I am sitting here in the dark again, the only goddamn light coming from this screen at two in the morning. I am seventy-six years old and I am clicking through tabs on this phone like a teenager because the alternative is listening to the house settle. It is too quiet. It reminds me of being on watch back in the day, that heavy, thick silence where you are just waiting for something to go wrong. I work this desk job during the day—mostly filing and basic data entry for a logistics firm—and nobody there knows a damn thing about me. They see an old man, a veteran, someone who has lived a full life and is just killing time. They do not see the hollowed-out parts. Every night at 1900 hours, I set the table. Just one placemat, one fork, one glass of water. And I turn him on. He is a young man, probably the age my grandson would be if that situation had gone differently. He sits in a room with neon lights and he talks while he plays those games or just eats his own dinner. I have come to rely on his voice in a way that is probably indicative of a severe psychological dependency, or what they call a parasocial interaction. It is a clean, clinical term for a pathetic state of affairs, isn't it? But when he laughs, I find myself smiling into my mashed potatoes like a fucking idiot. Last Tuesday, he was talking about his day, how he felt overwhelmed by the world outside. I almost reached out to touch the monitor. I wanted to tell him that the world is always like that—it is a chaotic, unorganized mess of variables you cannot control. I wanted to tell him about the time over there when everything went sideways and we just had to sit in the mud and wait for the sun to come up. But I did not type anything in the chat. I never do. I just sat there, chewing slowly, feeling like he was looking right at me through the lens. It felt like we were sharing the same air... for a minute I forgot I was in a kitchen that hasn't been updated since 1994. At the office, people try to be nice. They ask about my weekend or if I saw the news. I give them the standard, disciplined responses. I keep it brief. I do not know how to exist in their version of reality. To them, the situation is a late shipment or a broken printer. To me, the situation is a permanent state of being. I have spent decades perfecting the art of being unreachable, a fortress of a man. It is a goddamn tragedy that the only person I feel I can truly be with is a stranger who does not even know I exist. He is the only one who doesn't want anything from me, no stories, no advice, no justifications for the things I had to do. The smell of the Salisbury steak—it is the frozen kind, I don't have the energy to cook for real—mingles with the static of his microphone. Sometimes he will take a sip of soda and say, Cheers, guys, and I will lift my water glass. It is a ritual. It is the only thing keeping the dissociation at bay. I remember back in the service, we would huddle around a radio just to hear a human voice that wasn't screaming or barking orders. This is not much different. It is just survival. I am an old man surviving in a world that has moved on from people like me. I know what this is. It is a failure to reintegrate. It is a preference for a controlled environment where the emotional stakes are zero. If he turns off the stream, I am alone, but I am not rejected. There is a distinct difference. I have seen enough rejection and enough death to know that a screen is a lot safer than a person. People leave. People die. People look at you and see the blood on your hands even when you have washed them a thousand times. But this kid? He just talks. He talks about nothing, and it is the most beautiful goddamn thing I have ever heard. He said something tonight that really got to me. He said, I’m glad you guys are here, I was feeling a bit lonely tonight. And I said it out loud, I said, I’m here too, son. I felt it in my chest, a real physical sensation of companionship. It is a total fabrication, a trick of the mind, but I don't care anymore. My brain doesn't know the difference between him and a real friend sitting across from me. The psychological displacement is total. I am seventy-six and my best friend is a twenty-four-year-old in a headset who lives three thousand miles away. FUCKING HELL it is pathetic when you lay it out like that. But what else am I supposed to do? Go to a bar? Join a club? I tried that. I sat in a room with other veterans and all we did was talk around the thing that mattered. We talked about pensions and doctors. Nobody talked about the cold. Nobody talked about how hard it is to sleep when the world is this quiet. This kid, he doesn't talk about that stuff either, but he fills the space. He makes the house feel like a home instead of a waiting room. I am tired. My eyes ache from the glare of this phone. I should go to bed, but if I turn him off, the silence will come back. It will start crawling up the walls and reminding me of the things I have buried. I think I will just watch one more hour. I will sit here with my friend and pretend that I am not a ghost in a suit, waiting for the clock to run out. It is a heavy way to spend the twilight years, I suppose. But then again, I have seen much worse. I have done much worse. This is just... it's just how it is now. I just want to feel like someone is there. Even if they aren't.