“Hey man, can I get a hand with this real quick?”

Everything traditionally regarded as typical about James’ posture, followed by his gait, followed by his usual diction and within reason his voice, would become deliberately unaltered within roughly the same duration occupied by the question in asking.

He somehow rose to an even taller stature than Mohammad could recall having observed anytime prior, before instantly walking with an efficiency that appeared swift visually—albeit at a measurably slow rate of travel, in fact comically so, and having predetermined both the slow walk and the illusion of speed consciously. He began to close upon his general vicinity, or something approaching that. It was equally as obvious, as every individual detail respecting the inordinately abrasive and functionally instantaneous total abandon of his known self had just become, that he was not approaching Mohammad directly because he didn’t want to. It became immediately self evident that the dominant, commanding authority, the unmodified presence of whom proved sufficient for the consumption of all attention made available to him, was James. The “James,” with whom anyone then familiar to both Mohammad and James was familiar as well, was born from an exhaustive alternate persona of James’ own design and the performance of its intended function. “James” did not actually exist.

All the while directing his gaze, continually, to the effect that his colleague remained barely outside the fringe of his vision, or barely within the periphery, or call it whatever you will, he… eventually… stood somewhat close. Within a single digit matter of seconds, James had effectively conveyed his true demeanor by demonstration. His overall physical presence, behavior, or what have you, had for all practical purposes been revealed as they were meant to be, at long last; his real character having been exposed, of his own volition, in the form of coherent analogy to some character embodied by some bad guy in some cartoon; his paces meeting the floor as menacingly as he knew how, and to that end, commiting adequate bodyweight to each step as slowly as he knew how to walk without standing still, simply because that’s how the real James actually walked; the sundry of other minute details that wouldn’t necessarily mean anything without supporting the rest of the act that’s not an act… The assumption of the role of himself properly, regarded as a whole, served to facilitate the animation of the real cartoon villain James in all three directions through space. It was almost as if he were building a nearly self-aware level of suspense, just for maximum irony, only for the hyperbole of tension amassed to have set up no payoff at all climactic; just so he could finally deliver some theoretically eye-roll inducing monologue outside all existing context, just to describe his own relevance to the plot almost literally through exposition ostensibly unwarranted. No matter how much it may have appeared that way, however, I’m quite afraid that the twist is that there is no twist because, uh, yeah: that is exactly what happened.

“Before either of us say anything else, I’m going to lay down a very specific set of ground rules that shall, beginning this instant and withstanding incessantly for as long as time should persist, usurp all accountability and oversight but their own—not only on principle, but more importantly because they have to if only as a technical matter. The conditions I hold imperative are as follows: that we, including you and also including me, are to actively avoid the violation of anyone’s privacy to the extent that’s realistically feasible—again, not only on principle, but more importantly because we have to if only as a technical matter. Moreover, it should further stand to reason that neither of us, to the exclusion of both you and me, are ever at liberty to affect anyone and/or anything, in any way illegal under normal circumstances, unless and until said person and/or the owner of said property shall have explicitly requested execution according to such procedure, and particularly described the intended result thereof with a level of precision that is objectively reasonable given the nature of said request, and likewise the exact methodologies requested for the production of said outcome, and so on and so forth, and whatnot. Are all of the aforementioned conditions heard, and understood, and acknowledged, and mutually agreed upon without room for exception …Mr. Wang?”

Mohammad paused for just long enough, while simultaneously not pausing for too long by any means, in order for the total length of his pause to subsequently deliver his response behind the closest thing humanly attainable to perfection in terms of comedic timing. He then said—at an amplitude subjectively perceived by the listener as roughly half-way between that of screaming most highly corrosive against basic sanity, and that of whispering barely intelligible—and with no tone whatsoever, and without so much as an inflection that would’ve meant something in a conventional sense…

“Bruh.”