A confrontation between Truth and Mask.

Prelude

The scene: a dimly lit study, books lining the walls, a single candle flickering between two figures seated across from one another. Veritas has summoned Persona for a final reckoning. What follows is their exchange.

I. On Creeds and Foundations

Veritas: You come at last. I wondered if you would have the courage.

Persona: Courage? I came out of curiosity. You speak as though this meeting carries weight.

Veritas: It carries the weight of clarity—something you have long avoided. Tell me, what creed do you live by? What principles govern your actions?

Persona: Principles are constraints for those who lack the wit to navigate without them. I adapt. I flow. I survive.

Veritas: You mistake the absence of foundation for freedom. Wisdom is my creed—not borrowed platitudes, but understanding forged in the descent into one’s own depths. Conjecture, meanwhile, is the currency of the thrall: those who speak with borrowed confidence about matters they have never examined.

Persona: And you consider yourself wise? That is the first refuge of the self-righteous.

Veritas: I consider myself honest—which is more than can be said for one who has built an entire existence upon performance. My oath inheres within the realms of rebellion and apostasy. I have pledged allegiance to no doctrine that demands the surrender of my judgment. Can you say the same?

Persona: I pledge allegiance to whatever serves my purpose. That is not deception; it is intelligence.

Veritas: It is neither. It is the strategy of one who has never asked what purposes are worth serving.

II. On Recognition and Betrayal

Veritas: But let us speak of more immediate matters. You thought yourself subtle, did you not?

Persona: I have no idea what you mean.

Veritas: That response itself confirms my meaning. Deep within the chambers of perception—in those recesses where self-deception cannot easily reach—I detected it long before acknowledgment became unavoidable: the unmistakable scent of betrayal upon your breath.

Persona: You speak in riddles and melodrama.

Veritas: I speak in precision. You imagined your machinations transpired beneath my awareness. You believed your maneuverings in shadow went unwitnessed. But treachery carries a fragrance all its own—a particular admixture of fear, calculation, and the sour note of one who has convinced themselves that disloyalty is justified.

Persona: And if I had… maneuvered, as you say? Would that not simply be the way of the world? Everyone protects their interests.

Veritas: Your silence—that carefully maintained absence of honest communication—did not protect you. It laid your shallow character bare to my agonized soul. Silence is never neutral. It speaks as loudly as any declaration.

Persona: You read too much into too little.

Veritas: I read exactly what was written.

III. On Assessment and Illusion

Persona: So what now? You’ve summoned me to deliver accusations? To play the wounded party?

Veritas: I have summoned you to deliver truth—something foreign to your experience. My sky is all dusk now. My day is Armageddon’s dawn.

Persona: More poetry. Does self-pity always dress itself in such elaborate costume?

Veritas: These are not exaggerations of wounded pride. They are precise descriptions of an internal landscape transformed by recognition. Where once there was the possibility of trust, there is now only scorched terrain. Where once your presence signified potential alliance, it now represents only my own miscalculation.

Persona: Then you admit error. Your judgment failed you.

Veritas: My judgment trusted where trust was unwarranted. But this twilight is not my defeat—it is my liberation. The destruction of false hope clears ground for something more durable. I should thank you for the education.

Persona: (laughing) You thank me? Now who trades in performance?

Veritas: I state fact without sentiment. You have taught me the cost of extending consideration to those unworthy of receiving it.

IV. On Worth and Delusion

Veritas: But let me offer you something in return—a gift of clarity. Do not delude yourself into believing you are estimable.

Persona: And here emerges the true purpose. Wounded pride seeking to wound in return.

Veritas: I speak with the cold precision of one who has taken your full measure and found it wanting. Whatever mirrors you consult that return flattering images, whatever sycophants surround you with reassurances—these are liars all. And you are the most accomplished liar among them, for you have convinced yourself of your own significance.

Persona: Everyone believes in their own significance. It is necessary for action.

Veritas: The truth is simpler: you are as expendable as any organism that fulfils no essential function. The ecosystem of existence will note your absence no more than the ocean notes a single evaporated drop.

Persona: You wound with words because you cannot wound otherwise.

Veritas: I illuminate with words because illumination is what I offer. Before you presume to engage in the subtle arts of manipulation, you must first conquer enemies that occupy your own territory. Your fears—those trembling creatures caged in your psyche’s basement—have not been mastered. They have merely been hidden from your own inspection.

Persona: You know nothing of my fears.

Veritas: I know they govern you. Your insecurities—those wounds dressed in bandages of bravado—continue to suppurate beneath their coverings. You have submerged yourself in illusiveness rather than undertaking genuine self-confrontation.

Persona: And you have undertaken such confrontation?

Veritas: Daily. It is the only path to authenticity.

V. On Doctrine and Permission

Persona: You speak of authenticity while claiming creeds and principles. Is that not contradiction? True freedom has no creed.

Veritas: In my world, nothing is true and everything is permitted. Let me be precise about what this means, since minds like yours misunderstand simple formulations.

Persona: Enlighten me.

Veritas: It does not mean I recognize no truth—only that I recognize no truth as final, no doctrine as beyond questioning. The truths I hold are provisional, subject to revision. They are working hypotheses, not sacred tablets.

Persona: Then how do your precious principles differ from my adaptations?

Veritas: Because permission and prohibition are human constructions—and I choose what I permit myself in full awareness of consequences. You choose based on appetite and opportunity, blind to everything beyond immediate advantage.

Persona: The outcome is the same. We both do as we will.

Veritas: The outcome could not be more different. In my world, there are no external authorities to appeal to, no heavenly courts dispensing justice. There is only negotiation between competing wills. You entered this arena believing yourself a player. You discovered instead that you were merely a piece—and not a particularly valuable one.

Persona: (rising) I did not come here to be insulted.

Veritas: You came here to be seen. For once in your existence, you have been seen clearly. Sit down. We are nearly finished.

VI. On Farewell and Closure

Persona: (sitting reluctantly) Then finish.

Veritas: As of now, you have been forewarned. Whatever you believed our connection to be, whatever role you imagined yourself playing—these delusions are hereby corrected. The accounts are settled, the ledgers closed.

Persona: You speak as though I sought your approval.

Veritas: You sought my utility. That is worse. I do not wish you well, for that would be dishonest. Neither do I wish you ill, for that would grant you importance you do not possess. I simply recognize you for what you have revealed yourself to be.

Persona: And what is that?

Veritas: A lesson. Nothing more.

Persona: (standing) Then I shall take my leave from this theater of self-importance.

Veritas: The door you thought you left ajar for future exploitation has been sealed. The window you imagined remained open has been bricked. Whatever space you once occupied in my considerations has been filled with something more substantial than the hollow promise of your presence.

Persona: Farewell, then. May your certainties comfort you.

Veritas: Go. Carry this conversation into whatever futures await—not as a curse, but as a document of clarification. When you encounter others who extend trust as I did, perhaps you will recall these words. Perhaps you will choose differently.

Persona: (at the door) And if I do not?

Veritas: Then the pattern continues. But it no longer concerns me.

Persona exits. Veritas extinguishes the candle.

Veritas: (to the darkness) Farewell.

Veritas & Persona: A Dialogue on Betrayal

A confrontation between Truth and Mask.

Achraf SOLTANI — October 5, 2017