Jack had just finished speaking when the scene on the screen slowly darkened, and some large letters showed up - "Game Over".
"What?!"
Everyone was confused, including Owen. He had been busy trying to break up a fight and hadn't noticed what was playing on the screen.
And the others, too occupied with fighting and trying to separate the brawlers, hadn't paid any attention to the state of the game. How could it be over so abruptly?
Thankfully, the avatar of the winner was always displayed at the end of each game round. When the blackness in the center of the screen slowly dissipated, the figure that appeared was none other than Shiller.
"A bit stunned, aren't you?" Jack said with a sigh.
Batman glanced over at him, a tangible look in his eyes. Jack met his gaze and said, "I might have figured it out a little bit earlier than you all did, but not by much."
"Then why didn't you say something?" Red Robin asked, frowning.
"Figured out what? Didn't say what?" Both Nightwing and Red Hood were utterly confused, not understanding what was going on.
Red Robin rubbed his eyes hard, massaged his forehead, and ran a hand through his hair. He sighed, "I felt something was off earlier, like I was having difficulty breathing, but it wasn't severe enough to concern me."
"What?" Nightwing voiced his confusion again.
Batman paused as he was retracting his grapple, as if understanding something.
"Hypnosis is Shiller's forte," Jack said.
"In a certain sense, it's like fighting fire with fire," he said, glancing at Owen. "Our situation is the same as theirs."
"When the conditions for victory are vague or violence won't bring direct benefits, no one chooses to resort to it. But, looked at from another perspective, in such a scenario as long as one person decides to use violence, all will be caught in a brawl."
"What do you mean? Are you saying that the fights both on and off the screen were both caused by Shiller's hypnosis? Stop joking around. How could that be possible?" Nightwing said, his face filled with disbelief.
"I heard from Batman that Professor Rodriguez is quite an impressive psychology professor. But I also heard from him that hypnosis isn't as simple as it seems - it requires a calm environment and cooperation from the patient. How could someone be hypnotized so easily?"
"This isn't hypnosis, it's just a psychological suggestion," Jack shook his head, grabbing a fragment of the spectator stand to sit on. He sniffled, and then asked, "What did you guys feel the first time you saw the magic array drawn by Shiller?"
Everyone scrunched their brows in thought. Peter said with a knotted brow, "What feeling? Just thought it was pretty ugly."
"So, it made you uncomfortable, right?"
Peter, looking confounded, said, "Not that I'm purposely belittling Doctor Shiller's drawing skills. But it's clear that the array he drew had a perfect circle frame. However, the text and patterns inside were misaligned. Even the text on the same circle had varied elevations and some of the, overlapped."
Peter shook his head and shivered, "I found it overwhelming, it was discomforting to look at."
Owen brought up the first and second arrays that Shiller drew and projected them on the screen.
Only Spider Man, with his enhanced vision from the spider mutation, had been able to see the details clearly. But now, with Owen's zoomed-in projections, everyone else could see it too. The array's construction could not be described as methodical, but rather as something so strange it could grant you the title of Pope from an evil god.
As Peter described, the frames of the two arrays were perfect circles and the text inside, at first glance, seemed to form a circle too. Yet upon close inspection, major inconsistencies were uncovered.
The text was legible and the symbols clear, but inexplicably every stroke seemed off. The high strokes weren't high, the low strokes weren't low, strokes that should connect weren't connected, and strokes that shouldn't connect were forced together.
Any stroke extending from one character would embed in some part of the next character, and the subsequent character would distort the previous one. It was as if each character was the deformity of an unborn child.
This, being an alien language, was beyond their comprehension. They didn't notice any obvious errors at first sight, but upon closer inspection, they realized the characters didn't resemble human script at all.
After all, human scripts generally follow alignment rules, but the texts in the array just did the opposite. It was unnerving for everyone used to writing English.
Upon closer inspection, according to the ink's drying sequence on the first array, Shiller initially tried to write the characters a bit more orderly. However, as he progressed, the distortion became more extreme, as if he was experimenting with how upsetting he could make the inscription.
Then by the time he drew the second array and the suspected false evidence, his bizarre, discomforting characters had fully matured. At first sight, they were off-putting, then awkward, and after several moments, they became dizzying.
"Could this be some kind of magic?" Robin frowned, "But even magic can't affect us through the screen."
"These words mean nothing." Jack shook his head. "Even if written like this, they have no substantial function - their only purpose is to make the reader more and more uncomfortable."
"Think about it, how long have we been staring at these so-called ancient relics forged by Shiller?"
"Not too...Wait a minute, indeed we haven't looked at one fake relic for too long, but how many has he actually forged?"
The team began to flip through the previous film footage, with Owen. This twisted font served as an identification mark, making it much easier to identify fake relics. They then realized the quantity of fake relics exceeded their imagination.
They had previously mentioned that there were two branches in the Guiding Technology Group headquarters, both of which had found some ancient relics. But there were more files describing these ancient objects and recording the text left on them.
Most of the things printed in these files were real, but the fragments scattered throughout the notes supposedly left by old-time scientists were almost all forgeries by Shiller.
And he didn't start from scratch. He intentionally added a few words next to someone else's decent notes, making it look like an annotation left by the scholar himself. There were also some by the printed files and he had tampered with the shape of some runes in places that were easy to erase and rewrite.
The quantity wasn't too high, but the appearance was far too frequent. As they continuously followed the clues, these awkward, twisted runes were always in their sight.
"Before, I was wondering how these aliens could let such ugly text be passed down for so many years." Peter said, holding his forehead: "And I felt that some characters within this note made me uncomfortable, but I thought this was due to lack of strictness in the notes."
"He is inciting our emotions." Batman stated.
Jack snapped his fingers, pointing at Batman as if to say 'well said', then continued, "Entering an unfamiliar environment to play an unknown game, and being at risk of elimination at any time, none of us here are cowardly, but the implicit mental pressure is inescapable."
"An overwhelming desire to accomplish something, or being in an unsafe environment for a long time, can lead to latent anxiety."
"Short-term latent anxiety won't cause much harm, but if you are in a state of latent anxiety for a long time, it will evolve into real anxiety. There's also a situation where accumulated latent mental pressure and anxiety suddenly explode, causing an emotional breakdown."
"For instance, when we see a previously expressionless passerby suddenly creating a scene, this might not entirely be because something unbearable has just occurred. It could very well be the final straw that broke the camel's back."
Jack turned back to the screen and said, "This is the last straw."
Peter turned away and said, "So, Dr. Shiller is using these uncomfortable patterns to directly ignite our inner latent anxieties."
"No, these patterns actually serve to blur perception. When you see something uncomfortable, you instinctively associate more discomfort with it. And when you do something with this mindset, the effects are inevitable."
Turning back around to look at Red Hood, Jack continued, "For someone mentally and emotionally healthy, psychological suggestion isn't easy, but for someone mentally unstable and not in the right frame of mind, lighting the bomb becomes much simpler."
Everyone knew he was referring to Red Hood, but Batman was beginning to wonder whether he could have found a better way to prevent the fight between Jack and Red Hood, but in that moment, he made a more violent choice.
Was it his own choice? Or was he being subtly guided by others all along? How many things in this world, like the magic circles drawn by Dr. Shiller, are invisibly leading him towards violence? Are they man-made or natural?
There was a moment's silence in the projection room. Several people were pondering this question. Are our choices actually ours? Or are we merely a collection of our past and present? Are our choices merely a product of our experiences and environments?
Peter suddenly snapped out of his deep thought and said, "No, no, no! Don't think about this! Stop now!"
Although everyone was puzzled by his outburst, they were all startled awake by his sudden yelling. Peter immediately put his hands up and started to explain, "Don't overthink it, because that's exactly what Dr. Shiller wants!"
"He'd first create a massive scheme, involve a whole lot of people, constantly guide them to make the choices he wants and then, once the scheme is over, get them to reflect."
"Reflecting on why they were led by the nose, questioning if they are truly making their own decisions, contemplating their position in the overall environment, questioning their past and future, and the meaning of life."
"But these questions can't be answered through reflection, so the more one thinks, the more confused they would become. The ultimate result is going to see a psychologist - and Dr. Shiller's fees are exorbitant - two million U.S. dollars an hour!"
"Hiss!"
Everyone drew in a sharp breath.
Red Hood suddenly remembered the bill Dr. Shiller had given Batman for his treatment fees.
He then hastily said, "Quick, stop thinking! We can't all go see a psychologist - even Wayne Enterprises would go bankrupt!"
Meanwhile, Batman's attention shifted to Peter. As always, he didn't let any smart and able youngsters slip through his fingers.
"Alright, let's first take a look at how Shiller won." Owen clapped his hands, bringing everyone's attention back to the task at hand.