gen has been unusually resistant against the dreamshape's infiltration, delaying it's hatching by a good decade.
This means that if there was a mass deployement, for the majority of people, the hatching occured years ago. And given that such a thing would have likely had major societal effects, some of the implants or thoughtforms should have had memory of it. So, either that too got filtered out, every staple has been doing the dream resistance thing, or the shape has filtered itself out of memory.
Or Harmony/Miss Normal was singled out because she's a Monadic agent and most of the staples are, in fact, benign.
Yeah, I don't buy that LETHE itself is fully subverted, and
definitely don't buy that it's mass-converting its populace. A big group performing mass reprogramming of highly capable, PTSD-ridden war veterans? The gnosis-FBI (Monadic agents) would have to be absolutely asleep at the wheel to not be scrutinizing it closely, and we know they're out and doing their jobs. The 'bedbugs' have been actively keeping the Geometers and Hydra at bay for a thousand years, which implies a good level of baseline competence. If it were that easy, the planet would already be a trapezoid.
A corroborating bit is D5h's behavior itself: our parasite is
self-confident, but not
broadly so. It's taking great care to integrate seamlessly into broader Illuminatan society, preserving Miss Normal's outward facade, and makes no mention of joining a broader group or infiltrator network. If LETHE had been mass-converting its patients, we'd be in a
They Live sort of situation, but D5h is acting instead like it's in a John le Carre novel.
Similarly, let's not forget that 'corporation' on Illuminata shouldn't be taken at face value. This is an entire society built up from the ashes of what we know, and its mirror of organic humanity is...let's call it 'somewhat skewed.' This is not to say that the Morow-fork running LETHE is somehow immune to corruption, as evidenced by the Dreamscape interrupt back in the 'Red Sun' chapter. However, we shouldn't assume that LETHE is post-postmodern private equity willing to sell out the planet for a slightly better quarterly return, lol
The LETHE Corporation is certainly suborned, but I suspect it's at the individual project level (the whole 'hylic treatment' program) rather than completely through and through. The gnosis-FBI would certainly perform pneumatic-run checkups on LETHE's patients, looking for dreamscape or Hydra infiltration, but hylics treated using some weird-ass experimental therapy? 'A dreamshape infiltration using recently-developed Nurglite poison to bypass a hylic's psychic protections' is an awfully niche little trick, and a forgiveable oversight for the denizens of Origen Station.
At the same time, there's nothing stopping a suborned R&D head or the like from subverting
other hylics, so we shouldn't assume that we're the only Trojan Horse out there. If the dreamshapes use their new agents to make runs on Dis like D5h is doing with us, they won't leave behind much incriminating evidence either. Thank you, Noosphere, for blowing such a key actor wide open.
