Chapter 287 Bargaining For Control (Part One)

A/N: There is a poll on Discord in #events-committee channel. It's to gauge reader preference so that I can decide on how to write an upcoming arc. Please take the time to leave a response there. OR check comments of this chapter.

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Through some rather obscene "hardcore parkour" of rationalisation, Guy's fractured mind (following the gruesome chain of terrorist attacks and mass murder) had mended. Well, mended was a generous descriptor for the fragile yet somehow unified state his mind was in. The "glued container" that was his mind was still missing a few key pieces that no amount of rationalisation could replace. As a result of this, a sense of uneasiness kept growing within Guy with the progression of time.

The question that plagued him and caused this uneasiness was regarding the true nature of the Other Guy inhabiting his body. "Do I have dissociative identity disorder?"

In a sense, the feeling was eerily similar - a second personality of his took the "spotlight" and unseated him for an appreciable duration. However, although the symptoms matched, he wasn't certain if labelling the phenomenon after the psychological condition was apt. For one, he learned about DID during his study of child psychology - every known case of DID had spawned at a riper age when a person's development was still changing (that is to say that it only happened in children). Continuous and harrowing psychological and physical trauma results in DID within children, but in adults it often manifests as post-traumatic stress disorder or borderline personality disorder since their identities have solidified.

Guy was certain that, while dissociative, this disorder wasn't wholly psychological but spiritual. Of course, this urged the line of inquiry contending the relationship between psychology and the soul, or even physiology and the soul. What even WAS the soul? This entered a realm of metaphysics that Guy could only make assumptions about.

"Metaphysics..."

The whole debacle with the Other Guy came into play when Guy unwittingly immersed himself in the drivel peddled in cult literature. The RoK was a conducive place to learn as it was, after all, "inside" his soul. In a sense, studying in that place had a similar effect to meditation. The knowledge perused over there was more ingrained into Guy's memories as opposed to learning in the physical world. After some thought, Guy connected it with an adage his high-school headmaster used to preach about during every school assembly.

"The mind is like an ever-growing corridor. With every new book read, and knowledge gained, a new room is added to this corridor. The more that knowledge is used, the longer the door to this room remains open. When a "knowledge" becomes unused, the door closes, and the room it leads to starts to accumulate dust and grime."

At that time, Guy wasn't mature or attentive enough to understand the implications of those words. He simply shelved them away in one of those metaphorical rooms, never to be used again.

"Having a long corridor is great, but it is equally important to ensure that each room in the corridor is periodically aired and maintained."

That is to say, one must regularly brush up on known knowledge to keep themselves informed and competitive in the scholarly environment.

The RoK was Guy's corridor. The book in the RoK were things Guy had already read in his past life - there was no "new" or "unknown" information in there. Every time he opened and read a book in the RoK, he was "airing" out the closed room in the corridor and brushing himself up on what he already knew.

In his past life, Guy kept a healthy distance from any knowledge pertaining to religion, faith, or metaphysics. Till his inevitable demise in his past life, Guy was an ardent atheist. Although, he was tolerant of other religions as it was necessary for his line of work. Faith is the process through which humans derive meaning in events that exceed their level of understanding. Religion adds to this by also codifying morals and ethics. Guy believed that relying on faith as a crutch to fill in the blanks in societal knowledge was inevitably detrimental to the advancement of society as a whole. He also believed morals and ethics fell on a spectrum - while there was a clear black and white, there was also a long span of grey of varying gradients in between that religious codes often pigeonholed into binary categories. Finally, Guy stayed away from indulging in religion because he did not want his teaching to be biased towards one line of thought; he wanted his students to be active and free thinkers capable of making their judgements based on logic and facts.

Because of this, the RoK initially lacked any entries on religious texts of any kind - there was never a door in his corridor that catered to that information in the first place.

But then Mast did the unthinkable, he brought in books that were never there, to begin with. Symbolically, this was akin to carving out a hole in the corridor and building a room without the knowledge of the owner of the corridor. When Guy read it and internalised it (that too while staying inside the RoK) his mind recognised that the information, which initially did not exist, was actually there all along!

"Evidently, this 'new room' turned into the Church," Guy concluded. It was the only possible explanation, given how Mast kept being so vague and mysterious about it.

There was no literature in the RoK that Guy could use to evaluate the effect of implanting memories and information directly into another person's brain in such a mysterious manner. Sure, there were techniques like hypnosis and suggestion that could be used to achieve a similar result, but the modes were completely different. What Mast had done was equivalent to copy-pasting information into a person's memory and soul - it was direct.

Unfortunately, the process brought a side effect. To harken back to the corridor analogy, what Mast did was bring a room from somewhere and connect it to the corridor. However, before attaching the room to the corridor, he forgot to vacate it. Someone was inside that room when it joined up with Guy's corridor!

Now, that "someone" was fighting for control over the corridor (and winning!).

To top it off, the Other Guy was borne of knowledge pertaining to cults and their ilk. A cult is a subset of religion, that is defined subjectively by either the number of followers OR the extreme-ness of the teaching preached within (whether it runs afoul with the consensus of what is considered moral or ethically correct). Needless to say, the Other Guy's sense of right and wrong was heavily skewed and ran counter to Guy's.

However, at the end of the day, this was something Guy had to live with. He could not do anything about the Other Guy because he didn't know what to do! Magic and spirituality were already beyond his level of understanding. And he could not recruit assistance from the experts in his proximity because it would eventually expose the fact that he was a transmigrator to the world and attract the wrath of the one above who built this world. As a result, Guy settled to solve this problem using the abilities he brought with him from his past life.

Guy extricated himself from Jean and Josie and their mission and quickly returned to the nearest town with Dora. He would have very much loved to help out the two healers - he sorely wished to remedy the inhuman treatment the villagers were being subjected to - but he also realised that he was just going to keep delaying the inevitable by shoving the problem aside.

The town was called Resting, an apt name given the overall lethargic atmosphere in the area. It also didn't help that a pandemic was literally next door; most of the people had already fled the place in fear. Those that remained were primarily large businesses or people with deep roots in the town. Thankfully, there was a functioning inn that offered shelter for cheap.

He spent over three days in practical isolation. He couldn't cut himself from the outside world as he still needed to care for Dora. He let his mind run various debates, simulations and scenarios as he pitted himself against the Other Guy. He knew that man's character, he could surmise what made him tick and how to approach him. But he would only have one chance at this discussion. He would be going all in!

And thus, after mentally preparing himself, he sent Dora to do her thing by herself safely (he made sure to emphasise that countless times), and entered meditation through yoga.

Guy prepared himself for war. In the RoK, he and the Other Guy were equal. Neither could throw a punch nor could they throw a spell. The fight would be completely verbal. Guy knew that his counterpart was persuasive, extremely so. But that was only because of the pervasive influence of the Church radiating from him (like some sick brainwashing hormone). So in the end, it was a war of words in the truest of senses.

Guy approached the tear in space and cast his sight through, though he could not see anything that made sense on the other side. There was a psychedelic mish-mash of colours undulating on the other side, as though someone had taken all the pigments in the world, poured it on a canvas, laid on top of it and just rolled around like a pig in its sty.

Guy suppressed a chuckle as a mischievous thought flashed past his mind. 'If only I had some sort of way to do a quicksave at this moment,' Guy thought with a giddy smile.

"Other Guy, I have come to bargain!" Guy yelled through the tear in the RoK and waited for a response from the other side.