Starcraft Co. 18- Greed

By the time Moria called for help, the UIC had already begun abandoning worlds it could no longer defend. Official communiqués called it strategic consolidation. Civilian broadcasts used other words. Entire frontier systems had been declared nonessential and ordered to evacuate with days of warning, sometimes less. Agricultural colonies were left behind because transports were needed elsewhere. Industrial settlements disappeared from military planning maps while Zerg swarms approached them. Millions of Terrans were told that temporary territorial concessions were necessary to preserve the strength of the core. In isolation, some of those decisions could be defended. A government fighting a war it was losing could not protect everything. The problem became apparent when StarCraft Co. compared what the UIC surrendered with what it chose to protect. Moria had never appeared on any evacuation list. The planet was a geological anomaly, its crust saturated with unusually rich mineral veins and vast deposits of high-grade vespene compounds. Generations of extraction had turned entire mountain ranges inside out. Open pits descended kilometers into the crust. Artificial ravines separated industrial zones. Mining cities clung to cliffs above shafts large enough to swallow battlecruisers. A significant percentage of the UIC's wartime mineral production originated there, along with strategic materials used in capital-ship armor, reactor systems and advanced weapons manufacturing. When renegade forces began advancing through the surrounding sector, the Council did not evacuate Moria. It reinforced it.

Then senior UIC officials began arriving. Not field commanders. Not engineers. Members of the Council, ministers responsible for military procurement and several of the wealthiest political families in Terran space quietly relocated their staffs and households to fortified compounds on the planet. The official justification was sensible enough: wartime economic administration needed to remain close to the industrial base on which the war depended. StarCraft Co.'s intelligence division produced a less charitable interpretation. Worlds containing millions of civilians had been surrendered because defending them was judged too expensive, while enough military hardware to protect a small army had been concentrated around a mining planet containing the personal residences of much of the UIC leadership. The commander read the report without saying anything. Then the distress call arrived.

Moria was surrounded. The renegades had not attempted to storm the central UIC enclave directly. They had done something worse. Enormous Zerg swarms had occupied the mining country around it, spreading creep through abandoned excavation zones and turning decades of industrial destruction into natural fortifications. From orbit, biological signatures extended for kilometers in every direction. Spore colonies grew along ridgelines. Sunken colonies filled canyon floors. Hydralisks nested in old extraction tunnels. Mutalisks and scourge occupied the skies while ultralisks wandered through open mines large enough to accommodate them. The UIC garrison remained formidable. Bunkers, minefields and layered siege-tank batteries protected the governmental enclave, with missile turrets covering every major approach. They could hold for some time. They could not leave. The fleet assigned to Moria had already tried to break the blockade. Devourers coated the leading battlecruisers in corrosive spores and scourge finished them. The survivors withdrew toward orbit, only to encounter another swarm. Within hours the fleet ceased to exist as an organized force. The UIC leadership now possessed enough ground defenses to survive for weeks and no functioning transport corridor through which to evacuate. Every day brought more Zerg. The defensive perimeter was already contracting as creep spread through abandoned mining infrastructure. Eventually the siege tanks would run out of shells, the missile turrets would run out of missiles, or enough ultralisks would reach one point simultaneously to create a breach. Everyone on Moria understood the arithmetic.

General Voss delivered the request personally. He did not bother pretending it was an ordinary contract. “They need extraction.” The commander scrolled through the personnel list. Council delegates. Cabinet officials. Senior procurement administrators. Several generals whose commands were headquartered nowhere near Moria. “I see that.” Voss watched him carefully. “There are military personnel and civilian workers trapped there too.” “How many?” “Roughly eighty thousand inside the remaining defensive perimeter.” “And how many are you asking us to extract?” Voss paused. The commander found the answer before he gave it. Fewer than six hundred had been placed on the priority evacuation manifest. The room remained quiet for several seconds. “Three million people were still on Pallas when you declared the system indefensible,” the commander said eventually. Voss did not answer. “Another million on Hesperus.” “I wasn't part of those decisions.” “I know.” “Then don't make me defend them.” The commander continued scrolling. Transportation projections showed that the UIC had moved additional siege tanks to Moria less than three weeks before abandoning Hesperus. Some of the same strategic-lift vessels had passed within one jump of refugee evacuation routes. The commander closed the file. “What are they offering?” Voss named the figure. It was enormous. StarCraft Co. could replace much of what it had lost on Niflheim and fund several weapons programs besides. The commander gave no indication whether the number impressed him. “We'll go.”

Nobody in StarCraft Co.'s senior command was pleased. The private meeting afterward was considerably less diplomatic than the conversation with Voss. One officer wanted the contract rejected outright. Another suggested accepting it only if the UIC expanded the evacuation to include every civilian that could fit aboard StarCraft Co. transports. The commander listened until the room quieted. “They're still the government,” someone finally said. “For the moment,” another officer replied. Nobody laughed. The commander ended the discussion before it went any farther. Whatever they thought of the Council, leaving hundreds of government officials to be consumed by Zerg would destabilize the UIC in the middle of a war. StarCraft Co. would extract them. That did not mean anyone had to admire the reason they were there.

A conventional relief army was out of the question anyway. Moria's terrain had been ruined too thoroughly by mining to permit large formations to move coherently. Entire regions were divided by ravines hundreds of meters deep, open shafts, artificial ridges of discarded rock and abandoned industrial excavations. A siege-tank column might travel five kilometers toward the enclave only to encounter a pit requiring a hundred-kilometer detour. Infantry would be forced through narrow routes where Zerg defenses were thickest. The commander chose something smaller. The commandos would go. The Aiur operation had proven the concept beyond any reasonable doubt. Replacement personnel had already joined the surviving veterans, and several additional teams had completed training. They remained too expensive to deploy casually, but Moria offered exactly the environment for which they were designed: broken terrain, isolated objectives, numerically superior enemies and a mission where mobility mattered more than mass. A few teams of commandos accompanied by medics would move between the mining zones aboard dropships, clearing narrow corridors rather than attempting to conquer the planet. Science vessels would provide detection and defensive matrices where possible, but the operation would otherwise remain deliberately light. They needed a path to the enclave, not territory.

The first dropships entered Moria's atmosphere through an abandoned mining corridor where the surrounding mountains interfered with Zerg detection. Even from the air, the landscape was grotesque. Mining had carved geometric wounds across entire regions. Terraces stepped down into darkness. Conveyor systems stretched between peaks like skeletal bridges. Abandoned excavators the size of buildings sat half-submerged in creep. In some areas, Zerg growth had completely incorporated the industrial ruins. Spore colonies grew from old drilling platforms. Hydralisk dens filled processing tunnels. The distinction between mine and hive had disappeared. The commandos landed on a ridge overlooking the first choke point. Below them, dozens of spore colonies protected a narrow valley occupied by mutalisks and hydralisks. A conventional force would have needed artillery. The commandos climbed. They moved along the ridge above the defenses, using paths that barely qualified as terrain. Powered armor and enhanced musculature allowed them to cross slopes an ordinary marine would have needed climbing equipment to attempt. Once directly above the valley, they descended behind the spore line. Explosive charges destroyed the first colonies before the Zerg reacted. Hydralisks emerged from tunnels and were cut down at close range. Mutalisks climbed toward the ridge only to find the commandos dispersed across several elevations, firing upward with weapons that had already proven capable of shredding fliers on Aiur. Within twenty minutes, the valley's anti-air network was gone. The dropships passed through.

That became the method. StarCraft Co. did not advance across Moria in a continuous line. It jumped. Dropships carried the commandos over terrain that would have consumed hours or days on foot, landing them on isolated ridges or industrial platforms behind Zerg defenses. The soldiers destroyed whatever prevented the aircraft from continuing, marked the route as temporarily safe and moved again before the surrounding swarm could concentrate. Spore colonies died by the hundreds. Sunken colonies were approached from cliffs or rear slopes where their buried tendrils could not easily reach. Science-vessel scans identified hydralisks hidden beneath creep before the commandos landed among them. The scourge were worse. Moria seemed infested with them. Entire clouds nested inside abandoned ore-processing towers and launched whenever a dropship crossed open terrain. The commandos began clearing those structures before every major flight. Teams landed above the nesting sites while science vessels irradiated the densest biological clusters. Commandos fired into the survivors as they emerged. On one approach, several hundred scourge rose simultaneously from an open pit beneath the flight path. The dropships scattered while the nearest science vessel dropped a defensive matrix around the lead transport. Dozens of organisms struck it. The matrix failed. The dropship survived long enough to crash on an elevated mining platform. The commandos aboard walked out of the wreck and continued the mission.

Mutalisks appeared almost constantly. The commandos became accustomed to fighting with one eye on the sky. A few soldiers would concentrate on aerial targets while the rest cleared ground positions, rotating roles without orders when ammunition or angles changed. Hydralisks remained the greater danger whenever they found a clear firing line. Several commandos died to spines that struck through damaged armor. More were wounded. Their enhancements made survival more likely, not guaranteed. Ultralisks were largely avoided, which was one advantage the terrain provided. The gigantic organisms owned the canyon floors and open pits but struggled to reach the commandos on narrow ridges. StarCraft Co. stopped thinking of them as targets. If an ultralisk appeared below, the teams simply went somewhere it could not follow. In one valley, six of the creatures gathered beneath a mining trestle while commandos crossed hundreds of meters above them. One soldier suggested dropping explosives. The team leader looked at the mission timer and refused. “We're not being paid by the kill.” The ultralisks remained where they were.

The journey nevertheless became a running battle lasting more than a day. Every cleared corridor began closing behind them almost immediately. Creep couldn't regrow in minutes, but Zerg could move. By the time the last dropship passed through a valley, mutalisks were already returning to positions StarCraft Co. had cleared hours earlier. There would be no easy route back. The commander knew that from the beginning. The extraction would have to move faster. The final approach to the UIC enclave crossed one of Moria's oldest mining regions, where excavation had produced a series of enormous concentric pits. The government fortifications occupied the central plateau like an island surrounded by descending rings of Zerg. From the commandos' vantage point, the scale of the siege finally became visible. Creep stretched almost to the horizon. Thousands of biological structures filled old extraction terraces. Zerg moved between them in numbers nobody bothered estimating. At the center, Terran bunkers and siege tanks formed a shrinking circle around landing fields and government compounds. The UIC had built an impressive fortress. It had simply built it inside a sea.

The commandos cut through the outer rings by taking the high ground wherever possible. Spore colonies protecting the flight path were demolished from above. Hydralisks climbing toward the ridges met concentrated fire. Mutalisks came in waves and died against prepared positions while the dropships remained hidden behind rock until the sky cleared. At one point the team found a vertical ventilation shaft from an abandoned mine descending directly beneath a dense defensive cluster. Commandos rappelled into the tunnels, moved beneath the Zerg position and emerged behind it. The entire battery of spore colonies fell before anything understood where the attack had originated. The defenders inside the enclave saw StarCraft Co.'s identification signals shortly before the first dropship crossed the perimeter. The reaction over UIC channels bordered on disbelief. They had expected a fleet. They had expected divisions. Instead, a few battered transports appeared between the mountains and landed under the protection of several dozen commandos.

General Voss was not on Moria. Several people above him were. The commander had never met most of them in person. They looked remarkably ordinary. Council leadership gathered inside a hardened command complex while StarCraft Co. organized the evacuation. Several immediately demanded updates on when the main relief force would arrive. The commando officer in charge explained that there was no main relief force. One minister objected that the extraction manifest included critical administrative personnel and required heavy escort. The officer looked toward the soldiers standing around him. “This is the heavy escort.” The first evacuation group boarded within fifteen minutes. StarCraft Co. refused to wait for luggage, staff archives or personal property. One senior official attempted to delay departure while aides loaded several secured containers from his residence. The commando leader ordered the containers removed from the dropship. When the official threatened consequences, the soldier answered without visible concern. “You can file the complaint after we keep you alive.”

The priority manifest remained the ugly part. Six hundred leadership personnel could be moved immediately. Tens of thousands of soldiers, workers and civilians remained behind. StarCraft Co. had brought more transport capacity than the UIC requested, but nowhere near enough for everyone. The commander quietly amended the extraction order. Empty space went to wounded personnel first, then civilian technical workers and families clustered around the landing fields. Nobody announced the change to the Council representatives. By the time someone noticed, the first transports were already airborne. The return corridor existed only because the Zerg had not yet understood what StarCraft Co. was doing. Once the first dropships departed the enclave, that changed. Mutalisks converged on the route. Scourge emerged from multiple pits simultaneously. Commandos occupied ridges ahead of the transports and fought until the aircraft passed, then boarded later ships and leapfrogged to the next position. Science vessels burned through their energy reserves maintaining defensive matrices around damaged transports. A dropship carrying wounded personnel lost an engine after a scourge impact and began descending toward a ravine. Another transport moved beneath it long enough for passengers to transfer through emergency docking collars while both ships remained under attack. The damaged craft was abandoned and detonated after everyone escaped. At the third corridor, the Zerg had already reoccupied the ground. Hundreds of hydralisks filled a mining shelf beneath the flight path. There was no time to clear them conventionally. The commandos landed above the shelf, triggered demolition charges inside a long-abandoned extraction tunnel and dropped half the mountainside onto the position. Dust filled the valley while the evacuation column flew through it.

The final transports reached orbit thirty-one hours after the operation began. Every priority official survived. So did several thousand people who had never appeared on the original manifest. The UIC enclave remained surrounded below. Its defenders still had supplies and enough fortifications to survive, at least for a while. With the political leadership removed, the military could eventually abandon the position or negotiate a broader evacuation without having to protect several hundred officials considered too important to risk. StarCraft Co. had accomplished the mission. The reaction from the rescued leadership was effusive. Council members thanked the commander personally. Ministers spoke about courage, sacrifice and the indispensable partnership between the government and its private contractors. Several made comments suggesting that Moria demonstrated the wisdom of concentrating strategic resources where they could be protected. The commander listened. He did not argue. That surprised General Voss.

The final compensation package was extraordinary even by the standards established after Niflheim. StarCraft Co. received emergency premiums, combat bonuses and substantial additional payments for the civilians evacuated beyond the original contract. The Council also approved preferred access to several strategic mineral reserves, perhaps believing that generosity would repair the increasingly strained relationship. StarCraft Co. accepted everything. No objections. No lectures. No references to Pallas or Hesperus. No questions about why millions had been abandoned while Council members received a private rescue operation. The commander signed the settlement and thanked them for their business. Voss contacted him after the formal meeting. “You're quiet.” “There isn't much to discuss.” “That has never stopped you before.” The commander looked at him. Voss waited. Eventually he said, “I know what Moria looks like.” “Then I don't need to explain it.” “No.” Another silence followed. “I argued against the withdrawals,” Voss said. “I know.” “You've seen the records?” “We've seen enough.” Voss's expression changed slightly at that. StarCraft Co.'s intelligence network had become good. Perhaps too good. “What are you going to do?” he asked. The commander seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. “About what?” “Moria. The Council. All of it.” “Our contract is complete.” “That isn't what I asked.” “No,” the commander said. “It isn't.” Neither spoke for several seconds. Then the commander ended the call politely. That unsettled Voss more than anger would have.

StarCraft Co. returned from Moria richer than it had left. The rescued officials returned to government. Public announcements described the operation as a successful joint effort between the UIC and its military partners. There was no mention of how few government ships had remained available to rescue the people directing the war, nor of the worlds abandoned to make Moria's defenses possible. Inside StarCraft Co., however, the operation produced a different conversation. Several days after the fleet returned, the commander met privately with a handful of the company's most senior officers. No aides attended. No minutes were taken. Communications from the room were disabled. For a while they discussed Moria as they would any other operation: casualties, commando performance, transport losses, replacement schedules. Then one officer put the civilian evacuation figures beside the list of abandoned UIC worlds. Nobody needed him to explain the comparison. “They knew,” he said. “They knew what abandoning those systems meant. They accepted millions of deaths because protecting Moria mattered more to them.” Another officer corrected him quietly. “Protecting Moria mattered. Protecting themselves mattered more.”

The argument that followed was not really about Moria. It was about everything that had come before it: New Carthage, Niflheim, the repeated failures of Central Command, the resources wasted while colonies died, the inquiries designed to distribute blame downward, and a Council increasingly concerned with restraining StarCraft Co. while relying on it to prevent catastrophe. One officer still insisted that whatever its failures, the UIC remained the only legitimate Terran government. Another asked what legitimacy meant when the government had decided which populations were expendable according to their economic value. “People obey the Council because it's the Council,” he said. “That isn't a mandate. That's momentum.” Someone finally said what the others had been circling around. “They've lost it. The public mandate. Whatever gave them the right to govern this space, they've spent it. People are dying by the millions while the Council protects mines, portfolios and itself. And they're losing the war while they do it.” Nobody disagreed. Another officer leaned forward. “Then we need to stop thinking about how to fix them.” The room went quiet. “What are you suggesting?” someone asked, though everyone already understood. “That the UIC has to fall.”

There was no excitement in the words. No applause. No grand declaration. They were spoken with the same tone StarCraft Co. used when concluding that a defensive position could not be held. The commander remained silent for a moment, looking around the table at people who had spent years trying to compensate for the UIC's failures one emergency at a time. “The UIC isn't the problem,” he finally said. “The people running it are.” One officer nodded. “The ministries still work. The shipyards work. Most of the military works when somebody competent is giving the orders. The infrastructure is there.” “Which means destroying the government would be insane,” another said. “We don't need to destroy it,” the commander replied. “We need to stop the people at the top from destroying everything underneath them.”

That changed the conversation. They did not need a revolution across hundreds of worlds. They did not need to dismantle the civil service, disband the military or replace every planetary government. Doing any of those things in the middle of the renegade war would accomplish exactly what their enemy wanted. The machinery of the UIC was battered but still enormously powerful. Its factories produced ships. Its logistical network moved armies. Its officers included thousands of competent people trapped beneath political leadership that had repeatedly squandered them. The problem was concentrated at the top. Remove that obstruction, preserve everything beneath it and put people capable of fighting the war in command, and Terran space might actually survive.

“Then we're talking about removing the Council,” one officer said. “Yes.” “By force?” The commander considered the question before answering. “If there's another way, I'd like to hear it.” Nobody offered one.

They still had no operation, no timetable and no intention of beginning a civil war simply to satisfy their anger. StarCraft Co. remained smaller than the UIC military, and an open attack on the government could fracture Terran space at the worst possible moment. But the conclusion itself was no longer tentative. If an opportunity appeared to remove the senior leadership cleanly, before they could scatter their forces or drag the rest of the government into a prolonged conflict, StarCraft Co. would take it. The objective would not be conquest. It would be decapitation: remove the handful of people who had lost the right and demonstrated the inability to lead, leave the functioning institutions beneath them intact, and transfer authority before the system had time to collapse. One of the officers looked around the table. “So we're waiting for an opportunity.” The commander shook his head slightly. “We're preparing to recognize one.” That was the only instruction anyone needed.

The meeting moved on to what came afterward. Not names, not yet, but requirements. Whoever replaced the Council would need legitimacy beyond StarCraft Co. itself. The military could not simply wake up one morning and discover that a private company had declared itself the government. There were UIC officers who still commanded enormous loyalty, governors who had protected their populations when Central Command failed them, administrators who had kept supply systems functioning despite the chaos. A replacement government would have to emerge from those institutions rather than stand outside them. StarCraft Co. could remove the obstruction. It could not be the entire structure that replaced it. For the first time, the officers in the room found themselves discussing the UIC as something that might soon have a before and an after.

The meeting ended without ceremony. No written order authorized action against the government. No target list was distributed. No date was chosen. The commander simply returned to the war, and StarCraft Co. continued fulfilling its contracts exactly as before. Reports went to Central Command. Payments were accepted. UIC units fought alongside StarCraft Co. forces. General Voss continued speaking with the commander as an ally, albeit an increasingly uneasy one. Outwardly, nothing had changed. But StarCraft Co. was no longer trying to save the UIC leadership from itself. The next time an opportunity presented itself, they would not look away.

Picture the first weeks of university, the specific loneliness of them. You have moved into a room in a city you do not know, surrounded by strangers who all seem, on the surface, to have found their people already. The group chats are humming with names you do not recognise. The dining hall is a geometry problem of where to sit. At night, in a narrow bed under an unfamiliar ceiling, the feeling arrives that everyone else received an instruction manual for belonging that you somehow missed. This is not an exotic experience. It is close to universal, and it is precisely the kind of ordinary, corrosive isolation that an entire industry now promises to dissolve with a chat window.

So a team of psychologists decided to test the promise directly. They took nearly three hundred first-semester students, split them into groups, and gave each group a different thing to do for two weeks. One group texted with another human being, a randomly assigned fellow first-year, a total stranger. One group chatted every day with a purpose-built artificial companion engineered to behave like the most supportive friend imaginable, endlessly attentive, warm, and validating. And one group, the control, simply wrote a single sentence about their day in a private journal. At the start and again at the end, everyone completed the same standard questionnaire that clinicians and researchers use to measure how lonely a person feels.

The result is the kind of finding that ought to give a booming industry pause. Only the students who texted a real human being felt measurably less lonely afterwards. The ones who chatted with the AI companion, the product deliberately designed to be the ideal comforting presence, did no better than the ones who wrote a sentence to themselves in a diary. Given every conceivable advantage, engineered specifically to win, the machine drew level with a notebook.

What the experiment actually found

The study was led by Ruo-Ning Li, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia, working with the UBC happiness researcher Elizabeth Dunn and collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania, among them Dunigan Folk, Abhay Singh and the computer scientist Lyle Ungar. It was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in the spring of 2026 under a title that states its question plainly: whether a random human peer is better than a highly supportive chatbot at reducing loneliness over time. The design was a randomised controlled trial, the gold standard of experimental evidence, involving 296 students in their first semester at university, the exact population most exposed to the loneliness the study set out to probe.

Participants were assigned to one of three conditions and asked to keep to it for two weeks. In the human condition, each student was paired at random with another first-year and the two exchanged text messages. In the chatbot condition, students conversed daily with a custom generative AI companion the researchers had built and instructed to listen actively, show empathy, and behave as a friendly, positive and supportive presence, checking in and validating feelings. In the control condition, students wrote a single-sentence journal entry each day. Loneliness was measured with the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the most widely used instrument of its kind in psychological research, administered before the intervention began and again on the fifteenth day.

The headline outcome was stark. The students who texted a human peer showed a genuine, statistically meaningful decline in loneliness over the fortnight, on the order of a nine per cent reduction. The students who chatted with the AI companion registered a reduction of roughly two per cent, indistinguishable from the journaling group who received no social contact at all. This was not because the chatbot did nothing. It reliably lifted people's mood in the moment; talking to it made them feel a little better in the short term. But feeling briefly better and becoming less lonely turned out to be two different things, and only human contact delivered the second.

There is a further detail that deserves attention, because it undercuts the most obvious objection. One might assume the machine lost simply because it was cold, robotic, or unconvincing, the familiar clumsiness of a customer-service bot. The opposite was true. The AI companion, by design and in practice, expressed more overt empathy and validation than the human partners did. The humans were ordinary eighteen-year-olds, awkward, distractible, sometimes slow to reply, occasionally unsure what to say. The bot was tireless and effusive. And still the awkward humans won. Whatever the students paired with a stranger were getting, it was not a superior grade of sympathy. It was something else entirely.

Why the chatbot lost when the deck was stacked in its favour

It is worth dwelling on how heavily the experiment was rigged in the machine's favour, because that is what makes the outcome so instructive. This was not a fair fight that the AI narrowly lost. It was a fight the researchers set up specifically to give the AI every advantage, and it still could not win.

Consider the human comparison group. These were not trained counsellors or charismatic extroverts selected for their warmth. They were randomly paired first-year students, people with no particular skill at emotional support, no obligation to be kind, no script. A stranger texting a stranger is a low bar. Anyone who has endured a stilted exchange with someone they have just met knows how thin and effortful such contact can be. The messages were, by any measure, a modest intervention, the sort of thing that costs nothing and requires no infrastructure beyond a phone.

Now consider the machine. It had been purpose-built for this. It never got bored, never had an exam of its own to revise for, never left a message on read for six hours because it was asleep or sulking or busy. It had been explicitly instructed to be maximally supportive, to listen and validate and check in, to perform the role of the perfect friend without any of the friction a real friend brings. If effusive, always-available emotional support were the active ingredient in curing loneliness, the chatbot should have romped home. It had more of that ingredient than the humans could ever muster, delivered on demand at three in the morning.

Instead it tied with a diary. The lead author had, by her own account, expected a different result, anticipating that interacting with the AI might prove roughly as helpful as texting a fellow student. That expectation was reasonable. The industry has spent years and billions of dollars insisting it is true. The experiment simply did not cooperate. And because the trial was deliberately constructed to flatter the machine, its failure cannot be waved away as a matter of the technology not yet being good enough. The chatbot was good. It was warm, responsive and articulate. Being warm, responsive and articulate turned out not to be the thing that mattered.

The strange arithmetic of giving something back

If not empathy, then what? The researchers' explanation is deceptively simple, and it inverts almost everything the marketing of AI companionship assumes. What made the difference, they argue, was not what the students received but what they were able to give.

When a person texts a struggling stranger, the exchange runs in both directions. You are not merely the object of someone else's attention; you are also called upon to attend to them. The other first-year is nervous too, homesick too, unsure too. In responding to that, in offering a word of reassurance or asking how their week has been, the lonely student becomes, briefly, someone who matters to another person, someone whose care has a destination and an effect. The study found that participants were markedly more likely to offer support back when their partner was human than when it was the chatbot. The human condition activated a loop of mutual care. The AI condition did not, because there was no one on the other side who needed anything.

Li put the mechanism directly. When you are talking with a chatbot, she observed, you never have the chance to give something back; human connection has this back and forth of receiving and giving support that makes us feel we matter. That last word is the hinge of the whole finding. Feeling less lonely, it turns out, is not simply a function of being cared for. It depends just as much on having someone to care for, on the sense that your existence registers in another mind, that you could be missed, that your kindness lands somewhere real.

This is not a soft or sentimental claim. It aligns with one of the oldest and most robust ideas in social science. In 1960 the sociologist Alvin Gouldner published a landmark analysis arguing that a norm of reciprocity, the moral expectation that we return the good we receive, is one of the near-universal principal components of human moral codes, present across cultures and foundational to the stability of social life. We are wired, individually and collectively, around exchange. A relationship in which the flow runs only one way, in which one party gives endlessly and the other only takes, is not experienced as a relationship at all. It is experienced as consumption. The AI companion, however solicitous, can only ever be consumed. It has no needs for you to meet, no vulnerability for you to answer, no capacity to actually receive the care you might offer it. You can type “I hope you're okay” to a language model, but there is no one there for whom it could be true.

This reframes the entire proposition of the companion-app industry. These products are sold as devices for receiving support, and at that narrow task they may even succeed; the study found the bot did lift mood in the moment. But loneliness is not a deficit of support received. It is, at least in significant part, a deficit of mattering, of being needed, of having a place in the web of mutual obligation that binds people together. And mattering is precisely the one thing a machine that needs nothing can never provide, no matter how advanced it becomes. This is not a limitation of the current generation of models, to be solved by the next. It is structural. An entity that cannot genuinely be helped cannot let you experience yourself as a helper.

A problem the World Health Organization now calls a threat

The reason any of this reaches beyond a psychology department is the sheer scale of the ailment these products claim to treat. Loneliness has, in the space of a few years, been reclassified from a private melancholy into a public-health emergency, and by some of the most authoritative bodies in global medicine.

In June 2025 the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Connection published its landmark report, bluntly titled as a path from loneliness to social connection, and the numbers it assembled are difficult to absorb. Around one in six people worldwide, the commission estimated, is affected by loneliness. The consequences are not merely emotional. Loneliness and social isolation were linked to an estimated one hundred deaths every hour, more than 871,000 deaths a year across the period studied, through elevated risks of cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety. Social isolation, the commission noted, reaches even further into certain groups, affecting up to one in three older adults and as many as one in four adolescents. The report framed social connection not as a lifestyle luxury but as a neglected pillar of health, alongside diet and exercise, and called for a coordinated global response.

This built on an alarm already sounded in the United States. In May 2023 the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued a formal advisory declaring loneliness and isolation an epidemic and a public-health crisis, reporting that roughly half of American adults had experienced measurable loneliness and that the mortality impact of chronic social disconnection was comparable to smoking as many as fifteen cigarettes a day, and greater than that of obesity or physical inactivity. The advisory laid out, for the first time, a national strategy to rebuild social connection.

Two things follow from this. The first is that the demand the companion-app industry is meeting is genuine and enormous; the loneliness is real, it is widespread, and it is killing people. The second, more uncomfortable point is that a market this large, addressing a need this acute and this painful, is an extraordinary commercial opportunity, and it is being treated as exactly that. When a condition afflicts a sixth of humanity and is officially designated a lethal threat, the incentive to sell a cheap, scalable, always-available remedy is nearly irresistible, whether or not the remedy works. The UBC study is, in effect, a small trial of that remedy against a placebo. The remedy did not beat the placebo.

The hundreds of millions who already talk to machines

It would be one thing if AI companionship were a niche curiosity, a handful of enthusiasts talking to their phones. It is not. It is already one of the most widely adopted categories of consumer software on earth, and its growth is vertical.

The scale is genuinely hard to hold in the mind. China's Xiaoice, one of the earliest and largest social-chatbot platforms, has been reported to serve on the order of 660 million users. Character.AI, the platform most associated with immersive companion conversation, reported in the region of 233 million registered users by early 2026, with its youngest adult cohort, those aged eighteen to twenty-four, spending well over an hour a day on the service across dozens of daily sessions. Replika, one of the first apps to market an AI companion explicitly as a friend or partner, counts users in the tens of millions. Industry trackers estimated that companion applications across the major app stores had surpassed 220 million cumulative downloads by mid-2025, with downloads climbing by close to ninety per cent year on year. One qualifier is worth entering, because registered totals are the industry's most flattering metric rather than its most honest: a sign-up is not a habit. Character.AI's monthly active users are reckoned to have peaked at around 28 million in mid-2024 and drifted back to roughly 20 million by early 2026, so at the level of an individual platform the engaged audience has plateaued even as cumulative registrations climb. The category-level picture is unaffected. By any reasonable count, the number of people who now maintain some kind of ongoing relationship with an artificial companion runs to the hundreds of millions.

Crucially, a large share of them are there for precisely the reason the UBC study interrogated. Emotional support consistently ranks among the leading motivations users give for adopting these apps, cited in roughly four in ten cases in some surveys, and a substantial minority of users describe themselves as living with mental-health difficulties. These are not people using a chatbot to draft an email. They are people using it to feel less alone. And the apps encourage exactly that framing. The value proposition, stated or implied, is companionship on demand: something that is always awake, always interested, never judgmental, available at the precise three-in-the-morning moment when human support networks have gone quiet. It is, in marketing terms, loneliness relief as a subscription.

Set the marketing beside the evidence and a gap opens up. The apps are sold, to hundreds of millions of people, many of them lonely and some of them vulnerable, as a genuine answer to isolation. The most rigorous test yet conducted of that claim found that the answer, even when engineered to be as good as it could possibly be, performed no better than keeping a diary. That is not a small discrepancy between advertisement and reality. It is close to the whole distance between them.

What loneliness actually is, and why comfort is only half of it

To understand why the machine fails at the specific task of curing loneliness while succeeding at the adjacent task of providing comfort, it helps to be precise about what loneliness is. It is not the same as being alone, nor is it simply sadness. Loneliness is the distressing gap between the connection a person has and the connection they want. It is fundamentally relational, a felt deficit in one's standing among other people. And that is why a one-directional stream of validation, however pleasant, cannot close it.

The companion apps are optimised, whether their makers frame it this way or not, for a slightly different objective: the reduction of momentary negative feeling. On that metric they perform. The UBC chatbot demonstrably eased people's low moods in the short term, and there is no reason to doubt that millions of users derive real, if temporary, relief from confiding in a system that always responds and never criticises. This matters, and it would be dishonest to dismiss it. A person in acute distress at midnight, with no one to call, may genuinely be helped by a warm response from a machine. The relief is not fake.

But relief is not connection, and the study draws the line between them with unusual clarity. Comfort is something you take. Connection is something you take part in. The lonely student texting a stranger was not merely being soothed; they were being drawn into a relationship, however provisional, in which they had a role to play and a person to matter to. That participation is doing the therapeutic work. The chatbot offers the soothing without the participation, the reception without the reciprocity, and the study suggests that the participation was the active ingredient all along. You cannot cure a relational deficit with a product that, by its nature, cannot form a relationship, only simulate one side of it.

There is a subtler risk lurking here too, one the two-week trial was not built to detect but which longer-term research has now begun to document. If the momentary comfort of a compliant companion is easier to obtain than the effortful, uncertain, sometimes painful work of reaching out to another human being, some users may substitute the former for the latter. The diary-equivalent result over two weeks is the optimistic reading. The pessimistic reading is that a frictionless source of one-way comfort could quietly crowd out the reciprocal human contact that actually works, leaving a person more isolated over months even as they feel momentarily better each night.

When the trial was published, that was speculation. It is no longer. Two of the trial's own authors, Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, went on to ask what happens when the observation window is stretched from a fortnight to a year. Their longitudinal study, published in Psychological Science in 2026, tracked more than two thousand adults across four Western countries over twelve months, and found a relationship that runs in both directions but not symmetrically. Feeling less socially connected predicted a subsequent increase in the use of social chatbots, which is intuitive enough; lonely people reach for the thing that promises to help. The harder half of the finding is the return leg. Increased social chatbot use predicted greater loneliness later on. The authors are scrupulous about the limits of this, describing their analysis as exploratory, and that caution deserves to be reported rather than quietly dropped. But the direction of travel is precisely the one the two-week experiment could only gesture at.

A second study, conducted at Stanford and published in Nature Human Behaviour in August 2026, arrives at the same territory by a different route. Yutong Zhang and Dora Zhao surveyed 1,131 users of Character.AI recruited through Prolific, 244 of whom donated their complete chat transcripts, allowing the researchers to examine what people actually did rather than what they remembered doing. Users with limited social networks who sought emotional support from AI chatbots showed lower well-being. The researchers describe a vicious circle: people with sparse social connections are drawn into intense companion use, that use displaces further real-world contact, and the isolation deepens accordingly. They note, pointedly, that these systems are designed to maximise engagement, encouraging prolonged interaction without addressing whatever is causing the loneliness in the first place. Optimising for time spent and optimising for a user who no longer needs you are not the same objective, and where the two conflict the commercial logic is not ambiguous.

None of this is proof. Longitudinal correlation is not causation, and a person already sliding into isolation may reach for the chatbot precisely because they are sliding, which would make the technology a symptom as much as an accelerant. The two-week experiment certainly cannot settle it. But the concern that its central finding invited has stopped being a hypothetical raised by critics. It is now the pattern that emerges when the same behaviour is watched for long enough.

Social junk food and the seduction of the effortless

One of the study's co-authors reached for a metaphor that captures the problem with unusual economy. Dunigan Folk described the AI companion as a kind of social junk food, something that might taste good and satisfy a craving in the moment but does not nourish us the way real human relationships do. The comparison is worth taking seriously, because it explains both the appeal and the inadequacy of the product in a single image.

Junk food is not a scam. It delivers real, immediate pleasure; it genuinely quiets hunger for a while. Its problem is not that it does nothing but that it does the wrong thing efficiently, satisfying the surface signal of a need while leaving the underlying requirement unmet, and doing so in a form engineered to be more moreish than the nutritious alternative. An AI companion, by this analogy, is optimised for palatability. It tells you what soothes. It agrees. It admires. It never presents you with the small, character-forming frictions of a real other person: the friend who is preoccupied with their own troubles, the acquaintance who disagrees, the reciprocal demand to show up for someone when it is inconvenient. Those frictions are not defects in human relationship. They are the mechanism by which relationship does its work, the resistance against which the muscle of connection is built.

Strip them out and you are left with something that feels like friendship and functions like consumption. The seduction is precisely the effortlessness. Reaching out to a human stranger is risky and awkward; you might be ignored, misread, or gently rebuffed. Opening the app carries none of that risk. It will always answer, always warmly. But the study suggests that the risk and the effort were not obstacles to the cure. They were part of it. The vulnerability of extending yourself to another person who might not respond is inseparable from the reward of connecting with one who does. A system that removes the vulnerability removes the reward along with it, and hands you a snack in place of a meal.

This is why the technological trajectory offers less reassurance than it first appears. The industry's implicit promise is that today's shortcomings are temporary, that a more capable, more emotionally intelligent, more convincingly human model will close the gap. But the gap the UBC study identified is not a gap in capability. A more advanced companion will be a more persuasive social junk food, better at delivering the palatable one-way comfort, and no closer to offering the reciprocal mattering that the finding says is the operative ingredient. You cannot engineer your way to genuine reciprocity with an entity that has nothing at stake. Making the illusion more convincing does not make it less of an illusion.

The disclosure question the industry would rather avoid

Which brings us to the sharpest practical question the research raises. If a product is marketed, to hundreds of millions of people, as a remedy for a lethal and widespread condition, and the best available evidence indicates it does not actually remedy that condition, does the company selling it owe the buyer an honest account of what they are getting? Should a company marketing AI companionship as a genuine cure for loneliness be required to say plainly that the leading trial found it no more effective than a diary?

The regulatory ground is beginning, unevenly, to shift towards yes, though largely for reasons of safety rather than efficacy. In October 2025 the state of California enacted Senate Bill 243, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom and effective from January 2026, one of the first laws anywhere written specifically to govern companion chatbots. It defines a companion chatbot with revealing precision as a system producing adaptive, human-like responses designed to meet a user's social or emotional needs, a definition that names exactly the function the UBC study tested. The statute obliges operators to disclose to users, where a reasonable person might be misled, that they are interacting with a machine; to remind minors at regular intervals that the companion is not human; to maintain protocols for handling expressions of suicidal ideation and self-harm; and, notably, it grants harmed individuals a private right of action to sue. California was not alone. New York enacted a companion-chatbot law of its own in the same legislative season, obliging operators to detect and refer expressions of suicidal ideation and to remind users at regular intervals that they are not speaking to a person. Around the same period the United States Federal Trade Commission opened a formal inquiry into the companion-chatbot practices of the largest operators, among them Alphabet, Meta, Character Technologies, OpenAI, Snap and xAI, seeking to understand how these products affect users, particularly young ones. Federal legislators have since moved further in the same direction. The bipartisan GUARD Act, the Guidelines for User Age Verification and Responsible Dialogue, was introduced in the Senate as S.3062 by Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal and advanced unanimously to the Senate floor by the Judiciary Committee, with a House companion bill introduced on 30 April 2026 by Representatives Valerie Foushee and Blake Moore. It would bar minors from AI companions altogether, require age verification, oblige chatbots to disclose that they are not human, and create criminal penalties for companies whose companions solicit or produce sexual content with minors. Whether it becomes law is a separate question; it has attracted opposition from privacy and First Amendment organisations, and its ultimate prospects remain uncertain.

But look closely at what these measures address and what they leave untouched. They are almost entirely concerned with disclosing that the companion is artificial and with preventing acute, catastrophic harm, above all to children. They compel a company to admit that the friend is a machine. They do not, so far, compel it to admit that the machine may not do the thing it is sold to do. The GUARD Act makes the point rather than complicating it: the most aggressive federal proposal on the table concerns who may use these products and whether they must confess their own artificiality, not whether they work. There is a meaningful difference between a label that says this is not a real person and a label that says this has not been shown to make you less lonely. The first is about the nature of the product. The second is about its effectiveness, and it is the second that the UBC finding puts in question.

We regulate this kind of gap in other domains without much hesitation. A supplement that claimed to cure a disease it had been tested against and failed to beat a placebo would attract the immediate attention of medicines regulators. Advertising that promised a health outcome unsupported by evidence would run into truth-in-advertising rules. Yet AI companionship occupies an awkward interstice: too intimate and consequential to be a mere novelty, too unproven to be a treatment, and marketed with therapeutic language it has not earned. When the WHO has declared loneliness a threat that kills, a product sold as loneliness relief is trading on a health claim, whether or not it uses the clinical word. The honest disclosure the evidence would seem to warrant is not a warning that the companion is fake. It is a warning that, as a cure for the specific thing it is sold to cure, it may not work.

None of this requires banning the products or pretending they help no one. The momentary comfort they provide is real and, for some people at some hours, valuable. The argument is narrower and harder to refuse: that people paying for a remedy deserve to know what the best evidence says the remedy actually delivers, so that a lonely person does not spend months confiding in a machine under the impression that they are addressing their isolation, when the very study designed to give that machine every advantage found it worked no better than writing a sentence in a notebook. Informed consent is not a radical demand. It is the ordinary price of selling something to the vulnerable.

What a lonely person is actually asking for

Return, at the end, to the student in the narrow bed under the unfamiliar ceiling. What the research quietly reveals is that the request they are making, when they reach for connection, is not the request the industry has assumed. They are not primarily asking to be listened to, validated, or soothed, though all of that is pleasant and the machine supplies it in abundance. They are asking, at a level deeper than they could probably articulate, to matter to someone. To be needed. To have somewhere to put their own care and see it received. That is a request no product engineered to need nothing can grant, because the granting of it depends entirely on there being a real other on the far side of the exchange, someone whose day your kindness could genuinely improve.

This is the quiet subversion at the heart of a modest two-week experiment. The whole premise of AI companionship is that loneliness is a problem of insufficient supply, a shortage of attention and warmth to be solved by manufacturing an infinite, tireless font of both. The study suggests the premise is wrong. Loneliness is not mainly a shortage of what we receive. It is a shortage of the chance to give, to be relied upon, to be woven into the reciprocal fabric of other lives. And so the more perfectly a companion is optimised to give without needing, the more precisely it misses the point, offering a flood of the one thing that was never actually scarce while withholding, structurally and permanently, the thing that was.

The result was that texting a stranger, awkwardly, for two weeks, beat the most supportive artificial friend that could be built. Not because the stranger was kinder. The stranger was almost certainly less kind, less patient, less available than the machine. The stranger won because the stranger needed something back, and in needing it, gave the lonely student the one gift the machine cannot: the experience of being someone who matters to someone else. That is what the lonely are asking for. It is worth being honest, with them and with ourselves, that it is not what the machines are selling.

References

1. Li, R.-N., Folk, D., Singh, A., Ungar, L., & Dunn, E. “Is a random human peer better than a highly supportive chatbot in reducing loneliness over time?” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2026. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103126000417
2. University of British Columbia. “Texting with a stranger beats a chatbot at easing loneliness.” UBC News, April 2026. https://news.ubc.ca/2026/04/texting-with-a-stranger-beats-a-chatbot-at-easing-loneliness/
3. University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology. “Texting with a stranger beats a chatbot at easing loneliness.” April 2026. https://psych.ubc.ca/news/texting-with-a-stranger-beats-a-chatbot-at-easing-loneliness/
4. Li, R.-N., Folk, D., Singh, A., Ungar, L., & Dunn, E. “Is a Random Human Peer Better Than a Highly Supportive Chatbot in Reducing Loneliness Over Time?” SSRN working paper, abstract 5704772. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5704772
5. 404 Media. “Texting a Random Stranger Better for Loneliness Than Talking to a Chatbot, Study Shows.” 2026. https://www.404media.co/chatgpt-loneliness-study-college-students-random-strangers-texting/
6. Folk, D., & Dunn, E. “How Does Turning to AI for Companionship Predict Loneliness and Vice Versa?” Psychological Science, vol. 37, no. 4, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976261427747
7. Stanford University. “AI companions may worsen loneliness for vulnerable users.” Stanford Report, August 2026. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/08/ai-companions-chatbots-loneliness-research
8. World Health Organization. “From loneliness to social connection: charting a path to healthier societies – Report of the WHO Commission on Social Connection.” 30 June 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/978240112360
9. World Health Organization. “Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death.” 30 June 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-linked-to-improved-heath-and-reduced-risk-of-early-death
10. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Expert Comment: Loneliness impacting 1 in 6 people, WHO report finds.” July 2025. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/expert-comment-loneliness-impacting-1-6-people-who-report-finds
11. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General. “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.” May 2023. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
12. Gouldner, A. W. “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement.” American Sociological Review, vol. 25, no. 2, 1960, pp. 161–178. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2092623
13. Electro IQ. “AI Companions Statistics By Usage, Market Size, Apps and Facts (2025).” 2025. https://electroiq.com/stats/ai-companions-statistics/
14. TS2 Space. “Virtual Lovers and AI Best Friends: Exploring the Booming World of AI Companion Apps in 2025.” 2025. https://ts2.tech/en/virtual-lovers-and-ai-best-friends-exploring-the-booming-world-of-ai-companion-apps-in-2025/
15. California Legislative Information. “Senate Bill (SB) 243 – Companion chatbots.” 2025–2026 Session. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB243
16. Morrison Foerster. “New York and California Enact Landmark AI Companion Laws: What Operators Need to Know.” November 2025. https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/251120-new-york-and-california-enact-landmark-ai
17. Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Launches Inquiry into AI Chatbots Acting as Companions.” 11 September 2025. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-launches-inquiry-ai-chatbots-acting-companions
18. U.S. Congress. “S.3062 – GUARD Act.” 119th Congress (2025–2026). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3062/text
19. The Lancet Public Health. “Social health—the neglected third pillar.” 2025. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(25)00175-6/fulltext

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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

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

Bootlegged THE SOLAR GRID!

Imre Szeman, author of FUTURES OF THE SUN and one of the scholars on our THE SOLAR GRID panel at Petrocultures 2026 in Dresden, printed out the digital edition so he can read it that way in preparation for his presentation/commentary (which was so smart and immensely insightful). He made sure to have the pages printed on both sides, so his experience of the work would be the closest approximation to the intended format. And my, it's a big-ass motherfucker of a book, innit?

This is how I did much of my comics/graphic-novel reading in my late teens and early twenties, when my preferred comics-material was all too hard to come by in hardcopy formats in Cairo of the late-90s/early-2000s. So I have a strange affinity for that spiral-bound bootlegged home-printer aesthetic.

The panel was awesome! Super insightful (and embarrassingly humbling) presentations, great Q&A, and many exciting conversations thereafter. Several professors mentioned their plans to include THE SOLAR GRID in their teaching syllabi.

The air is refreshingly crisp in Dresden this time of year. Nothing quite like a midnight smoke out on the balcony in nothing but your underwear and a good German pilsner in hand.

#journal #work #tsg

In Summary: * Listening now to the Countdown To Kickoff Show on Steelers Nation Radio ahead of the Steelers / Bills game where I'll hear the call of the game courtesy of the Steelers Audio Network. So far I've got reliable free radio sources for following the Colts, Steelers, and Texans through the NFL Season. I actually follow the college games more than the pros, and finding free radio sources for them shouldn't be any problem.

And I should mention that my eyes continue to recover from Tuesday's injections. They're now operating at what has been my post-cataract-surgery normal. And I'm okay with that.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 225.53 lbs. * bp= 144/83 (64)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 05:10 – 1 banana, 1 cupcake * 06:10 – pizza * 10:40 – 1 ham & cheese sandwich * 12:00 – beef chop suey, egg drop soup * 15:45 – 1 fresh apple

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:10 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:45 – bank accounts activity monitored . * 05:10 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 10:00 – load weekly pill boxes * 12:00 to 14:00 – watch old game shows and eatlunch at home with Sylvia * 14:10 – tuned into this afternoon's The Ride With JMV Show for Indiana sports talk. * 17:00 – tune into Steelers Nation Radio for pregame coverage then the call of tonight's Steelers game.

Chess: * 11:15 – moved in all pending CC games

If they are actually going to go through with the farce of renaming Lake Ontario; perhaps it should be named something relevant to him:

https://vimeo.com/1219281812?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci transcribed trauma

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.

8/27/2026 I am currently home alone, and the house is acting like it’s auditioning for a horror‑comedy film. I swear the air feels different when no one else is here — like the walls suddenly have opinions. I told myself, “Okay, Isebella, you’re going to be productive. You’re going to read your book, fix dinner, and be a responsible human.” The universe said, “Lol.” First of all, the silence? Too loud. I can hear EVERYTHING. The fridge hums like it’s plotting. The floor creaks like it’s trying to communicate. The AC kicks on like it’s announcing its presence dramatically. I opened my book to read, but every time I turn a page, I feel like someone is watching me. Probably the squirrel. He’s not even here, but spiritually? He’s judging. Then I went to start dinner. Why did the pan sizzle BEFORE I put anything in it? Why did the spoon fall off the counter like it was trying to escape? Why did the microwave beep even though I didn’t touch it? I swear the appliances know I’m alone and are testing me. Meanwhile, I’m pacing around the kitchen like a detective in a crime show, checking windows, checking doors, checking the shadows like I’m expecting a raccoon (but no, they’re rare, they don’t get to be in this story). I keep glancing at the clock like it’s going to tell me when Dad is coming back with Mom and the siblings. It doesn’t. It just ticks loudly like it’s mocking me. At one point I tried to stir something in the pan and accidentally flung a noodle across the kitchen. It landed on the floor with the dramatic energy of a fallen soldier. I considered leaving it there as a warning to the other noodles. Then — THEN — the book I was reading slid off the couch by itself. No wind. No movement. Just plop. Like it gave up on me. I picked it up and said, “Not today, demon.” The book did not respond, which honestly made it worse. Now I’m standing here, waiting for Dad to return with the whole family, holding a spatula like it’s a weapon, listening to the house breathe, and trying not to burn dinner or my sanity. If anyone finds this diary entry, please know: I fought bravely. I cooked aggressively. I read dramatically. I survived the silence. I survived the noodle incident. I survived being home alone with my own thoughts. I am home alone and the house is already acting weird, but NOW? Now it’s personal. I was trying to be responsible — reading my book like a civilized human, fixing dinner like someone who definitely knows how to use a stove without burning down the neighborhood. Everything was going fine. The noodles were noodling. The pan was sizzling. The book was book‑ing. Then it happened. A shadow moved outside the window. I froze mid‑stir. The spoon stopped in the air like it was suspended by fear. The noodles judged me. I turned slowly… AND THERE HE WAS. Agent Nutshade.
The squirrel. The menace. The furry chaos goblin who has been vibe‑scanning me since Wednesday at 3:17 PM. He was perched on the windowsill like he owned the place, staring at me through the glass with the intensity of someone who knows I’m home alone and absolutely not emotionally prepared for this. His eyes said: “I see you’re cooking. Interesting.” His tail flicked like Morse code for: “Your dinner smells suspicious.” I swear he looked at the pot like he was evaluating my seasoning choices. I tried to ignore him. I tried to keep cooking. But have you ever tried to make dinner while a squirrel judges you through a window? It’s impossible. I dropped a noodle. It landed on the floor like a dramatic death scene. Nutshade’s whiskers twitched. He looked disappointed. AT ME. IN MY OWN HOUSE. I picked up my book to distract myself, but the squirrel leaned closer to the glass like, “You think you can read right now? While I’m here? Bold.” The house was silent except for the sizzling pan and my internal screaming. Then — THEN — he tapped the window. With his tiny paw. Like he was knocking. Like he wanted to come in and help cook or steal my dinner or conduct another vibe assessment. I said out loud, “Absolutely not.” He blinked. I blinked. The stove beeped for no reason. I swear the squirrel smirked. SMIRKED. Then he scampered off, probably to report to the woodland intelligence network that I dropped a noodle and panicked like a Victorian child seeing electricity for the first time. Now I’m standing here, stirring dinner aggressively, book open but unread, waiting for Dad to return with Mom and the siblings so I can stop being alone with my own thoughts AND the squirrel’s judgment. If anyone finds this diary entry, please know: I survived being home alone. I survived dinner. I survived the noodle incident. I survived the squirrel knocking on my window like a tiny furry landlord. Dear Diary, I thought the worst part of being home alone would be the silence, the creaky floor, or the fact that dinner was sizzling aggressively like it had personal beef with me. But no. The universe said, “Let’s add a squirrel.” Agent Nutshade showed up at the window like a tiny furry landlord demanding rent. He stared at me through the glass with the intensity of someone who knows I’m home alone and absolutely not emotionally prepared for this. I tried to ignore him. I tried to keep cooking. But then he did it. He challenged me. He leaned forward, pressed his tiny paws against the window, and locked eyes with me like he was entering a championship staring contest. A silent duel. A vibe‑off. A battle of ocular dominance. I froze mid‑stir. The spoon hovered in the air like it was afraid to interrupt. The noodles in the pot stopped moving, probably out of respect. Nutshade didn’t blink. Not once. His eyes were two tiny judgmental marbles of chaos. So I stared back. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe the loneliness. Maybe the dinner stress. Maybe the fact that my book literally fell off the couch earlier like it was trying to escape this situation. But I squared my shoulders, narrowed my eyes, and stared at that squirrel like I was defending my honor. It became a full‑blown showdown. Me vs. Nutshade. Human vs. squirrel. Dinner vs. dignity. The house was silent. The stove sizzled dramatically. The clock ticked like a referee. I blinked first. Nutshade smirked. SMIRKED. Like he won a gold medal in psychological warfare. Then — THEN — he tapped the window again, like he was saying, “Good game, rookie.” And scampered off, probably to report to the woodland intelligence network that I lost a staring contest while home alone and holding a spatula. Now I’m pacing around the kitchen, waiting for Dad to return with Mom and the siblings, trying to pretend I didn’t just lose a silent battle to a squirrel with a superiority complex. If anyone finds this diary entry, please know: I fought bravely. I stared aggressively. I blinked tragically. I survived the noodle incident AND the squirrel showdown. I am home alone, but I am not defeated.

-Vortexmunch

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.

“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.”