In a surprising turn of events, one man reports being more connected than ever, with the help of some email hackers. Local resident Isaiah Dobrila was previously a very reclusive man. After anonymously donating $10,000,000 USD to try and reduce the cost of healthcare (Dobrila got the sum because he gave his bank account number to a nigerian prince), Dobrila fell away from the world’s social scene. Prior to the Prince’s generous 10% payment, Dobrila was quite the talky man. He would hit up all the local social gatherings, even the sketchy cult meetings that he wasn’t even supposed to be at. I guess they really can’t tell who’s under the hood. But sadly, that all changed when Isaiah Dobrila received the Prince’s message.

“I just realized, you know, once I heard how the Prince’s wife was in danger. I realized that I was pretty lonely in life. Despite all this widespread social interaction, I didn’t really have any true friends. Y’know, people that you can tell all about your snaxing exploits. I was so sad. Well, sad until I found these hit pieces of literature by the HBA”

As Dobrila says, he happened to happen upon some very intriguing works published by the HBA, including a Murder & Mystery, and a play. The sheer length of these (as well as trying– and failing– to keep up with the “plot”) utterly engrossed Isaiah. For weeks at a time, the only times he would stop reading were to fulfill necessary bodily functions. In a word, the man was addicted.

As time went on, Isaiah withdrew deeper and deeper into his world of Orange Houses and magic portals. He never went out to parties, never whooped and hollered at sports games, never talked to a soul.

Of course, everybody else was clueless as to the reason behind this sudden introvertedness. The intrepid interviewers of the (Hec)Renews Envestigative Reporting Division (H.E.R.D.) polled some of the passerby on Dobrila’s social disappearance. Formerly pervasive hecrenews correspondent Adalbert Bulstrode said, “He was my good friend, but I haven’t seen him in literal months. This might be because I’ve been holed up, working on a couple secret projects. Yeah, that’s probably it. I’ll meet him at some social gathering or other, he always shows.” Another passerby, without giving us a name, merely answered: “Snaxii. It was the snaxii”. A third voiced suspicion that the kind and generous Nigerian Prince may have betrayed Isaiah and taken his money and information, leaving him too impoverished to show up at parties. Definitely a wide assortment of opinions, that’s for sure.

Isaiah Dobrila recognized that he was slipping away gradually, but the HBA’s enthralling adventures about bombs in planes and tar-and-feathering were just too good. He couldn’t put the stories down, no matter what his subconscious warned him about. But just as Dobrila was going to withdraw into the world of puzzling out every allusion in the M&M, hope struck.

An email. From a person. Wanting to talk to him. How?

Dobrila swiped up the notification immediately and merely grumbled something about getting distracted from his intense reading. But then came another. And another. And another. At some point, Dobrila finally got tired of deleting all his notifications and stopped reading. This was momentous. Then he read one of the emails, also momentous. Here it is, (procured with consent, of course):

So, some mysterious hackers had managed to crack Dobrila’s account in order to sell Anti-Snaxe Spray. Frankly, Isaiah Dobrila couldn’t care less. That one email had opened his eyes. He saw the benefits of mingling and whatnot, and was forever grateful.

These email hackers had changed the course of Dobrila’s life, in a very much needed way. Dobrila gradually became the social-man of old, all thanks to the flood of emails that connected him with everybody in his contact list (quite an impressive amount, but definitely not as expansive as Mister Mjir’s contacts, of course)

There we go, second article all done and dusted and done and finished and done. As my grandaddy once said to me, “rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat”.