Inbetweeners Part 7- Interloper's Gifts

The Interloper was puzzled that more sentient beings didn't tap into magic in this multiverse. In fact, he discovered that the majority of magic was tied up in a monopoly known as “The Weave.” Essentially, Mechanus controlled the laws of magic, limiting only certain entities to accessing magic. Primus would essentially allow deities to have access to magic and act as middle-men between their magic users and Mechanus itself. Of course, older entities, and many independent beings had their own ways of tapping into magic/energy, but the majority of formal spells and spell casting were part of this monopoly. However, the Interloper discovered there was abundant magical energy all around that simply was not tapped into because of how the planes had been arranged. Inbetween planes there was constant metaphysical “motion” which created a sort of friction. This friction could be tapped into for energy, as a potent and nigh inexhaustible source. Hence, the Interloper developed “interplanar flux” as a source for spells. Since hew as new to this multiverse and its rules, the Interloper was experimenting with crafting custom spells. Simply tapping directly into interplanar flux without some modulation would surely fry a mortal if not transform them into something horrific. So, he came about with his first batch of spells. I meant to develop these more, but the campaign ended up going in a different direction.

The Interloper's “spells” are essentially abilities that can be used once per long rest. Any sentient being can be gifted these spells, they need not be a magic user. So let's look at each spell:

Spell- Destabilize

A target creature touched takes 3d6 damage. They must then make a constitution saving throw DC (Prof + casting skill + 8). Failure and they take 3d6 damage each turn. Immediately their physical form starts to roil and mutate in a chaotic, uncontrollable fashion. They continue taking the damage each turn until they make a successful saving throw. They must make a wisdom saving throw (same DC) to take any actions on a turn they fail their con save, meaning they use will power to force their shape to cohere enough. Any creature killed by this attack becomes a gibbering mouther hostile to the players. Powerful creatures become greater gibbering mouths. https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/gibbering-mouther-massive/

This one is fun but not effective against higher level entities who can easily pass the save or have so many hitpoints that the 3d6 is meaningless. When Zariel made a deal with the Interloper and he flooded her with gifts, her casters began using this ability in mass. It could wreak havoc behind enemy lines as foes turn on each other when they become gibbering mouthers.

Spell- Undo Wounds

May cast on self or other single target. Any damage, physical, or magical ill effects taken at the last minute are undone. However, roll 1d6. If one, finger of death is cast upon them DC 20. If 6, the character gains extra temporary hit points equal to their HP total (up to 100). Otherwise spell works as normal. If Finger of death kills them, they come back as undead equal to their level in ferocity.

This spell is extremely overpowered. If I was going to adjust it, I'd remove the temporary hitpoint boost on a 6 because its overkill. I'd also make it from a finger of death to something more damaging. The players have used it a number of times and been lucky enough to never roll a one. Undoing all ill effects from the last minute is massive in the 5e universe, since that's 10 rounds in a battle. A player can be unconscious, blind, diseased, have their mind wiped, poisoned, cursed, etc and suddenly be back to full, normal health. Zariel's forces were seen employing this spell on the battlefield, but they always had casters nearby in case it failed to incinerate the undead that comes. 1/6 chance isn't bad by infernal standards. Essentially, if you have 100 soldiers, the next batch would be 83, then 69, then 58, then 48, and so on. It becomes an infinite series with your initial point as 100 and a common ratio of 6, so 100 soldiers become 600, or a x6 force multiplier before they've all become undead. But yeah, I'd say this was one of the most busted spells the Interloper created.

Spell- Time Duplicate

A perfect clone of you is created to fight. The clone lasts for as long as you concentrate, up to a minute. It has all of the abilities and items you have access to. Roll 1d6, on a 1, the clone is diametrically opposed and will attack you. On 6, you get an extra duplicate and roll again. This spell may draw attention of outside forces as it damages the Weave.

This spell is objectively the most powerful, so I had to add in that it draws the attention of outside forces, specifically the Protectors of the Weave. Essentially, anytime it is used the Protectors will come investigate the location it is used, maybe not immediately, but at some point, so it kind of burns that location. Also, if the 1 is rolled, the clone may leave. I decided to make the clone on a 1 permanent. It's only happened once, and it was killed quickly enough that the players didn't need to worry about it. Uzo, the Hobgoblin Samurai used it a couple of times. He named them Twozo, Threezo, etc. During a particularly epic boss fight in The Torment, Uzo used it for the first time. His duplicate had three grenades on him, and Uzo gave him his three grenades as well. The duplicate then pulled all six pins and bear hugged on of the enhanced Nycaloths they were fighting that had 50 hitpoint regeneration, doing enough explosive damage to kill it in one swoop. Fun spell, but needs narrative limitations to not be exploited too much.

Spell- Ouch Ball

Create a sphere 6 feet in diameter of swirling metaphysical blades. You can control its motion, it moves normal speed of a player. Anything in the same space as the sphere takes 1d6 + 4 melee attacks, +10 attack modifier 2d6 damage each as the shards tear them apart. Player must make a wisdom save if distracted or injured. If failed, the ball explodes, hitting everyone in 30 foot radius with attack.

This one never got used but I think it would've been fun to take out large mobs of weaker units or chewing up a larger, stronger enemy. So assume an average of 7.5 attacks dealing an average of 7 damage each, it gives around 52-53 damage per turn assuming all attacks hit. Pretty potent in the early or midgame. The only downside is if you lose concentration it explodes, and can do a lot of friendly fire damage. At lower levels it could go from helping to crush a boss to killing your entire party.

Spell- Augment Weapons

Target player’s weapons become enchanted. Roll 1d6 to determine the effect: 1- The player cannot put the weapon down. Any damage the player deals is also dealt to them as the weapon drains blood from them. 2- +2d6 fire damage, (4d6 on critical and target catches fire) 3- +2d6 cold damage (4d6 on critical, character freezes solid if save fails) 4- +2d6 radiant damage (4d6 on critical, character blinded if save fails) 5- Triple attack (if bow, three arrows shot out, if melee, two spectral copies appear, trippling the damage) 6- Weapon comes to life and acts on its own accord. Roll for alignment. Lasts for 1 hour.

This spell ended up being much more powerful than I intended. A ranger in our group had it, and they kept getting 5s. It was really the triple attack that was most busted, I didn't really think through what tripling damage output would do. Also the player just ended up being really lucky with rolls. 2-4 were just decent buffs and even a 6 wasn't as good as a 5. Also the 1 hour duration is a little ridiculous, I probably should have made it one minute. Ah well, it was pretty fun. The ranger, Thogg, eventually retired and along with him this spell.

Spell- Summon Unlikely Ally

Summons a creature from somewhere in the multiverse. Creatures must succeed a wisdom save or serve the player faithfully until spend ends or they are dispelled. If they succeed, they may act on their own accord. The level should be roughly scaled with player level. Type to be determined (roll 1d20):

1-2: Undead 3-4 Elemental 5-8 Aberration 9-10 Ooze 11- Beast 12-13- Monstrosity 14- Construct 15- Fiend (devil or demon) 16- Celestial or Fey 17- Humanoid or Giant 18- Dragon 19- Player instead is summoned by something else 20- Far Realm Horror is Unleashed

Creatures last for up to 1 hour unless killed or dispelled earlier. Far realm horror can’t be controlled and is permanent.

This is a super fun spell that we only saw used once or twice because the player who had it quit the campaign. They summoned it when they first scrapped with agents of the Protectors of the Weave, and whatever they summoned ended up killing one of the agents. I think it may have been an Otyugh since the players were level 5 or 6 around that time but I'm not positive, this was years ago. The RNG on this spell is crazy—summoning a dragon in the middle of a battle is fun. Also, the more powerful the creature, they more likely they are to pass the wisdom save. I think legendary resistance would be a straight up guarantee. So imagine the players towards the end of the game manifesting a pissed off Solar. Just a fun injection of chaos into an encounter. If they ever rolled a 20 I would've definitely dropped something really nasty, like a Neh-thalggu or Star Spawn Mage into the encounter.

Spell- Cosmic Curse

Target must make a wisdom or con saving throw or face effects based on 1d6:

1- Latency Error: Dex is reduced to 2. -5 to all attacks. Last in initiative order. Only takes action every other turn. 2- Unlucky: Disadvantage on everything 3- Paper Skin: All damage taken is doubled. -5 to AC 4- Manic Rage: Creature attacks random target near them, ignores any threats and doesn’t stop attacking until all targets around them are dead. 5- Brainrot: Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma are reduced to 2. Can no longer communicate or understand what is happening around them. 6- Rubber and Glue: Reroll and curse instead is placed on caster. If a 6 is rolled again, roll again and both caster and target are cursed. If third 6 is rolled, everyone in 30 foot radius is cursed. If 4th roll is cursed, space time rips…

Spell lasts HD of caster + 2 rounds.

This one was also never used. 1/6 chance it backfires, which is fun, and 1/216 chance it backfires on everyone in the group. A 5 is just feeblemind, essentially. Actually looking at this again, some of these curses are pretty brutal. Latency error kind of makes an opponent useless. Disadvantage on everything is like reverse foresight. Paper skin would be exceptional for taking out a tough enemy quickly. Imagine cutting an ancient red dragon's hitpoints in half essentially. This would've been fun, too bad it never got used.

Spell- Jackpot!

Roll 2d20. Multiply the results times the players hit dice. So If the player rolls at 5 and a 10 and is level 3, the result is 150. Treasure appears that value of gold. Any 20s also give a special item with the treasure. If a 1 is rolled, the creature whose treasure this is being robbed from is also summoned along with the treasure (probably a dragon).

This one was also never used, and became obsolete pretty quickly. By mid campaign, the players had access to an arbitrary amount of funds, really whatever they needed.

Spell- Bloodlust

+2d6 necrotic damage to melee attacks, target heals equivalent amount. Lasts one hour. Roll 1d20 when cast. If 20, deals 6d6 necrotic damage and heals as much instead. If 1, the player becomes undead (equivalent to current level).

Barbarian uses this one. A nice little buff, but nothing too crazy.

Spell- Battle Psychosis

+2 extra attacks per turn. Must make Wisdom save each turn (DC 13) or attacks targets at random. Spell lasts as many rounds as the character has hit dice +5 or until combat ends, whichever is first. When it is over the player loses consciousness for 1 hour.

This one was never used, but it would make a melee fighter absolutely terrifying. Giving a raging barbarian 2 extra attacks per turn could bring the total up to five with frenzy. A high level fighter action surging could get... 12 attacks in a turn if my math is correct? Either way, super busted. Probably good I didn't give this to one of my melee fighters.

Spell- Defensive Matrix

Roll 1d20 and gain x5 that as temporary hit points for 1 minute. On a 20, the 100 hp lasts for an hour and regenerates 5 per turn. On a 1, gain no temporary hit points, your armor class is reduced to 5 and you take double damage for 1 hour.

Barbarian got this one and uses it regularly. That plus half damage while raging makes them an unstoppable tank. Players recently killed the Tarrasque and the Barbarian was the only one to take damage, tanking all of its attacks.

Spell- Clubbermeister

You spawn a temporary, 4 dimensional club. This club is incredibly dense, but to you feels light as a feather. Its base damage is 3d8 + double strength modifier. However, each time you successfully hit a target, it has a ⅙ chance of shattering. When it shatters, you take 6d8 force damage. On a natural 1 it automatically explodes.

Never used this one. Would be nice, though dangerous, for a lower level player. Even for a high level player, doubling the strength modifier is pretty good. The players have such powerful artifacts at this point though that they would never use the spell.

So that's all of the ones originally drafted. The overall theme is that the Interloper is manipulating reality, so as a result his spells are far more powerful and dangerous than normal spells. If I was going to do it all over again, there certainly would be some balancing changes and also I'd probably sharpen a few of the drawbacks. But hey, the spells being a little busted really worked for the overall theme of this campaign. The Far Realm is... the Far Realm. The Interloper also crafted a number of items on the fly, but I didn't write most of those down.

Oh and I just remembered, one of the players asked to be part plant and they now heal from radiant damage. That ended up being super busted because they can just use a cantrip that deals radiant damage to heal. Also pretty funny when they fight celestials.

Troy Story 5.1

vertaald uit het varkenslatijns via de engelse vertaling door Van Voorbijgaande Aard in coöperatie met Goochel Globale Taal Transformatie, waarvan spijt. Dit als voetnoot bovenop dit stukje indrukwekkende pulp literatuur, maar wel gebaseerd op ware feiten.

Bij de zandbak nabij de grote poort van Troje stonden Vergilius en Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd samen te spelen, dat wil zeggen Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd liet zich gebonden aan gevlochten touw door Vergilius door de zandbak slepen terwijl die riep “Sterf misdadiger, illegaal, vuile Griek, jij ploert. Nooit zullen jullie Troje weer vernietigen zoals best wel vaak is voorgekomen, eigenlijk de gewoonste zaak van deze wereld is. Stik jij, in dit door de goden ingezegende zand van dit door Godenzoon Cruiiijf opgerichte speelcourtje', op dat moment glipte Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd uit het touwtje. Meteen sommeerde Vergilius actie, hij riep naar zijn kompanen ReXVII en Hem Lap LEDlicht, (het eerste oplaadbare licht van ver voor christus en bijpassende dom jaren, het werd opgeladen dankzij zonnencellen van het merk RaRa, de uitvinder was Ingenieur Zonnenbloem, een almachtig kundig man en dankzij die vindingrijkheid en zijn contacten met het buitenaardse rechter en linkerhand van de Trojaanse macht).

Hem en Rex werden richting Aard gegooid waarna een heftige strijd werd gesimuleerd, na lang soebatten won Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd het pleit en wist daarna op slinkse wijze te ontsnappen aan de wrede hand van de kleine Vergilius. Waarna de jongen in huilen uitbrak, en Aard spoorslags terugkeerde naar het zandbak frontje. Hem Lap LEDlicht en ReXVII keken verbaasd, geen van de speeltjes waarmee de jongste telg van het Vergilius Vergilius gezin kon hun spelleider waarderen, hij was vals, gemeen, manipulatief maar ook slechts vijf jaar jong en kind van het hoofd administratie, waterhuishouding en oorlogsvoeding van de stad Troje. Vergilius droogde zijn tranen, hij raapte zijn speeltjes bij een, klaar om thuis zijn huiswerk te doen, voor de vakken Varkenslatijn, Wapenkennis en Klieren voor Gevorderden. Net op dat moment liep er een in vodden uitgedoste maar zeer fit ogende kerel aan ze voorbij, richting de poortwachters met in zijn handen een bericht van groot belang voor Stad Troje.

Vergilius ging voor afluisteren op kleine doch onopvallende afstand staan, hij deed alsof hij zijn veters moest strikken terwijl hij dat niet kon. Heel normaal voor een jongen zoals hij, zeker in die tijd. De meeste kinderen droegen ook liever slippers, maar dan kun je dit soort trucjes niet uithalen, zo wist Vergilius, een truc geleerd van zijn vader. Zijn geweldige diplomatieke loopbaan is dankzij deze handeling geweldig geworden.

Welkom, let alstublieft niet op mijn uitdossing, ik leef in onmin met mijn oude gemeenschap, de Grieken, en daarom moet ik van hun op straat leven, voedsel rapen uit de goot, kruimels stelen van de ratten, meeuwen en duiven, altijd knokken tegen andere zwervers en Griekse gezagsdragers! Ik heb het zwaar, maar desondanks heb ik iets voor u of beter voor u stad, het bestuur en de nog hogere machten. Een geschenk, gejat uit handen van het hoogste Griekse gezag, een hebbeding met mogelijk geheime krachten, een welke elke u vijandige staat op de knieën kan en dus zal dwingen. Ik geef u de flyer rol van het object, de HiHi Hinnik en daarin staat alles wat je ermee kan, als ook hoe je dat doet. Ik gun het u omdat u de vijand bent van mijn vijand en ik u daarom dus beschouw als partner. Ik, Sinon de Listige, geef u het speelgoed waarmee Troje zal heersen over alles en iedereen daar residerend, amen.

De wachters Rotnie en Westie Snijder (3 en 6 in de Snijder en zonen reeks) bekeken deze man argwanend maar ook met enig medelijden, je zult er maar zo goed uitzien en dan deze lompen moeten dragen, waar gaat het heen met de wereld der Grieken, dachten ze tegelijkertijd, zo denken was erfelijk. De folder namen ze in zonder er een blik op te werpen en dankten Sinon voor zijn hulp om Troje te laten heersen over onder andere hem. Ze gaven hem ook een paar glad en rond geslepen betaal keitjes plus het adres van de kledingbank residerend op het industrie terrein nabij de gedempte haven van Troje Buiten, zodat hij zich net kon aankleden, dan maak je toch een betere indruk slapend op de straten van al die oerlelijke Griekse steden. Wie weet lag er een leuk sjaaltje, zelden gedragen, altijd in een doos op zolder gelegen. Zo'n fraai langwerpig gewaad zien hangen om de nek van een ander doet een mens goed. Ga met Sop zeiden ze, onderwijl onder hands zwaaien zoals gebruikelijk is in Troje en omstreken, gelijkend op het gooien van een kegelbal, en dan drie keer zwaaien ermee voor je het op de gladde baan gooit richting de 24 onschuldige kegels. Zo groet je op z'n Trojes.

Vergilius stalde het bericht over de Hinnik van Listige Sinon in zijn geheugen, dit moest Pa weten. Hij wou deze HiHi Hinnik eigenlijk voor zichzelf en zijn pa kon dat waarschijnlijk regelen. Hij zou daarna alleenheerser zijn over de zandbank en al zijn speeltjes, zelfs over Buzz Lichtjaren, deze nare radicaal tartte hem al maanden, trok zijn macht in twijfel! Welk een minpunt, waarom geven ze ook niet meteen gehoor, doen ze zo vervelend, zelfs de dingen deugen niet. Sinds de aanvaring met Vanvoorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd in de beheers bak was zijn humeur nog minder dan anders, zelfs de kans op een nieuw speeltje kon daar eigenlijk geen verandering inbrengen.

Gehaast rende hij langs de wachten pardoes liet hij Hem Lap Ledlicht achter op de plek waar hij zijn veters zo moeizaam strikte. Dit tot schrik van ReXVII en Van Voorbijgaande Aardappelhoofd als ook Jazzy, het mini poppetje altijd hangend aan een ketting om de nek van Vergilius Junior, als bewaakster van de sleutel. V het sleutelkind, Pa en ma druk met hun werkzaamheden, Pa als bestuurder, ma als zijn spion in gegoede kringen, het menselijk substituut voor losse veters, en Vergilius en zijn zusjes Zussie en Zusssie allen met hun eigen sleutel romend over de straten van Troje.

Zoals gewoonlijk geen spoor van Senior in de villa, er was voor een dergelijke heers heerschap altijd wel een mogelijkheid benut voor een overleg, stemronde, plan voor strijd, infrastructuur, versterken van iets, defensief of aanvallend, Initiërende Interventie noemde hij dat soort overleg, het effect ervan op de deelnemers, Vergilius Senior oefende thuis op dergelijke taal, manipulerende wijs geworden, het universele gereedschap voor alles overheersing is tenslotte taal, leer ze de taal en je kan er iedere dag naar binnen gaan en allerhande eisen stellen, opdrachten geven, gedragingen installeren, plannen laten maken en dergelijke interacties met de bewerkelijkheid.

Op zijn deel van de villa aangekomen ging Junior alvast ruimte vrij maken voor zijn De HiHi Hinnik, zo groot kon het niet zijn, het paste immers op een flyer rol. Schaal en Vergilius Jr hadden nog niet nader kennis gemaakt. Schaal is voor een tros bananen aldus Junior. De andere speeltjes gooide hij op een hoopje in de hoek, bij de rest, die daar al lagen, deze keer niet gekozen voor het zandbak theater van de macht. De groep zweeg in gezelschap van hun meester, wachten met op speelse wijze communiceren tot ze zeker wisten dat Junior niet meer in de buurt was. Hun bespeler kon beter niet weten wat er in zijn spelers omging, en het was al helemaal geen goed idee dat hij nog iemand anders, geen enkel lid van de mensheid, erachter kwam dat het door hun gebruikte speelgoed leefde.

Op die afwezigheid hoefden ze nooit lang te wachten trouwens, de jongen was wat ADHD, kon niet stilzitten, nou, alleen als spion voor eigen beheer, verbetering van zijn positie op school en thuis, het kind met een missie, en de missie nu is de HiHi Hinnik toevoegen aan zijn collectie machtig mooi speelgoed, er van genieten dat hij kon zeggen dat het in zijn bezit was. Hij er mee kon schuiven en klopperdeklop kon zeggen, er op zitten en hortsik zeggen, HiHi de sporen geven terwijl hij ridder Vergilius bijstond tijdens de oorlog tegen de Grieken en de Watervolkeren.

Hij rende weg van die collectie, het grootste belang ervan is het bezit, daarna is het grootste belang de volgende om die dan ook te bezitten. Het spul zelf is eenmaal daar aan de goden overgeleverd, diezelfde goden waaraan het is ontfutseld. Buzz Lichtjaar was een soort wapen in handen van Aeneas de Globetrotter, het hield hem veilig als hij sliep, hij had het gekregen van Meneer Wezensvreemd de god van tijdreizen, Jazzy was ontvreemd van de nek van Dido, een KIO, iemand die hij kende op de school voor koninginnen en overige belangrijke ambtenaren zoals burgemeesteressen en keizers. Hij vond Dido vervelend en dus had hij op een ochtend tijdens gymnastiek, terwijl hij een blessure veinsde, een vleeswond, die Jazzy van haar ketting gestolen en sindsdien zit ze altijd om zijn nek, de beste verstopplek is immers volop in beeld maar dan net even anders, zoals super meneer Kent, vaders assistent, met of zonder bril totaal onherkenbaar kan worden, verdwijnen in zicht, iedereen kent hem met bril, weet hem te bereiken, dan is hij beschikbaar maar dan zodra hij die bril van de neus haalt is hij weg, nergens meer te zien, horen en of voelen. De heer Kent kwam uit een mystieke regio waar al brillen waren ver voor er oorlog was, de oorlog ontstond niet lang daarna.

Hem Lap LEDlicht was meegenomen uit het lab van Ingenieur Zonnenbloem, deze man vond aan de lopende band de toekomst uit, hij had duizenden uitvindingen op papier waarvoor nu nog de middelen ontbraken maar zodra stroom kon worden opgewekt uit kolen of zo dan kon iedereen genieten van dingen zoals ; automatische schuifdeuren, drones, kerst verlichting, tuners, wi-fi en hifi of andersom, de yphone, koffiezetten met een apparaat en veel meer zinnige dingen voor veel later, Hem was de enigste die al werkte dankzij Alien tech, hij, de ingenieur, had het gekregen van een vriend Loek Skywalker. En zo had junior op deze slinkse wijze al zijn speelgoed bijeengegaard, is zijn alsmaar uitdijende collectie ontstaan, beetje als in een museum, maar dan ver voor er museums zijn. Niks mis mee, dus.

Nu Vergilius was gaan wieberen, epibreren of andere wijze ver van daar aan het verkeren konden de speeltjes vrijuit communiceren. Het bericht over de achteloosheid waarmee Hem Lap LEDlicht was gedumpt, vergeten, achtergelaten voor dood sloeg in als een bom, Buzz begon te hyper ventileren, Jazzy werd helemaal slap en viel flauw, ook al was ze erbij, het was haar toch ontgaan, Regent Woody werd er stil van, kon het amper aan. Keizer Zurgias en Die Verrekte Hond Slinx konden het niet bevatten, al deden ze nog zo hun best. Onbegrijpelijk. 'Je laat je schijnend licht toch niet achter!' Gromde Regent Woody. 'Zelfs niet al ben je vijf jaren jong, het is misdadig.' Ging Buzz verder en daarop 'We moeten ons leren weren tegen de wispelturigheid van de jongste jeugd en hun onverschilligheid ten opzichte van onze waarde en vorm.' 'Je helpt niet! Buzz. We hebben behoefte aan een plan voor het terughalen van Hem LEDlicht niet aan een revolutie.' zei Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd vlak, moe van dat gezever over de ommekeer en het verheffen van het speelgoed naar een hoger niveau. Laat ons eerst maar eens lang genoegen samen zijn en dan daar een keer aan beginnen, Vergilius zal daar zeker niet voor zorgen, hij laat ons, zijn verzameling juttersgoed zo achter voor een andere hobby, uitdaging in bezit, bezette gebieden en dergelijke fenomenen. Worden we gedumpt in de zee, weggegeven aan een kringloop, verhandeld op het marktplein, gescheiden van elkaar en alleen wij kunnen dat voorkomen maar wel pas zodra er iets is te voorkomen, zoals nu graag. Deze gedachten loop volgde altijd direct op die over revolutie, de strijdbijl opgraven en de kracht van de kudde van Buzz Lichtjaar, een soort reactie op de contaminatie, de ene gedachte vecht tegen de andere. Aardappel Hoofd hield zijn hoofd liever leeg, onbezet door niet zijn eigen gedachten, effecten van eigen handelingen en dergelijke. Logisch gezien de verandering die hij moest doormaken.

Opvallend genoeg zei Buzz, hij meestal degene van directe actie, 'op dit moment niet bij machte te zijn om lijfelijk te werken aan de oplossing van dit probleem aangezien zijn stevige beentjes door Vergilius waren gekneveld, hooguit kon hij een plan van aanpak verzinnen. Regent Woody kon dan de uitvoering ervan leiden omdat hij de enigste was die kalm bleef tijdens hachelijke ondernemingen. Niet iedereen kon zich daarin vinden vooral Woody zelf niet, het leek hem beter dat Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd de leiding had, hij is ook als enigste meerdere malen ontsnapt aan de hebberige handjes van Vergilius Junior.

'Ja maar, hij bleef nooit weg, een paar traantjes, een hanglip, en dan komt ie gelijk weer terug, in plaats van zijn herwonnen vrijheid te gebruiken om ons te bevrijden!' repliceerde Buzz Lichtjaar snedig. 'Hij is gewoon heel gevoelig, ja!' bitste Jazzy, Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd zweeg, hij was geen leiderstype, Woody wel, dat zag Buzz goed, niettemin was dit, deze verkwanseling van Hem Lap LEDlicht, wel de slechtste daad van Vergilius ooit, en actie moest zeker worden ondernomen, en wel nu. Met of zonder leiding, dat was hem om het even. Als Hem LEDlicht in paniek zijn licht ergens op zou laten schijnen dan zagen ze Hem nooit weer terug, dat soort dingen pikken ze niet in het donker, onnatuurlijke schijnsels zijn tegenwoordig niet in zwang, niet in Troje in elk geval. Zolang hij in het duister dwaalde was het nog goed. Dan was er kans dat ze hier terug samen weer op dezelfde hoop zouden liggen.

Overigens, dit betreffende zijn lafheid of gevoeligheden, was Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd als enigste niet gestolen uit betere, goede omstandigheden maar afkomstig van nog beroerder handen, en wel blij met enige vooruitgang, dat was dit zeker. Hij was waarschijnlijk Vergilius enigste goede daad, misschien alleen ter bevestiging van de regel een uitzondering. De anderen waren gewoon niet op de hoogte van nog mindere eigenaars, vandaar de eeuwige terugkeer in de grijpgrage handjes van Junior. Het kon erger, hij kon zich de geprakte, met hete sappen overgoten en ook de opengesneden kameraden nog heugen als de dag van gisteren, de pijn van het kokende water, in de stomend hete olie en waarom, waarom! Hij wist het eerst niet maar sinds hem de ogen waren geopend en de neus, mond en oren wel.

Buzz, deed een gebonden versie van het plan, de locaties, de schuilplekken, speelgoed zonder eigenaar kon beter niet gezien worden! Alleen Aardappel Hoofd begreep deze mededeling, de rest had visioenen van hun oude baasjes, Dido en zo, of een ander zeer speelgoed minnend persoon, maar ja op Aardappel en Slinx na was verder niks echt speelgoed maar objecten met grote waarde en mogelijk enorme krachten, zwarte magie, gele misschien, rode met groen stippen, regenboog magie van de verdwenen troetelbeertjes, opgejaagd en opgegeten, ach arme.. In handen vallen van onbekenden zou een heel ander en nog naargeestiger leven opleveren voor de Jazzy's en Buzzers. Eentje waarbij ze werden ingezet als wapen of bewaard in een potdichte kast in een kelder, nooit het daglicht zien, levend voelen, speels zijn. Geen vooruitgang daar, zelfs terugkeer naar de oude eigenaar, de eigenlijke, garandeerde geen verbetering in deze toch ook al slechte situatie.

Buzz had alle instructies over gebracht op iedereen in het algemeen en in detail in Regent Woody, elke stap uitgewerkt, nu moesten we wachten tot Vergilius te sponde lag en zijn gebruikelijke slaap der schuldigen sliep, diep en lang.

De jonge Vergilius zelf was ondertussen via via terecht gekomen bij Senior en hij vertelde over de HiHi Hinnik, de gift op de flyer rol van de geroyeerde Griek Listige Sinon, pa luisterde aandachtig, het klonk goed, hij riep om zijn assistent Kent maar uit de kamer kwam de assistent van de assistent Laocoöm, ex predikant, maar na het verlies van alle geloof omgeschoold tot tweede assistent. Vergilius Senior vroeg of Laocoöm Kent kon verwittigen zodat hij de folder kon bemachtigen en daarna dit object z.s.m. zou aanvaarden en stallen in de opvang voor kostbaarheden van het keizerlijk paleis. Laocoöm keek bedenkelijk na het aanhoren van deze boodschap, hij was de man er niet naar om direct kritiek te uiten op de baas, onderbaas, maar als iemand zichzelf voorstelt als ... de Listige dan is zo'n gift zelden goed. Zeker aangezien hij ook de levendiger vertelling van Junior had aangehoord over het uiterlijk van deze Griek Sinon, zwervers waren altijd van alles behalve fit, hun lijf een ruïne niet veel anders dan Troje 1 tot en met 6 onder Troje 7, ons fundament. Als hij met dit bericht was gekomen in plaats van die nare Junior dan zou Senior dit ook denken, nu blind door de liefde voor zijn vreselijk hebberige zoon ziet hij er niks verkeerds in.

Hoedanook, Laocoöm moest deze boodschap wel overbrengen naar Kent, de man die zijn bril had afgezet en dus spoorslags was verdwenen, gelukkig nooit lang. Meestal had ie dan zo'n rottige glimlach alsof hij alleen de aarde had gered van iets waarvan hij alleen weet had, de gluiperd. Deze werkzaamheden in een dergelijk bestuursorgaan waren al bijna net zo ellendig als het lijden van een parochie, er aan ook. Hij ging wel de kanttekening bijvoegen tijdens de overdracht, een HiHi Hinnik klinkt veel te onschuldig om goed te zijn, zeker gezien de onbekende bron en het gebrek aan deugdelijke achtergrond info betreffende de gever. Ze hadden hem op zijn minst een poosje kunnen pijnigen om het levensverhaal te bevestigen.

Woody en Jazzy wachten en wachten tot de vreselijk onrustige Vergilius Junior eindelijk eens in slaap viel, de hele tijd was hij bezig met de HiHi, waar die moest staan, hoe die er echt uit zag, of het zou glanzen, oplichten in het donker, of er draden aan zaten, of het was gemaakt van zeldzaam materiaal, heel duur was en dergelijke kwesties. Het was een drugte van belang in zijn kleine koppie, de behoefte aan het verse spul was torenhoog, enorm, het veroorzaakte uren onrust voor hij dan eindelijk om een uur of laat in slaap viel, diep en ook lang.

Op dat moment sommeerde Woody de speelkameraden, de zoektocht naar Hem Lap LEDlicht moest ogenblikkelijk aanvangen, Sop willende moet hij vanavond nog gevonden worden. Een stille aftocht was gelukkig weer niet nodig, Junior zou alleen wakker worden als HiHi zelf naast zijn bed stond, stijgerend, blazend, luid hinnikend, en hard met de achterpoten stampend tegen het bed. Het speelgoed beheerste de stille aftocht totaal niet, alles ratelde, trilde en klingelde naar lieve lust op weg naar de speelgoeduitgang van kindersuite 9.

Woody liep voorop en de anderen volgden, langs alle vooraf ingestelde punten, locaties donker maar vanaf daar wel uitzicht biedende op de te lopen, schuifelen, rollen en meer route naar het volgende punt. De poort was het eindpunt, daar ergens zou LEDlicht nog moeten liggen, dit klinkt als een simpele klus maar voor mobiel goed, lastig voortbewegend, niet al te pienter is dit gewoon een onmogelijke klus. Iedereen wist dat het niet meteen goed zou komen, er zouden situaties ontstaan, onfortuinlijke. Elkaar uit het oog verliezen is een zekerheid, normaal, het zou raar zijn als het niet zo was. Ze gingen ergens vanaf vallen, terecht komen op vervelende locaties, onbedoelde geluiden maken, opvallen zelfs door duisternis omringd. Zolang er maar een is die Hem Lap LEDlicht ontdekt en dan terug brengt is de missie gewoon geslaagd te noemen, de rest redt zich altijd wel, die vallen maar altijd in de buurt van de speelzaal, zonder erg. Hem LED ligt gewoon te ver daarvan, gedoemd tot dwalen. Elk project wordt uiteindelijk altijd geredt door Buzz en zijn onzichtbare plannen, het echte verhaal erachter niet aan ons verteld en juist daarom werkzaam. We worden gebruikt, misbruikt, ingezet tegen beter weten in maar we doen het voor elkaar, omdat we allemaal in dezelfde klote situatie zitten, liggen, staan en dat alleen samen aan kunnen, verdragen, doorzetten en hopen op beterschap. Aangekomen bij standpunt 5 van 9 ontbrak Keizer Zurgios, geen van ons had gezien wat er was gebeurt, waarom de Keizer ons gezelschap moest ontberen. We moesten echter doorgaan, er op vertrouwen dat Zurgos zonder ons terug zou keren op basis kamp, rondom Vergilius speelgoed kist.

Verder weg was Loacoös in overleg met zijn vriend Aeneas, Aeneas was door Hector, een man uit zijn bubbel die van de Grieken had gehoord dat er iets in Troje stond te gebeuren en die had dit bericht met behulp van  postduif.sm  'vliegensvlug bij u' en marathon mail 'als een lopend vuur' bereikt. Aeneas vroeg daarna aan Loacoös wat er van waar was en de oud priester, mede reiziger, meer een dwalende, vertelde hem over de HiHi Hinnik, het paard op de rol beschreven, inmiddels werd het ding al opgehaald door assistent Kent.

Op de gebruikelijke mysterieuze wijze stond het zelfs al midden op het Juridisch en Moralistisch Plein klaar voor verder transport naar de opslag van Villa Vergilius, Aeneas keek daarop extra bedenkelijk. Senior was de enigste die de reis die hij ging maken in rijm kon omzetten en zo presenteren aan een groot publiek. Hij moest een andere schrijver regelen of aangezien er zo weinig degelijke scribenten zijn zijn biograaf Vergilius ietwat onder druk zetten, zijn verlangen uitspreken om samen met hem op pad te gaan, en wel meteen. Wat Aeneas wist over de HiHi beloofde een spoedig einde van Troje, van iedereen die aanwezig was als het paard werd geopend, iedereen dus inclusief dichter schrijver en parttime diplomaat Vergilius,

Dit hele gesprek ontging alle speeltjes, ze hadden maar een doel, Hem Lap LEDlicht weer thuis brengen, voegen bij hun hoop. Het gezelschap werd ondanks alle afspraken en maatregelen alsmaar kleiner, ongewild en als altijd onverwacht, al was het normaal. Ieder project verliep op deze wijze, rommelig, klungelig, simpele opdrachten werden vreselijk ingewikkeld, Waar is Slinx? vroeg Woody aan Aardappel Hoofd 'Ik weet waar hij was maar ik heb geen idee waar Die Verrekte Hond nu uithangt' 'Ik snap niet hoe we dit doen Hoofd? We moeten achter elkaar aan lopen, hoe moeilijk kan dat zijn?' 'Nou behoorlijk lastig, laat ik eerlijk zijn, tijdens geen van onze tochtjes heb ik jou of jij mij tot het eindpunt kunnen volgen, niet met een vast slot punt, niet met een beweeglijk onduidelijk eindpunt.. zoals nu. We kunnen niet anders.'

We raken altijd de focus kwijt. Ik denk dat het komt omdat ze met ons spelen, zolang we in het spel zijn is de focus aanwezig, raken we uit zicht, worden we onbelangrijk dan verliezen we alle vormen van concentratie, gaan ongeveer in het niets van iets anders op, struikelen dan over onszelf, vallen uit of weg, bestaan ... Aard, Aardappel Hoofd! Waar ben je?!' Sprak Woody met treurige ondertoon in zijn stem.

'Eh Oh Ah, ja nee, ik weet niet, moeilijk te zeggen, het is anders voor mij. Ik dwaal moedwillig af, waar jullie gewoon de verkeerde kant op lopen of afvallen van iets, kijk, Regent Woody, ik kom van een andere plek, ik was maar een Aardappel, vervolgens kreeg ik vanalles erbij, de pootjes, de zintuigen, neus, oren, ogen, en het bolhoedje.. ik had niks een schil, twee uitzaaiers en wat blauwe plekken en opeens bestond ik, kon ik de ellende om me heen zien, mezelf en anderen, het andere ruiken, praten, luisteren naar mezelf, jullie, mijn kwelgeesten van voor ik Van Voorbijgaande AardappelHoofd was, die lui schilden je levend, kookten je of bakten, loeiheet, de ellende die ik daar zag, moest meemaken, dan ben altijd overal blij dat je daar niet meer bent en hier wel, volledig aanwezig. Niemand speelde met mij tot dat moment, ik zag, ik had de benen, ik nam ze. Mijn focus is compleet... Woody, Regent Woody, en weg.'

De instructies van Buzz volgend zou Woody pas bij de volgende stop het spoor bijster raken. Echter het idee bleef het zelfde iedereen op Buzz en Aardappel Hoofd na zwalkte om in de regio waar Hem Lap LEDlicht inmiddels zelf moest zwalken, de dump plek, de afstand die een niet gefocust stuk speelgoed kan afleggen per uur, het oppervlak kon duidelijk worden uitgetekend, binnen nu en dertig minuten zouden ze elkaar voor de voeten lopen, Hem LED zou van schrik knipperen en iedereen hier zou er op reageren. Eenvoudige oplossingen voor eenvoudige problemen, typisch Buzz. De rest zorgt voor complicaties, hoe minder rest des te beter het is voor de plannen en verhalen van Lichtjaar.

Er was zeker kans op falen tegelijkertijd geringe kans op niet knipperen van Hem LED, het is toch superhandig als je jezelf moedwillig kunt laten verschijnen zodat je gezien zal worden maar ook kan zien waar je bent, vooral nuttig als je de omgeving kent, anders ben je meer een lichtend voorbeeld van iemand die zichzelf oplicht. Als iedereen die je zoekt buiten is waar jij verschijnt is ontdekt worden een stuk eenvoudiger. De complicaties zijn duidelijk extern, buiten ons blikveld maar absoluut daar, bij voorbaat daar. Maar zij weten niet wat ze zien, wij wel en wachten er op, we weten ook wel dat zodra Hem Lap LEDlicht op weg terug naar Juniors doos hij steeds heel even gaat knipperen, omdat hij ziet en gezien kan worden door degenen die naar hem op zoek zijn.

En inderdaad 10 minuten nadat Woody verdween in zijn dooie spelmoment klonken er klungelige geluiden, knipperde LEDlicht, en jubelde die ratelende Verrekte Hond Slinx, Hem LEDlicht bevrijd van de stress begon een moment lang te schijnen, zodat iedereen zag dat ze binnen een zeer beperkte cirkel minuten lang om elkaar heen hadden gedraaid. Hem deed zichzelf weer uit, op de terugweg doen we dan wel wat we eerder niet deden elkaar vasthouden, eenmaal terug samen laten we pas los als we veilig op een hoop liggen. Weliswaar betrekkelijk veilig, zeer betrekkelijk.

Rondom ons, vlakbij de hoofd ingang van de opslag was uit het niets een object verschenen. Het leek wel alsof het uit de lucht was gevallen. Lichten gingen aan, assistent Kent kwam aan, bril op, zo herkenbaar, 'zo wat een verrassing, wat jij Laocoöm' Ja, Daar is het gevaarte, dat is snel, hoe is het ja mogelijk, fijn. Ik zal de beide Snijders op de hoogte brengen, en de baas.'

Daar werd dan door Wetsie en Rotnie Snijder het HiHi ding op een plateau op rolletjes naar binnen gedreven, de troonzaal van de familie Vergilius in, het kundig geprepareede kunstpaard was pikzwart, glanzend, zat vol vakjes, de ogen waren diamanten met goud omrand, de manen van onduidelijk niet heel aards overkomend materiaal, het geval was een schitterend ongeluk op het punt gebeuren. De speelgoed familie keek er naar en huiverde, dit was geen speeltje dit was verre van dat, het bezat duidelijk krachten maar hele andere dan die van Buzz, Jazzy en Woody.

Van Voorbijgaande Aardappel Hoofd keek naar de HiHi Hinnik, daarna naar Buzz Lichtjaar en zag dezelfde blik vol afschuw die hij zelf waarschijnlijk ook had. Buiten hoorden ze mensen smoezelen, Buzz zag de tweede assistent met een compaan, alleen deze was te paard, Die compaan was Aeneas, de globetrotter, Aeneas, eens een getrouwe van Vergilius Senior, ging er al stilletjes tussen uit knijpen, hij was dus hier van op de hoogte gebracht, wist ook iets, Laocoöm, zit hier vast, zijn taak bleef maar heilig, en die bijstaan tot het end, het geloof laat je nooit los, wordt alleen omgezet in een andere. Taken om te volbrengen ondanks alles.

Het HiHi Hinnik paard, had één hendel, daar zou zeker een van de Vergiliussen aan trekken, die hendel zat bij de bek, trok je daar aan dan zou het leven in Troje nooit meer hetzelfde zijn, voorbij. De HiHi Hinnik was een verse opgewaardeerde versie van de oude doos van Pandora, het labeltje van de Pandora fabriek hing er nog aan, versie 6.6.6. Dit was op dit moment de snelste poort naar de hel, de snelweg, een directe entree, hiervan werd Vergilius Junior, Pinhead Junior,

We moeten maar eens gaan allen sprak Buzz rustig, en dit keer zonder dat complexe oponthoud, linea recta weg uit Troje, geen gestuiter. Hier heb ik geen zin in en nooit niet. Gaan we nu weg zijn we binnen dertig minuten bij de poort en vanaf daar heb ik samen met Hem Lap LEDlicht transport geregeld, Ing Zonnenbloem en zijn bastaard dochter Dido wachten op ons, De Bloem heeft een experimenteel voertuig gebouwd, hij noemt het de Boing, Deze nijvere ingenieur heeft namelijk als enigste de folder van HiHi daadwerkelijk gelezen, aldus begrepen wat er komt, hij verwacht ons en dan 'stijgen' we op of zo. Ingenieur Zonnenbloem mag dan een mafketel zijn maar zijn poort naar de hel brengt ons op een Z weg erheen, een moeilijk toegankelijk edoch onomkeerbaar eenrichtingvoetpad, maar wat mij betreft is dat progressie.

Al vroeg werd Vergilius Junior wakker, hij was reuze blij, Hij zag in de troonzaal aangekomen zijn moeder staan ze keek in de bek van het paard, haar hoofd stond in brand. Vergilius werd daarentegen ijskoud. Van de rest van de familie geen spoor, zussie en zusssie, waren namelijk wel door Pa meegenomen, Aeneas had zich net voor vertrek bedacht en gevraagd aan Vergilius hem per direct te begeleiden tijdens zijn vijf minuten geleden begonnen reis, vanaf de ondergang van Troje naar het middelpunt van het heelal, langs godenrijken en hij moest stante pede alles meenemen wat hem lief was, nu! Hij had hem niet op de hoogte gebracht van de ware aard van de HiHi Hinnik, de rest is net als dat reisverslag geschiedenis.

PW, Pre Wiki. De volgende personen kwamen er in voor en andere verschijnen mogelijk in Troy Story 5.2

Aeneas, globetrotter Vergilius schrijver denker Vergilius Vergilius zoon van denker schrijver, entrepreneur Hector influencer Kent (met en zonder bril) Westie Snijder Rotnie Snijder Dido (KIO, koningin in opleiding) Laocoön Sinon de Listige HiHi Hinnik Pandora Fabricaties Regent Woody Van Voorbijgaande AardAppel Hoofd Die Verrekte Hond Slinx ReXVII Buzz Lichtjaar Jazzy Hem Lap LEDlicht Keizer Zurgias

Alle Stemacteurs worden ingesproken door de lezer! Bedankt nou.

Dit script werd mogelijk gemaakt dankzij Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, en dat type volk. Wij van Van Voorbijgaande Aard Creaties zijn hem enorm dankbaar voor zoveel indrukwekkend vertoon van creaties en geld op een grote hoop.

Tonight I plan to follow the NFL Preseason Game between the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Hopefully Steelers Nation Radio will bring me pregame coverage and the call of the game. 6:00 PM CDT is the game's scheduled start time, so I'll start checking about an hour early for pregame stuff.

And the adventure continues.

The umbrella arrives before the rain.

The map arrives before the journey.

Recognition arrives before understanding.

Structure arrives before growth.

& how does a desert stay honest when it's raining.

I talked with a coworker/friend about some of her plight Of San Jose. Specifically with dating and the culture behind it, and I am really grateful I don’t live here. I don’t have to tell myself that no matter what I would still be happy because I am not happy because of my circumstances, but rather the decision decisions that I make. There are always good things that you can pay attention to. But I digress, I do feel, however, that there is an ugly side of me of competition that really comes out here, which is really funny because I am not trying to date anyone here. Hell, I am leaving tomorrow lol. But I noticed this in myself in the fact that whenever I have seen men in public, I kind of insult them in my head, like I try to put them down and I treat it like there is some competition that I am being judged against them in. I feel like I’m on edge and I am insecure about my own desirability as a person, I find myself worrying about things like random hypotheticals that aren’t even coming up, or how these random people are paying for these meals in fancy restaurants for their partner, and how this probably is a normal occurrence for them. And I do believe that this is fiscally irresponsible, but I feel like I’m fixating on that as a justification for not losing this competition rather than as a separate valid point. I don’t like the side of me, I much rather enjoy the side of me that doesn’t feel like I am fighting and trying to put other people down.

I think im overthinking again, which is a great time to start writing. and maybe i have a good reason too. i suppose ill never know. until then, im left wondering, fun right? I’ve never been this attached to a woman before, and honetly, i hate it. i hate how much i want to be around her, how much i notice when she disappears, and how much a simple message seems to matter to me. she can be gone for sixteen, nineteen, twenty hours, then tell me she was asleep. maybe she was. i believe her. i know shes tired. i just dont understand why sending me something when shes awake or in btween sleeps seems so difficult sometimes. even a simple “good morning” would be enough. everyone checks their phone at some point, even if its just to look at the time or check a message. i dont think sending one would take that much. im not asking her to be there all day. just tell me where you’ve been. sleep, games, going out, whatever. i dont care. just tell me. you dont have to lie or pretend you werent on your phone. and yes, i know im probably being ridiculous. but its whatever, who am i to complain or judge? who am i to decide if she should text me or not, i dont think she believes we’re that serious either way, and while that hurts i love her, i love her so much more than i could tell. this doesnt make me love her less, it just bothers me. i do my best, as a man whos busy most of the time, to reply quickly and make an effort. sometimes it feels like she barely cares, or wouldnt bother to text if she had her phone with her. and while i could probably do the same but im afraid of losing her, or doing an act that would make her much more distant. i dont think shes afraid of losing me because she knows ill stay either way, and that hurts more than id like to admit. i dont want to do the same thing just to make her understand how annoying it feels. i just want her to understand without me having to become cruel about it. i do believe everything she tells me, and somehow i still manage to question afterwards, and ill admit that at least, thats my fault. i cant exactly complain to her about this. it is silly. it is unnecessary and if i tell her, ill probably become “too much” again, which is a charming little title id rather not earn.

So ill write it here instead, at least i can be honest here, if she thinks its unecessary, then perhaps i should think so too, maybe thats just the best for me to just do what she does and believe its right, until its not. maybe, maybe not i dont know. I’m very good at not knowing when it comes to things like this. and ill probably not do anything about it, after all im just overthinking.

Sincerely, who has too much time to think

JOURNAL 25 août

Olala la montagne, dormir dehors la nuit ça me manque… l'océan le #surf, on s'amuse, on a des copains, c’est gentil mais c’est pas pareil. Au fond de moi je suis triste, quelque chose me manque. Et c’est la #forêt, le chant doux et profond des arbres et des pierres, le murmure du ruisseau, les multiples présences aux aguets tout autour, une vie intime que l'océan puissant et monstrueux ne permet pas de s'épanouir, il occupe tout l'espace physique et sonore à lui tout seul, il rend impossible toute méditation, on ne peut comme lui qu'être sans cesse en mouvement et s’étourdir. Plein soleil aujourd'hui. On apprécie la clim pendant ces nuits à 27°c. On repartira jeudi matin avec l'arrivée de la pluie qui va s'installer pendant des jours à nouveau.

 6.

Les soldats avaient installé de grandes tentes qui attiraient notre curiosité. On s’y rendait en bande pour se rassurer. Souvent ils nous donnaient du chocolat, ça valait le coup. Parfois on avait le droit de tourner les manivelles de leur radio, c’était dur mais quelle fierté ! On se battait presque pour être le premier. Il y avait des filles dans notre bande, elles n’étaient pas les dernières. Nous nous familiarisions réciproquement avec nos différences anatomiques. Ma sœur avait 10 ans, elle allait à l’école chez les sœurs, elle me paraissait appartenir à une espèce étrangère. Peut-être était-elle française aussi, comme les soldats ? L’atmosphère dans la grande maison était lourde. Mes parents ne s’entendaient pas. Les disputes incessantes entre ma mère et ma grand-mère rendaient la vie commune insupportable. Ma mère avait juste trente ans, elle voulait s’amuser, repartir pour la France. « La chèvre meurt où on l’attache » lui répondait-on.

“Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, kiss, or dream?” I smiled and said,

“Because the most beautiful things in life are not seen, but felt only by the heart.”

I’m tired today. I have nothing else to say. I don’t think im willing to go on like i always do, im just tired. Nothing to write about.

Sincerely, Tired

PS. that was supposed to be for yesterday’s entry, August 26th. No, i did not forget. i tried to publish it. it simply decided not to work. not my fault. yours.

Inbetweeners Part 6- The Crab Shack

I figured I'd do a post highlighting one of the rooms in the original dungeon crawl incarnation of the Inbetweeners Campaign. Something that is funny about running a game is that frequently, characters will spend much more time and attention on something that you barely considered while ignoring content that the game master/dungeon master considered more central. This was the case with the Crab Shack.

If players headed directly “north” (whatever that means in liminal space) from the Grey Room, they would go through a hallway. On the other end of that hallway, they would emerge next to an abandon fishermen's shack on the beach. More specifically, an abandon crabber's shack. I included the basic notes/description in the rooms document, but the takeaway was that this shack had been abandon for some time and had a few skeletons of fisherman or crabbers who, upon investigation, the players can discover died from trauma. The bones are picked clean, either indicating extensive decay (years) or that something at the meat off of them. Not sure we ever got into the players closely examining them, but if they had, a medicine check probably would have revealed they were killed by animals. A high level nature or survival might have been able to pin it down to crabs. There wasn't much of value in the shack, just old fishing equipment: nets, broken traps, fishing hooks and canned fermented crab meat. If they rolled high on investigation, maybe a few gold coins. However, if the players lingered, things got interesting.

Periodically, giant crabs would attack the players. They have an AC of 15, 13 hitpoints, deal 1d6 + 1 damage and can potentially grapple with their pincers. Overall, not very threatening, but a quaint little encounter for the players. I didn't have a set number that would appear over intervals, the idea was just one, and then more would trickle in over time. They don't move particularly quickly, so players can see them coming from a distance. It's less of an urgent threat and more of a... if we wait here long enough we may get overwhelmed with crabs. Each crab provides substantial meat and 25 experience points. I figured players would just hang for a second and move on, but my players loved this room. They liked the idea of just endlessly killing crabs. They didn't end up killing that many, but they did kill a few and collect crab meat, and on passes back through took out a few more crabs. If the players went into the ocean, they would appear in the courtyard of a mages' university, and if they went through one of the doors in the shack, it took them back to the hallway. If they ran down the beach any distance they would simply loop and appear on the other side. However, they could see crabs coming down the beach in the distance, and nothing else living in sight.

There isn't really a whole lot more to say about the contents of the “room” itself. It's more the sort of nostalgia of a simple encounter like this. Early RPG video games where leveling involved grinding low level enemies endlessly. Think the OG pokemon, where you spent hours knocking out rattatas and pidgeys to try to level enough to fight Brock because of course you picked charmander and fire is ass against rock pokemon. The players joked about never leaving the crab shack except to sell their crab meat at the market. They could just endlessly use cantrips and ranged attacks to kill crabs and have a sustainable source of food and income. Theoretically, if they killed enough crabs, they would be able to level arbitrarily high. I followed the XP system for this campaign rather than story based rewards, because I found the arbitrary XP system kind of funny. Theoretically, 14200 crabs per player would level them all from 1 to 20. It would make for dreadfully boring sessions, but, if the players want to do it the players can do it. There's nothing stopping them. Though I suppose eventually they would exhaust the local crab population. I'd say after a few hundred there really wouldn't be any giant crabs left in the area. I try to make it more realistic than video games where things just spawn infinitely. Like eventually charmander would incinerate all the wildlife on Route 1, right?

Towards the end of the game, when the players did the Lady of Pain's gauntlet, they returned to a version of the Crab Shack. However, this one was an entire harbor that, while once buslting, had been completely destoryed. There were overturned ships, many dead, torn apart bodies and devestated structures. Instead of giant crabs though, Chuuls spawned endlessly. To borrow from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, “Chuuls have been described as “a horrible mix of crustacean, insect, and serpent”, but most closely resembled an 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall yellow-green lobster, weighing around 650 pounds (290 kilograms) with four long legs, two large claws, a strong protective exoskeleton, a fan-like tail, and a mass of paralysis-causing tentacles around its mouth.” Each one of these has 96 hitpoints, much more dangerous weapons, and gives 1100 XP. Ironically, by the time the players encountered them, a Chuul posed far less of a threat than the giant crabs did when the players first encountered them.

So yeah, sometimes a simple encounter works best for the players. Not everything needs to be fancy, epic, or full of intrigue. Sometimes players just enjoy hunting crabs.

The most consequential sentence in American higher education this month is six words long, and takes two seconds to type.

“Log in and complete my quiz.”

Reporting by Dana Goldstein and Alan Blinder for the New York Times, published on 10 August 2026, established that this instruction now works. Not as a demonstration, not as a jailbreak, but as ordinary consumer software doing what it was built to do. An agentic browser takes the credentials, opens Canvas or Blackboard or Brightspace, watches the prerecorded lecture, sits the test, drafts the paper and posts into the discussion forum, where it converses with classmates who may themselves be agents. The student is elsewhere, and may be asleep.

Notice what is absent. There is no deception directed at the machine, no prompt engineering, no attempt to evade a filter. The Times tested the three tools most used by students, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grammarly, and found none refused a request to write a paper on a student's behalf. None of the companies prevents its agents logging into learning management systems. Educators have asked the AI firms to make agents identify themselves inside course platforms, and the firms have declined. Perplexity told the Times such a requirement “would put the student's privacy and security at risk”, a remarkable sentence from a company arguing its software should be permitted to impersonate an enrolled human inside an institution that will later certify that person as competent.

The exposure is not marginal. Analysis of federal IPEDS data for autumn 2024, published by the education market analyst Phil Hill in January 2026, found 26.5 per cent of American postsecondary students enrolled exclusively in distance education, rising to 40.5 per cent of graduate students, with roughly 54.8 per cent taking at least one online course. More than half of American college students took an online class last year, up from about a third in 2019. A quarter to a half of the sector's assessed output now passes through a channel in which the only evidence a human was present is a login session and a timestamp.

Six Words Are the Entire Attack Surface

What makes agentic cheating different is not sophistication. It is the collapse of the seam. Contract cheating required a transaction, a counterparty, a payment trail and a delivered file the student then submitted under their own name. Chatbot cheating required copying, pasting and, if the student was careful, some rewriting. Both left a boundary somewhere: a moment at which the student's work stopped and someone else's began.

The agent removes the seam. It does not hand the student a file. It operates the account. The submission originates from the student's session, at the student's IP address, at a plausible hour and pace, with the mouse movements and dwell times of a person reading. Reporting by Frank Landymore in Futurism on 13 August 2026 drew the consequence: professors cannot fall back on supervised examinations and oral presentations in a course where everything happens behind a screen. Digital Trends, covering the same Times reporting that day, stated what most institutions have declined to say aloud, which is that the question is no longer whether AI can help a student cheat on an assignment but whether a student can complete an entire degree without doing much of the learning.

Platforms can look for behavioural tells: time on task, session patterns, the rhythm of navigation. The Times reported no fail-safe way to block agentic cheating, and the reason is structural rather than technical. Any signature that distinguishes an agent from a diligent student is a signature the agent can be instructed to imitate, and the imitation costs the student nothing, because the student is not the one doing the waiting.

The Detector Was Never Going to Hold This Line

The institutional response, reported by Kathryn Palmer in Inside Higher Ed on 5 August 2026, is that universities have stopped pretending detection works.

Yale, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins and Indiana have adopted policies banning or discouraging reliance on AI detection software as the sole evidence of alleged cheating. At least a dozen institutions, including Northwestern, Georgetown and New York University, have switched off Turnitin's AI detection feature entirely. The updated Faculty AI Playbook at Indiana's Kelley School of Business tells staff that tools claiming to detect AI use “are highly unreliable” and advises them to design assignments encouraging process, reasoning and authentic engagement instead.

This is a retreat, and it is the correct one. The evidence against detection has accumulated for three years and it is not close.

Vanderbilt was early and unusually candid about the arithmetic. In August 2023 its Brightspace team disabled Turnitin's AI detector and published its reasoning. The university had submitted roughly 75,000 papers to Turnitin in 2022. At the 1 per cent false positive rate Turnitin advertised at launch, that implied around 750 papers wrongly flagged in one year at one institution. Vanderbilt also noted that Turnitin disclosed no detail about how its classifier reached a verdict, and that detectors disproportionately flag writing by non-native English speakers.

That second objection has the strongest empirical backing of anything in this field. Weixin Liang, Mert Yuksekgonul, Yining Mao, Eric Wu and James Zou of Stanford University published a study in Patterns in July 2023 running seven widely used GPT detectors over TOEFL essays by non-native English speakers and over essays by American eighth-graders. The detectors classified the native-speaker writing with near-perfect accuracy. They classified 61.3 per cent of the non-native essays as AI generated, all seven unanimously flagged 19.8 per cent of them, and at least one detector flagged 97.8 per cent. Detectors key on text perplexity, penalising writers with a narrower range of expression. When the researchers used ChatGPT to enrich the vocabulary of the same essays, the false positive rate fell to 11.6 per cent. The surest way to stop a detector accusing a foreign student of using AI was to have AI rewrite their essay.

Turnitin reviewed more than 200 million papers in the first year of its detection feature, roughly 11 per cent of which contained at least 20 per cent AI writing, and its guidance puts the sentence-level false positive rate at around 4 per cent, which is not a rounding error when a single flagged paragraph is what a misconduct panel is looking at. The detectors fail in the other direction too. Peter Scarfe, Kelly Watcham, Alasdair Clarke and Etienne Roesch at the University of Reading ran the most rigorous real-world test of the proposition, published in PLOS ONE in June 2024, inserting AI-generated submissions into live undergraduate psychology assessments without the markers' knowledge. Ninety-four per cent went undetected. The AI submissions attained grades on average half a grade boundary above those of the real students.

Jennifer Frederick, executive director of Yale's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, and Alfred Guy, who directs its undergraduate writing and tutoring programmes, gave Inside Higher Ed the clearest statement of why Yale stepped back. Evidence shows, they wrote, that “humanizing” programs are very successful at reducing or eliminating the percentage of AI usage that is detected, and they wanted to avoid “the inevitable cat and mouse game created by AI detection tools”. Their objection was not that the arms race is unwinnable but that it is beside the point. “This becomes a technical exercise rather than a learning event.”

The cost of getting it wrong is not abstract. Haishan Yang, a third-year PhD student in health economics at the University of Minnesota, sat an eight-hour preliminary examination remotely in August 2024 and was expelled the following January after faculty graders concluded, partly from AI detection software and ChatGPT comparisons, that his essays were machine-written. Yang denied it and sued. A federal court dismissed his due process claim in October 2025 and the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the expulsion in February 2026. Whatever the merits of that case, its shape is what matters: an unreliable instrument, a career-ending sanction, and a burden of proof no party can discharge.

The Only Numbers Anyone Has Are the Numbers of the Caught

Abandoning detection has a consequence universities have not absorbed. The sector's statistical picture of academic misconduct is a record of enforcement, not behaviour, and enforcement has just been switched off.

The best longitudinal data comes from the United Kingdom. Michael Goodier, reporting for the Guardian on 15 June 2025, obtained figures under the Freedom of Information Act from 131 of 155 universities. Proven cases of AI-related cheating reached almost 7,000 in 2023-24, equivalent to 5.1 per 1,000 students, up from 1.6 the year before, with partial figures suggesting about 7.5 the following year. Proven conventional plagiarism fell from 19 per 1,000 students to 15.2 over the same period. More than 27 per cent of responding universities did not yet record AI misuse as a separate category.

Now set that against what students say they do. The Higher Education Policy Institute's Student Generative AI Survey 2026, written by Rose Stephenson and Charlotte Armstrong and published on 12 March 2026 from a December 2025 survey of 1,054 full-time UK undergraduates, found 94 per cent using generative AI to help with assessed work, up from 88 per cent in 2025 and 53 per cent in 2024. Twelve per cent said they had included AI-generated text directly in assessed work, up from 8 per cent and then 3 per cent in the two preceding years.

Twelve per cent of undergraduates admitting to submitting machine-written text. Five proven cases per thousand students. The gap is roughly a factor of twenty-four, and it is the honest measure of how much the sector knows about its own assessments. Scarfe told the Guardian that those caught are the tip of the iceberg, and explained why in a sentence that ought to be pinned to every misconduct policy in the world. AI detection is unlike plagiarism, where you can confirm the copied text. Where you suspect AI, it is near impossible to prove.

The faculty view comes from a survey of 1,057 American college faculty conducted between 29 October and 26 November 2025 by Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center with the American Association of Colleges and Universities, released on 21 January 2026. Seventy-three per cent had personally dealt with academic integrity issues involving student use of generative AI, 78 per cent said cheating had increased on their campus, 95 per cent expected the technology to increase overreliance, 90 per cent expected diminished critical thinking, and 74 per cent believed it would negatively affect the value of a degree. The authors are explicit that the sample is not statistically generalisable. It does not need to be. Three-quarters of a large sample of the people who mark the work believe the qualification they confer is worth less than it was, for reasons they can name.

Contract Cheating Already Answered This and Nobody Wanted the Answer

There is a comforting story in which generative AI created this crisis in November 2022. It is false, and believing it is why the sector is improvising.

Philip Newton of Swansea University published a systematic review in Frontiers in Education on 30 August 2018 covering 71 samples from 65 studies going back to 1978, with 54,514 participants. The historic average of students self-reporting commercial contract cheating was 3.52 per cent. In studies conducted between 2014 and 2018 the figure was 15.7 per cent, which Newton extrapolated to roughly 31 million students globally. That was five years before ChatGPT. The market was mature, the transactions untraceable in practice, the detection rate negligible, because a purpose-written essay contains no copied text for a similarity checker to find.

Tracey Bretag, Rowena Harper and colleagues surveyed 14,086 students across eight Australian universities for a study in Studies in Higher Education, and found three factors reliably associated with outsourcing: dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment, a perception that there were lots of opportunities to cheat, and speaking a language other than English at home. None is a technology variable. Two are descriptions of institutional design.

England responded with criminal law. The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 made it an offence to provide, arrange or advertise contract cheating services for financial gain to students at post-16 institutions and higher education providers in England. It was the right instinct and has proved near-impossible to enforce, the providers being numerous, offshore and hard to reach, and prosecution sitting with the Crown Prosecution Service rather than an education regulator with a reason to care.

So the boundary between a student's work and someone else's did not disappear in 2026. It disappeared, for a meaningful minority, during the 2010s, and universities carried on treating the unsupervised written artefact as evidence of learning because the alternative was expensive. Generative AI removed the price, the counterparty, the delivery lag and the risk, converting a minority behaviour into a default one. That is not a change of kind but a change of magnitude large enough that the old assumption stops functioning.

Tricia Bertram Gallant, who directs the academic integrity office and testing centre at UC San Diego and co-authored The Opposite of Cheating, said exactly this to Inside Higher Ed. Over twenty-odd years, she noted, changes from internet-supported plagiarism to the contract cheating industry and now AI have slowly degraded the validity of twentieth-century assessments. Yet higher education has not changed. “We're still relying on the unsupervised written word as evidence of learning. The real trick is acknowledging that that doesn't work anymore.”

Students Are Not Confused About the Rules, They Are Renegotiating Them

One paper in this literature circulates as a finding that ChatGPT lowers the barrier to contract cheating while making detection harder. That is a fair summary of the field but not of the paper, and precision matters here. ArXiv 2606.09845, submitted on 27 April 2026 by Belle Li, Lily Tan, Wei Zakharov, Qiang Qiu and Colby Ben Acton, is titled “Tutor, Not Solver: Designing a Guardrailed AI Assistant for Learning in Higher Education: A Design Case of PeteChat”. It is not a prevalence study. It documents an AI tutor deployed at Purdue University on a locally hosted Llama-3 model with retrieval-augmented generation grounded in course materials, from which the authors derive eight design principles for assessment-aware tutors, from homework guardrails to self-regulated learning support. Its interest here is that it inverts the detection approach, assuming students will use a model and constraining what the model does at the point of use rather than punishing them afterwards. That works only inside a system the institution controls, which an agentic consumer browser is not.

The paper that addresses the collapse of the boundary is arXiv 2605.29090, submitted on 27 May 2026 by Jiyoon Kim, Kentaro Toyama, Sangmi Kim and John M. Carroll, titled “'It's OK Because...': The Wild West of Student Rationalization of AI Use in Academic Writing”. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews together with students' AI chat logs, syllabuses and submitted assignments, the authors find at least five distinct sites at which AI use is conceptualised, running from the policy the instructor intended through to what students actually did. Between those five sites, meaning drifts.

Within that drift the authors catalogue more than twenty distinct rationalisations. That copying AI-generated text is victimless. That any AI text reflecting the student's own beliefs, or reading in their own style, is therefore their own writing. That extensive AI use means they are learning more than they otherwise would. The taxonomy includes justifications used to excuse conscious violations of stated course policy. Crucially, these rationalisations arise both ad hoc and post hoc and are not necessarily self-consistent: students construct them in the moment, reconstruct them afterwards, and do not need them to cohere. Modern AI, the authors conclude, presents a steep ethical slippery slope which students conceptually slide down, landing far outside their instructors' pedagogical goals.

This should worry universities more than the agent story, because it describes a condition no assessment format repairs. A student who believes machine-generated prose expressing their own view is their own writing has not broken a rule. They have sincerely adopted a different definition of authorship, and they will carry it into a graduate job where nobody will correct it either.

The Argument on Reddit Is the Argument Everywhere

The third paper cited in the brief was characterised as documenting teacher burnout and poor institutional support. It is something else, and the something else is more useful.

At arXiv 2605.17712, submitted on 18 May 2026 by Pelin Yüce, Xiangruo Dai, Rebecca Owens and Tuğrulcan Elmas, “ChatGPT vs Teachers vs Students: Large-Scale Analysis of Generative AI Discourse in Education Communities on Reddit” analyses 270,000 AI-related posts and comments across 26 education subreddits between November 2022 and April 2026. Topic modelling yields seventeen themes. The trajectory is a detection-and-evasion arms race hardening into a sustained enforcement regime, with constructive integration only beginning to challenge it from the middle of 2024.

Different constituencies worry about different things. K-12 teachers foreground cognitive dependency, academics focus on detection, students in professional programmes on career anxiety. The finding that matters most is about contact. Seventeen per cent of threads are cross-role, and one third of that cross-role contact occurs in the two adversarial themes, AI Detection and Misconduct Enforcement. Students initiate 68 per cent of mixed threads, but faculty produce most of the replies. Mixed threads contain two to three times more records than same-role threads and last two to four times longer. Sentiment correlates strongly negatively with engagement.

Strip out the platform and what remains is a description of an institutional relationship. The sustained centre of contact between the two parties to an education has become the dispute over whether one of them cheated. Not the subject. Not the feedback. The accusation and the defence.

Marc Watkins, a writing and composition lecturer who directs the AI Institute for Teachers at the University of Mississippi, put the resourcing question to Inside Higher Ed in terms nobody has costed. He could not fathom the cost to a single university, let alone most campuses, of scaling AI-resilience tactics such as proctored oral examinations, and it should not all fall on faculty. Kevin Yee, who directs the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Central Florida, described colleagues at wit's end, moving towards assignment redesign not because they think it better but because the alternative failed. “It's a difficult, delicate moment right now, and I'm not sure we have all the answers.”

The Blue Book Is a Confession Rather Than a Cure

Which brings us to the booklet. The Atlantic has published a piece titled “What Students Learn From Blue-Book Exams”, which this article could not read behind the paywall and therefore does not characterise beyond its title. The broader argument is easy to state anyway. Put a human in a room, take the devices, hand them lined paper and a fixed period, and whatever appears on the page was produced by that person. It is the only verification method available that does not depend on a classifier, a probability or an inference.

Institutions are moving. Princeton's faculty voted on 11 May 2026 to place proctors in examination rooms, ending a system of unsupervised examinations that had stood since 1893, after a dean's letter reported that significant numbers of professors and students perceived cheating on in-class examinations to be widespread. The Daily Princetonian's survey of the Class of 2026 found 24.8 per cent of respondents admitting to cheating in violation of the honour code, and, asked about using a chatbot on work that banned it, 27 per cent of arts and sciences students and 46 per cent of engineers said they had. The University of Chicago Law School has banned phones, tablets and laptops in first-year classes as part of its AI strategy. Bertram Gallant put the logic best: “We cannot be giving unsupervised assessments to students expecting them to resist AI. They're not going to be learning, we're going to be spending our time trying to catch them cheating and they're going to graduate and realize they just wasted four years.”

The comparison usually offered here is the calculator, and it is worth saying where it breaks. Maths education absorbed the calculator by conceding the mechanical step and moving assessment upward, towards modelling and interpretation. The tool automated a component and left the task recognisable. An agent that logs into Canvas and completes the course does not automate a component. It automates the student. There is no upward move available, because there is no residual layer above being the person enrolled.

But the blue book is a confession, not a cure, and its costs land on exactly the students who can least afford them.

Amanda Sturgill, an associate professor of journalism at Elon University, set out the practical objections for the Center for Engaged Learning in August 2025. Handwriting speed varies enormously and is not evenly taught; there is, as she puts it, a public-private divide in handwriting instruction, so a timed handwritten assessment quietly advantages students whose schools drilled it. Post-pandemic cohorts compose on keyboards. Hands cramp, and cramping degrades output and legibility, neither of which bears on whether the student understands the material. For students with dysgraphia, motor impairments or writing-related accommodations, an unadapted handwritten examination measures penmanship and stamina rather than knowledge, and the accommodations that fix it, extra time, a scribe, a locked-down laptop, are exactly what under-resourced institutions ration.

The technologists' alternative has the same problem in a different place. Armando Fox of UC Berkeley and Craig Zilles of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign argued in Inside Higher Ed on 19 March 2026 that computer-based testing facilities beat blue books, allowing algorithmically generated examination variants, richer question formats, self-scheduling across multi-day windows and frequent low-stakes assessment. Illinois ran more than 130,000 examinations through its facilities in autumn 2025. It is genuinely better than handwriting, and it requires a proctored building, a capital expenditure most institutions and effectively all fully online programmes do not have.

Remote proctoring, the option that appears to square the circle, has the worst record. Deborah Yoder-Himes and colleagues at the University of Louisville published a study in Frontiers in Education in September 2022 examining automated proctoring across 357 students in four STEM courses. The software detected Black students' faces 79 per cent of the time against 92 per cent for white students. Students with the darkest skin tones spent 7.64 per cent of assessment time flagged against 1.56 per cent for lighter tones, and received 6.07 flags per assessment against 1.19 for the lightest group. Women with the darkest skin tones were 4.36 times more likely to be flagged than women with medium tones. Monika Blue Kwapisz, Yoav Ackerman, Jennifer Nguyen and Prashanth Rajivan documented in a November 2025 preprint how students with disability accommodations experience these systems, describing anxiety about the interaction between surveillance and their disability, fear of being misread as cheating, and the cognitive load that fear imposes during the examination.

Line the three options up and the pattern is impossible to miss. Handwritten examinations disadvantage students with motor and writing disabilities and those schooled without handwriting instruction. Proctored computer facilities require capital poorer institutions lack and online programmes do not have at all. Algorithmic proctoring misidentifies dark-skinned students and penalises disabled ones. Every available method of proving a human did the work reallocates the burden onto the students already carrying most of it, the same population Liang and colleagues found the detectors falsely accusing, and the same population Bretag and colleagues found most likely to be flagged for outsourcing.

Signalling Was Always Doing More Work Than the Learning

Underneath all this sits an economic question higher education has spent fifty years avoiding, and the agent has forced.

Michael Spence's 1973 paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics established the framework. Education functions in the labour market partly as a signal: employers cannot observe productivity directly, so they pay for a credential that is cheaper to obtain for able and conscientious candidates than for others. The signal works because it is costly, and it works whether or not anything was learned in the acquiring. Bryan Caplan's 2018 book The Case Against Education pushed the claim to its limit, arguing that something like 80 per cent of the earnings premium reflects signalling rather than skill, an estimate other economists dispute vigorously and nobody has settled.

The dispute does not need settling for the point to bite. If the credential carries any signalling weight at all, an agent that can obtain it degrades the signal for every holder, including everyone who did the work honestly. This is a mechanical claim, not a moral one. A signal cheap to counterfeit stops discriminating, and once employers know it is cheap to counterfeit they discount it uniformly, because they cannot tell which holders did. The honest graduate of an online programme in 2026 pays full price for an asset being devalued by people they will never meet.

That is what the Elon and AAC&U figure measures when 74 per cent of faculty say generative AI will negatively affect the value of a degree, and it lands hardest on the segment of the market built as a widening-participation instrument. Online degrees exist, in the story the sector tells about itself, to reach the working adult, the carer, the person in a town without a campus. Digital Trends made the uncomfortable observation: for colleges that have spent years arguing online education makes higher education more accessible, an agent that can attend the class instead of the person paying for it is a particularly awkward problem to have.

The mixed institutional signalling makes it worse. Futurism noted that many universities hold partnerships with AI companies while policing AI use, leaving students to reconcile the contradiction. The California State University system signed a multimillion-dollar agreement with OpenAI to put ChatGPT Edu in front of hundreds of thousands of students and staff. Carol Sewell, an instructor in that system, told the Times how that feels from a classroom: “I'm not getting any guidance on how to dissuade their use. I'm getting opportunities to learn more about using it.”

There is a workable model in plain sight, ignored for a century because it is unflattering. Professional licensure separates the two functions a degree smashes together. Nursing candidates in the United States take the NCLEX under supervision at dedicated testing centres, more than 328,000 of them in 2025 for the registered nurse examination alone. Medicine has the USMLE, law the bar. In every case the coursework is where learning happens, and a separate proctored instrument certifies competence. Nobody worries that a nursing student used AI on a formative assignment, because the assignment is not the credential. The credential is the day in the room.

Higher education runs one artefact for both purposes: the essay is simultaneously the pedagogical exercise and the evidence. That worked for as long as producing an essay required knowing something. The agent has broken the coupling, and the options are to rebuild it by force, at enormous cost and with the distributional consequences described above, or to separate the functions as every licensed profession did decades ago.

The Verification Problem Is Not the Serious Problem

Return to the six words.

The student who types them is not, in most cases, a fraud in the way an essay mill customer was. They are, per the rationalisation study, someone with an available justification: that they are learning more this way, that the assignment was busywork, that the output reflects what they think anyway. Per the Reddit analysis, their main sustained contact with the institution has become a dispute about enforcement. Per the HEPI figures, they are in a cohort where 94 per cent use the tool for assessed work and only 36 per cent feel their institution encourages them to. They are behaving rationally inside a system that has stopped telling them a coherent story about what the work is for.

Kathryn Kysar, a community college instructor who has taught online for fifteen years, told the Times that those who have taught a long time usually recognise the cheaply written AI stuff within thirty seconds. She is almost certainly right, and it does not help her, because recognising it and proving it are separated by an evidentiary chasm no detector spans. Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University, buried the word Madagascar in white text inside a midterm prompt in the summer of 2026 and reported that thirty-two of his thirty-five students across two classes failed part of the examination, having pasted the prompt into a chatbot and submitted the result unread. What unsettled him was not the cheating. It was that nobody noticed sentences about Madagascar floating sideways through the afternoon in an essay on the Industrial Revolution.

Gibson caught his students because they were careless. The agentic student will not be careless, because the agent will not paste the prompt and will not leave the word in. The trap worked once.

So the answer to what a degree is worth when a machine could have earned it is not a number, and proctoring alone does not recover it. Making a person sit in a room and write by hand verifies that a human produced marks on paper under time pressure. It verifies nothing about the fourteen weeks before, and it produces a credential whose accessibility depends on how steady your hands are and how your school taught cursive. It is a verification of presence dressed as a verification of learning, adopted because it is the last mechanism that cannot be spoofed.

The harder thing is what Bertram Gallant said out loud and almost nobody has repeated. If a student can complete a degree without doing the learning, the injury is not principally to the institution's reputation or the employer's hiring accuracy. It is to the student, who paid the money, gave the years, got the paper. The four wasted years are the loss no invigilator prevents and no detector catches, and the only person positioned to notice is the one who has already spent everything avoiding it.

References

1. Dana Goldstein and Alan Blinder, “AI Agents Are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students,” The New York Times, 10 August 2026 (syndicated by the San Francisco Examiner, 12 August 2026). https://www.sfexaminer.com/ai-agents-are-taking-entire-online-courses-for-cheating-students/article_9d4ef5ca-317f-54a3-937a-56bfcc9a0272.html
2. Frank Landymore, “College Kids Are Using AI Agents to 'Take' Entire Online Classes for Them by Logging Directly Into the Course Management Software,” Futurism, 13 August 2026. https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/college-kids-ai-agents-cheat-online-courses
3. Varun Mirchandani, “AI agents are sitting through students' online courses, and colleges are struggling to stop them,” Digital Trends, 13 August 2026. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/ai-agents-taking-online-courses-student-cheating/
4. Kathryn Palmer, “AI Detectors Are Out, New Assessments Are In,” Inside Higher Ed, 5 August 2026. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2026/08/05/ai-detectors-are-out-new-approaches-are
5. Lee Rainie and C. Edward Watson, “The AI Challenge: A National Survey of College Faculty,” Imagining the Digital Future Center, Elon University, and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, 21 January 2026. https://imaginingthedigitalfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Elon-AACU-faculty-AI-survey-full-report-1-21-26.pdf
6. Vanderbilt University Brightspace team, “Guidance on AI Detection and Why We're Disabling Turnitin's AI Detector,” Vanderbilt University, 16 August 2023. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/brightspace/2023/08/16/guidance-on-ai-detection-and-why-were-disabling-turnitins-ai-detector/
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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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