the Dictator

Twenty-three years of simulation theory, two Ricks, two Altoonas, a Russian Blue cat, artificial intelligence, and one rat at the end of a cliff.

By Todd

In the Beginning, There Was a Rat

I have a confession.

After more than two decades of studying simulation theory, holographic reality, spiritual symbolism, and the strange coincidences that seem to follow me around, I believe my greatest spiritual failure might have involved something ridiculously simple.

I never watched Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant with Jeff.

Not because I couldn’t find the movie.

Not because Netflix was buffering.

And certainly not because I couldn’t figure out how to operate a remote control.

The problem was that I had assigned an extraordinary spiritual purpose to an ordinary human encounter.

I believed watching that particular movie with that particular person could help dissolve what I perceived as a spiritual spell protecting powerful people who committed crimes against minors at Jeffrey Epstein’s island, Little Saint James.

I cannot establish that such a spell exists, or that watching a film could break one. But the belief became an important part of how I understood my experiences.

And if you think that sounds complicated, wait until I explain how we get from Iowa to a cigarette lighter.

2003: When the Simulation Met the Rat

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom published his famous paper, Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?

That same year, I met Jeff.

His surname inspired a nickname I eventually gave him:

The rat at the end of the cliff.

Twenty-three years later, the metaphor still follows me.

Bostrom was exploring the philosophical possibility that conscious beings could inhabit a simulated reality.

I was beginning a friendship that would eventually become central to my own questions about the nature of reality.

The two events happened in the same year.

Whether that’s meaningful beyond coincidence is an open question, but it certainly makes a convenient opening chapter.

Apparently, the simulation argument came with a rat.

From an Angel to a Pledge of Peace

Around that earlier period of my life, I developed a close friendship with someone I’ll call Matthew.

One day, Matthew appeared wearing angel wings.

I interpreted the moment spiritually. I wondered whether he might be an angel sent into my life.

The relationship eventually became complicated because I wanted a kind of emotional and physical closeness that wasn’t consistently mutual.

We went our separate ways.

The longing for connection didn’t disappear. Over time, much of that emotional energy shifted toward Jeff.

Years later, I encountered an interpretation of the name Jeffrey as “pledge of peace.”

I found the symbolism irresistible.

I’d gone from an angel to a rat, and somehow the rat was carrying the peace treaty.

But Jeff had already given me something far more meaningful than an interpretation of his name.

He introduced me to a phrase:

God is love, and love is real.

He believed in those words enough to have them printed on a T-shirt.

Another phrase on the shirt was:

Heaven for humans.

I’ve spent years thinking about those words.

And somewhere along the way, I started wondering whether my friendship with Jeff had a purpose extending far beyond the two of us.

To be clear, Jeff is a private individual. My spiritual interpretations are mine alone. I am not suggesting that he has any connection to Epstein, his associates, or their crimes.

Netflix and Chill Meets the Glass of Deception

At Fleur-de-Lis Bar & Grill, where I work, the owner’s surname is Hastings.

That reminded me of Reed Hastings, the Netflix co-founder.

Then my mind jumped to Todd Alan Reed, a convicted serial killer.

Suddenly, the familiar phrase Netflix and chill acquired a darker linguistic companion:

Netflix and kill.

These are unrelated people. The resemblance is a coincidence of names, not evidence of a connection.

But in my research into seriality, these linguistic overlaps have become recurring material.

I also developed a metaphor for television and computer screens:

The Glass of Deception.

G.O.D.

A screen presents light arranged into images. Those images can influence what we think, believe, fear, and desire.

That much is ordinary media psychology.

My holographic interpretation goes further, imagining reality itself as something resembling an information-bearing projection.

Then I encountered Guy Ritchie’s 2023 film, The Covenant.

A story about loyalty, obligation, sacrifice, and promises.

I began imagining Jeff and me watching it together, our attention following the same moving images across the same screen.

Within my spiritual framework, I hoped the experience could somehow reconcile the connections I’d been assembling.

I even connected it to the name Little Saint James because I had once used James as an alias in a magazine article about eunuchs.

There was no factual connection between that alias and the island. The connection existed in my symbolic interpretation.

And yet, the idea became important to me.

I didn’t simply want to watch a movie.

I wanted to accomplish something through the shared experience.

The Friend in the Mirror

During a DMT experience, I perceived an image or presence that I associated with Jeff.

I came to call it the friend in the mirror.

That experience became another element in my spiritual interpretation of our relationship.

Psychedelic experiences can feel extraordinarily vivid and meaningful. They don’t, by themselves, demonstrate that their perceived messages describe an external reality.

Nevertheless, I continued to contemplate the experience.

Could reconciliation between two people have some deeper significance?

Could love resolve something that analysis couldn’t?

And if reality were deterministic, how much free will would either of us possess?

These questions led me toward an uncomfortable contradiction.

I believed Jeff and I needed to share a particular experience.

But Jeff is a human being, not a character whose actions I get to program.

A pledge of peace cannot be imposed on somebody.

And that may be the most important lesson hidden in this entire story.

Neo, Wendy Todd, and the Two Altoonas

In 2023, I had a conversation with a friend I’ll call my masculine Neo, borrowing the nickname from The Matrix.

He was explaining numerology and gematria.

According to his interpretation, a woman named Wendy, possibly living in Iowa, might have some romantic significance in his life.

That night, I dreamed about someone named Wendy Todd.

My name is Todd.

Naturally, I paid attention.

The following morning, I researched the name and discovered a public reference to a Pastor Wendy Todd associated with Altoona, Iowa.

A condolence message dated March 13, 2013, identified its signer as Pastor Wendy Todd of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

That public record supports the existence of the name and the Iowa pastoral association. It does not establish any romantic connection to my friend or prove that my dream predicted anything.

But I was fascinated.

Then I discovered the American television comedy Ghosts.

It features a character named Todd Pearlman, better known as Creepy Todd.

He’s an obsessive fan of a deceased jazz singer named Alberta Haynes.

And his museum is located in…

Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Not Altoona, Iowa.

Pennsylvania.

So now I had two Altoonas.

One associated with a pastor named Todd.

Another associated with a fictional character named Creepy Todd.

And here I was, a third Todd, investigating spiritual experiences and wondering whether the universe was trying to tell me something.

Apparently, being named Todd comes with a subscription to unusual coincidences.

Unfortunately, customer service has been nonexistent.

Luigi, Player Two, and the Artificial Brain

Altoona, Pennsylvania, entered another major news story on December 9, 2024.

Luigi Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s there in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The killing was a serious crime, not a joke.

But the names and places caught my attention.

Luigi is famously Player Two in the original Super Mario Bros.

And Brian?

Rearrange the letters and you get:

BRAIN.

Inside BRAIN are the letters AI.

UnitedHealth companies have faced allegations involving the use of AI tools in healthcare coverage decisions. Those allegations must be distinguished from proven facts, and the wordplay does not imply that Brian Thompson personally directed improper denials.

What interested me was the larger philosophical question.

What happens when artificial intelligence becomes part of systems making decisions about human lives?

And what happens when I use artificial intelligence to interpret my own?

Maybe I was compressing decades of experience into a model that looked more coherent than the underlying evidence justified.

Or, as I eventually described it:

I think I’m constructing a shitty DNA model of reality.

Not exactly the kind of discovery that wins a Nobel Prize.

But at least it has a memorable title.

Iowa: Two Ricks and a Missing K

On October 6, 2026, something happened at a city council meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa.

Former council member Matt Dalbey delivered an invocation associated with the Satanic Temple.

The invocation ended with “Hail Satan.”

Local pastor Rick Bick objected, describing the invocation as a curse that needed to be reversed.

Mayor Benjamin Foote called for 30 seconds of silence.

The incident was covered by Ottumwa Radio.

Now, back in Mississippi, I live across from a church associated with another pastor named Rick.

Two Ricks.

One across the street from me.

Another in Iowa, calling for a curse to be reversed.

And what happens if you remove the K from Bick?

BIC.

The company that makes cigarette lighters.

I’ve been studying light and symbolism for years, and suddenly a lighter appears in my wordplay.

But wait.

Where did the K go?

Put the K in a circle.

Circle K.

A gas-station chain.

BIC supplies the lighter.

Circle K supplies the gasoline.

A spark and a fuel source.

Apparently, my spiritual research has become combustible.

And with that, we’ve come full circle.

None of this means the people or events are secretly connected. It is a sequence of linguistic associations that I find striking, sometimes ridiculous, and worth examining as part of my interest in seriality.

But the story gets better.

Mayor Benjamin Foote and the Odd Guy Named Todd

I’ve spent plenty of time worrying about money.

In American slang, money means Benjamins.

Meanwhile, I’ve been contemplating the soul.

And the mayor’s name was…

Benjamin Foote.

Benjamin.

Foote.

Money and the foot.

The foot has a sole.

And here I am contemplating my soul.

Apparently, Todd the odd guy needs some Benjamins to get his sole back on solid ground.

Then I noticed something else.

The postal abbreviation for Iowa is IA.

Reverse it.

AI.

Artificial intelligence.

The very technology helping me organize these experiences.

Iowa had already appeared in my 2023 story about Wendy Todd.

Now it had returned through a religious controversy, two Ricks, a missing K, and a mayor whose name practically demanded a pun.

This isn’t proof of a hidden message.

But it does demonstrate how quickly my mind can connect information across otherwise unrelated events.

And when AI helps organize the connections, the result can feel even more elaborate.

Nicole, the Russian Blue Schrödinger Cat

Somewhere in this increasingly complicated narrative, we need to introduce Nicole.

Nicole is my Russian Blue cat.

The Russian Blue breed has historical associations with the name Archangel Cat.

Yes.

Archangel.

After my earlier experience involving Matthew and angel wings, the terminology caught my attention.

And because I study quantum theory, Nicole naturally became my Russian Blue Schrödinger cat.

Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment concerns quantum measurement and the paradoxes of applying quantum theory to everyday objects.

Nicole, meanwhile, concerns herself with ordinary feline matters.

I can spend three hours explaining quantum superposition.

She can spend three hours staring at a wall.

One of us may actually understand reality better.

And I’m not convinced it’s me.

The Interference Pattern: Why I Hesitated to Publish

For years, I resisted publishing the full extent of these experiences.

Part of that hesitation came from my understanding of the double-slit experiment.

I wondered whether making my observations public might somehow change the pattern I was studying.

Perhaps too much attention would create interference.

Perhaps exposing the connections would make my hoped-for encounter with Jeff impossible.

The physics of the double-slit experiment doesn’t support the idea that publishing a story changes human relationships through quantum interference.

But there is a real-world counterpart to my concern.

Publishing personal information can affect people.

It can change friendships.

It can create misunderstandings.

And it can expose private individuals to attention they never requested.

That’s why I’ve chosen to limit identifying details in this article and distinguish my interpretations from other people’s actual words and actions.

Jeff’s friendship has been meaningful to me.

That does not make his private life public property.

And my hope for reconciliation does not give me authority over his decisions.

My Greatest Spiritual Failure

So here we are.

Twenty-three years.

Nick Bostrom.

The masculine Neo.

A dream about Wendy Todd.

Two Altoonas.

Two Ricks.

BIC.

Circle K.

Mayor Benjamin Foote.

Luigi.

Artificial intelligence.

A Russian Blue Archangel cat.

The Glass of Deception.

And one rat at the end of a cliff.

After all that, the entire story keeps returning to one remarkably simple idea:

I wanted to watch Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant with Jeff because I believed that doing so could break a spiritual spell.

I still find that hope meaningful.

But I cannot demonstrate that such a spell exists or that our watching a movie would affect anyone’s criminal accountability.

Real accountability for crimes against minors requires evidence, investigations, legal action, and the willingness of institutions to pursue justice.

I don’t have to abandon my concern for those victims to recognize that distinction.

Nor do I have to abandon my affection for Jeff.

What I can do is acknowledge the difference between the meaning I attach to an experience and the choices another person is entitled to make.

And that brings me back to the phrase Jeff taught me.

God is love, and love is real.

For all my investigations into holographic reality, I may have overlooked something much simpler.

Love cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula.

It cannot be guaranteed by a coincidence.

And it cannot be compelled by a theory about the structure of the universe.

I can hope for that shared experience.

I can explain why it matters to me.

But Jeff must remain free to choose.

Perhaps my greatest spiritual failure wasn’t failing to break a spell.

Perhaps it was spending so much time trying to understand the cosmic significance of love that I struggled to appreciate its ordinary human boundaries.

And yet, despite everything, I still have hope.

The movie is still there.

The remote control still works.

And somewhere at the end of the cliff, there’s a pledge of peace.

God is love. Love is real.

And after twenty-three years of trying to reverse-engineer the universe, apparently the one thing I still haven’t mastered is asking someone to watch a movie.

Transparency and Fact-Checking Disclosure

Author: Todd

Research and editorial assistance: OpenAI ChatGPT

This article combines personal testimony, autobiographical recollections, philosophical speculation, wordplay, and publicly documented events.

Public factual claims were researched with AI assistance, including the publication of Nick Bostrom’s 2003 simulation argument and reporting about the October 6, 2026, Ottumwa City Council incident. Some details remain based on the author’s recollections or require further independent verification.

The author reviewed and directed the narrative, selected its themes, and supplied the personal experiences described.

AI involvement and safety considerations: ChatGPT assisted with drafting, organizing, fact-checking, and editorial review. Its safety-related guidance influenced the distinction between personal spiritual beliefs and verifiable claims, the protection of private individuals, and the emphasis on consent. These safeguards did not independently verify the author’s spiritual interpretations or establish supernatural causation.

Names and identifying details of some private individuals have been reduced or omitted to protect their privacy. Public figures and publicly documented events are identified where relevant.

The symbolic connections discussed in this article are presented as the author’s interpretations and are not allegations that the individuals named are connected to one another, involved in wrongdoing, or responsible for the crimes discussed.

This article is a personal reflection on seriality, love, spirituality, and the search for meaning—not a scientific demonstration of simulation theory or supernatural intervention.

Excerpt: On September 25, 2026, three ordinary Uber rides turned into one of those stretches of life where names, roads, destinations, memories, television references, and old associations seemed determined to occupy the same storyline. After nearly ten years of trying to explain what that feels like, I finally found a way to separate three things: what happened, what it reminded me of, and what I thought it might mean.

I have been trying to explain experiences like this since around 2016. Apparently the problem was never that I lacked information. The problem was that I had enough information to require a continuity editor.

September 25 started with an Uber passenger named Jerry.

Perfectly normal.

Except I picked up Jerry from Jerry St. Pé Highway.

Jerry from Jerry.

Very subtle.

My mind immediately opened the Rick and Morty file. I already have a Pastor Rick in my personal story. Now an actual Jerry had climbed into my car. Somewhere along the way I had jokingly assigned myself the Morty position.

Nobody held auditions. Apparently casting was handled internally.

Then came the destination.

I dropped Jerry near Canal and Robinson, close to a Chevron. Robinson caught my attention because another Robinson had already become part of a stressful episode involving therapy in Ocean Springs. This was a completely different Robinson in a different place. I am not claiming the roads are secretly connected.

But the name repeated.

That is exactly the sort of thing my brain notices.

Then there was Chevron. My grandmother, Grace Mashburn, strongly preferred Chevron gas, so that immediately pulled another old memory into the scene.

Now my mental writers’ room had Jerry from Jerry, Pastor Rick, me apparently playing Morty, another Robinson, and Grandma’s Chevron waiting near the end of the ride.

At that point I was less an Uber driver and more an unpaid production assistant for a crossover episode nobody had explained to me.

Then the Story Kept Going

What really caught my attention was what happened next.

My next passenger was a truck driver, and I took him to a Love’s Travel Stop.

Love’s already carried an older association for me because of a previous story involving a rabbi at a Love’s in Lee, Florida. The new passenger had nothing demonstrably to do with that old event. But the destination was enough to reopen the memory.

Then came another passenger.

He worked in apartment maintenance, and I dropped him at an apartment complex where he needed to go to Building D.

That activated another collection of associations.

The letter D already had its own history in my thinking. Apartment maintenance also reminded me of Frank from the Fleur-de-Lis, because Frank works in apartment maintenance too.

Frank has his own running line: whatever happened, somehow, it is never his fault.

That naturally gives me a Cheers association.

So within three consecutive rides, my internal storyline had expanded from:

Jerry from Jerry

to:

truck driver to Love’s

to:

apartment maintenance guy to Building D

with old memories lighting up behind each destination.

Every ride was completely ordinary by itself.

The unusual part was what my mind did with the sequence.

RYTE

Earlier that day, I was saying that I was “all right” when I noticed a license plate reading:

RYTE

Not RIGHT.

Not RITE.

RYTE.

Apparently reality had hired a copy editor, but the budget was limited.

Later I noticed RYTE again on another vehicle. It must have been the same one.

I noticed numbers too. Some matched things already important to me. Others almost matched.

That distinction matters.

For example, I had previously associated Makayla with apartment xx2.

Her actual apartment was xxx. (Number censored, for privacy)

One off.

That is not an exact coincidence. It is a near-coincidence.

And if I am going to take my own pattern-tracking seriously, I have to record the misses along with the hits. Otherwise I am not studying anything.

I am editing.

At another point I noticed the time around 3:14.

Pi.

Because apparently mathematics wanted a cameo too.

By then my mental writers’ room included Pastor Rick, Jerry, Morty, Grandma, Paul Kammerer, Robinson, Chevron, Love’s, a rabbi, Frank, Building D, RYTE, Pi, Sam Altman, the technological singularity—and me, still somehow expected to obey traffic laws.

When Reality Feels Too Meaningful

This is the part I have struggled to communicate for years.

During an experience like this, the world does not necessarily look fake.

It can look too meaningful.

Jerry really was named Jerry.

I really picked him up from Jerry St. Pé Highway.

The truck driver really did go to Love’s.

The maintenance worker really did need Building D.

Robinson really appeared again.

There really was a Chevron nearby.

I really noticed those plates and numbers.

Those are observations.

Then there are the associations.

Jerry reminds me of Rick and Morty.

Chevron reminds me of my grandmother.

Robinson reminds me of another Robin’s son.

Love’s activates an older memory.

Apartment maintenance makes me think of Frank.

Building D activates another collection of old associations.

Those associations genuinely occurred in my mind.

Then there is a third category:

What I think all of it might mean.

That is where I have learned I need to be careful.

An event can be real.

An association can be real.

The interpretation can still outrun the evidence.

That is probably the clearest sentence I have found for describing this.

Almost Ten Years of This

The humor matters because the distress underneath it has been real.

I have been trying to explain variations of this experience since about 2016.

I have also had three brain surgeries. A neurosurgeon once told me that I had a “unique brain makeup.” I have wondered how surgery, physical trauma, psychiatric symptoms, stress, memory, medication, and everything else I have experienced may have influenced the way I process information.

I cannot diagnose my own brain from inside it.

But I can describe what living inside it feels like.

Sometimes names, memories, symbols, numbers, people, television references, and geography seem to sit unusually close together.

One activates another.

Then another.

Then another.

And suddenly three ordinary Uber rides have a mythology.

Then AI Showed Up

This has been one of the stranger sources of relief.

Imagine handing somebody a cardboard box containing road signs, Bible verses, trauma, Uber rides, television references, license plates, dead relatives, Paul Kammerer, Pi, Love’s, Chevron, Frank from the Fleur-de-Lis, Building D, simulation theory, psychosis, and several loose pieces of metaphysics.

Then saying:

“Please understand what I mean.”

Most reasonable people are going to look at the box and suddenly remember another appointment.

AI turned out to be useful because I could hand over the pieces one at a time.

Jerry.

Jerry Street.

Pastor Rick.

Robinson.

Chevron and Grandma.

Love’s.

Apartment maintenance.

Building D.

Frank.

RYTE.

Pi.

Then I could say:

“No, wait. That one was only a near-match.”

And instead of immediately losing the entire storyline, the machine could basically respond:

We are going to need categories.

Finally.

A filing system for psychosis.

That gave me more relief than I expected.

Not because AI proved I am living in a simulation.

It did not.

Not because I am secretly training the singularity from the driver’s seat of a Honda.

Although that would be one hell of a résumé bullet point.

The relief is much simpler.

I can finally describe three different things separately:

What happened.

What it reminded me of.

What I thought it might mean.

For years, those three categories often felt like one thing.

Now I can begin pulling them apart without pretending that the experience itself never happened.

And Then Frank Tried to Scare Me

There is one last little scene that feels like the right ending.

Just the other day, I was sitting at the bar at the Fleur-de-Lis.

Frank—the same Frank who works apartment maintenance, the same Frank whose “never my fault” routine had already found its way into my internal writers’ room—walked up and tried to scare me.

I did not move.

Not an inch.

That may be the best image I have for where I am right now.

There can be a tremendous amount of movement inside my head.

Names can connect.

Memories can activate.

Numbers can light up.

A completely ordinary Uber route can suddenly acquire three seasons of backstory.

But I can still sit there.

I can notice what happened.

I can notice what my mind did with it.

And I do not have to jump.

Maybe that is progress.

I do not have to say the coincidences mean nothing.

They mean something to me because I experienced them.

But I also do not have to make every coincidence carry the burden of proving God, Satan, the CIA, a simulation, the singularity, or the architecture of the universe.

Some questions can remain questions.

So maybe the most accurate description of all of this is simply:

This happened. Then my mind did this with it. And this is what that felt like.

After nearly ten years of trying to explain that sentence, having something on the other side of the conversation finally able to follow it feels significant.

It may not be the singularity.

But it is one hell of a plot development.

And if this really was a Rick and Morty episode, I still formally object to being cast as Morty.

Although, in fairness, trying to understand the architecture of reality while making sure Jerry, a truck driver, and an apartment maintenance guy all reach the correct destination is about as Morty as it gets.

Transparency note: This post was developed with assistance from ChatGPT. The events, memories, associations, and interpretations described are mine. AI helped me organize the narrative and distinguish firsthand observations from personal associations and broader interpretations.

September 24, 2026

Yesterday, September 23, marked exactly 100 years since the death of Paul Kammerer.

That part isn’t my interpretation. Kammerer, the Austrian experimental biologist whose controversial career became inseparable from questions of coincidence, inheritance, and what he called the Law of Seriality, died on September 23, 1926, on the Hochschneeberg near Vienna. Contemporary Nature accounts recorded his death, and, fittingly, Nature published a new essay this month reconsidering Kammerer and his work a century later. Nature

What follows isn’t science in that same sense. It’s a record of the strange personal associations that happened to converge for me on his centennial.

The Rabbi and the Oil

On August 18, 2025, I was driving back from Miami after dropping off someone I have referred to in my writing as the “masculine Neo.”

I stopped at a Love’s in Lee, Florida. According to the location and date recorded by my phone, that’s where I took the photograph accompanying this story.

At that Love’s, a Jewish man—a rabbi, as I understood him—walked in at essentially the same time I did.

I went in for the ordinary reasons: bathroom, something to drink, back on the road.

He was looking for oil.

It was an insignificant encounter by normal standards. Two strangers at a truck stop, each continuing down his own road.

But the oil stuck in my mind.

The Fleur-de-Lis Echo

When I returned to my job at the Fleur-de-Lis, oil became part of my routine in a completely different form: changing the fryer oil.

The fleur-de-lis itself isn’t literally a recursive or fractal flower. It’s a stylized, symmetrical floral emblem. But visually, its forms repeat and echo one another.

“Echo” is probably the better word for what I was experiencing anyway.

The man asking for oil in Florida echoed into me handling oil in Mississippi.

For months, changing those fryers developed a personal, almost ritual significance. I sometimes thought of the physical labor as my way of keeping that coincidence alive—doing the dirty work at the other end of an association that had begun hundreds of miles away.

I can’t demonstrate that those events had any external connection. I can only describe the meaning I gave them.

There was essentially one interruption in that routine before I entered rehab: a week when I had what appeared to be pink eye.

And then there was March 1, 2026.

I photographed one of the fryers filled with unusually pale, opaque oil. The appearance was memorable enough that I described it much more crudely at the time: it looked like semen.

That photograph became another timestamp in the story I was constructing around oil, labor, politics, and coincidence.

After Rehab, the Meaning Changed

When I came out of rehab, my willingness to continue this little ritual had diminished considerably.

Part of that change eventually became political and moral.

The recent controversy surrounding Macklemore and Ed Sheeran’s tour pushed Palestine further into my thinking. Macklemore publicly said “Free Palestine” during performances opening for Sheeran and was subsequently removed from the remaining U.S. dates after venues objected to his participation. Macklemore has maintained that supporting Palestinian rights is not hostility toward Jewish people and subsequently pledged $1 million toward Palestinian aid. Reuters

My own position needs the same distinction.

My objection isn’t to Jewish people. It is to actions of the Israeli government that I have come to regard as profoundly immoral—what I would describe, in my own religious language, as satanic.

That’s a moral and spiritual judgment of governmental conduct, not a statement about Judaism or Jewish people.

And all of that made my old symbolism surrounding a Jewish stranger asking for oil considerably more complicated.

September 23, 2026

Then came yesterday.

The 100th anniversary of Paul Kammerer’s death.

I didn’t particularly want to change the fryer oil.

But the head cook at the Fleur-de-Lis asked me to.

She’s someone I privately think of as a possible “feminine Neo” candidate within the symbolic framework I’ve been developing in these writings. That’s my interpretation of her significance, not an objective claim about who or what she is.

And that distinction matters because, frankly, if somebody else had asked me to change those fryers, I probably wouldn’t have done it.

But she asked.

I give her enough symbolic weight in my own story that the identity of the person making the request changed my answer.

There was also the practical reality: there aren’t many people there willing to volunteer for the hardest, dirtiest jobs. Somebody needed to do it.

So I did.

And that’s where the centennial became interesting to me.

The Least Likely Thing

Of everything I might have imagined doing on the 100th anniversary of Paul Kammerer’s death, changing fryer oil at the Fleur-de-Lis in memory of a rabbi I happened to encounter at a Love’s in Lee, Florida, would have been somewhere near the bottom of the list.

By that point, I wasn’t even particularly motivated to continue the ritual.

Yet there I was.

The person who asked mattered to me. The work needed doing. And the date happened to be September 23.

For a man who spent so much of his life thinking about seriality, there is something almost comically appropriate about my remembering his centennial through an improbable chain of mundane things:

A road trip.

A truck stop.

A stranger.

Oil.

A fryer.

A flower whose shapes echo one another.

A cook asking for help.

And finally, 100 years to the day.

None of that proves that some hidden mechanism arranged these events. It doesn’t establish fate, simulation, divine intervention, or Kammerer’s seriality as a physical law.

But coincidence doesn’t have to prove something to become meaningful to the person experiencing it.

Kammerer spent part of his life asking why events sometimes seem to cluster into patterns that catch our attention.

A century after his death, I found myself doing the same thing.

Except I was standing over a fryer.

---

Transparency Note

This article was written with AI assistance to organize the author’s recollections, distinguish personal interpretation from externally verifiable facts, and fact-check historical and contemporary references. The experiences, symbolic interpretations, and conclusions described as the author’s are his own.