No one knows who pulled the switch, pushed the button, or whispered the command.  What I remember about the last moment of mind slavery was its dazzling unexpectedness and the fact that Day 1 started simultaneously around the globe, like some cosmic calendar page flipping in all time zones at once.

            It was an ordinary Thursday.  I waited with about three hundred others to board the ferry to the nutrient extractor factory.  My cuffs had been activated, my fluids deionized, and I stood naked in the printer stall while my uniform was sprayed on.  Like everyone else I stared up at the giant TV monitors. What else could I look at?  Anti-radiation panels and air traffic blocked any glimpse of the sky.

            The usual images throbbed onscreen:  squads of synchronized grinning workers, neon-bright Happy Foods, sex robots, sleeping pods with soft lighting, single-person transport cars cruising traffic-free at top altitude—all the luxuries a worker might buy if our labor credits ever paid off Necessity Debt.  Occasionally they slipped in old pictures of unsullied Earth, as if our diligence had a chance to reverse the impending global catastrophe.

Suddenly, all loudspeakers crackled, then shuddered to silence. I clapped hands to my ears.  Did I do this instinctively?  Did I know what was coming?  Did anyone?  All around, faces mirrored my own surprise.  Hundreds of hands fidgeted, like mine, unsure what to do in these seconds of unprecedented unscriptedness.    

Then the screens relit, showing nothing but a white-grey fog of pulsating pixels while the loudspeakers broadcast a brand new sound.  After the silence it punched like a shock wave. Indecipherable and non-melodic, it was a strangely hypnotizing chorus of electric fuzziness.  I felt the sound as color, white like the tiny points of light dancing round and round each other, packed tight as a stadium on Major Speech Day.

The whole stunned queue of us held our breath, as if we had been anticipating this moment forever. Three red letters and an exclamation point exploded onto the white noise screen, and a voice that was neither male nor female incanted:

A H A!

 “Aha!” whizzed like a bullet into my forehead…  Bear with me.  I remember everything yet I have not the words.  “AHAaaaaaaa” spread, glowing through my body both warm and icy clear.  I could see every one of my cells transmute into pure energy, dissolve indivisibly in harmony and infinite health.  My psyche exploded into a million brilliant fragments, then rained like falling fireworks into a lake of cool blue-white fire connected to everything past, present, and future without barriers.

Abracadabra, Open Sesame, Aha…

“Aha!” was the one magic word that replaced all other dogmas.  On Day 1 all prejudices ceased to be.  Enemies saw through each other’s eyes and hatred metamorphosed into compassion. Love vanquished fear. 

When I returned to consciousness in this body, in queue with three hundred other liberated souls, I looked from face to enlightened face and knew we finally comprehended being free.