Vox Mentis

Learn them.

While you're at it, check your mirror to see if it's bugged.

You feel around behind and around your mirror, pulling it away from the wall. Nothing there. Seems secure enough.

Follow those instructions!
Also see if you recognize any similarities with Latin in those words, maybe.

is that a "J" in Jegrance?

Some of the syllables seem to have Latin roots, but they're mashed together in strange ways. Menditract. Jegrance. Vartix. None of these words as a whole are Latin... they're something else.

If they feel slippery, try and nail them down. Say them one at a time. Try different pronunciations. Possibly you're just supposed to memorize them, so try and do that, but possibly you're supposed to DO something with them, or they're supposed to do something. Like magic, right?

You stand in front of the mirror and watch yourself. "Varrrrttttt," you say, which is supposed to be Vartix, but for some reason it takes a long time to come out, time stretching and getting grainy, and not only time but everything: the walls and mirror and air, all undergoing a slow disintegration that you can see and feel with every molecule of your being. You feel fear, because you don't want to see what's underneath the world. The sound of your voice falls to pieces and the silence between them freezes over. You regain consciousness. You realize this in retrospect. Your fingers and toes tingle. You close your mouth. There's drool on your chin. You feel bruised in the brain. You walk to your bed and sit. You put the words back in the envelope, because fuck doing that again.

But after a while you return to the mirror. Your mind revolts. It doesn't want to be bruised again. But you suck it up. "Varrrrttttt," you say.

~

"We got words," you tell Jeremy on the grass. You're being less cautious about being seen with him, because he's graduating soon, and what can they do? "We have to read them to ourselves."

"How did that go?"

"Badly."

He smiles. "Attention words are the worst."

You leap on this. "Attention words? There are types?" You know he won't answer. "What are the others? What are attention words for?"

"You'll learn soon enough."

"I want to know now." But the truth is, you've just figured it out. Attention words. A single word isn't enough. Not even for a particular set. The brain has defenses, filters evolved after millions of years to protect against manipulation. The first is perception, the process of funneling an ocean of sensory input down to a few data packages worthy of study by the cerebral cortex. When data gets by the perception filter, it receives attention. And you see now that it must be like that all the way down: there must be words to attack each filter. Attention words and then maybe desire words and logic words and urgency words and command words. This is what they're teaching you. How to craft a string of words that will disable the filters one by one, unlocking each mental tumbler until the mind's last door swings open.

~

That night you go to brush your teeth and there's Sasha, wearing blue satin pajamas. "Are you still doing it?"

"Doing what?"

"The words. You know."

"Oh. Yeah."

Sasha sighs dramatically. "It's foul, right?"

"Super foul," you say.

"There had better be a good reason for it," Sasha says, pulling back her hair. "Otherwise I'm going to be pissed."

You nod. It seems pretty obvious to you that the reason is to build up resistance. This term you're taking Drama, puffing yourself up and shouting at people in a voice that begins in your gut, which the teacher calls projecting forcefully. It's all because people are animals, analogue rather than binary, and everything in nature happens in degrees. People can be partially persuaded. They can be shocked into letting down their guard. You practice saying the words so that if anyone ever says them to you, you'll stand a chance.

"I can't remember mine," Sasha says. "They keep falling out of my brain."

Sasha leaves. You brush. Walking back to your room, you hear the TV burbling and see Sasha in the rec room.

Keep an ear out in the corridors, the common areas, for almost-words that aren't the ones you were given. Watch how your peers react. Watch how the seniors react. Let one of your own slip, under your breath, when you make it look like you don't think the teacher's in earshot.

i object to letting it out until we know what it does.

however, if you happen to see another student's envelope just lying around, like in their room maybe? Obviously we can't try to use what we find on them, that's against the rules, but just to know wasn't specified as illegal.

You hesitate, thinking about what Sasha said. About not being able to remember her words. You go to Sasha's door and try the handle and it turns.

Sasha's room is super neat. You go to the bookshelf and stand on tiptoe and peer at the books. Socratic Debate is sitting out half an inch, but you haven't studied that one for a while. You pull it down, balance the book on its spine, and let it go. The pages fall open. You see three slips of paper. Three words.





You close the book and return it to the shelf. You're trembling. When you step out into the corridor you're sure somebody will see you and ask what you're doing. What would you say? You don't know. You have no idea. You were just curious.

But there's no one. You close Sasha's door and return to your room. You climb into bed and lie there, thinking about Sasha's words.

~

Sasha's set is thirteen. She's not very good at hiding it. Thus, her words must work on thirteens. You find three more sets of words.

Set 42:





Set 195:





Set 7:





You don't go looking for them, exactly. But if someone leaves their room unlocked when they go to the bathroom, you notice that. And you might wander down to that person's bedroom and see if anything looks like it's hiding words. You don't intend to use them for anything. But they're powerful, and they're there, so you look out for them. You're an opportunist.

~

"I know everything," you tell Jeremy. "I figured it all out. So, good news, I don't need to pester you with questions anymore."

He glances at you. He's playing basketball. Or practicing basketball. The indoor court is empty but for you two. Jeremy's shooting baskets from the free throw line, over and over. You're watching his shiny shorts.

"Once upon a time, there were sorcerers," you say. "Who were really just guys who knew a little about persuasion. And some of them did all right, ruled kingdoms and founded religions, et cetera, but they also occasionally got burned to death by angry mobs, or beheaded, or drowned while being tested for witchness. So sometime in the last few centuries, maybe even in the last fifty or so, actually, they got organized. To solve the whole being-burned problem. And..." you gesture. "Here we are. No more beheadings."

Jeremy releases the ball. It passes through the net with a swoosh.

"Also, the words are getting better," you say. "I'm thinking that five hundred years ago, the keywords were things like bless. Tribal identifiers. Playing on how we trust people who think like us, believe the same things. Which is a start, but obviously not what you do. It's not what Eliot and Austen do. So the organization must have been making keywords. Building them, one on top of the other. Like you do with computer code. First you gain trust from a set with weak keywords. Not a lot of trust. Just enough to teach them to believe in a stronger keyword. Rinse and repeat." You sit back on your elbows. "Pretty simply. I actually don't know why you thought you couldn't tell me."

"Have they actually taught you this?" Jeremy says. "Or are you guessing?"

"Ha," you say. "You just confirmed it. Right there."

"Bah," says Jeremy, throwing.

"They taught me some of it."

He comes back, bouncing the ball. "What's a word?"

"Huh?"

"You're feeling clever - tell me what a word is."