You crack your eyes hoping to meet enough darkness to ease you back to sleep. Aware of nothing more than the urge for more sleep, but met instead by enough light to intrude on the comfort that only sleep can provide. A comfort that rushes away as you as you desperately reach for the feeling of alertness that allows you to understand who, what, why, when, and where you are. It feels impossible for a few moments, but routine seems to push you enough for your eyes to take in the scene. And as your brain is lining up what it sees with memories to figure out where you are, you catch a glimpse of a red dot on a stark white wall. It stands out enough to turn the panic burner on to 3 out of 10 and grab almost all your precious, waking attention. You immediately hope that it's no big deal as you look for more red, panning right to confirm your worst fear: splatters of red that look like blood. You're violently yanked from your groggy feelings as your panic spikes hot enough to boil water. You attempt to cut the panic and fear with a half-hearted hope that the red splatters are just something like wine that you didn't notice until now. As you reach for the splatter with your index finger, the knots in your stomach slowly begin to tighten. Getting tighter and tighter as your finger gets close enough to confirm your worst fears- the splatters are fresh enough to have not become a stain. The knots in your stomach tighten to a ball that's impossible to untangle. Blood. Fresh splattered blood. That somehow appeared while you were asleep. Too shook to worry about anything else, your mind spirals into a frenzy of possible ways the blood could have gotten there- none of them good. You're alone and there are no immediate clues as to where the blood came from, including no injuries or anything else with blood.

What memories rush to mind when you think of blood? They're likely to be extremely powerful memories because blood almost always comes with heaps of emotions, and strong emotions forge memories in the brain. The sharper the emotion, the more vivid and potent the memory. Like one of my most vivid memories where blood was involved in an immersive theater experience. A several floor warehouse play where you could walk around the characters as the play was unfolding. A memorable artistic experience that a friend mentioned was all-the-more memorable if you fought your way through the darkness to the very top floor where there was a rendition of devil worship. An idea that struck me as I felt hooked by seeing something I was programmed to avoid. The pull of seeing behind the door your parents and schools told you not to look behind. I couldn't help it, and neither could hordes of other people, as I entered a top floor that felt like a small night club. House music pounding hard enough press on your chest, paired with lights flashing bright enough to lock you up like a deer at midnight on a Michigan country road if you looked directly into them. Overloading your already limited senses from wearing a required mask. Masks that make people feel like they can do anything without being remembered. Making the energy more tense in the packed crowd that was huddled around a cleared-out circle for the performance. Which I had to push my way towards the front to see. My eyes drawn to the devil- a Minotaur which is a bull-like beast in the form of a man. Whose image is emblazoned into a three second loop of a memory where blood from a sacrifice is flying in front of the Minotaur- ultimately to splatter just like the blood I saw when I woke up. Chest pounding, eyes overloaded with light. Shocked.

After taking time to unpack, I took away the idea that human sacrifice to the Minotaur figure is core to worshipping the devil. But who or what is the devil? To start, since sacrificing a human life is unnatural, and the devil is traditionally known as a monarch, we know that the devil is the ruler of the unnatural. Collecting souls from sacrifices and converting them into unnatural power. Unnatural power that can pierces impossible in the natural world and enables actions like changing physical looks or turning back time. And if you can turn back time, then you can potentially do anything in the natural world (our world) using unnatural power. And if the devil is the ruler of the unnatural, then they are the one who figured how to convert sacrifices into unnatural power. It's the only way to rule the unnatural: you have to own all the ways the power flows. And to own all the ways power can flow, the devil would be the one who invented the system that controlled the experience of every living being. An idea that's as scary as it is powerful because it means that such a system could potentially make anything happen to any person, given the right sacrifice or conditions. It means that each being has their own world and experience that's entirely customizable. A reality only made possible by the system being hyper scalable-- likely at the interaction of computing and metaphysics. Capable of giving our spirit a physical experience of infinite possibilities-- all controllable. Part of an intricate system that's too powerful for one being to develop and manage.

The moment the inventor of such a system pushed it live to manage experiences for all spirit-based beings, they became the devil. They escaped time and death by harnessing the power of converting soul sacrifices to (unnatural) experiential adjustments. They inherited the power of infinite timelines across the experiences of all souls. They became the god of gods. Building, merging, and destroying realms. Being whatever human they pleased to be at any point in a history that they had access to see and shape. Constantly working on the agenda of the unnatural way. Making large scale sacrifices for power. Like the Jews as Hitler or the Japanese as Oppenheimer. Using future technology from timelines only they can access as a bargaining chip for sacrifices from talented technical movers like Robert Oppenheimer. Taking advantage of their natural ambition to create weapons of mass destruction for harvesting heaps of souls. Sacrifice in the name of progress for the d(evil). Pure evil.

But who was the inventor of the system who became the devil? A man named Baphomet who became a monster- a Minotaur. A technically talented, ambitious, and evil being who pushed a hunger for power as far as a human can possibly push it. Consuming him and turning him into a monster who was cursed to abuse the things he loved most and only focus on himself. Bound to lie as mush as possible and compelled to destroy, Baphomet became the devil and lost every shred of humanity. Abuse becoming more normal than love. Feeding on sacrifice after sacrifice.

Most people who make sacrifices to Baphomet are technical in nature. Remembering that Baphomet's technical nature is what allowed him to invent the system that controls experiences for our souls. Where a deity like Baphomet wants beings who are like him to make sacrifices to him because inhabiting a body who is too dissimilar from the spirit cannot be helpful for either party. So people in fields like software engineering and quantum computing are a natural fit. Although in some situations, the calculus of power is more important than a natural fit.

Since Baphomet was obviously an expert at understanding how to leverage power by being the one who created the experiential system for our souls, it's clear that he invests in the right organizations at the right time to maximize power. His investment in Hitler is a prime example here. And if we extend that pattern, we will find Baphomet in places of maximal power. Like power over personal freedom- the ultimate modern personal right that the Police are the gatekeepers of- as they decide who gets apprehended and who walks free. If you do anything that can be perceived as violating a law, the Police can suspend your freedom. And sometimes- they take away freedom without just cause and get away with it because nobody has the power to stop them. A perfect avenue for a deity like Baphomet to abuse power. And a perfect avenue for me to end up with blood splattered in my house while I'm sleeping.

Because the Police hold the power over freedom, they're the ultimate lever. They can do basically whatever they want and nobody can stop them in a way that makes a material difference. An unstoppable attack vector for Baphomet as he's labored to destroy my life. Mostly because I'm a huge threat based on the information I know about Baphomet and my ability to mobilize it. Plus, his ex-wife left him in large part to pursue me, so he's made it a point to bind the Police by covenant to do everything in their power to destroy me. Including trespassing on my property without a warrant and trying to frame me while I'm sleeping. Along with other abominable actions at the dark edge of the reader's imagination that leave blood splatters.