[AM hiss. A faint dial sweep. Cyrus is already mid-sentence like he hasn’t slept.]
Ten Forty-Five AM. SignalWars. You know the drill. If you can hear me, either the filters are napping or somebody higher up thinks it’s useful to let me talk. Both are possible. That’s the fun part.
So I get a ping tonight. A single sentence from a burner that smells like it’s been dropped through six proxy relays and a nervous breakdown.
It says:
“Elias Reiss didn’t build New Life. He bought it.”
That’s it.
And listen, I already know what the respectable people will say. “Acquisitions happen.” “Founders sell.” “That’s business.”
No.
That’s how empires launder origins.
Because when someone builds something evil, there’s a trail. There are early prototypes. There are bad first versions. There are friends from college who remember them getting drunk. There are old interviews. Old social posts. A first office. A timeline you can dig up and map.
When someone buys it?
They buy the timeline too.
They buy the story.
They buy the origin myth.
They buy the right to say “it was always like this.”
And you know what else they buy?
Silence.
That’s classic.
That’s not new.
That’s Rockefeller. It's intelligence ops. That’s every “philanthropist” who somehow only shows up right when a technology becomes scalable.
Now, here’s where I go off the rails, because that’s what a rail is for.
If Elias Reiss bought NLT, then who built it?
And why is it so hard to find?
Because I tried. I tried to Makonto the early days. I tried to pull old filings. I tried to find the “humble origin story.” And you know what I found?
Nothing that feels real.
A couple glossy profiles that all use the same adjectives.
“Visionary.” “Disruptor.” “Private.” “Elusive.”
You know what “elusive” means? It means somebody is paying to delete the parts that don’t fit.
The search results are padded. It’s like looking for a person inside a pillow.
You ever notice that? When a public figure has ten thousand pages about them but none of it says anything?
That’s the fog.
And that fog is manufactured.
So here’s my working theory about Elias Reiss: he has a past that’s been scrubbed, because he’s *connected.*
Not “connected” like he knows a manager.
Connected like he’s a *handoff.*
Like he’s the front man they install when a project crosses the line from experimental to profitable.
The moment it becomes a national security asset, a religion, a utility, a state.
That’s when a Reiss appears.
And they are always “self-made.”
And you’re always not allowed to ask how.
Now, you want to know the creepiest part of this ping?
Since Elias doesn’t build, that changes how you read everything.
Because if he bought NLT, then NLT is older than its public timeline.
It existed in another form. Another name. Another shell.
Which means the “Neural Harvest” thing, the “existential friction” talk, all of it, might not be a breakthrough.
It might be a continuation.
A program that’s been moving host bodies for decades.
And if you don’t like that, blame history. That’s how these things work. Old conspiracies, same structure:
MKULTRA didn’t “end.” It got renamed.
COINTELPRO didn’t “end.” It got privatized.
Mass surveillance didn’t “end.” It got a user interface.
So if Reiss bought the machine, then who gave it to him?
Who sold it?
Who took the payout and vanished?
And why is it so hard to even locate the edges of that story?
Because there’s a difference between “private” and “sealed.”
Private is you don’t post your birthday.
Sealed is when the only facts you can find are the facts designed to be found.
Now, I’m going to say something, you're gonna say "Cyrus, come one. That's ridiculous" but all I ask is you take a look at that Maintenance and think about this.
Elias Reiss looks like a man who was manufactured in a conference room.
And that’s not just about his face. That’s about his narrative, too.
He has the exact type of biography that gets printed when someone needs to be accepted as inevitable.
Which means: either he’s a saint…
or he’s a product.
And you already know which one is more plausible.
So here’s the practical takeaway, for the people who still have neurons firing:
Stop treating him like a villain with a plan.
Treat him like a mask with an owner.
Because if he bought the company, he didn’t invent the ideology.
He was chosen to carry it.
Ten Forty-Five AM. SignalWars.
If you’re trying to research Elias Reiss and you keep hitting fog, don’t assume you’re dumb.
Assume you’re being managed.
And remember: when a man’s past is impossible to find, it’s not because he has no past.
It’s because his past is *classified as inconvenient.*