The Witness
Sligita is a magic world of yellow-orange rocks and blue-green plants, home of the sligits, leaf-shaped beings with many stubby legs that walk on their long toenails. Each has one eye and two antennas. The antennas perform magic, either vibrating objects to make noise (this is how they speak), levitating small objects (the effects remain until removed), or teleporting small objects. They also hear through the antennas and eat by teleporting food inside their bellies (waste is removed the same way). They have no mouths or anuses. Those sligits losing both antennae can no longer hear, speak, perform magic, and will soon starve without intervention from others. The sligits build complex machines using magical standing instructions to objects to teleport or levitate under the right circumstances. Over thousands of years, these machines have become self-repairing and are fully integrated in every aspect of the sligit’s lives. One sligit magician has now learned how to teleport thoughts right into others’ minds by using both antennas at once.
The magician commits horrific acts and then deludes the witnesses into thinking something else occurred. His powers are limited, however, and there must always be one witness in any group who cannot be turned. While false ideas can be implanted, truth cannot be destroyed – only moved from mind to mind. Rarely does anyone believe the words of one over the many, but the sligit police have gradually learned to trust these witnesses and it has become necessary for the magician to shut them up one way or another. This is why Nate has been hired as bodyguard to transport one witness to a safe place with several other witnesses. Officers S, J, Z, and W work with him.
Nate continually finds himself surrounded by people attempting to kill him and his charge. Some of them have been hired by the magician. Some have been threatened or blackmailed by the magician. Some have been deluded by the magician. Some have even been deluded into thinking that the witness is the magician and must be killed. Nate stops them all. Some are arrested. Some are killed.
To ensure he has not also been deluded, Nate begins to secretly plant cameras everywhere. It is by watching the videos later that he discovers his witness has been replaced! The video clearly shows what must be the magician walk in, kill the witness, and then bend his antennas in a peculiar way when Nate confronts him, causing Nate to stop and reholster his gun. Nate has no memory of any of this. He plans on showing the police his video evidence, but the tape goes mysteriously missing.
It is now time for all the witnesses to meet. Nate expects the magician to kill the witnesses and is ready to intervene. In the video, he was taken by surprise. He won’t be taken by surprise a second time. Once Nate enters the room with his witness, the other witnesses immediately start accusing Nate’s witness of being the magician. Nate pulls his gun, but it is teleported away. Then the accused turns to the crowd and says, “I’m not the magician; he is!”
The crowd turns on Nate. He is tossed around the room by levitation and tortured by having random objects teleported inside of him. He is captured and placed in a jail cell. Only one person at a time is allowed near him, so that if he passes a delusion spell, the one person present will also be the one person unaffected, meaning he can delude no one. No trial will ever be held for fear that he might delude the jury. Without killing any more witnesses, the magician has successfully escaped and no one is looking for him.
Nate lies on the floor of his cell and thinks. He pores over every tiny detail from the past week. He has plenty of time. Something is bothering him about this whole situation. Something isn’t right.
Hold it! When Nate was deluded in the video he saw, who was the witness to that delusion? There must always be a minimum of three people present for a delusion to occur – the magician, the deluded, and the witness. Nate and the magician were the only two living beings in that video. Something wasn’t right. Nate must have never seen a video; he had merely been deluded into thinking so. This would also explain why the video went “missing.” So, when did that delusion take place and who was present then?
It must have happened very shortly before meeting up with the other witnesses or else he is sure he would have come up with a better plan than simply bringing a gun and waiting for the magician to act. His actions that day were not like him. The whole memory was like a badly written story.
The only person he met that morning was Commissioner L. Commissioner L was also present when he was first introduced to his charge. Whether the witness was swapped out for the magician at some point or whether he was the magician all along, there was no doubt that L was working for him. Questioning every assumption and following the branching logic, Nate concludes that Commissioner L must be the magician’s primary truth receptacle. Now he just needs to figure out how to get out of this cell. It had been a long time. His health was failing. He was getting desperate. It was time to take a risk.
Whispering through the air holes in the thin wall that the guards would teleport his food through, Nate whispers, “Hi! How would you like a promotion?”
“Don’t talk to me. You’re trying to trick me,” the guard says.
“How could I trick you? You’re the only one here. Who would be witness? I don’t even have antennas,” Nate says. The guard leaves without saying another word.
The next day, Nate tries again. “I have evidence that will help capture the real magician. If you help, I’m sure there will be a promotion for you.” Again, the guard leaves without speaking.
The next day, Nate tries again. “I have proof that Commissioner L is working with the magician. I can tell you where to look. If you won’t help me, one of the other guards will.” Again, the guard leaves without talking.
Nate keeps trying for several days until he notices a change in his food. It smells different. His specialized nose detects poison. Word must have finally got back to the commissioner what he had been saying. He was hoping for this. Doing some chemistry with the items he had accumulated over several months, he isolates the poison and dips his dropped feathers in it. Then he rolls up some paper into a tube and waits.
The next time the guard walks down the hall, Nate blows through the tube and sends a sharpened, poisoned feather into the guard’s eye. Aaaah!
“If you want the antidote, let me out,” Nate demands.
Already feeling the effects, the terrified guard teleports Nate out of the cell, who promptly blows another dart into his eye. “I lied.” Nate flies out of the prison before anyone can catch him.
Soon, he is at the police station holding Commissioner L at gunpoint. Officers S, J, Z, and W are present. “Tell me where he is!” Nate yells.
“Who?” L says.
“The magician!” Nate says.
“I don’t know. Why would I know?” L says.
Nate suddenly drops his gun. “Wait. Something’s wrong. If I was really in jail all those months, I would have come up with a better plan than this. I’m smarter than that. This is like a badly written story. How did I even get here?”
“What difference does it make? He knows where to find the magician,” officer S says.
“No. We’ve just been deluded again. The magician is in this room right now,” Nate says.
“What?” officer J says.
“Close the doors. Nobody leaves,” Nate orders.
J promptly closes the doors and the sligits stand around looking at each other. Finally, S suggests that they all break off one antenna to ensure that no one in the room will be able to teleport again.
“Good idea, but the magician could always trick us into believing he had done it when he hadn’t,” Nate says.
“I’m not doing that anyways. Why should I pay for the crimes of another?” officer W argues.
“Good point,” J concurs.
“Every memory of ours could be fake. We don’t even know that we are police or that this is a police station,” Nate thinks out loud.
“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?” L comments.
“Maybe,” Nate says.
“What if we broke into groups somehow? To narrow down our choices?” officer W suggests.
“That wouldn’t work if no more spells were cast, and now the magician knows your plan,” Nate says.
“Right,” W reluctantly concedes.
“How are we ever going to figure this out? It seems impossible,” L says.
“Yes, we can’t stay here forever,” J says.
“We might have to,” S says.
“Z, you’ve been very quiet. Any suggestions?” Nate asks. Officer Z does not respond.
“Hey Z, the bird is talking to you,” W says. Z still says nothing.
“Z must be the witness! He must be too afraid to say anything to incriminate his boss,” S says.
“I don’t think so. Look at him,” Nate says, looking around at the group. “When I told you to look at him you all looked in different directions. Z isn’t even here.”
“Is anybody real? Do we know anything?” L asks.
“We know we’re being deluded; that’s one thing we know,” W says.
“What are we going to do?” J asks.
Nate suddenly starts chuckling to himself. “I just figured out who the magician is.”
“Who?” J asks.
“The moment I say it, you’ll hear me saying something else. I need to write it down,” Nate says. He pulls some cards from his pouch and holds a pen in one talon. When he finishes scribbling, he hands out one card to each officer. “I’ve given each of you the identity of the magician – except for the magician, to whom I’ve written someone else. When I say ‘go,’ follow the instructions on the card.”
The sligits all eye each other nervously. “Go.” Suddenly, the table lifts up and pins L to the wall. S, J, and W hold it in place with their levitation powers. Nate jumps out of the way, rolling on the floor, and retrieves his gun. Then he aims at S and blasts him in the eye.
As S the magician dies, he can no longer maintain the delusions and everyone starts to see things as they really are.
“I’m an accountant,” L says.
“I’m a banker,” W says.
“This is a grocery store and I was just passing through,” Nate says.
The image of Z vanishes and J runs from the room before anyone can accuse him of being the magician’s witness. “What just happened? How did you know it was S?” L asks.
“S tricked us into attacking you, but the names on the cards were never important. I assigned them randomly, not knowing at that time who the magician was,” Nate explains. “What were important were the instructions. I told you to hold W’s antennas apart. I told him to loudly accuse J. I told J to point his weapon at S. I told S to pin you against the wall with the table. Not being able to see what the others had read, he assumed that I had given everyone the same instructions, so he deluded everyone into attacking the same person based on the instructions I wrote him.”
“Brilliant, but why weren’t you tricked into thinking you sent the instructions we were tricked into thinking we read?” L asks.
“I was, but I knew it didn’t make sense based on the plan I already had in mind that S could not possibly have known. I knew it had to be a false memory,” Nate explains.
“What about now?” W asks.
“What?” L asks.
“How do we know that what just happened actually happened? Maybe the magician got away and fed us that entire story,” W proposes.
“Oh, right,” Nate says. “I guess all one can do is move forward and hope for the best.”
“Yes. I suppose so,” L agrees.
“Well, goodbye and good luck. I’ve still got a galaxy to explore,” Nate says.
“Assuming it’s real,” L mutters.
“What?” Nate says.
The magician commits horrific acts and then deludes the witnesses into thinking something else occurred. His powers are limited, however, and there must always be one witness in any group who cannot be turned. While false ideas can be implanted, truth cannot be destroyed – only moved from mind to mind. Rarely does anyone believe the words of one over the many, but the sligit police have gradually learned to trust these witnesses and it has become necessary for the magician to shut them up one way or another. This is why Nate has been hired as bodyguard to transport one witness to a safe place with several other witnesses. Officers S, J, Z, and W work with him.
Nate continually finds himself surrounded by people attempting to kill him and his charge. Some of them have been hired by the magician. Some have been threatened or blackmailed by the magician. Some have been deluded by the magician. Some have even been deluded into thinking that the witness is the magician and must be killed. Nate stops them all. Some are arrested. Some are killed.
To ensure he has not also been deluded, Nate begins to secretly plant cameras everywhere. It is by watching the videos later that he discovers his witness has been replaced! The video clearly shows what must be the magician walk in, kill the witness, and then bend his antennas in a peculiar way when Nate confronts him, causing Nate to stop and reholster his gun. Nate has no memory of any of this. He plans on showing the police his video evidence, but the tape goes mysteriously missing.
It is now time for all the witnesses to meet. Nate expects the magician to kill the witnesses and is ready to intervene. In the video, he was taken by surprise. He won’t be taken by surprise a second time. Once Nate enters the room with his witness, the other witnesses immediately start accusing Nate’s witness of being the magician. Nate pulls his gun, but it is teleported away. Then the accused turns to the crowd and says, “I’m not the magician; he is!”
The crowd turns on Nate. He is tossed around the room by levitation and tortured by having random objects teleported inside of him. He is captured and placed in a jail cell. Only one person at a time is allowed near him, so that if he passes a delusion spell, the one person present will also be the one person unaffected, meaning he can delude no one. No trial will ever be held for fear that he might delude the jury. Without killing any more witnesses, the magician has successfully escaped and no one is looking for him.
Nate lies on the floor of his cell and thinks. He pores over every tiny detail from the past week. He has plenty of time. Something is bothering him about this whole situation. Something isn’t right.
Hold it! When Nate was deluded in the video he saw, who was the witness to that delusion? There must always be a minimum of three people present for a delusion to occur – the magician, the deluded, and the witness. Nate and the magician were the only two living beings in that video. Something wasn’t right. Nate must have never seen a video; he had merely been deluded into thinking so. This would also explain why the video went “missing.” So, when did that delusion take place and who was present then?
It must have happened very shortly before meeting up with the other witnesses or else he is sure he would have come up with a better plan than simply bringing a gun and waiting for the magician to act. His actions that day were not like him. The whole memory was like a badly written story.
The only person he met that morning was Commissioner L. Commissioner L was also present when he was first introduced to his charge. Whether the witness was swapped out for the magician at some point or whether he was the magician all along, there was no doubt that L was working for him. Questioning every assumption and following the branching logic, Nate concludes that Commissioner L must be the magician’s primary truth receptacle. Now he just needs to figure out how to get out of this cell. It had been a long time. His health was failing. He was getting desperate. It was time to take a risk.
Whispering through the air holes in the thin wall that the guards would teleport his food through, Nate whispers, “Hi! How would you like a promotion?”
“Don’t talk to me. You’re trying to trick me,” the guard says.
“How could I trick you? You’re the only one here. Who would be witness? I don’t even have antennas,” Nate says. The guard leaves without saying another word.
The next day, Nate tries again. “I have evidence that will help capture the real magician. If you help, I’m sure there will be a promotion for you.” Again, the guard leaves without speaking.
The next day, Nate tries again. “I have proof that Commissioner L is working with the magician. I can tell you where to look. If you won’t help me, one of the other guards will.” Again, the guard leaves without talking.
Nate keeps trying for several days until he notices a change in his food. It smells different. His specialized nose detects poison. Word must have finally got back to the commissioner what he had been saying. He was hoping for this. Doing some chemistry with the items he had accumulated over several months, he isolates the poison and dips his dropped feathers in it. Then he rolls up some paper into a tube and waits.
The next time the guard walks down the hall, Nate blows through the tube and sends a sharpened, poisoned feather into the guard’s eye. Aaaah!
“If you want the antidote, let me out,” Nate demands.
Already feeling the effects, the terrified guard teleports Nate out of the cell, who promptly blows another dart into his eye. “I lied.” Nate flies out of the prison before anyone can catch him.
Soon, he is at the police station holding Commissioner L at gunpoint. Officers S, J, Z, and W are present. “Tell me where he is!” Nate yells.
“Who?” L says.
“The magician!” Nate says.
“I don’t know. Why would I know?” L says.
Nate suddenly drops his gun. “Wait. Something’s wrong. If I was really in jail all those months, I would have come up with a better plan than this. I’m smarter than that. This is like a badly written story. How did I even get here?”
“What difference does it make? He knows where to find the magician,” officer S says.
“No. We’ve just been deluded again. The magician is in this room right now,” Nate says.
“What?” officer J says.
“Close the doors. Nobody leaves,” Nate orders.
J promptly closes the doors and the sligits stand around looking at each other. Finally, S suggests that they all break off one antenna to ensure that no one in the room will be able to teleport again.
“Good idea, but the magician could always trick us into believing he had done it when he hadn’t,” Nate says.
“I’m not doing that anyways. Why should I pay for the crimes of another?” officer W argues.
“Good point,” J concurs.
“Every memory of ours could be fake. We don’t even know that we are police or that this is a police station,” Nate thinks out loud.
“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?” L comments.
“Maybe,” Nate says.
“What if we broke into groups somehow? To narrow down our choices?” officer W suggests.
“That wouldn’t work if no more spells were cast, and now the magician knows your plan,” Nate says.
“Right,” W reluctantly concedes.
“How are we ever going to figure this out? It seems impossible,” L says.
“Yes, we can’t stay here forever,” J says.
“We might have to,” S says.
“Z, you’ve been very quiet. Any suggestions?” Nate asks. Officer Z does not respond.
“Hey Z, the bird is talking to you,” W says. Z still says nothing.
“Z must be the witness! He must be too afraid to say anything to incriminate his boss,” S says.
“I don’t think so. Look at him,” Nate says, looking around at the group. “When I told you to look at him you all looked in different directions. Z isn’t even here.”
“Is anybody real? Do we know anything?” L asks.
“We know we’re being deluded; that’s one thing we know,” W says.
“What are we going to do?” J asks.
Nate suddenly starts chuckling to himself. “I just figured out who the magician is.”
“Who?” J asks.
“The moment I say it, you’ll hear me saying something else. I need to write it down,” Nate says. He pulls some cards from his pouch and holds a pen in one talon. When he finishes scribbling, he hands out one card to each officer. “I’ve given each of you the identity of the magician – except for the magician, to whom I’ve written someone else. When I say ‘go,’ follow the instructions on the card.”
The sligits all eye each other nervously. “Go.” Suddenly, the table lifts up and pins L to the wall. S, J, and W hold it in place with their levitation powers. Nate jumps out of the way, rolling on the floor, and retrieves his gun. Then he aims at S and blasts him in the eye.
As S the magician dies, he can no longer maintain the delusions and everyone starts to see things as they really are.
“I’m an accountant,” L says.
“I’m a banker,” W says.
“This is a grocery store and I was just passing through,” Nate says.
The image of Z vanishes and J runs from the room before anyone can accuse him of being the magician’s witness. “What just happened? How did you know it was S?” L asks.
“S tricked us into attacking you, but the names on the cards were never important. I assigned them randomly, not knowing at that time who the magician was,” Nate explains. “What were important were the instructions. I told you to hold W’s antennas apart. I told him to loudly accuse J. I told J to point his weapon at S. I told S to pin you against the wall with the table. Not being able to see what the others had read, he assumed that I had given everyone the same instructions, so he deluded everyone into attacking the same person based on the instructions I wrote him.”
“Brilliant, but why weren’t you tricked into thinking you sent the instructions we were tricked into thinking we read?” L asks.
“I was, but I knew it didn’t make sense based on the plan I already had in mind that S could not possibly have known. I knew it had to be a false memory,” Nate explains.
“What about now?” W asks.
“What?” L asks.
“How do we know that what just happened actually happened? Maybe the magician got away and fed us that entire story,” W proposes.
“Oh, right,” Nate says. “I guess all one can do is move forward and hope for the best.”
“Yes. I suppose so,” L agrees.
“Well, goodbye and good luck. I’ve still got a galaxy to explore,” Nate says.
“Assuming it’s real,” L mutters.
“What?” Nate says.