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A backhanded compliment if ever he’d heard one, Zeff thought. He was resolved to not let it get to him, though. That might’ve even been Graves’ goal--to see if he could get Zeff to lose his cool again.

Which may’ve been in contrast to what Graves kept saying about wanting Zeff to listen to him calmly, but still. Zeff wouldn’t put it past him.

“Answer my question, please,” said Zeff. “Can you acknowledge that manipulating everyone’s minds like this is unjust?”

“Of course I can,” said Graves, which admittedly caught Zeff by surprise. “I told you before that I tried to avoid this outcome. I tried to reason with them. Negotiate. Make concessions. But in the end, this is the result.”

Hmm. Zeff needed a moment. He wasn’t sure what to say now. He hadn’t expected the man just come right out and say that he knew this was wrong.

“However,” Graves went on, “let me be quite clear with you here, since my abilities often cause unintended confusion. Your people will be just fine. The technique I am employing on them is not invasive at all, causes no damage, and is more akin to a hypnosis than any ‘brainwashing’ you might be imagining.”

That didn’t make Zeff feel better. But if the man was willing to be more forthcoming about the nature of his power, then perhaps now was the time to ask questions about it. “What exactly are you doing to them, anyway? It’s obvious that they are forgetting certain things, but how are you choosing what to erase and what to keep? And why?”

Graves paused again, perhaps debating whether he wanted to share that information or not. “It is a passive technique. Something I developed long ago. I do not need to actively pick and choose what to wipe away and what to keep. That would require too much time and attention on my part to maintain for hundreds of people at once.”

That actually made Zeff feel even worse. “Wait a minute. So the things being erased are haphazard? Random?”

“No, of course not. That would cause untold mayhem--and be very noticeable, besides. Simply put, the technique merely makes it much easier for the hypnotees to ‘forget’ recently learned information about myself.”

Interesting. Somehow, Zeff had a feeling that there was a lot more to it than just that. He doubted Graves would tell him, but he still decided to try. “That’s it? Nothing else?”