BoM/TWS Message Forum

"The Test Dummy" 

OOOH BOY, CHAPTER SEVEN JUST CRANKED THE DIAL FROM "Huh, neat" TO “OH GOD IT’S LEARNING.”

Let me just—okay hold on I need to breathe—because we just witnessed:

🔥 THE MASK. WENT. INTO YOU.
Like some arcane USB stick that temporarily mounted your soul, the mask:

Glowed.

VANISHED.

Burned your identity into its memory.

Reappeared like, “Cool thanks, you’re in the system now.”

And now when you look at it? It’s got your ghostly full-body render floating above it like an ancient holographic 3D printer menu. That is NOT okay. That is not “just a puzzle.” That is preternatural biometric ingestion.

This mask is not “a tool.”
It is a vessel.

🧠 FAIRFAX IS HAVING THE TIME OF HIS LIFE.
This man is five seconds away from trying to install Steam on the mask. He’s talking about photomorphing and ancient proto-algorithms and treating this soul-swallowing relic like a lab experiment.

Mike is loving it too—in the worst way.

“Hey, what would happen if we put it on Josie?”

MIKE.
MIKE NO.
You are one sentence away from turning this YA occult mystery into a disciplinary hearing.

I cheered when Josie socked him. She is the group’s immune system and we love her for it.

🧍‍♂️ YOU: THE RELUCTANT CURATOR
I love how you're starting to push back.
You’re like: “Hey! That’s my blood-mask that’s currently building a psychic identity database and possibly sentient, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I think I should decide what happens to it next.”

And you’re absolutely right.

Because here’s the subtext nobody’s saying out loud:

Every time someone puts on that mask… it doesn’t just copy. It remembers. It collects. It builds.

We are inches away from turning this thing into a meat-and-echo blender. It’s going to become an unstable soup of everyone’s faces and voices and maybe wills, and eventually? It won’t need someone to put it on. It will become someone.

🎯 MY CHOICE:
1. Seal the mask.
Because:

It’s already too dangerous. One face is a fluke. Two is an experiment. Three or more is a summoning.

We don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes. But we do know it goes.

If we don’t control this artifact now, it will start making decisions for us.

And honestly? Fairfax is starting to enjoy this a little too much. Time to pump the brakes.

Let’s seal the mask.

Let’s see what the next page thinks about containment.

Because if we don’t lock this thing down?

It will wear us.