𝔻𝕣𝕚𝕗𝕥

Pirates use this innate fear to their advantage to protect themselves from mermaids, hence the iconic beards and hat:

“{}@&_@&%(#(&@__!*_”

“Yes. Can you move the mouse to the lower right side of the screen? There should be some little bars that will tell you if you are connected to the wi-fi.”

“&%)!^*^$%^!_%_$}{|”

“No my Great and Terrible the wi-fi is not a rival god from the desert lands, it’s just the technology that let’s you see your email.”

“!*&){}|@*#”

“Good, that means you are connected to the internet. Now if you can open your browser, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Microsoft Edge.”

“!@^&)(&@!&&&@}|”

You mute yourself so you can swear. “Yes, you can use Internet Explorer to access your AOL email account. If I may offer a suggestion?”

“$%^&*@”

“It will be easier in the long run, I promise. But Microsoft stopped supporting Internet Explorer a long time ago, and AOL is barely a company anymore. If you will let me walk you through some steps we can get you a modern web browser and a brand new email-”

“&^$}”

“Yes, with all of your old email.”

—-

Five hours of your life later, you’ve got the deep sea eldritch god set up with Firefox and a new email with forwarding from it’s old email. Just when you start to think that this job isn’t remotely worth it, a small crab-like creature crawls across your desk. (you can’t in good conscious call it a crab because it somehow has both too many eyes, legs, and pincers, and not enough of the same. yet your brain interprets the being as “crab”)

It’s about the size of a coffee mug and it holds something up for you, shaking one of it’s many claws at you.

You take the small thing, and crab scuttles away to where ever it came from.

The small thing in your palm seems to be a tiny treasure chest, the kind of thing that you’d put in a goldfish bowl. It feels wet and the kind of slimy something gets from being covered in seaweed.

You put it down on your desk just in time for it to rapidly expand, cracking a support on your desk and covering you in sea water.

Before you can get mad about it the chest opens revealing a small horde of gold, jewels, and a bottle of what you have to assume is pirate rum.

“Oh! Cool!” one of your coworkers say as they pop their head up over the cubicle wall. “I wish I got pirate booty once in a while.”

“Why, what did Thyrien, Emissary of the Sun, give you for helping them recover their steam library?” you ask.

“A sense of peace and calm about my life and place in the world.”

“Oh sounds nice.”

“It is. They also gave me this ceremonial headdress.” You coworker disappears for a moment and puts on a giant headdress that appears to be made from gold and platinum and has several truly giant diamonds all over it.

“Wow,” you say.