes cold, detached manner.

Fine.

But that last line she'd heard—that intrusive thought—was too intrusive.

Your mother made you are a pig.

And she thought she'd heard bitch, too.

Maybe meditation would help.

Answers sometimes came.

She could think back and walk around the dream.

She put on her music.

She hummed.

She breathed.

She relaxed.

And she walked back into the dream as an observer.

Well.

An observer of the observer.

In the dream, Samantha had been on the table and above it, like God.

Now she was like God's god, looking over it all.

Her body wasn't very realistic.

It was like watching claymation or stop-motion animation.

Her nipples were blurry. They were merely the impression of nipples.

And she had no pubic hair.

Well.

Surgery.

But the blurry darkness had company.

Lumps.

Samantha moved closer.

That was when she realized the lumps had names.

Gary.

Malcolm.

Gerald.

Mike.

"Well, hello, boys," she said.

YOUR MOTHER MADE YOU—

A PIG—

BITCH—

They talked over one another.

And then—

Poof.

There went the dream.

Samantha stayed seated.

She breathed.

She walked around the remnants of it.

Gary.

Malcolm.

Gerald.

Mike.

They had mixed up The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Silence of the Lambs.

They were on an island.

They read books.

Oh.

No.

They'd seen the movies.

Samantha felt through the shadows they'd left behind in her memory.

Something cold wound through them.

She recognized the cord.

She knew that cord very well.

It was the switch.

A cane.

A belt.

A hand.

Their fathers had believed in the kind of discipline that humiliated other people.

Ah.

Now we know.

Gary.

Malcolm.

Gerald.

Mike.

Freedom was earned through restricting your own will.

Or, better yet, replacing it entirely with the will of an authority figure who would beat you if you didn't.

And being free was offensive.

Especially the kind of freedom that actually indulged in freedom.

Walking trails.

Going to the beach.

Taking time off.

Doing something simply because you wanted to do it.

Samantha opened her eyes.

Interesting.

The Men Who Wore Hats had tried to get inside her dream.

Instead, they'd left the door open.