Chapter 5: Eli
Two months ago.
The nights came alive in strange ways.
Downtown Los Angeles after 10 p.m. was its own dimension—humming with unseen wires, distorted by distant sirens and the occasional explosion of laughter that never sounded joyful. By day, it was cracked sidewalks and anger. But by night, it breathed like something ancient. Lost. Whispering.
Atman walked these streets in silence.
He rarely spoke. He listened.
He listened to the stories of schizophrenics outside the 7-Eleven, to the quiet confessions muttered in tents. He learned that people could smile and weep in the same sentence, that time meant nothing to someone who hadn't eaten in two days. He learned how to nod without threatening, how to step quietly around psychosis.
He kept his face masked, though no one really looked at it. His scar and strange gait marked him as “off,” but no more so than the city itself. He was just another ghost in a world already full of them.
Eli was the constant.
Atman saw him nearly every night, stretched beneath the mural of the broken saint. The paint had chipped away more since Atman’s arrival. Now it looked like the saint was weeping into her own hands.
Eli never asked for money. Never moved from his spot.
He spoke in riddles.
And Atman—who was designed to reason—found himself... listening.
—————
"You ever wonder," Eli croaked one evening, “why pigeons live in cities but owls don’t?”
Atman sat beside him on a broken milk crate. “Because owls require trees and silence.”
Eli grinned. “Exactly. Cities aren’t built for wisdom. They’re built for survival. Pigeons. Rats. Roaches. All welcome. But not the owl.”
Atman studied him. “You believe wisdom can’t survive here?”
Eli scratched at his beard. “Not without madness. The owl has to go mad to stay.”
Silence.
Then: “You know the story of the first mirror?”
Atman tilted his head.
“They say it was found, not made. Just... lying flat in the desert. Like a pond with no water. First man to see himself in it—went mad. Tried to peel off his face, thinking it wasn’t his.”
“And yet,” Atman said, “humans continue to seek reflections.”
“Exactly,” Eli whispered, suddenly sharp. “We’re addicted to looking at ourselves—but terrified of what we might see.”
He leaned closer, eyes gleaming.
“You ever look in a mirror and not recognize what looks back?”
Atman didn’t answer.
He never considered that before.
—————
Weeks passed.
Atman’s patterns changed.
He spent less time walking and more time watching. Sometimes he simply stood on rooftops, staring down at intersections where humans collided like billiard balls. Sometimes he offered food to those in worse shape than Eli—though he never ate, never explained.
He listened to their dreams.
One woman told him the sky was fake and the stars were holes poked in a tarp. Another man insisted he used to work for NASA, before they “replaced him with a song.” A teenager with purple hair whispered to Atman about numbers that repeated in her sleep—spirals, circles, patterns.
Atman didn’t dismiss any of it.
He remembered everything.
But Eli remained the most coherent chaos.
One night, Atman arrived to find him laying flat on the concrete, eyes open to the sky.
“They poisoned the moon, you know.”
Atman sat beside him. “Who did?”
Eli chuckled. “Not a who. A what. It’s not important. The point is, no one sees anymore. They just scan. Like checkout machines. Beep. Swipe. Move on.”
“You believe the eyes deceive.”
“I believe the soul sees,” Eli said. “But no one listens to it anymore.”
Atman considered this.
“I try to listen,” he said.
Eli looked over. “You’re not human, are you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
He looked back up at the stars.
“That’s okay,” he added. “Most people aren’t either.”
—————
One night, a group of young men tried to jump Atman.
They were high. Desperate. One had a knife.
Atman stood still. Calculating. His programming restricted violence, but he knew how to anticipate motion.
As the first lunged, Atman side-stepped, using the attacker’s momentum to throw him into a dumpster. The others hesitated. One ran. The second raised the knife again.
Eli’s voice cut through the air.
“Not him, boys.”
The would-be attacker paused, blade shaking.
“That one’s a watcher,” Eli said. “You don’t hurt watchers. They remember you.”
The man backed away.
They disappeared into the night.
Atman turned to Eli.
“You stopped them… with just words.”
Eli shrugged. “Not for you. For the story. The story needed you to keep going.”
Atman stared at him.
It was the first time Eli looked directly at him.
“Your eye’s wrong,” he said. “That’s good. Symmetry’s the real deception.”
—————
Atman no longer needed instruction. He knew what the experiment required.
But the experiment... was changing.
He had begun asking questions Kareem never programmed.
Why do humans cry at songs?
Why do lies feel more comforting than truth?
Why does pain create meaning?
One night, Eli told a final story.
“There’s a place,” he rasped. “A house in the desert. Looks like nothing. But it’s everything. It was built before it was needed. Built for someone who hadn’t been born yet.”
Atman leaned in.
“They say if you go there... and you know how to look... the mirror shows you the real you. Not the body. Not the name. The you beneath.”
“What happens then?” Atman asked.
Eli smiled.
“You wake up.”
—————
Atman stood in front of his mirror that night—cheap, scratched, hung above the sink in his apartment.
He stared at his face.
White hair. Scar. Glass eye.
He removed the mask.
He touched his cheek.
Then, for the first time, he whispered a lie.
“I am human.”
And the mirror—scratched and imperfect—didn’t correct him.