Your name is DIRK STRIDER, and you are really starting to believe that you are an irredeemable, awful, terrible, no-good, very bad person. Then again, isolating yourself for months at a time with nothing but your own mind to keep you company has historically tended to have this effect on you. This whole ordeal is unquestionably self-defeating, hulling yourself away in your workshop and endlessly tinkering away at least keeps you occupied, but you've become so consumed by your own existential angst, it's hard to keep track of what you're actually doing from one moment to the next. Still, you go through the motions, haphazardly cobbling together your new creations in a sort of trance. Usually, they're still functional enough.

Your phone buzzes. It's been a few days since you've picked that thing up, you haven't really cared to talk to anyone, aside from shooting a one-off message to your brother every now and again, it's been awhile since you've had a real conversation. You're inclined to completely ignore it, until another notification sounds. And then yet another. Fine. You'll pick up the damn phone. That's what youre supposed to do, right?

> Dirk: Pick up the damn phone.