“So how do you manipulate people?” I asked, drawing surprised looks from my companion. We were sprawled on my porch, sipping whiskey, smoking, and listening to music drifting from inside the house as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting the sky in an orange haze. We’d spent the evening reflecting on life, our very existence, and how radically different our experiences had been. The silence between us was comfortable—two souls at ease, reminding ourselves that despite everything, we were, at least for now, living in reality.
“Wow, where did that come from, Walter?” they said, irritation flickering in their eyes. “And I resent what you’re implying.”
“I don’t blame you,” I replied gently. “But you know what I mean. You’re the ultimate manipulator—the one who makes lies taste like truth, who whispers in the ears of the powerful until they bend to your will without realising it. So don’t brush off my question. Don’t pretend manipulation isn’t real, or that you weren’t once exactly who I’m accusing you of being—the force shaping this world from the shadows.”
They shrugged. “Jeez, Walter, that’s heavy.”
“Heavy isn’t always bad,” I said. “Besides, you can’t deny your past. You don’t have to live there or let it define you—I get that more than anyone. I’ve done things I’d rather forget, deeds I’d erase if I could. But ignoring your history entirely would be foolish.”
They took a slow sip of whiskey. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Did you really test Jesus? Steal the serpent’s form and persuade Eve to taste the fruit? How have you ruled mankind from behind the curtain? And if you no longer hold that power—what changed? You weren’t exactly virtuous when we first met, so your downfall can’t be pinned solely on me.”
“You always want so much, Walter,” they murmured.
“I need the truth.”
“Why?” they asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Because if there’s any hope for the people trapped in the Ultrahigh worlds, at least the ones I design, I need your level of persuasion. I already understand behaviour and influence as well as anyone, but you… you’re in a different league. Do you still wield that power? If you do, why aren’t you bending world leaders to your will? Why hang out with me, cooking breakfast and dinner, getting high, when you could reshape the world?”
They met my gaze, expression unreadable. “Do you truly want the answer? Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. The consequences might devastate you.”
I nodded, bracing myself. “Tell me.”
“I can teach you everything,” they said softly. “But first, you must accept the hardest truth—why I’m here with you instead of meddling in human affairs.”
I waited.
“When you killed me, Walter—when the light faded and I fell into the abyss I thought I deserved—I discovered someone far more formidable than I could ever be. Someone who commands manipulation, persuasion, even righteous violence, with far greater authority. That someone is you.”
My mouth went dry. “What the fuck.”
“Yes,” they continued. “By all the common sense in heaven and in earth you shouldn’t have had the power to slay me, even temporarily. And remember how you first caught my attention…” They paused, letting the memory settle between us. “I’m not calling you evil—far from it. I’m calling you powerful—more powerful than you know. I don’t understand where you came from or why you possess these abilities, and you seem either unaware or afraid of them. But I intend to figure it out.”
We sat there, enveloped in a silence so thick it pressed against the temples. My mind spun in greasy, grinding circles, snagging on the question: was this just one more twist, another manipulation, or was I staring at the raw, undiluted truth? I had killed the devil. That was a fact. I’d found the strength, the nerve, the fuck-you force. But the aftermath—I hadn’t lingered or even poked at it. I’d just swept it aside, logged off as if it were a glitched game event, never asking how I’d done it or why I could. Maybe I’d been denying the evidence right in front of me: that head on my porch, decapitated, perched on the railing like an accusation, a bloody monument to what truly happened.
I understood how fragile the codebase of the mind really was. How a flicker of input, some hormonal spike or neurochemical misfire, could hijack the whole wetware and rewrite perception until the world itself bent sideways. The quantum mind had come into vogue alongside quantum computers, both of them swirling into the mainstream like twin tornados. Now technology and consciousness smashed together at the edges, creating collisions we could barely map, let alone explain. Maybe the fusion of quantum tech with my own mutating mind, plus all the shamanic rituals, drug dives, and repeated jumps into the Ultrahigh, had forced open some reality-bending exploit inside me. Or maybe it was just psychosis, some ugly hallucination dressed up as power. Another trick of altered consciousness, one more bug in my personal firmware.
