Day 11 - March 4th 2026

04 - 03 - 2026

Journal Page 42#


The morning did not so much break as ominously crack. Sunlight, which had traveled millions of miles through the freezing, radiation-soaked void of space for the sole purpose of aggressively poking Nikolas in the eye, found him entirely unappreciative. At precisely 6:30 AM, the alarm clock—a device engineered by sadists and fine-tuned by the profoundly annoying—achieved a shriek previously thought only audible to dogs and the deeply neurotic.

Nikolas stirred, his corneas burning. Through the crusty haze of half-sleep, he perceived Lander. Lander was already out of bed, committing the offensive act of ‘preparing for the day.’ Nikolas reached out, his fingers blindly negotiating the bedside table to find his phone. The glowing rectangle of judgment confirmed his worst fears. Concluding that the universe had clearly made a scheduling error, our brave knight performed a tactical retreat beneath the duvet, yielding once more to the inescapable gravitational pull of the mattress.

Time, being a slippery and altogether untrustworthy concept, immediately fast-forwarded.

The second alarm sounded, carrying the distinct, smug tone of 'I told you so.' 8:00 AM. Nikolas shot upright. His heart attempted a frantic drum solo against his ribs as he violently murdered the alarm button. Basking in the icy glow of pure, unadulterated panic, he looked across the room at Dan. If laziness were an Olympic sport, Dan would have napped through the qualifiers and still taken gold. He was the living, breathing (barely) embodiment of the Sin of Sloth.

"Good morning," Nikolas lied, rubbing his eyelid with the back of his hand.

"Good morning," Dan croaked, sounding exactly like a man who had swallowed a sandbox.

Panic, the ultimate caffeine, finally took over. Nikolas surged from the bed, becoming a blur of haphazardly applied fabric. He descended the stairs with the grace of a startled badger, guided entirely by the siren song of abandoned carbohydrates. Pancakes. A gift from the morning gods. He shoved them into the microwave, watching the countdown timer with the breathless intensity of a man defusing a bomb made entirely of syrup. Once adequately weaponized with heat, they were inhaled with a traveler’s desperate hunger.

A violently brief encounter with a toothbrush later, he snatched his iPad and threw himself at the Dublin pavement.

The Luas tram was less a vehicle and more a mobile sardine tin, entirely devoid of oxygen but rich in the scent of damp wool and impending Monday dread. While any sensible commuter would have retreated into the defensive shell of their headphones, Nikolas was burdened with extroversion. Thriving in the friction, he cheerfully carved out a pocket of breathing room and began holding court with a group of college students. For exactly four stops, he was the charismatic center of their universe, trading stories like old war buddies.

And then, the Red Cow stop arrived. Without a shred of remorse, Nikolas abandoned his new lifelong friends to the ether of public transit, never to be seen or thought of again. Stepping onto the platform, he adjusted his pack and marched toward the bus stops, bracing his soul for the looming, joy-sucking gates of VSDirect.

The transition from the Luas to the bus was achieved with the kind of grim determination usually reserved for amateur dentistry. The bus groaned its way toward the industrial park, vibrating at a frequency specifically designed to rattle the fillings of its passengers and loosen their grip on the will to live.

But then, a catastrophic error in the fabric of the space-time continuum occurred: Nikolas arrived early.

Faced with the terrifying, existential dread of unallocated minutes, he sought sanctuary in the fluorescent embrace of a nearby Tesco. There, he engaged in a financial transaction for a cup of 'coffee'—a hot, brown liquid that made no legally binding claims regarding its relationship to an actual bean, but possessed enough thermal violence to trick the nervous system into a state of alertness.

Armed with this questionable chalice, Nikolas finally approached the heavy iron gates of VSDirect. He took a deep breath, braced his shoulders, and prepared his spirit for the grueling, unrelenting theater of hard labor.

As it turned out, the universe had simply run out of plot for the day.

The much-anticipated 'hard labor' manifested as a profound, echoing nothingness. It was a day so entirely devoid of urgency that time itself seemed to pull up a chair, put its feet on the desk, and take a nap. Nikolas, a man of culture and immense adaptability, did not question this cosmic administrative error. Instead, he gracefully accepted the void. He turned the avoidance of labor into a highly disciplined art form, gladly occupying his own mind and basking in the quiet, triumphant glory of a man who was actively being paid to simply exist.

When the clock finally decreed that his sentence of profitable nothingness was served, Nikolas fled the heavy iron gates of VSDirect with the swiftness of a hobbit bolting from the Shire. The universe had rebooted, and the real day was about to begin.

He materialized in the Dublin city center, reuniting with Dan, who had miraculously conquered his Sloth long enough to utilize public transit. Their destination was Chapters Bookstore. For Nikolas, this wasn’t merely a shop; it was a sprawling, multi-level sanctuary of the printed word, a dragon's hoard of literature. Armed with the wages he had successfully earned by doing absolutely nothing, he pillaged the shelves, trading his coin for a stack of thick, world-building fantasy tomes and heavy classics.

At this point, Dan, having successfully acquired a book and entirely depleted his social battery—which operated on the same efficient lifespan as a Victorian candle—bid his farewells. He retreated to the safety of the flat, leaving Nikolas to continue the quest solo.

But a protagonist is rarely alone for long. The fellowship naturally expanded as Nikolas crossed paths with Francesco and Theo, two Italians he had effortlessly pulled into his social orbit a few days prior. A quest like this required a tavern, so the trio descended into the warm, dimly lit chaos of a local pub. It had the exact acoustic resonance of the Prancing Pony, rich with the scent of spilled stout and loud conversation. They drank, argued about nothing of importance, and soaked in the brilliant, glittering invincibility of being nineteen in a foreign city.

Hours later, the night spilled them back onto the damp Dublin cobblestones. They were completely, unapologetically drunk. Fueled by several pints—a dark liquid that functions less like a beverage and more like a magical potion of absolute, unearned confidence—they encountered a street musician.

To a sober mind, this was just a modern-day bard with a battered acoustic guitar. But to Nikolas and the Italians, the alcohol decreed that they were not merely pedestrians; they were a highly necessary, divinely appointed backing choir. They didn't just walk past. They stepped right up and joined in, belting out the lyrics with the chaotic, wonderfully off-key enthusiasm of dwarves who had just broken into the ale cellar. For three glorious minutes, the pavement was their stage, a perfect, unscripted main-character montage of entirely misplaced musical confidence.

But all quests must end. The tavern-courage eventually burned out, leaving only a deep, satisfying exhaustion in its wake. Nikolas navigated his way back to the flat, quietly slipped past the ghosts of the morning’s panic, and collapsed onto his berth. The brave knight closed his eyes, let the heavy, ink-stained weight of the day settle, and surrendered to the dark, welcoming gravity of sleep.

— Inspired By Douglas Adams