The secret of our power

Dear Dissonance,

I think your Patient is on to us, or at least to you, given what you’ve written. This is bad for a number of reasons.

First and perhaps most disastrous for us,  it means she is in closer contact with the Enemy as she would not recognize our actions unless it had something to do with what she told him or who she is becoming. It probably has something to do with your tactics, which are to subtle the same way as “The Today Show” is to news.

Why, for example, would you make her consumed with buying new clothes 10 minutes after she prayed for self-control over spending her money? Or why would you put not one, or two, but three private school mothers in huge sunglasses and house-priced, bus-sized SUVs who think it is their personal right to make her late to work by turning left in no-left-turn zones into school parking lots in rush hour traffic after she prayed for a peaceful commute to work? Or why would you fuel a couple of blow-out arguments between your Patient and her husband on their honeymoon over virtually nothing? Both ended up asking, quizzically, after tempers cooled, “where did that come from?” because it seemed each had no control over what came out of their mouths. Or why give your Patient a more terrible case of procrastination with each successive column she writes – which only makes her question why she feels that way when she very rarely has before.

The examples are almost boundless, as I can see from reviewing video footage. And they are making you look desperate. Sure, you succeeded in making her huff into work and send a few needlessly curt emails. But it could be a Pyrrhic victory.

I’ve always thought it is pretty amazing that we can hear everything humans aim at the Enemy as if they were talking on a cell phone next to us in line at the grocery store. The Enemy just lets us, and unlike the NSA, we don’t even have to have the pretense of asking permission to do so!

It’s so easy to read minds I’ve wondered if the Enemy is actually tricking us somehow. But I don’t get the method because I can’t unearth anything underhanded or false in the process – we hear exactly what he does. Our Father would never be so generous with his information, rightfully so, as it would be his alone. Besides, why would he give a competitor inside knowledge? We don’t fight fair, we simply fight to win. Remember that.

The important thing is that we never want to be recognized, because anonymity gives us the power to confuse. If your Patient moves from questioning our existence to taking it for granted, we have no advantage over her heart.

Why do you think we almost never speak to people directly? If we did, they would think they were going crazy or others would think our various patients were crazy and delegitimize what they thought or said. That would mean devastation, as our main goal is domination. Besides, many people at least might consider changing their behavior if they knew where it originated, and we don’t want any moral quandaries.

To reinsert doubt of our existence into her mind, you need to lay low for a few weeks. Think of it as a listening tour that will lead to greater understanding of how to undermine the Enemy’s inroads into your Patient’s heart. If no equal and opposite force arrives immediately to combat her prayer requests, she will no doubt start feeling silly that there ever was one in the first place. I’m not sure how long you will need to monitor without acting, but you will be able to smell her complacency like garbage piled on city streets in the summer during a workers’ strike. So be patient and take lots of notes. And get used to the idea that you can’t go back to your same tactics. You know what they say about insanity –“doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Your affectionate aunt,

Pandemonium