I dreamed there was a mass psyche-extinction event in the United States called The Deconsolidation. It scrambled people’s memories, jumbled our understanding of time, and decimated our sense of self. In an effort to reverse the damage, a government project known as The Reconsolidation was launched. People were taken, one by one, into a room that looked like the interior of a moving train. There was a window with a table and two short booths in front of it, all under a warm spotlight.

Each participant was seated across from the interviewer, who asked simple questions with simple answers. The participants listened and responded as fake hypnotic landscapes whizzed by the fake window. The interviewer was kind, his voice low and reassuring. The interchange was designed to make us feel safe and bring our minds back online.

When it was my turn, I recognized that we were on a set, that there was no train, no scenery, that the world had been deconsolidated along with our psyches. I could see the dark corners of the space, where everything trailed off to nothing. I was one of the few who had not been successfully deconsolidated for whatever reason, so I saw through all of it. Why were they bringing everyone back, our minds back, to a world that was gone?

Our belief. They needed our belief in them, in ourselves, in what was, so they could keep taking and taking and taking everything from us. They wanted to keep their precious power even in an illusory world. They would turn the whole planet into a Potemkin Village to get it. We, the villagers, dazed and wandering, were their only hope.