Gary Brandt weaves together social media savvy and supernatural horror in this chilling episode from The Dimension Of Mind Dot Com when what starts as influencer training transforms into a heart-stopping rescue mission.
During their Saturday ONI class, Melanie Crenshaw teaches the girls about being responsible online role models, but Helana's terrified by her Instagram comments—adoring messages from middle schoolers calling her 'perfect' and 'not even real' that reveal how their supernatural confidence has made them magnetic celebrities.
Melanie's warnings about attracting 'what you crave' rather than 'what you are' prove prophetic: lonely girls seeking confidence, jealous haters wanting to dim their light, and dangerous obsessives planning fatal attractions.
The Navy's surveillance of their accounts extends to CIA, NSA, and foreign governments, making every post a potential security risk, while the girls learn to navigate their newfound fame with authentic kindness rather than cruel rejection.
But Brandt shifts from teenage social dynamics to cosmic horror when Commander Beaker interrupts their class for an emergency telepathic investigation in Cincinnati, where psychics have detected cries for help from young females.
The mission reveals the darkest depths of human evil: a pedophile ring using 'pleasure children' as rewards for completing murders, forcing kids as young as six to service adults at sick parties while wearing costumes or nothing at all.
Even more disturbing, some victims aren't from Earth—alien children trafficked into this nightmare.
While the FBI prepares a rescue operation, Ella's diary entry captures the psychological toll: she's disturbed that she and Eileen handled the horror better than sensitive Helana and Roxana, wondering if her numbness makes her 'bad.' Her confession that some children were sacrificed—information she's protecting her mother from—shows how these fourteen-year-olds are being forced to carry adult-level trauma while maintaining their cover as normal teenagers.
Brandt masterfully explores how supernatural gifts become both blessing and curse when they expose you to humanity's worst evils, and how even universe-saving teenagers still worry about getting paid fairly for risking their lives and sanity.