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Description
Illuminate me so I may see the light
Eliminate me so I cease to long for anything
Illuminate me so I can tell what’s right
Eliminate me so I come to know myself
— New World Revolution, Illuminate

Media | Time | Soundtrack

Reiner & Aske, the mask and the mirror.

Scene in The Silent Wall: Ren/Reiner Ackermann, catching a breather after an exhausting day at work on Project Heimdall, and realising for the briefest moment that something’s lurking behind... before the frightening thought flies away. Yet the man in the mirror is still here, the real persona buried under the lies—cunning, biding his time, ready to surface again and take over when it becomes safe again (or if everything has gone FUBAR, and he has to kill everyone around him, or potentially himself... hrmph).

This whole memory gambit involves a double-layer mental shield. As the warning goes among Waisen (rogue telepaths), 'silence is the great betrayer': when the Watchers perform mental scans, non-telepaths come up as a series of surface thoughts, but Waisen protected by a shield are 'silent', thus immediately attracting attention... and yet, they can't go around without shields, since they're bound to realise they're being scanned, and the merest thought at that moment will also betray them.

Ren has been going around with the shield he instinctively developed, keeping a set of surface thoughts above it; this is how he managed to foil the screening tests at school (although barely), and didn't get noticed. However, he needs to remain consciously focused on the decoy for it to work, which means an unexpected scan can still screw him up. When he joined a Waisen cell as a teenager, his leader realised the kid had strong psychic abilities, and may be able to go to the next level. So they've been testing this decoy shield technique, consisting in layering said shield not merely with random surface thoughts, but with thoughts pertaining to a 'mask persona' based on the real man behind. Being recruited on Project Heimdall was a dangerous game for Ren, yet at the same time, if the technique works there, on a government project on a military base, it means it's viable.

(Yep, this is high-level psionic stuff. There's a reason the Watchers want Ren alive.)

The mask persona remains largely based on Ren, to prevent it from slipping—he has the same interests, same job, same relationships with his family members etc. It's a more timid personality, a bit on the coward side but overall nice and helpful, who does his best to abide by the law and stay out of trouble—the official reason being that he doesn't want to end up like his father, whose political dissidence sent him to fight on the front and die an early death. Loyalty born of fear is still loyalty, so he was still given his chance for Heimdall thanks to his weaponry skills.

What's sad is that this kind, 'innocent' personality is doomed to vanish for good at some point, since it never really existed.

Eien is ©Yzabel / NaNoWriMo 2017 FTW
Definitely works for #75 - Mirror in the 100 Themes Challenge .

Cloud brushes by DanLuVisiArt
Background texture by darkrose42-stock
Inspired from this: i0.wp.com/www.thegoodvader.com… (If you know who to credit, I’ll happily do so, but I couldn't find the photographer's name.)

Related pictures:
+ Ren - The Waise
+ Trouble Lurking
+ Kittin - The Mechanic
+ Emmerich - The Watcher
+ Kheril - The Diplomat
+ Ian - The Catalyst
+ Iswann - The Shield

Description
Illuminate me so I may see the light
Eliminate me so I cease to long for anything
Illuminate me so I can tell what’s right
Eliminate me so I come to know myself
— New World Revolution, Illuminate

Media | Time | Soundtrack

Reiner & Aske, the mask and the mirror.

Scene in The Silent Wall: Ren/Reiner Ackermann, catching a breather after an exhausting day at work on Project Heimdall, and realising for the briefest moment that something’s lurking behind... before the frightening thought flies away. Yet the man in the mirror is still here, the real persona buried under the lies—cunning, biding his time, ready to surface again and take over when it becomes safe again (or if everything has gone FUBAR, and he has to kill everyone around him, or potentially himself... hrmph).

This whole memory gambit involves a double-layer mental shield. As the warning goes among Waisen (rogue telepaths), 'silence is the great betrayer': when the Watchers perform mental scans, non-telepaths come up as a series of surface thoughts, but Waisen protected by a shield are 'silent', thus immediately attracting attention... and yet, they can't go around without shields, since they're bound to realise they're being scanned, and the merest thought at that moment will also betray them.

Ren has been going around with the shield he instinctively developed, keeping a set of surface thoughts above it; this is how he managed to foil the screening tests at school (although barely), and didn't get noticed. However, he needs to remain consciously focused on the decoy for it to work, which means an unexpected scan can still screw him up. When he joined a Waisen cell as a teenager, his leader realised the kid had strong psychic abilities, and may be able to go to the next level. So they've been testing this decoy shield technique, consisting in layering said shield not merely with random surface thoughts, but with thoughts pertaining to a 'mask persona' based on the real man behind. Being recruited on Project Heimdall was a dangerous game for Ren, yet at the same time, if the technique works there, on a government project on a military base, it means it's viable.

(Yep, this is high-level psionic stuff. There's a reason the Watchers want Ren alive.)

The mask persona remains largely based on Ren, to prevent it from slipping—he has the same interests, same job, same relationships with his family members etc. It's a more timid personality, a bit on the coward side but overall nice and helpful, who does his best to abide by the law and stay out of trouble—the official reason being that he doesn't want to end up like his father, whose political dissidence sent him to fight on the front and die an early death. Loyalty born of fear is still loyalty, so he was still given his chance for Heimdall thanks to his weaponry skills.

What's sad is that this kind, 'innocent' personality is doomed to vanish for good at some point, since it never really existed.

Eien is ©Yzabel / NaNoWriMo 2017 FTW
Definitely works for #75 - Mirror in the 100 Themes Challenge .

Cloud brushes by DanLuVisiArt
Background texture by darkrose42-stock
Inspired from this: i0.wp.com/www.thegoodvader.com… (If you know who to credit, I’ll happily do so, but I couldn't find the photographer's name.)

Related pictures:
+ Ren - The Waise
+ Trouble Lurking
+ Kittin - The Mechanic
+ Emmerich - The Watcher
+ Kheril - The Diplomat
+ Ian - The Catalyst
+ Iswann - The Shield