Five-Year Anniversary
When I published The Vapor, the Hot Hat, & the Witches’ Potion: A Fairy Story on August 3, 2021, I had 200 people on my mailing list. To my amazement, those wonderful readers began enthusiastically sharing my parable for our totalitarian times.
Below is an excerpt from the piece I published documenting my gratitude and surprise at the time:
Dear Friends,
I hope it’s okay that I call you a friend. I know we’re technically strangers, but I feel a camaraderie with you, despite never having spoken. I feel you, too, share my passion for unmasking totalitarianism and awakening the sleeping before tyranny triumphs; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here reading this.
To say I’m moved by your belief in my work would be an understatement. This may sound strange, but I may be most touched by the fact that you guys—based on where my articles have been reposted, tweeted, and shared—span the full range of the political spectrum.
It shows me we are capable of transcending the artificial partitions erected to divide us. It shows me that when totalitarianism threatens the planet, those with eyes to see and ears to hear can set aside their differences to decry tyranny. It shows me there is a glimmer of hope that we can escape the dystopian future every instrument of authoritarianism is dragging us toward with the seemingly irresistible force of gravity—because we far, far outnumber them … if we can come together.
I honestly got teary-eyed when I stumbled across the below tweets (not to mention the retweets and other kind souls who made the effort to share, comment on, and like my COVID fairytale as well as the hundreds who reposted, shared, and translated into other languages A Primer for the Propagandized and COVID IS OVER! … If You Want It after OffGuardian picked up my first and second articles):
I then shared a sampling of some of the responses I encountered, including:
“Yo, this is an absolutely amazing fairy tale allegory of the COVID pseudopandemic. Mad love to the weaver of this wonderful tale, Margaret Anna Alice.” —Nevermore Media
“A story for our time. I’m blown away by the writing style. I’d love to hear Peter Jones, who did voiceover in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the BBC TV show, do the reading. Parents, get this for your kids and let them read it to you over and over again.” —Das Medikament Wird Sie Befreien (formerly Antifa Special Ops Black Helicopter Driver)
“Brilliant 👏👏👏” —Schrodinger’s Deplorable™
“Love the illustrations. Story telling and engaging the imaginative function carry a certain power to penetrate through programming. Worth sharing with ‘new normalers’ maybe …” —Left Lockdown Sceptics
“The old stories are the stories people most want to believe in. There’s very little allegory in this retelling of the coronavirus story, but by putting it in the language of fairytales, Margaret Anna Alice has brought out just how fabulous it is.” —Architects for Social Housing
“👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Amazing; well written and illustrated. Needs passing around.” —Pamela, Do Not Trust Them
“#Storytelling. Cultural (a beautiful example here👇) vs. media/marketing to build/achieve acquiescence. #Fear leveraged. #Propaganda unleashed. A people strategically divided. Social license is required for #4IR global architecture intended to #reset capitalism in crisis.” —Cory Morningstar
In the book version I was to publish the following month, some of those responses appear alongside select comments from the Off-Guardian reprint.
The reactions weren’t all positive, though. A few people lamented the bleak ending, a concern I addressed in the piece marking its four-year anniversary.
I didn’t set out to write a dystopian story, but that’s what tumbled out. I was merely a stenographer struggling to keep up with my Muse’s dictation. It wasn’t until later that I recognized the galvanizing power of the dystopian format, writing:
As someone who grew up loving dystopian novels and films, I’ve never found dark endings depressing but rather motivating.
When we are fed a cookie-cutter happy ending to a serious threat, our brains interpret this fictional scenario as a satisfying resolution to the tension preceding it. That means people go away feeling placated without any sense of urgency to play a role in stopping such a vision from coming to fruition.
I don’t want people to be left with a lazy feeling of complacency because some supplied hero has done all the hard work for them.
I want to spark Apocaloptimistic action, courageous resistance, and Badass disobedience in reality.
I want the sleeping to reclaim their minds, rediscover their critical thinking, recognize propaganda, defend our freedom, awaken to tyranny, and become ungovernable.
I want people to escape their socially engineered granfalloons, find their karass, and live their cheng.
It’s not too late.
The story isn’t over.
We can write a new ending together.
In the five years since writing this story, I have delightfully discovered my own karass while living my cheng, and the auditory adventure I am sharing today is the love-labor of one such collaborative connection.
Micropixie Collaboration
It was the Fourth of July 2025, and I had just experienced my first Micropixie audiovisual creation, 50 Shades of Beige.
I could scarcely contain my glee, writing:
Holy eff! I just watched your SBF [Single Beige Female] video, and that was freaking awesome! Can’t wait to listen to more of your intellectually and rhythmically stimulating music.
I instantly knew I wanted to collaborate with her and hopped onto Substack Messages to suggest we do so, only for this message from her to pop up just as I was about to type mine:
MAA, happy 4th of July! Been meaning to reach out and see if you wanted to collab on a video sometime? Maybe you have some written words I could do something with?
I replied:
GTFO of my head!!!!! I was just about to hop on here and ask you exactly the same!!!!!
I absolutely love your music and your creative video!
I then embarked on a delectable journey through her entire musical oeuvre, which comprises the brilliant albums Alice in Stevie Wonderland; The Good, the Beige & the Ugly; and Dark Sight of the Moon.
My favorite contemporary genre is trip-hop, Portishead being the preeminent example. Also known as One Little Alien (among a dozen or so other personas and noms de plume), Micropixie is fluent in this genre. As I wrote in my Substack recommendation for her:
Micropixie weaves together her magical voice with hypnotic rhythms, atmospheric soundscapes, and melodic jewels to cast awakening spells upon the sleeping.
I would have loved her music, regardless of knowing her personally, so having the opportunity to collaborate was especially thrilling.
Just over a year later, I am ecstatic to present our first collaboration—a gentle, bedtime story trip-hop version of my fairy tale—which I hope you will relish as much as I do.
For the past three months, Micropixie has worked tirelessly to record her narration, produce the accompanying soundtrack, and add delightful micro-flourishes she calls “under-the-neath vocals.”
A meticulous stickler for detail, she has not only finessed her vocals and music to perfection, but she also made several small but significant suggestions for improvements to the text, almost all of which I incorporated, including:
She suggested changing “sorcerer” to “wizard” in the following passage to better capture the wisdom and nobility of this character, whom many of you will recognize:
They only learned they had it because of a certain spell a wizard had written down before the vapor came. The wizard had said it wasn’t supposed to be cast for vapors and couldn’t tell people if they had caught a vapor or not. But the wizard had died, and the king’s counselors decided to cast the spell, anyway, and that is how people found out they had the vapor.
She remarked on the particular targeting of children by harmful policies, which led me to insert “children especially” in this line:
Still, it was a very scary vapor, so all the subjects, children especially, had to change for the good of the kingdom.
Where I talk about people having to hop five times forward and five times backward, she asked if I’d ever thought about making it six. I thought that was a brilliant but subtle tweak to strengthen the allegorical connection to absurd and arbitrary real-life policies.
She suggested removing “a little” before “dangerous” in this passage since they are more than a little dangerous:
Some people thought the hats looked silly and were even dangerous since they made it hard for them to hear and see and made them sweat in the summer.
One change Micropixie brought up that I didn’t make because it would be too comprehensive and would require even changing the title and cover was replacing “witches” with a different term such as “sorcerers.” She talked about how witches historically were the alternative medicine practitioners, the healers and herbalists who were burned at the stake and later vilified by Rockefeller medicine.
This echoes a concern expressed in the only non–five-star review at Amazon, titled “unfortunate label witches”:
i have thus far only read synopsis,/reviews etc but am disappointed about the label of “witches” for Pharma. Witches have long been the midwives, herbalists, healers, nature revering women throughout history, who have been tortured, executed and their land/properties (think medical licenses) confiscated by the church. The group calling for early treatment of effective, safe “potions” e.g. IVM, HCQ , vit D, etc in the evidence based protocols put together by those who dared; they are the persecuted “witches”. The Rx corporate beast is the complete opposite of all that! I have to wonder if using the witch label for Pharma is an appeal to the religious right. Unfortunate and divisive when the tale to be told is so very important to all for body sovereignty, freedom of speech/thought/pursuit of health & happiness and a functional democracy. Language is potent and should be used carefully in a fairy tale spell. (I would refrain from the star rating since I havent actualy read it yet, but it was required to make this post.)
I sympathize with this viewpoint, but I also appreciate the literary tradition of fairy tales from which this story hails. It was that trope that wrote itself into this tale, and I feel I must be faithful to the original inspiration as gifted by my Muse.
And with that, I will hand the microphone over to Micropixie, who wrote the following message to accompany this post.
Missive from Micropixie
In 2020, world-changing events divided humanity into two camps. Some MPX music-lovers, friends, and family members know I fell into the one that got you hated, the one that got you smeared, the one that got you canceled. Because I spoke out vociferously, my life took a direction that I and all the other people in that most unpopular camp could never have imagined.
I experienced many shocks over the next six years, one of the first being that asking questions about the plausibility of these events or being skeptical about the mainstream narrative was “right-coded” (a serious crime in these here Bay Area parts).
Yes, dear One Little Alien friends, yours truly—lover of reason, logic, and Beige humanity and a lifelong champion of the underdog, who has always known the most abused are the poor (because those are my roots, and the struggle/hustle is still real, folks) and who has penned beseeching lyrics such as:
Stop the killing
Stop the stealing …
Stop the bleeding
Start the feeding
was suddenly considered by many of her friends, family, and former collaborators to have transformed overnight into a science-denying, grandma-killing, far-right white supremacist!
As a hybrid alien-human artist who has always sought to understand what’s happening on this planet, I have spent the last six years wandering in a knowledge-seeking maze; discovering deceptions around “medicine” and health; and navigating the boundaries of permissible expression.
(And what do we have this week?! Another distraction in the form of the “Nuremberg 2.0” fake Fauci hearings, where once again COVID justice eludes us.)
If you are in the same camp as me, you will understand every oblique reference in this audio piece. You’ll know the actual name of the wizard, you’ll know the device he invented, and you’ll understand how that sleight of hand (amongst so many others) worked. You’ll also know about the work of Edward Bernays; you’ll know how the masses are psychologically manipulated through the weaponization of language and empathy; you’ll know we are being marched toward Agenda 2030; and you’ll have learned a bunch of other concepts that became common parlance amongst us ardent investigators of crimes against humanity.
Gratitude to the hundreds of investigators whose work I follow, which include but are not limited to Dr. Denis Rancourt; Mark Crispin Miller; Transcriber B; Jeremiah Hosea; Dr. Sam and Dr. Mark Bailey; and Margaret Anna Alice.
Kudos and love to dear MAA, ABC-extraordinaire (Absolutely Brilliant Creator), for writing this stupendous fairy tale, which contains so much truth and wit. And thank you for allowing me to add not just my voice and music, which I love playing with, but also for welcoming my wordsmithing suggestions. It’s been an absolute pleasure to collaborate with you.
How to Support This Struggling/Hustling Alien Artist
If you ever have the need for voiceover, music/soundtrack, video, or other creative work within Micropixie’s multifaceted skill set, please consider hiring her professionally.
Unlike mainstream artists who became willing instruments of COVID tyranny, dissident artists like Micropixie lost income, friends, followers, and grant opportunities from philanthropathic organizations for bravely speaking out.
You can also support her work by buying her albums and becoming a paid subscriber to her Substack.
And now, please enjoy our creative collaboration, the text of which you will find below.
The Vapor, the Hot Hat, & the Witches’ Potion
A Fairy Story
Once upon a time in a prosperous land, a rumor swept across the kingdom that there was an invisible vapor floating through the air. Many vapors had come before, but this one was so extraordinary, it called for an extraordinary response.
This vapor, the town criers cried, could kill you at any time, anywhere. You could get it by talking, breathing, or singing. You could get it by standing or walking too closely to someone. You could even get it by playing. And the scariest thing of all—you could get it and not even know you had it.
The only way to escape was to hide indoors, keep away from people, and rub your hands with a clear jelly every time you touched something. Merchants stopped trading, apprentices stopped learning, and people stopped seeing people.
Every day, the town criers yelled out the number of people who had caught the vapor, although most didn’t know it since they felt the same as usual—just a lot more scared. They only learned they had it because of a certain spell a wizard had written down before the vapor came. The wizard had said it wasn’t supposed to be cast for vapors and couldn’t tell people if they had caught a vapor or not. But the wizard had died, and the king’s counselors decided to cast the spell, anyway, and that is how people found out they had the vapor.
The town criers shouted the latest death tolls so often their voices grew hoarse. Almost everyone who died was very, very old or very, very sick or very, very fat. Hardly anyone else died, and at the end of the year, it would turn out about the same number had died as had in other years.
Still, it was a very scary vapor, so all the subjects, children especially, had to change for the good of the kingdom.
The land was no longer prosperous, but the king just minted more coins and tossed them out to the people so they wouldn’t notice right away.
Eventually, they were told they could come out of hiding and the marketplace could open back up if everyone followed a few rules. They had to wear a hot, scratchy hat that covered their ears and eyes so the vapor couldn’t get into their earholes or eyeholes. They had to hop six times forward and six times backward if they accidentally got too close to another person. And, of course, they had to rub their hands with jelly after touching anything.
Some people thought the hats looked silly and were even dangerous since they made it hard for them to hear and see and made them sweat in the summer. The hopping took so much time, people weren’t able to get much done. When those people didn’t wear the hats or hop around, the rest of the people got very, very angry and said it was their fault people were dying and getting sick and couldn’t live the way they used to live. Some even took to wearing two or more hats for extra protection against the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.
Every so often, the king would tell people to hide back inside again because too many people were catching the vapor. They couldn’t work or shop or visit people they loved. There wasn’t much to do besides lie around listening to the town criers, who always let people know how scared and angry and resentful they should all feel, especially toward the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.
Suddenly, people started feeling more hopeful. A few witches who were richer than all the world’s kingdoms and queendoms combined offered to make a potion people would need to swallow every so often to keep them safe from the vapor—but it would only work if everyone drank it together.
It took a few months, but eventually the witches each had their own flavor—grape and orange and tropical punch—and they were ready to pour them into people’s mouths. Whenever potions had been made in the past, the witches had had to spend years and years making sure it was safe before giving it to people. This time, though, the vapor was so scary, they skipped all those steps so people could be saved sooner. They even got the king to issue a special decree so no one could hurt the witches if anything bad happened to them after drinking the potion. The king gathered three-quarters of the coins he had collected from the people that year and presented them to the witches.
Almost everybody couldn’t wait to drink the grape or orange or tropical punch potion. They bragged about going to get it and told everyone after they got their first and second drinks. When they came across someone who didn’t want to drink it, they got very, very cross. The town criers told everyone to yell at the anti-drinkers because it was their fault they couldn’t go back to life like it was before the vapor.
Something strange happened after people started drinking the potion, though. Some of them caught the vapor, anyway, but that was because it was a version of the vapor the witches hadn’t planned for—still, it was important to drink both doses of the potion because it was better than not drinking them. To be safe, though, the town criers said they should go back to wearing hot hats and hopping—although most hadn’t stopped to begin with because they were afraid of what would happen if they did (or worse, they might be mistaken for an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, or anti-drinker).
Even stranger, some of the people who had drunk the potion died either right after or not long after drinking it. Unlike the people who died from the vapor, these people were often very, very young or very, very healthy or very, very fit. The town criers never shouted about these deaths. If anyone brought it up, they called them an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, and anti-drinker.
Being an anti-drinker was the worst of all because everyone knows you need to drink to survive. If you’re against drinking the potion, you must surely be against drinking water, too, and we all know you can’t live without drinking water.
Not everyone who drank the potion died. Some just had peculiar things happen to their bodies. They shook all the time or got rare diseases or noticed parts of their bodies stopped working. They were bedridden or lame or hurt in different ways and couldn’t live the way they did before or even after the vapor. The town criers didn’t tell anyone about these people, either.
And then there were the drinkers who felt perfectly fine … for now. The potion had never been tried for longer than a few months, so no one was really sure what would happen in the next year or two or longer. It was also a different kind of potion than anyone had ever drunk before. This potion changed something inside you that could never be undone. People would also need to drink new versions of the potion every few months, and the king would need to continue giving three-quarters of the kingdom’s coins to the witches forever, or at least as long as the kingdom existed.
All the surviving drinkers were grateful to the witches and thanked them for saving their lives. They proudly displayed a mark on their chin that meant they’d drunk the potion. The ones who’d drunk it twice had two marks.
Those who didn’t have any marks were to blame for the kingdom’s problems. They weren’t permitted to shop in the marketplace or work or apprentice or take part in any public activities. They were shamed and shunned for being a threat to the people of the land. These people started to feel like they should leave the kingdom, but they weren’t allowed to travel without the double marks, and besides, all the other kingdoms and queendoms were the same as theirs, anyway. There wasn’t anyplace left where people weren’t afraid of the vapor and where they didn’t demand that everyone drink the potion.
Soon, the king decided the anti-drinkers were so dangerous, they would need to be locked in a dungeon until they agreed to drink the potion. They were free to choose whichever flavor they liked. If they decided not to drink, they would simply remain in the dungeon. It was entirely up to them.
One year passed, and then another. There were fewer and fewer people left in the kingdom. Eventually, so few people were left, the king could no longer collect enough coins to pay the witches. The rest of the kingdoms and queendoms around the world were in the same fix. They decided to join together into one king-queendom so they could collect enough coins to buy the potion.
After eight more years passed, there weren’t enough people left in all the world to cover the witches’ dues. The rulers decided everything that belonged to the people now belonged to the king-queendom. The people could still live in their hovels, but they wouldn’t own anything. They could earn their keep through labor—indeed, they might be put to work making the potion!
People no longer needed to decide what they wanted to do or be in life because the king-queendom would decide for them. People didn’t need to pay for anything because all the subjects got equally small amounts of the necessities. Everyone looked the same, acted the same, and thought the same.
Most people didn’t remember what it was like before the vapor. Some didn’t even know there was such a time.
The rulers, on the other hand, never wanted for anything. Nor did their friends, the town criers. The witches were the wealthiest of all—and deservedly so, because they had saved the world from the deadly vapor.
It wasn’t long before there were no more subjects. The rulers, the counselors, the town criers, and the witches had all the earth’s riches to themselves, and they lived happily ever after.
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