"… I'm not sure that emailing is the best idea because it might mean that people who work for Google or something get ownership of it? Since it's on their servers? I can try sending it over bluetooth, though."

So he does!

Nothing happens!

"Okay, eugh, but I guess I shouldn't've expected anything to change just because I have a copy of it."

"And if I take a video of myself, on my own phone, then presumably that will do nothing, but if I send it to you through bluetooth it should take effect?"

"Let's try!"

So he does!

"Yeah, that definitely works, seems to be ownership... now if I send it to Matt, my prediction is that he gets the thing over you—we should give it a name—"

"Trance, power, draw, pull, sway, gravity, influence…?"

"Sway has a nice ring to it." He sends Matt the thing. It works.

Eugh. "Can we delete this and go back to the audio recordings now?"

"Yeah, I think so." Delete delete. "Pictures, video, audio, what do those things have in common with absolutely nothing at all, why do you get this by default."

Theo shrugs. "I mean, it seems weird that I'd just get it over people by default – do you actually need to see my face to feel it, or just know I'm around? Pretty sure it's just sort of there for me, not just when you're around, but it might vary or something."

"On the other hand you have supersenses, so you probably have a higher threshold of perceiving us."

"True– but actually that makes me think that my default over you might be because of the supersenses, actually. Or the eidetic memory. If it's just, I dunno, 'possessing' the audio or video or whatever, then I probably have better quality stuff in my memory than you do in yours?"

"...huh. That. Actually makes a lot of sense?"

"It does but I'm not sure that we have enough information to justify that. Uh, if we check different quality recordings against each other, maybe?"

"I... don't know if my phone can do different qualities?"

"Mine can definitely do different qualities, but we should be able to test it through that and bluetooth anyway."

"I think mine can too," says Matt. "Should be able to test it both ways, at least for me and Theo."

"Yeah. I think the easiest way to test it is just deleting everything, and then Matt records a bad quality video, then deletes that, then a good quality one, and compare? Maybe several of each, and see how long it takes on average for Theo's sway over Matt to be reversed."

"Totally reversed? That… should work if I can notice that point, shouldn't be too hard?"

"I mean it's kinda practically designed to be undetectable, yeah, and also a single picture is enough so even the shortest video should already be, that's probably not a very good test, hmmm..."

"… I don't think I can put my camera down to a low enough quality that it'd affect that, unless it's seriously affected by a change in quality? Should probably try that before we rule it out, just in case."

So he puts his phone to have 480p quality, wow, kinda surprising it goes that low, and then takes a short video of Theo!

It's not enough. Pretty instant.

He deletes it. "Okay, well, I don't think I can set it to take particularly low-quality photos either, so that probably won't work. Uh. Do you have a microphone attached to a computer? We could record you and then lower the quality different amounts and send me them and see how that works?"

"I have a computer and a microphone and can probably save it at different qualities, yeah? Then, since e-mail is potentially horrific, I can just copy it onto my phone and bluetooth it – slow but hopefully, you know, less risk of being horrific."