Karen just wanted a blueberry muffin. She had entered Bean Me Up every morning for weeks, ignoring the chalkboard outside that now read: TRY OUR NEW OCCULT-INFUSED PASTRIES! YOUR TASTE BUDS MAY ASCEND.

Cute marketing, she thought. Probably a vegan thing.

Forgoing her usual plain drip coffee, she ordered a blueberry muffin.

The barista, Jo, with increasingly large under-eye circles and a nervous twitch, handed it over with both hands and whispered, “Eat responsibly.”

Karen assumed it was a tip for digestion. It was not.

She took one bite and a warm muffin-y bliss spread through her limbs, followed by a sudden and overwhelming ability to hear what everyone around her was thinking.

The man at the next table was mentally drafting a breakup text involving almond and raspberry petit fours. The woman by the window was debating whether croissants were a personality trait while the guy that joined the end of the line really hated raisins in his pastries. He violently hated raisins.

Blinking, Karen realized the world had gone into full broadcast mode. It wasn’t just any thoughts she could hear though. She could only hear thoughts about pastries.

Walking out, a jogger passed and she heard, “I don’t deserve a cruller unless I do five more laps.”

As a child walked by, she heard, “Cupcakes are just muffins wearing hope.”

It was very loud and weirdly profound.

By noon, Karen had written a manifesto titled Crumbs of the Collective Mind, which she handed out on street corners wearing a homemade scone themed hat. She spoke passionately of the Muffin Matrix, the Croissant Consciousness, and how banana bread held the key to enlightenment.

People listened and crowds grew. Oprah came out of retirement with one phone call.The barista, Jo, refused to confirm whether the muffins contained cinnamon or sentient spores, but the original cursed coffee jar rattled on the shelf and whispered, “Let them eat fate.”