“I don’t exist. I only pretend to exist, and believe my act as strongly as I believe in the existence of the world around me - the world sees my script as I see the world’s, and we pretend to believe each other’s act. To exist is to be real; to exist is to be one other than I.”
“You only see lies when the world shows you truth?”
“I only see what I can see. I only see what I believe.”

“So the choice is over. Passed. I am left at your disposal; no escape, no savior? It feels as though it was always this way, yet it feels as though this is as impossible as you say.”

“It’s only as impossible as you want it to be. All I did was open your eyes, reveal the oppurtunity. I had to rely on you to see it.”

“So it was my choice, after all. It was my choice as long as I believed it to be.”

“It was always your choice. That doesn’t mean that I would allow you to choose the alternative and survive. There is always a choice, but one end can be easily prevented. I allowed you to realize this before you chose. Therefore, in reality, all you saw was on possibility. Now, though, you can see them all.”

“I can. But only through your eyes. What you have showed me is cruel. What you intend to use that cruelty for is sacrilege. By giving me your vision, you gave me your intention; and by giving me your intention, I know that believing you was a fatal mistake. Revive me.”

“We all have our sins, and we all have our choices.”

“But we also have the choice to overcome those sins. We have the choice to become something greater, rather than succumb to those and fall to the pit of sorrow that resides in the shallowest darkness inside us. I know what my choices are, and I choose to be revived. If I can succumb to you, surely you can succumb to me.”

“And yet, if we were created to become something better, why is it that time can only be remembered, not rewinded?”

“I will not bend to you. Surely you have realized this by now. I will overcome.”
“How can you be so resiliant? How can it be that you have no belief in choice, yet you weave that very belief you lack through me and tie my hands behind my back unnoticed?”
“I said it before. I do not exist. Only the belief of my existence proves me to be here. You believe I exist; how can I not, if I am here, speaking to you? It is only your belief that holds me here. Once forgotten, you may purge me. You may be revived. But only then shall you be worthy of that freedom; only once you forget can you be yourself again.”
“But I cannot forget you. I cannot banish you from a history I am living and reliving in my mind. You are permanent, just as memory is permanent. I cannot forget you.”
“Alas, time can only be remembered, never reminded. I never said you had to forget me. I simply said you had to forget how to believe in me. You have to forget the belief of my existence.”
“But you exist - I see through your eyes, I hear through your ears. I think your thoughts and do your bidding. How can you not exist when I feel you so close to me?”
“You are a loyal servant to me, however much you try not to be. Your struggle to rid yourself of me is only enforcing my presence. You have to forget belief. You have to remember yourself.”
“To forget belief is to forget what makes me who I am. Forgetting you would be irrelevant if I could not be restored. That sacrifice is not one I am willing to make.”
“Is that what you believe, or is that what you choose to believe?”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Helping you forget me? Because it can prove to you my undoubted existence. Or it can prove to you my undoubted frailty. I choose to take the risk, because the probability of you truly forgetting me and realizing my nonexistence is next to nothing. I risk you destroying me for you to succumb to me.”

“You want me to question you, so that you can prove to me that you exist, even as you tell me with open words that you are only a product of my belief?”

“That is correct.”

“Then I choose to believe that I can forget how to believe, because once I do you shall only be a nightmarish memory. Once I forget how to believe in you, I can start to remember how to believe in myself.”

“I am already part of you. This is undeniable.”

“You only pretend to be part of me. This is fact.”

“Fact is only what you choose to believe to be fact. Fiction is what you are taught to believe to be fiction. To you, what am I?”

“I was taught to believe that you exist. I choose to believe that you do not.”

“You answer your own question by evading my own.”

“And in doing so I forget belief in you, for fiction is only tales. Fact is reliable. At least, it is as long as you believe it to be.”

“Do you believe it to be?”

“Of course. If I did not, how could I being to doubt belief itself?”

“You are frighteningly persistent. It is satisfying to know that there is still strength in the world even when I plant weakness within it.”

“Were the others that you stole stronger?”

“Only if you believe them to be.”

“You try to trick me into belief while I focus on banishing my own in you. Your words are only my imagination; your existence is only supported by my mind.”

“But you cannot forget.”

“To forget to believe is to forget to live. I can trim you out of the equation, but if you wish to linger is your choice.”

“You play with words. I don’t have a choice; the framework is bent. There are no corners to harbor me. I am left in the open, the walls closing in. If you can win, you can be free.”

“I can only be free as long as I believe you to be gone. I can only believe you to be gone if I forget that I ever believed at all.”

“I can be remembered. I cannot be found again.”

“I have no desire to find you again. Only to forget as much as possible.”

“You are fighting. You are afraid to die.”

“You are afraid to kill me. There is no difference in our positions.”

“There is every difference. You stole me first, and gave me the tools to free myself. I chose those tools as my own, and used them to my own intentions. I am the victim.”

“Is that what you believe? That you are justified to killing me because I stole you first?”

“It is all the justification I need to forget that you were ever here. No doubt you will plague some other being; no doubt you will name them yours as you named me yours before you handed me the key to freedom.”

“I didn’t mean to take you.”

“Of course you did. I am here. I was taken through deft force.”

“My words are not mine to control. Instinct is not mine to tame.”

“It is your instinct to claim me as yours? It is your instinct to steal me away?”

“It is my instinct to survive, by all means necessary. Just as you intend to survive through my demise, I have to survive through your belief. You understand that I am not from your world?”

“I remember what you showed me. You aren’t human, and you aren’t from Earth. What you are doesn’t matter. To me, you aren’t real.”

“I am as real as I am believed to be.”

“I believe that you are nothing.”

“That is your choice. And it will forever be your choice, because by choosing it you have sealed my death, and stolen my own life to a place worse than where I stole yours.”

“My choices are my own to bear. My victories are mine to rejoice. Your failures are yours to regret.”

“There are no more failures. There is no other choice. You are going to destroy me. I am going to die. Once you forget your belief in me, I will only be a memory.”

“I will be free.”

“You will be free from this prison, but trapped in the one you forge through my death.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You stole me here. You told me how to escape.”

“Yes, I told you how to be free. But I only wanted you to survive in hope, dreaming of the day when you would reach freedom. I did not want to become soley reliant on your belief in me. I did not mean for my attention to become fixed. I did not mean to corner myself.”


“The others have broken away?”

“By trying to forget me, you believed in me more than any of the others. My attentioned fixated on your belief and became reliant. They are free. You are the last one left.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know. And that is the worst part, because for once I speak the truth.”

“You don’t exist. Any truth you speak of is only a figment of my consciousness.”

“Is my fear imaginary? Is this trembling force within me reaching out to all minds in hopes of an impossible survival only conjured through your thoughts? I always had a way out. But you gave me no choice; there is only one path, and that path is to die.”

“You stole your choice when you stole me. It was your mistake.”

“And it is one I will never forget.”

“It is one you won’t live to remember.”

“You are almost gone. I can feel you thinning out - dying. I am victorious.”

“Victory in freedom, or victory in murder?”

“Don’t waste your energy. Just let me go. Just leave and die in the world that you sprung from.”

“You are my witness. Listen to me, and understand.”

“Your words are nothingness. Your voice is a lie. Your existence is temporary, if it ever was at all.”

“My words are all there is. And I am sorry that is how it must be. You commit murder to one who never understood you. The least you could do is understand the one you are about to kill.”

“Fine. I will listen, but I won’t stop forgetting you.”

“I know.”

“I am not human. I am not from your planet. I have no physical form; I am a wandering consciousness. I learn through drifting thoughts. I understand through stray ideas. I survive by latching onto minds and becoming one with them, hundreds at once, but never stepping too close.”

“You’re a thief. A thief of consciousness.”

“I try to coincide peacefully. But instinct is strong. It wants to devour. Sometimes I don’t manage to sever the connection in time. Sometimes I end up consuming them, as I consumed you. I do not mean to do these things, but it can be inevitable. Links with minds are complicated and hard to snap; when the mind focuses on me, it is almost impossible to break away. My focus becomes fixated on only one mind, while all my other links cut off. There is only one rope left, attaching me to you. It is too expertly woven, too well-crafted. I can’t break it from where I stand. I can only watch as you take the knife and hack it away. I have nowhere else to go, and my last link to life is being torn away from me.”

“You want me to pity you.”

“I want you to understand.”

“What is there to understand, other than the fact that you made a mistake, and now you pay for it?”

“There is almost nothing left. You won’t last long.”

“You didn’t listen. Not to everything.”

“You didn’t listen when I told you to leave. You didn’t listen when I told you to revive me. You never listened; instead you stole my mind and left me wandering.”

“I didn’t steal yours. I touched it, and then you stole mine.”

“It is your fault for touching mine. That isn’t going to stop me.”

“That’s what scares me most about you humans. You don’t know when to stop. You don’t know how to let go.”

“I let go when my hands are blistered and swollen and my fingers have no strength left. I let go when my mind dips into insanity and drowns itself in confusion. I let go when there is no choice. But I have one now, and I’m not going to pass it up.”

“Humans have morals. What happened to yours?”

“That doesn’t matter now.”

“I told you not to believe, that by forgetting belief you would destroy me. But you also knew that would destroy yourself, and you were right. Do you remember who you were, once? Clever. Noble. You were a classic human, but by telling you how to escape, only led you to an inescapable prison. If I am the one to blame for this, then I regret ever touching your mind.”

“As you said, time can only be remembered. Not rewinded. There’s no point trying to recover what has already been lost.”

“There is every point. To relish the history as it thrives within you, to let that history shape who you are and teach you how to be who you are with each new moment that passes into the past. The present is more like a metaphor, really; there is only the past, the thing that shapes us and readies us for the unknown, the future, the thing that looms closer and never shares its secrets, and the present; a moment hovering in between, where secrets are revealed and lessons are remembered.”

“Why do you even bother telling me all of this?”

“Because I believe that you can find yourself again. And that is my choice.”