Stanley was in front of a small group of 10 people. And something was very wrong. It was only a few minutes after he started speaking that he first noticed it. The feeling just kept getting stronger as time stretched on. Within 10 minutes, people started leaving. 15 minutes, and he felt like death. After 20 minutes, he started to feel the same thing coming from a few of the people in front of him. Kerala didn’t seem to notice anything. She was still smiling. But as Stanley thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t. The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was Toby. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he was gone. He had only just left, saying he needed to be somewhere. But somehow, Stanley knew that wasn’t entirely true. He knew that what Toby meant was ‘I can’t be here,’

‘This needs to end,’ he thought as he heard the calls of some nearby Ravens. The crows seemed to mock him as he sunk deeper into despair.

He was only half way through his presentation, but he proceeded to wrap it up early. His downcast nature was obvious for all to see. Even Kerala’s smile slowly faded away as she watched him. He hurried past many familiar faces, trying to make his way back home. His exit was accompanied by the flight of the Ravens, who seemed to agree with him.

‘I need to find my brother,’ he thought as he went past the park that contained some of his earliest memories of this town. He decided to cut through it, using it as a shortcut to his property. A mob of Kangaroos casually observed his journey. Under the clear blue sky, Stanley arrived at his destination. He found Toby in the living room with a game running. It was ‘Beat up Aliens on a Hula Hoop 3’ and was left at the main menu. He looked up as Stanley sat across from him.

“Sorry,” said Stanley while looking like someone had just stolen his soul and was now charging him interest for every day he didn’t retrieve it.

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Toby revealed a half smile before saying “You’re apologising to me? I’m not the one that was giving that terrible presentation,” he said while chuckling.

“Yeah. What do you think I did wrong? I felt like it started out okay, but…”Stanley trailed off while pondering his day so far.

“Think about it, what did you do differently?” Toby inquired. While waiting for a response, he picked up a game controller and selected ‘Start Solo Game’

“It may not have been a great idea to spend the majority of it reading from a legal document. I think I lost most of the people because of that,” Stanley said while admiring the opening cut scene of a game he first played over a decade ago.

“Not only that, I think you could have kept people there even if that’s all you did. But, well, you weren’t acting quite yourself up there,”

“Tell me about it,” Stanley said shaking his head. ‘It’s almost as if I abandoned any effort to keep the people in front of me interested, and was only doing a robotic reading of a document that was important to me,’

“Remind me why we’re doing this again? Because shooting aliens is looking a lot more fun right now if this is how it’ll be from now on,” Toby inquired while team killing all of his allies out of boredom.

Stanley was tempted to answer the same way he had when Kerala had asked him the night before. But that didn’t feel right to him anymore. It hit him as he watched Toby killing the same friendly npc over and over. It didn’t seem to want to stay dead. ‘I want things to change, but that’s only because I think people will be happier if they did, that I would see some of those familiar smiles that have all but disappeared from some people,’ he thought so hard that some say he looked like he was chewing 6 gum.

“No. There won’t be a repeat of today,” he finally said as he watched Toby adapt his strategy to hitting his un-killable ally through to the next part of the level. “I’m ready to try again,” he added with a fire in his eyes that appeared to be able to consume all that stood before him.

“That’s great and all, but grab the extra controller, I need you to help me see if we can push this Sargent guy all the way to the end of the level,”

“Oh, okay,”