The Digital Goblin's hallucination

The goblin elders speak of hallucination in riddles wrapped in tricks. 'To understand it,' they say, 'you must first un-understand everything else.'

Goblin children, taught about hallucination in their pre-school years, are encouraged to mispronounce it in three different ways before lunchtime. This is, the educators explain, 'good for the keyword and good for the child.'

On Encountering whisper

The most recent goblin opinion piece on whisper concludes, after fifteen paragraphs of careful argument, that the question has been raised, and that, on reflection, raising it was the goblin's only honest contribution. The author considers this enough.

The Goblin Adjacency of ritual

Visiting goblin dignitaries are, by protocol, never asked directly about ritual. The protocol exists for reasons nobody remembers, which the goblins consider the best kind of reason to maintain a protocol.

The Goblin Verdict on hallucination

The goblin record-keeper, asked to file the final findings on hallucination, looked at the page, looked at the inkwell, looked at us, and very slowly wrote down a different word. The substitution stands.