Jens was my roommate. I thought he was pretty much a Discordian already, but he didn't agree. He wasn't religious, but he was into Taoism and shit. He told me once: "I agree with pretty much all of the stuff you talk about, but Discordianism isn't for me. I prefer my spirituality to be at least a few thousand years old."
I thought that was bullshit. These days I wouldn't try to push someone into Discordianism (Discordianism tends to push 'em right back at me), but I was younger then and I hadn't figured that lesson out yet. So I hatched a plan.
I managed to find the perfect combination of audio filters and voice work. It made me sound like a woman. A confident, powerful, sexy, experienced woman. A woman with a serious mental problem. It made me sound like Eris.
I used to have so much free time.
I hid a speaker in his room. Late at night, when he returned home drunk and stoned I played a message: "I'm real, you know."
I don't think he was alert enough for it to really register, and I never heard him talk about it.
But to me it had been a succes, and I continued to make him hear stuff. "You look hungry, you should have an apple." "It is a bitter bitch that concerns you so" (He was going through a breakup at the time). And so on. A lot of greek sounding gibberish too.
And then one day it worked. I think the line I sent him was "It's all my fault, you know?" After that he borrowed my copy of the Principia.
That evenening I heard a voice. It was that voice I had created. But it didn't say anything I had made it say. Maybe it was Jens playing a prank on me. Maybe it was some other prankster. Maybe it was the six joints I was smoking a day. I tore up my room and never found a speaker, and I kept smokeing and never heard the voice again.
I like to think it was Eris talking to me.
She said: "Good job, bozo."
Jens wasn't a Discordian for long. I guess I had loosened him up, to new Religious experiences. He moved out and I heard some kind of Christian group got to him, maybe even one of the door-to-door kinds. All I know is that he never gave me my Principia Discordia back. I think he needs it more than I do anyway.