some of the worst characters from you are starting to emerge

But they cannot come out without a little context.

Well--it's not that they cannot. It's just that they would rather not.

"Rather knot?" asks one of the sailors.

I draw a precipice. I draw a Sherlock Holmes' footprint upon it. I stand proudly at the precipice.

"Move forward!" I command.

Of course, this is a whole ecosystem, this massive ship. There are a lot of badly rounded little slips of people walking around. They lack definition and need me to start to give hints about them. If it's not some drama about the state of statistical disadvantage, it's usually another 'epic' yarn.

One of them asks me "Why are you freaking out? Just relax. It's a Saturday. Enjoy the Saturday."

"It's warm outside," I tell them. "The sun is quite epic right now, eh?"

"It's making me sweat as I stand here," explains a woman. "I'm here to visit my son, but he's away at work, so I'm sort of just ambling around. Checking out the world he lives in. But it's so hot, and I thought it would be cold, so I had put on a jacket."

"And then it turned out that it was hot."

"How can one predict these things?" she said, relegating the problem to chance.

"I don't know, must be insane to do that," I said coolly, and my cool suit visor slowly lowered and snapped into 'cool' mode. I set it to about 65 degrees, since that is the only way that ice can begin to form in the subconscious. I walked away from the hot person, because I had no interest in tempting the lore of spontaneous combustion. I even put a sign up as I moved away, "(You are too hot)". That's the last she would ever see of me, for being that warm and so on.

I entered a life where the universe was coordinated. Funny things still happened, but they were just really tight. There was no dilly-dallying. There was no BS. When a person made a joke, everyone noticed that it was a joke, and not serious. But when someone was serious about their serious thing, everyone else also took it seriously. "I don't find this hilarious at all," I said to a stone pad, which allowed me entrance into the grave.

A goblin shat on my shoulder, but I was very serious at this point. I looked up at him as though he was a King of Goblins. "Why shit you in this fashion?" I asked with greatest courtesy.

"Make me yours," challenged the fiend.

I took the gun and shot it into my mouth.

"Do you know about any jokes?" asked the funny face.

"Why shat you upon my shoulder?" insisted my serious form.

"Cos I could."

I began my conversation with it. At all points this being would slither, and twist. And turn. At every possibility it would just shrug away at my comments. "Why are you so uneasy?" I asked, finally.

"You discomfort me," it replied. "You make me all twisty, turny."

I felt that we were making some progress. "How can I make your tormented soul sit easier?"

"First of all, don't portray me as a tormented soul."

"Why not? You are tormented. You have been twisted by the err of the world. Nay. The err of the whole Universe."

"I'm sorry that your whole Universe errs," replied the monster. "Mine is pretty good. Until you."

"Until me?"

"Until you aggravate me. Coming over with your broken Universe and trying to overlay your errors upon my perfection," said the goblin.

I wanted to slaughter it, but by that time, I had already changed. "I have changed," I declared. "I seek no job as correction-maker."

"Will you begin to learn about why I am the way I am?"

"I will learn, and thereupon be thy friend and cordial advisor," I told it.

"Your face is hilarious, but I'll trust you on this," said the creature, cautiously.

I nodded to indicate positive vibes, and held my arm at length--a gesture of comraderie. "This is how my peoples greet strangers," I told it. "It is not an representation of bathroom services."

"You know I'm a monster," it told me. "There is no way this will be 'civilized', as you often seem to put it."

I sat down and pulled out my provisions. "There are always ways," I said.