What begins as a benign seed, a passing concept, becomes rooted into your subconscious. It becomes a part of you.

Concepts are memetic. They can be considered as part of a units system of memes. Culture is diffused with these. But what else?

Memetics is by nature part of a sort of beneficiary infection. Take a concept, share it. Memes are the replicators of concepts.

What does this executable --this program, this spell, this power-- gain from demanding it be part of cultural diffusion?

The answer at first seems simple. A bacteria or virus spreads so that it might survive and propagate itself.

Does this program seek to survive? To spread? Considering how few are afflicted by it, it doesn't seem so.

Dirk said it resembled less of a disease spreading to him. More of a...probe analyzing certain sets of data. Census anomalies?

He worded it more crudely, with comparison to alien abduction scenarios. However, his observations were sound, in hindsight.

It's taken me weeks to start wholly agreeing with him on that point, which leads to the next query.

If this program is analyzing its hosts, what does it gain? What data is it culling with its behavioral modification systems in place?

My only hypothesis is rooted in the belief that whatever is behind the program wants to 8WIN8 in a scenario with too many variables.

But that's based more on the philosophies of existence that Dirk is obsessed with. And I am currently gravitating towards my own obsessions.

This is likely an outcome that the program wanted, but I still can't see what it, or its creator, seeks to gain.

Perhaps I will find something in one of the grimoires...

Explanation of Read: tl.gd/n_1sdi4d2

> You jump up from a HAZY reading in one of your TOMES. You need a pen. The images are in PLAIN SIGHT.

> And now they're gone, and you're head hurts even worse. You sip on your tea and try to power through this. > The secret's unfurling...

> The nightmares have gripped you for so long and the secret that DARKLING secret was so obvious. > You read it just a month ago.

Byron. How quaint. > Your spine shivers in fear of what is to come. It transcends your mere existence. And theirs.

> You feel an earthquake shake you down to your BONES. > But the earth stands still. WHY ARE YOU SHAKING SO?