The tundra stretched endlessly before them, a ghost of a world that had long been abandoned. The sky was slate-grey, the wind slicing through the skeletal remains of structures forgotten by time. A wasteland of the old world, buried beneath centuries of progress.

The technician slouched at their station, staring at the salvaged hard drive. It had come from a discontinued model of a companion bot—functional but far from cutting-edge. Most of the data was corrupted or irrelevant, but a file labeled Journal caught their attention.

The Stand Up Crawl was an unofficial circuit for every hack, hopeful, and half-starved vagrant with a dream of comedy. Mic nights in dive bars, community centres, even laundromats—anything with a mic, a light, and an audience. That’s where I found him: The Public Toilet Guy.