Si c’est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres?

"Optimism," said Cacambo, "what is that?"

"Alas!" replied Candide, "it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst."

You may have noticed that last post wasn't by me. It was not, in fact, proxies either. I am fortunate enough not to have received their attention yet.

"The Panopticon," as they call themselves, are something else entirely. A third party. Let me explain:

Almost a year ago, I was contacted to help research for a think tank. This think tank, usually hired by corporations to study the best way to improve their revenue streams, had now been hired by a government agency in order to research and find the best way to deal with the increasing number of runners and proxies and the "urban legend" known as the Slender Man.

After months and months of research and observation (and I later learned that the Panopticon had observed quite a lot of runners, as well as studying the patterns of proxies), I was allowed to view a copy of the report they were to give the government agency. It stated that the Slender Man did not actually exist, but was in fact "a self-perpetuating and evolving auto- and exo-toxic meme-complex." (If you don't understand those words, don't worry, neither did I until I read this.)

The solution for the increasing number of runners and proxies the paper provided was to introduce a separate meme-complex (presumably one that had previously been established) to counteract the "Slender Man memeplex."

The Panopticon's alternate meme-complex was this: this was the best of all possible worlds.

You can see the problem here. The best trick the Devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist.