In Shiller's Tower of Thought, the room of arrogance was large and spanned two floors. The first floor served as both a living and work area, while the second was a rest area.
Bruce was often active on the first floor, so he confidently walked into the room, kicked the carpet that he had just stepped on backwards with his heel allowing the other edge of the carpet to perfectly slot into the door frame before proceeding to move forward.
Before reaching the bookshelf, Shiller took out two books and placed them on the table. Without looking back, he walked into his own workspace. As he put on his glasses, he flipped through a stack of documents and spoke.
"I'm not sure why you suddenly have an interest in psychoanalysis, but I must remind you, psychology is a very young discipline. The traditional masters you are familiar with are not historical figures."
"If you expect historical sages to provide you with ancient wisdom as the masters of mathematics and physics do, then you are indeed dreaming."
"Are you one of them?" Bruce sat on the sofa and noticed two glasses on the coffee table. The dried-out red wine stains proved that a previous guest had not departed very long ago, so he asked, "Did you have a guest before me?"
Shiller paused while flipping through his files, and said, "That has nothing to do with the topic of your visit today."
"Who was it? Greed?"
"No, a friend from afar."
Shiller came over and put a pile of materials he had retrieved from his memory in front of Bruce. Rather than sitting down, he went to the desk in the work area and began to clear the items on it.
Bruce squinted his eyes. He saw a half-folded envelope, tidy stacks of writing paper, a seal, and a candle for sealing wax on Shiller's desk. This proved that Shiller had been writing a letter to someone before Bruce knocked on the door.
"What were you doing at Monsanto Company?" Shiller asked, smoothing the crease of the just-folded envelope with his fingertips.
"Don't change the subject. How can you have guests other than another version of yourself?"
"The Dreamworld is vast, anyone can travel to and fro. Maybe they discovered this tower during their journey and stopped by to visit; and I happen to have free time to entertain them."
"Another Batman?"
"Bruce." Shiller stood at the desk, his finger still rested on the envelope, but he looked up at Bruce and said, "I was actually happy that you took the initiative to come to me for learning materials, but it seems that I had too high hopes for your feverish enthusiasm for psychology."
"Apart from the wine, what else did he give you?" Bruce leaned back on the sofa and turned to look at Shiller, asking.
"Half of a mystical equation, would you like to take a look at it?"
"Not interested, it's thoroughly rotten."
After tidying up the table, Shiller came out from behind the desk. He sat across Bruce, but Bruce seemed to hesitate for some reason. He seemed to weigh something in his mind for a while before asking, "Did you tell him about Thomas?"
"He must have seen it already."
"He saw everything." Bruce, with his deep blue eyes, stared into Shiller's, saying, "About me, about you, about Thomas, about this Gotham we're in, but I know nothing about him."
"Are you accusing me of hiding things from him?" Shiller didn't seem angry, he just moved the two cups aside, eliminating the barrier between him and Bruce.
He then leaned forward, elbows resting on his thighs, and hands clasped together, saying, "You can see it that way if you like. He is another me, and was supposed to be the future you."
"Someone has told me about this... can I pour a glass of water?"
Bruce stood up and walked over to the cup shelf against the wall. He picked up a cup and walked to the island platform, where he filled his cup with water from the kettle. He didn't return to the sofa, but stood behind the island platform, as if using the items on it as a barrier between him and Shiller.
"My future self will be a logically completely self-consistent madman, just like you. And you don't want me to become that, what about him?"
Bruce put the cup down. He rarely spoke such long sentences to anyone else, but the countless discourses and debates that had taken place in this room over the years had made him accustomed to the echo of his own voice in this space.
"If he says he doesn't want me to become him, then he is regretting it, which proves that he is not completely self-consistent. If he says he hopes that I become him, then you two shouldn't get along so well."
"You've successfully found a logical flaw again." In his original posture, Shiller turned his head to look at him, saying, "Like a good detective, as always."
"You're interested in the way we interact, but what I can tell you is that, to some extent, we are two mentally ill people with similar interests. Hence, we will never have such interactions, nor is there any need."
Bruce saw the calmness in Shiller's eyes, just like their countless academic discussions. There was a vast ocean in those gray eyes, calm as if it would never cause any ripples.
Thus, Bruce also calmed down. He gazed at Shiller and said, "You speak to him as an equal, but always manipulate me. I seem to lack a layer of armor compared to him. What is it?"
"Why don't you find out for yourself?"
Bruce suddenly seemed somewhat irritated, setting down his cup with a heavier thump that echoed with a clang.
Shiller got up and walked to the other side of the island counter, leaning on it with both hands while saying, "I knew better than to expect anything from your persistent learning enthusiasm, which feels like an incorrigible illness. If this was in the past, I wouldn't give you any hints."
Bruce looked up at him.
"But you really don't have to slit your own throat anymore."
Shiller poured himself a glass of water, Bruce inhaled deeply and sighed, seemingly impatient at whatever he was about to say, so he put it very briefly, "From the start, then, afterwards, only then did I… I've said this many times."
"Well, I think you should attempt a change of perspective. For instance, switch from being manipulated to becoming the manipulator."
"You do realize manipulating others is evil, right?"
"You're evil enough as it is."
Bruce suddenly laughed after a moment's pause his chest heaving and then he looked at Shiller and said, "That's the only place where I've bested him, isn't it?"
"And also the most critical part." Shiller raised his glass towards Bruce and said, "This kind of evil originates from me. It's my honor."
"Alright, so what do I do?"
Shiller shook his head, "The hints stop here, but based on my limited knowledge in mathematics and physics, half of that formula Batman gave might be regarding some fundamental rules of the cosmos."
Watching Bruce rush out of the room, Shiller revealed a smile.
"So, you were suggesting to Bruce from the start, which is why he formulated that plan and rushed to implement it?" Constantine said after hearing the whole process.
Then he remarked,"You used another Batman to provoke him? ...Okay, our Bruce is not entirely innocent either, forever young, never learns a lesson."
"I'm not boasting, but deceiving or violently coercing others is a quite different matter." Shiller put down his glass, took a puff of his cigar, then said, "I prefer to play with my cards on the table."
"Then have a laugh when others, even if they see through your means, are helpless and struggling because they are unable to control the emotions you stir up in them, and don't have a real choice but to follow the path you guide them to, right?"
"Partly true."
"That's absolutely wicked."
"Only the smart ones experience this." Shiller shook his head and said, "For the less clever fools, there's no frustration or conflict, only happiness, like that silly girl Amanda."
"She's never considered why I, being kind, gave her strategies against dangerous criminals, even though she caged me, implanted a nanomachine controller in me, and constantly offended me."
Shiller seemed to have some rare sentimentality, as if for a rare type of animal that was this rare. He lightly tapped the side of his glass and said, "Do you know? For the sufficiently stupid, relying on me doesn't cost anything, the mental agony I often bring people just simply doesn't exist if they can't feel it."
"Like Amanda, she's so desperate to pour her pain and anger from her past onto Elliot, when I gave her a strategy to put Elliot in a special detention cell to torture him in a justified way, she thought it was great."
"I recommended Bane, a colleague that Deathstroke introduced to me, and she happily accepted my suggestion. I said Galado would be good bait, so she used her connections in the FBI to throw Galado, who just escaped from Oliver's pursuit, into the designated cell."
"During the whole process, she didn't suspect anything, thinking everything was under her control, and found enormous satisfaction and joy in this illusion."
Shiller revealed a smile, held the glass with his pale finger-knuckles of his other hand, and took a sip of his drink, saying, "What I said is true, the fools love any savior they can rely on, only the intelligent ones think about killing god."
"It's kind of nice, isn't it?" Constantine shrugged, saying, "Being played and manipulated by someone much smarter than you isn't entirely a bad thing, At least Amanda's happy right now."
"Most smart people suffer because of their far-sightedness," Shiller slowly exhaled a puff of smoke and said, "For short-sighted people, what will happen tomorrow is always a mystery, so they can fully focus on the joy of today."
"But the pain of the smart ones isn't unreasonable, who can guarantee that good things will always happen in the future? Once the stupid ones become useless when something bad happens, the short-lived joy will cost them tenfold, a hundredfold."
Constantine raised an eyebrow, he finished the good wine in his glass like it was cheap whiskey, coughed twice, then said, "You think Amanda will be revenged upon by Bruce? But in the end, he heard your voice, he should understand that Amanda was just a tool."
"Of course, he understands." Shiller stood up and went to the wine cabinet to pick a bottle of wine, which indicated that this conversation was far from over.
Constantine sighed inwardly, just like Shiller said, all the manipulations from Shiller were out in the open, impossible to refuse. He wanted to leave now, but how could he refuse these excellent wines from Shiller's private collection?
Shiller sat back down on the sofa with the wine and wine opener in his hands. As he unwrapped the cork, he said, "In theory, Bruce has no need to have a bone to pick with Amanda."
"Unfortunately, apart from being evil, Bruce's tolerance also comes from me."