sacred sounds

So here's the question:

Can Graham directly make people kill themselves, or does he personally kill them, or does he control someone else into doing it? We never find this out, as far as I know. The note in Hidaka's pocket, "I am the faceless spy", is written in unrecognizable handwriting, which Graham could have either written himself, forced Hidaka to write in strange handwriting, or forced an unknown third party to write.

As to the limits of his power, it seems like he had to take several days to program Hoshino and Yamato into the very complex plot of taking over the city. As we see in the rest of the game, this was compatible with Hoshino and Yamato's original personalities and wishes, but the BBS thread still says it took days. (Iirc Yamato is basically a missing person during this time, but Hoshino is not noticed missing.)

Based on all this, and the way that FORT describes Tanaka being Hijacked, I think one thing becomes clear that is never laid out in the game itself: Graham's "Hijack" is not his personal psychic ability à la Atsuki's scraping or Natsuki's Viewing, nor is it the ability he uses to directly control Mika, Yamato and Hoshino. Hijacking is exclusive to Graham, but it appears to be the result of extended infection with his Silent, Oce. I think the mind control is his unnamed personal psychic ability. It does not let him replace anyone's memories or personality, it takes a long time to get people to do complicated and dangerous things, and it doesn't seem to even let him force people into ego-dystonic actions (eg, Mika couldn't be forced to knowingly hurt Rui; she had to be given a simple instruction with no knowledge of the consequences). This isn't what Hijacking is supposed to be like, and some people he controls are never infected with Oce at all. So, despite the name making it sound like he controls them, Graham doesn't seem to have much power over Hijacked people at all. He cannot directly make them do anything; they've just been completely eroded by Oce and are kind of operating on their own.

Now, how does this work when Honoka and Hibiki are NOT infected with his Silent, but Honoka is explicitly said to show traces of Hijacking if she dies???? I think this is just a writing error. I think she was supposed to be infected with Oce, not Maggot. She does meet Graham; she doesn't meet Edward. Graham clearly was supposed to infect her with his Silent in their meeting, but that got mixed up during one rewrite or another. She acts more like Tanaka does, not like Mika, Yamato, Hamana and Hoshino, all of whom have a specific thing Graham wants them to do that furthers his plans instead of just being random chaos like Tanaka and Tazaki. So Tanaka, Tazaki, and Honoka are all said to be Hijacked in-game, and this is not the same thing as Graham's direct and unnamed mind control ability.

Oh, and he can also separately erase memories, which is what he does to Melody, but not to anyone else, and this is different from Liu Yee's power. And may have made Hidaka kill himself somehow, which isn't compatible with his mind control powers that we see used on Mika. Okay, that's not confusing at all.

There's another question that comes up during the game: why didn't Yamato show up to meet Hoshino in the next town over? A few people at FORT suggest it's because he doesn't trust Hoshino, but Liu Yee offers two possibilities: it's either that, or Yamato is busy with something. Because when Yamato shows up at the school, he clearly has completely different programming from Hoshino. Hoshino showed no awareness of psychics, and Yamato doesn't say a word about taking over the police station/Seagull or starting a revolution. Either their programming was different from the start (in which case Hoshino was never meant as more than a distraction), or Graham smelled trouble and pulled Yamato out of the city to redirect him with a new story.

Since Yamato is just planning to shoot Rui and Nami dead, and we know Graham wants their powers, it could be that he was unable to control Yamato enough to overpower his natural instincts. I think the evidence points that way: even though he has unprecedented mind control powers, he still can't *outright* control anyone. My favorite little discovery from retranslating is that Yamato, the math teacher, starts ranting about statistical anomalies while he's holding everyone hostage. So Graham's personal mind control has to be filtered directly through the target's original personality.

Here's my guess: Yamato and Hoshino obviously took more time to brainwash because of the complexity of the orders. I think they originally had the same programming--somehow Graham picked up enough about them to know that Yamato has working guns, and Hoshino's JSDF training would make him somewhat useful as well. I don't know how far they ever could've gotten with just two guys, but for Graham's purposes he just needs enough chaos to flush out the psychics he wants.

Liu Yee is able to control Hoshino enough to get him to make a phone call, which is surprising in the middle of a plot that insists outright mind control is impossible... apparently this is a very minor action. I think that not only does Yamato smell a rat when he gets this call, but he contacts Graham about it, and Graham reprograms him with something simpler, something that only requires him to learn a little new information. Since Yamato doesn't twig that Graham himself is also a psychic, maybe Graham just told him outright about the psychics in Kisaragi, and only used his powers to keep him Yamato thinking, "hey... why did I just call this guy, anyway?" From there, he just has to make Yamato paranoid enough to put his own life on the line.

In fact, from the way Yamato is talking near the end, it almost sounds like Graham showed him a glimpse of that sea of Silent we keep hearing about in these chapters. But it might be impossible for him to perceive that, since he's not psychic like Atsuki and Rui. At any rate, he's genuinely frightened and seems to be seeing himself as a hero just like Hoshino was--we don't know for sure how Yamato was feeling about the whole global revolution idea that Graham was feeding them earlier. The key here is that *both* of them openly state they're willing to die for their respective plans, which is sort of in keeping with Hoshino's previous character, but certainly not the Yamato we see in the early chapters, who was laughing at the idea of suicide. Maybe Graham has some ability to lead people to the point where they can accept suicide even if it's an ego-dystonic thought? If so, that would explain how he kills Kagami, Hidaka, Pink and P.

Another point about Graham, Hoshino and Yamato is that this sequence shows us Graham doesn't need to infect people with his Silent in order to control them. In fact, they can be infected by someone completely different and he can still control them.

Tanaka: infected by his Silent (Oce) for some time, presumably since Graham's arrival in Kisaragi or shortly after. His infection is so advanced that his original self/consciousness is completely gone, but the infection is able to maintain his cover personality. Because Graham can't overwrite you completely, Tanaka was *always* a serial killer and his only new behavior related to the infection is the reckless actions that get him caught.

Hamana: always a thug, but it doesn't seem like he was outright involved with the yakuza as a killer or even as muscle. Just kind of a lowlife who was okay with threatening people. Graham can give him somewhat complicated orders like "bring me this person", but that's presumably through direct mind control that is separate from the Silent infection. and like Tanaka, he reaches a point where he's indifferent to his own safety. Only *one* of his infections is from Graham, but Graham is able to mind control him regardless. It seems like the Oce infection was what really pushed him to a place where he would endanger himself, though.

Based on that, it may be that Graham uses Silent infections strategically to make some people okay with endangering themselves in the execution of his instructions, and otherwise his direct mind control is somewhat limited.

Hoshino: never infected by Oce. Also had some weirdly invested feelings towards Yamato mixed in with the fascist crash out. It's unclear whether Graham programmed that in, or whether it naturally arose just from... I don't know, standing near Yamato while they were getting brainwashed? He was clearly isolated and desperate for friendship, and probably had been for a long time, though he was willing to be friendly towards any customers who met his standards of behavior--Atsuki can get approving interactions and Nami reports that he was always friendly to her. However, the last Thought that you read from him asks whether Yamato has tipped somebody off, so the feelings, whatever they were, can't have been that deeply rooted.

Oddly, Hoshino's infection is from Edward's Maggot, but he never shows any of the symptoms Maggot is supposed to produce. Apparently Graham's control can supersede that, even without using Oce to overwrite another infection.

Yamato: Never infected by Graham; in fact, his infection from Clymenus is the strongest proof in the game that most Silent can't totally wipe out the original personality. Instead of becoming depressed and suicidal, which is supposed to be Clymenus' main effect, Yamato is so lacking in empathy that he interprets this infection as "go and find some depressed and suicidal people to laugh at". When he pulls his gun on a bunch of teenagers over a week after you clear his infection, it has nothing to do with Silent, and it gives the impression that Graham's powers only had to nudge him into not caring about his *own* safety.

When Edward controls someone, meanwhile, the effects are very different. He can destroy someone's mind, but not erase it like Liu Yee or Hibiki. What we see in Takano's dying Thoughts is not the need to kill himself, but an attempt to *save* himself--it just happens to send him into Chitose Pond, which he perceives as safety. So Edward can't directly implant commands to take certain actions.

Maggot is also unique in that it can awaken telepathic powers, as it did with Hibiki. Touma always develops the ability to read minds within a day of removing Maggot, and Sayuri and Takuya both have bad routes if you ignore their infections. They both develop the power to read minds in that case, but they don't deal with it as well as Touma, and become permanently angry and borderline violent because they can tell what everyone is thinking of them. You can remove their Silent infections up until chapter 19, and It's not clear if they keep the mind reading abilities if you do so. Hibiki does keep some level of psychic ability after Liu Yee eats his infection, but Honoka never develops anything in the good ending where you remove Maggot from her. As with Hoshino, Honoka never specifically mentions having the dreams or sensations of unreality that other Maggot victims talk about. I assume Graham's mind control was overriding that.

Speaking of which: now that we know Honoka isn't supposed to have killed him, how does Hibiki manage to die in his bad ending, anyway? The only difference in timelines is your interactions with Honoka. My guess is that if you don't deal with it, Maggot jumps back into him from Honoka while he's comatose, and his mind is too weak to handle an infection, so he dies. It would be nice if they'd explained this in the game!

Here's my final guess:

Graham: Can deliberately infect people with the Silent Oce. Long term infection leads to something unique: people willing to act on violent impulses outside the confines of their usual personality. All infectees eventually develop the same thoughts after enough time. This is what's called Hijacking. Despite the name, this only describes erosion of the self due to Oce's infection. Graham can also, separately, mind control people with specific instructions. This is not Hijacking, it's a different ability, presumably his individual psychic power. He can also erase memories to some extent.