Displacement of thought is a measurable form of energy. When I discovered this, I could not let the trouble sleep. While I was exiled from the cathedrals of Science and declared a heretic by the priesthood, I continued my work.

My followers came from the seven cardinals of Knowledge. A seven-pointed star of humanity, my disciples. We found a way to measure the ancient pathways of the human mind. The dormant parts were mapped and then we studied them.

In our studies we found ways to stimulate the use of the dead zones. Anyone can activate the drawing of energy from their environment. Focus like the beginning of a yawn, imagine four circles coming together and visualize the star they make in the center. Concentrate on the four points and hold that steady, until they are as one. A dull roaring sound, like the echo of a seashell of the sea, will manifest in the inner ear. As that increases in intensity the body might become numb or tingle. The body is a rod, a conduit, drawing the energy the mind needs from the surrounding environment.

When I first accomplished a steady drawing, the plants around me withered and the fly on the window died. Later, we could measure the increase of electrical current in our minds. We named the surplus mental energy 'manna'.

Our prototype manna probes were large helmets with lots of wiring. With sufficient and discreet funding, we were able to improve them to mere headbands. We called them manna bands and reserved the term manna probe for devices we made to measure manna in the ambient pools. We learned that manna gathers where there is already manna present. That is why the human body can draw manna into itself and channel it up the spine into the mind.

I had written a publication and was rejected because I was already disgraced. Science had exiled me, I was an outcast, Apostate. In a darkness of thought I became bitter and resentful.

My disciples were merely reflections of my own insanity. Each of them embodied one of my failures, my inability to make anyone see things my way. They were proof that I could not be proven right.

We were filming when my head exploded.

At first the gathered researchers just blinked at my decapitated remains with bits of my skull and brains all over their white robes of the priesthood. Then there was screaming and panic and horror. When they had cleared the room, I floated free of my corpse, never to be tethered again. I had transcended the living, to live forever. All I needed was the energy of life, manna. I had drawn too much, more than I could contain.

As the energy was drawn through my body it became as me and I became as the energy. A darkness swirled around my dead body like a miniature thunderstorm of crackling black clouds, lined with pure glowing blue light. My consciousness became as the same cloud, visible to the eye and the camera.

Where I went the tendrils of it reached. There was no distance I could not reach. Each extension dissipated me, reducing me, slowing and contracting what I had become. I was afraid of my new state.

In horror and confusion - I lashed out. I found my fleeing disciples and fed upon their fears, restoring myself from their anguish. I became hungry, becoming what I ate. Fear is a kind of hunger, as hunger is a kind of fear.

In ravening night: I found a new existence. I could remain pooled in places, waiting like a cobweb in the darkness. I was in the shadows and the thoughts of those who were afraid. I felt their terror, a vibration signaling mealtime. I fed, drinking, sucking, taking from anyone who trembled in dread.

The nourishment was wrong, evil somehow. I knew I was becoming less human with each sip and each suck. I came from closets, eyes aglow, upon the sleeper, bringing nightmares. I came from the headphones, a silence, into the altar of the soul. I came from the chime of midnight, upon the priests of Science as they crafted deadly diseases with the taxes of those they would infect. I found evil to be a most satisfying meal.

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I held myself in horrible regard, learning to fear what I was becoming with each carcass of a human mind. I took their inequities and made banquet. Scientists were my favorite food, immoral, greedy and wise like devils. I whispered vile things into their thoughts and watched their eyes light up with internal Hellfire.

"Is one deadly disease and one contagious: two things or one? How much would the vaccine be worth? So easy, so gullible. They deserve to die by the score. You are a genius and deserve the wealth you would receive. Murder them with lies." I would say and the Scientist would smile at my words. As a demon I was more conscious than they were as men and women.

This was maddening, disgusting and the reflection of ultimate horror. I feared the existence, the pillars of Creation, the worm that I was, the mere words of Whisper. I became Whisper, I became shadow, I served only my own hunger.

"Whisper, be not my thoughts." She said. I hesitated. I looked at her identification badge.

"Dr. Alameen, you are no better than the others. Do as they do and listen to me." I spoke into her thoughts. She resisted and I felt a deeper fear. I was somehow trapped, trying to feed on something in her that I could not take my mouth away from. I had become stuck to something I could not chew. I had a mouthful of her, and I could not swallow it or spit it out. I was choking on her.

I panicked, realizing I would shrivel and die. I would wither as the plants, fall as the dead fly and dissipate like an ugly dark cloud. Everywhere she went, I was forced to go.

I could not use her greed, for she chose poverty and charity. She gave away her healing without accepting pay from those who could not afford her care. Then she went home and slept on a rug and ate a humble meal of chickpeas. I despised her meals and counted each of the tiny seeds, attempting to compare the number to her failure to feel avarice for my benefit. I could never finish counting by dawn.

When Dr. Alameen woke up rested and ready for another day working against me, I scattered my counted pile of seeds, no nearer to ending her horrid lack of selfishness.

"How dare you!" I hissed at her. She somehow ignored my challenge and knelt and prayed on a prayer rug. "Stop that, you are a scientist!"

My dread grew as I weakened from hunger and captivity. I rested on her shoulder, near her ear, worried she couldn't hear me.

"You are quiet today, Whisper." She glanced at her shoulder in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. How could she see me? I felt exposed, naked and ashamed of my form. I hid myself, mutating and becoming even less, in her eyes and in my powers.

I appealed to her immorality, a desperate effort.

Whenever I tempted her to think darkly or to reject those who were different, she sighed and quoted absurd poetry that described her world in proverbs. When her own thoughts failed to see the good in others, she reverted to the teachings of her faith. I was doomed.

"Curse you, Dr. Alameen. Damn you!" I tried to burrow into her and found that I could not get past some sort of strange light. I had once held such light and when I tried to get past it: I was burned by it. In pain and torment: I withdrew, terrified of my eventual demise.

"All are blessed. All are loved." Dr. Alameen seemed to be telling me. She held nothing against me. She called me Whisper and knew me. She was not afraid of me; her faith had protected her from my predations.

"Not I." I said. It was then that she decided to educate me. I did not have to die the final death.

"Those that live forever are a part of the world. Pillars, walls, doors. This is your path, Whisper. Choose not disobedience. You are this, be truthful. Forfeit your evil ways and repent of them. Serve the One Truth, cease your lies." Dr. Alameen prophesized.

I was very proud and willing to die, rather than face my greatest fear. My greatest fear was to accept that I had accomplished something so great and that it did not belong to me. I was supposed to be a servant of something that forgave and loved. A being that asked me to accept the pain of responsibility.

As I became as almost nothing at all, starved by her, I faced a choice. I would turn to distributing goodness, painfully, sacrificially, my own essence of self. Or I would quietly and painlessly die, ceasing to exist.

I was more afraid to go on as a recognizable spirit. The shame and horror were one. To give of oneself is to grow in magnitude and become less of oneself. I preferred to die intact.

Dr. Alameen was dying. She had grown old during my time with her. Always she was patient with me; she never cast me out. Instead, she always told me that there was still good in me.

"There is yet good in you." Dr. Alameen told me. Then she breathed her last and I was free of her. I had become so small and weak that I just hovered there, waiting for someone to come along.

When I finally had a host, I remained silent. I saw the crumbs of sin and left them. This person is how I regained my humanity. How I came to speak again, to tell my story. The person was tempted to feed me, and I felt no fear when I whispered:

"Be good, do no evil."