The Book of Knots - Jags

understand has come from beings that are
not gods and not demons and it wants you
to do what you’ve always dreamed of. It
has chemical equations (strange ones—the
scientists need to be hand-picked and they
need to examine and refine the formulas that
were conceived of by a mind so far from
human in your nightmares you dread to meet
it). It has techniques and experiments that
make your hands clammy. It has promises
that you’d kill your own children to secure.
Well, that’s not so much. Promises you’d
trade everything for.
And the project begins with you—with a
few others. You start making the contacts
and you’re careful about what you tell
the others—even the powerful ones who
you need to keep close: because talking to
yourself in mirrors isn’t something a sane
person does. Is it?
Operations
Big Pharma runs “test markets” (which are
no kind of market at all) wherein subjects
collected by a number of means (such as
tracking depressive teenagers by posts to
a certain message board) are given various
chemicals to see how they react to it. The
usual goal is mass suicides and they’ve have a number of success. But
their failures are even more impressive so they’ve gotten several new
tacts.
The higher-ups—the inner circle are well aware that their benefactors are
far, far from human. They have made some cautious inquiries and studies
into the real “state of the world” and have received disturbing results.
But they have come up with a few alternate techniques.
Chemicals combined with therapy (of the right sort) has had a powerful
effect. One of Big Pharma’s initiatives has been to spread infection
amongst its subjects using chemical hallucinogens to create temporary
shifts wherein their targets can watch a Hypotherapist-hosted Dr. Phillike
TV show, where the guests are the Shadows of the targets. This has
had a number of successes (of course people not on the chemicals can’t
see the show which has added advantages in making the subject despair
and believe they are going crazy). Attempts to create permanent or
strong infection, however, have been uniform failures.
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Book of Knots - The Symposium