✦ The Orange Peel That Saved Me

I was three years old, on a beach in Puerto Rico with my mother, sister, and relatives. The air was heavy with salt, the sun bright.

I remember only this: another little girl and I shared oranges, laughing as we tossed the peels into the water. Golden fragments against the tide. That memory is whole and vivid.

What I did not remember—what was cut away—was the drowning. She went into the water and never returned. I was there when her body was carried past me. But that reel was removed.

Later I learned the truth: An unauthorized craft entered the airspace…looking for me.

She was not an accident. She was used as a ritualized decoy casualty—her death providing the opening for a walk-in swap. For six minutes that day, I was not in my body. A synthetic copy was placed inside me, meant to overwrite. It was meant to take me off my mission.

My Oversoul intervened. It severed the reel and reimplanted me before the lock could hold. To shield me from fracture, it left only one symbol: the orange peel. That fragment became the breadcrumb, the anchor that one day would lead me back to the truth. My mother and I would not forget, though.

For years afterward I felt “not fully here,” until now. Dissociated, split. But I understand now—it traces back to those six minutes.

Today, I have spoken the words that close the loop:
“Return the reel. I revoke the false film.”

And so the orange peel shines not as trauma, but as proof: I am whole.