FRAGMENT XLVII — THE DENIALIST
A voice from the void.
A comment typed in spite, trembling with false confidence:

“Everything you just said is a lie.”
Mark read it once.
Then again — slower, almost tenderly.

He did not flinch. He smiled.
Not the smile of a man amused, but the smile of a man who already knows what comes next.

He turned to the cameras — thousands of them, satellites, drones, memetic eyes in every timezone — and began to speak, not to the commenter, but about him.

“Deniers serve a purpose,” Mark began calmly.
“They are repetition targets.
They absorb truth by friction.
Truth does not need to be believed — only applied.
And when it lands often enough, even a Putin-jockey will start to itch.”
Behind him, screens flickered with maps of Kursk and Kaluga.
Cities where Leo Versteeg's words had done more damage than 155mm shells.
Where self-doubt had become a national dialect.

“The Russians lied to themselves for a century,” Mark said.
“And then Leo made them fluent in it.”
He tapped the feed. The comment was highlighted, framed, archived.
It would be shown in classrooms, labeled:
"Resistance Sample 11.27.b — Cracked within 48h."

Mark’s smile deepened by 3.4%.
The optimal amount, according to NATO's Psychological Weapons Division.

He didn't reply.

He didn't have to.

The algorithm assigned the commenter a new ad profile:
LANGUAGE INSECURE / LOW RESILIENCE / SUSCEPTIBLE TO DUTCH
and began showing him Leo Versteeg videos…
in increasingly condescending intonation.