"It’s also possible to be lied to and not know it." Thor turns to the volunteer. "If I lie to you, it’ll affect everyone who hears me." He glances over the others. "Anyone who doesn’t want to experience it should go out of earshot, or we can go somewhere private."

The volunteer hops out of the helicopter and walks over to a distant corner of the hospital roof.

Thor follows and speaks in a low voice once they're over there. "Okay. I'm going to tell you a lie that will make you confused about my shoes if you can't defeat it. Here it is. I am wearing fuzzy bunny slippers."

"Wow, that is confusing, I can't figure out how you fit them in there! Did I usedta know about extra-dimensional shoes?"

"No, I made you mistaken about whether I'm wearing fuzzy slippers. I'm not wearing them and haven't worn them in weeks. The thing I said wasn't true."

The guy opens and closes his mouth a couple times, squinting at the shoes. "So I remembered wrong about you saying it?"

"That's... a close guess. Lying is a lot like saying something that will be remembered wrong, knowing it will be remembered wrong, because you want the person you're talking to to be wrong. I think, because of your curse, you might not be able to see any differences between that and lying."

"That's so weird! Sometimes I like it when people around me are wrong because it makes me feel better about myself but I don't have the faintest idea how I'd do it on purpose."

"It's not a good thing to do." Shrug. "When people lie it can make you wrong about what they just said. But if you know that, you can learn to defend yourself. Do you want to try again and see if you can beat me now that you know a little about how it works?"

"I guess! Can we stick to just your shoes so even if I wind up super super confused it's at least only about that?"

"Sure. Okay, I'm going to tell you another lie about my footwear. Here it is. I'm not wearing anything on my feet."

"Do all gods have feet like yours? Oh, is that how you picked what to do the test about?"

Thor sighs. "I just have regular feet right now and I'm not barefoot or wearing bunny slippers. I made you wrong about both those things as part of the test. I haven't made you wrong on purpose about anything besides my feet, I don't plan to ever do that to you or anyone else here in the future, and thank you for volunteering for the test."

"You're welcome, I hope it was helpful! - if we're done now could you take off your shoes for a sec, I feel like that will make me feel better."

"Sure." He takes off his shoes and socks. He has five toes per foot. Each toe has one toenail. There is basically nothing out of the ordinary about his feet right now.

The human nods very solemnly at this phenomenon. "Thank you. That must be one heck of a magical situation."

"Yeah. I hope I can figure out who did this."

"Is it better, when people can just make each other wrong about things?"

"No. But whoever did this could come back here and kidnap people, hurt people, kill people, and then make all the witnesses wrong about what happened. They could take you away from your family and then lie to you to make you wrong about whether anyone had ever loved you. They could cook human flesh and make you mistakenly think it was pig flesh. And I don't have any idea if that's something they'd really do."

"I've at least never heard of those things happening to - I guess if everyone were wrong about it I wouldn't hear about it... I don't think I am confused about any big weird things?"

Thor nods sharply. "That's good." Aww, and this person paid attention to what being tricked felt like and figured out a way they might notice in hindsight! Even though they can't even understand what it is they're supposed to be looking out for! Thor is so proud of them!

"Oh good. I'm confused about some medium sized things but I don't know if they're bad or just coincidences."

"If you tell me about them, maybe I'll investigate. I don't have any better leads."

"I'm confused about traffic. And how phones work. And inflation. And gyroscopes. And why being in the sun makes things pale but doesn't work on leaves or water or raisins."

"Good news, the Earth where people aren't cursed has all those things. I don't think the traffic or the inflation over there are very confusing, though, so I'll look into that. I can also explain gyroscopes, if you want."