Life after the Philosophy Symposium should have returned to normal. The ghost of Alexander Plath had gotten his posthumous moment of academic vindication. The Survivors Club had, by all accounts, successfully completed a ghost-assisted heist. They expected peace. They expected quiet.
They were, as usual, profoundly mistaken.
The problem wasn't that Alexander was gone. The problem was that he was grateful. And a grateful, eternally-bored philosophy ghost expresses his gratitude by becoming the world's most intrusive, un-asked-for, and spectral life coach.
It began on a Tuesday morning, in the stark, unforgiving light of the communal bathroom. Liam was staring into the mirror, practicing his "confident and approachable" face for the cute barista at the campus coffee shop. He puffed out his chest, gave a little smirk, and whispered, "Hey. One black coffee, please."
A shimmering form materialized in the mirror behind him, arms crossed. Alexander Plath looked deeply unimpressed.
"A futile endeavor," the ghost intoned, his voice echoing off the porcelain tiles. "You are attempting to project a persona, a 'they-self' as Heidegger would say, that is inauthentic to your fundamental being-in-the-world. You don't even like black coffee. You take yours with three sugars and a shot of vanilla, a cloying testament to your fear of bitterness."
Liam yelped, spinning around and slipping on a wet patch on the floor. "Alexander! Bathroom! Private time!"
"Privacy is a social construct designed to hide the inherent alienation of the self from the Other," Alexander replied, floating through a stall door. "Also, your pick-up line is a performative negation of your actual desires. Try honesty. Perhaps, 'Your presence behind that counter momentarily halts the relentless march of existential dread I feel upon waking. May I have a latte?'"
"It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue," Liam grumbled, picking himself up.
"Truth rarely does. That's why people prefer small talk. It's the linguistic equivalent of your vanilla syrup."
---
Later that day, Chloe was in the library, attempting to wrestle a 15-page paper on neoclassical economic theory into submission. She was in the zone, fingers flying across the keyboard, fueled by rage and her fourth iced coffee.
A cold spot formed around her. The text on her screen flickered. A single, glowing sentence inserted itself between her paragraphs:
"Your critique of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' lacks a foundational understanding of emergent, decentralized systems. Might I suggest a comparative analysis with Taoist philosophy? The concept of Wu Wei, or effortless action, provides a far more elegant framework than your current, rather brutish, Keynesian rebuttal."
Chloe stared. "No," she whispered to the empty air. "Absolutely not. I am not citing 'the way of the ghost' in my Econ 101 paper."
The words on the screen deleted themselves. New ones appeared.
"Your loss. Professor Grange is a known Taoism enthusiast. He spends his weekends building miniature rock gardens. A simple mention of 'the uncarved block' would have netted you at least a B+. Now, you're looking at a solid C, maybe a C- if he's had a bad weekend. His azaleas are struggling."
She looked around frantically. "How do you know that?"
A faint whisper came from the library's ventilation system. "I haunt his office, too. The man has atrocious taste in filing cabinets. It's a tragedy."
---
Mason, meanwhile, was attempting to film a new video for his channel, "Mason's Misguided Mysteries: The Campus Curator." This week's episode was on the notoriously bad campus food. He was in the cafeteria, pointing his camera at a lump of gelatinous substance that was allegedly meatloaf.
"...and here we have it, folks," Mason said, poking it with a spork. "The university's latest attempt at alchemy. Can we transmute despair into sustenance? Let's find—"
The meatloaf lifted off the plate, hovered in the air for a moment, and then reshaped itself into a perfect, miniature replica of Rodin's "The Thinker."
"Behold!" Alexander's voice boomed from the mashed potatoes. "Even in this culinary nadir, we find the potential for profound expression! This meatloaf, in its current form, is a testament to the absurdity of existence—a meaningless lump given temporary, symbolic significance! Is it not a metaphor for our own lives?"
The meat-sculpture then fell apart, splattering back onto the plate.
Mason stared at his camera, then at the ruined food. "Dude! That was my lunch!"
"Lunch is a concept invented by the industrial complex to regiment the proletariat's day," Alexander sniffed. "True nourishment is spiritual. Now, let's discuss the phenomenological experience of tater tots."
---
The final straw came that evening during their weekly "Survivors Club" meeting, which had devolved into a support group for the spiritually harassed.
"He changed my thesis statement!" Ethan wailed, gesturing at his laptop. "I was writing a perfectly good computer science paper on machine learning algorithms, and he added a footnote questioning whether a machine can truly 'learn' if it lacks a mortal soul and the concomitant fear of oblivion!"
"He keeps replacing the pictures on my Pinterest board with depressing 19th-century oil paintings," Jade added wearily. "I just wanted to look at pictures of cozy cabins. Now my feed is full of 'The Death of Socrates.'"
"I tried to order that latte he suggested," Liam mumbled into his hands. "The barista called campus security. They thought I was having a mental breakdown."
"He turned my meatloaf into art!" Mason said, still visibly traumatized.
Chloe slammed her hand on the table. "That's it. We need to set boundaries. We need a ghostly intervention."
"But how?" Ethan asked. "You can't reason with him. He just deconstructs your reasoning until you're questioning your own right to have an opinion."
Jade, the pragmatist, tapped her chin. "We don't reason with him. We outsource. We get him a new project. Something so vast, so all-consuming, it will occupy his spectral attention for eternity."
They all looked at her. "What could possibly do that?" Liam asked.
A slow, wicked grin spread across Jade's face. "We get him an internet connection."
---
The plan was simple, brilliant, and terrifying. They would introduce Alexander Plath to the online world of philosophical debate. It was a realm of infinite, self-generating conflict, pedantry, and pointless squabbling—a ghost's paradise.
They gathered in Ethan's room around his desktop computer. Mason set up a webcam, pointing it at an empty chair.
"Okay, Alex," Mason said, opening a browser. "You ready to see the great marketplace of ideas?"
Alexander materialized, peering at the screen with interest. "The digital realm. A placeless space. A timeless time. Intriguing."
"We're going to make you an account on a little website called 'PhiloForums.net'," Jade explained, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "It's a place where people discuss big ideas."
"Splendid! A digital Agora!"
"Sure," Chloe muttered. "Let's go with that."
They created a profile: Spectral_Scholar42.
His first foray was into a thread titled "Kant vs. Hume: The Final Showdown." Alexander cracked his spectral knuckles, a sound like snapping twigs, and began to type. His fingers moved through the keyboard, the keys depressing on their own.
What followed was a thing of beauty and horror. Alexander's first post was a 2,000-word treatise, meticulously cited, that dismantled both Kant and Hume while proposing a radical synthesis based on "post-mortem epistemological certainty." It was brilliant, condescending, and utterly impenetrable.
For a full hour, nothing happened. Alexander floated anxiously. "Perhaps my argument was too airtight? The human mind requires time to process such a paradigm shift."
Then, a notification popped up.
User 'NietzscheFan1999' has replied to your post.
Alexander clicked on it eagerly.
The reply was a single line: "lol u sound like a poser. have u even read the critique of pure reason?"
The temperature in the room plummeted. A bookshelf rattled.
"A 'poser'?" Alexander whispered, his form flickering with outrage. "He questions my familiarity with the foundational text of transcendental idealism? The audacity! The unmitigated gall!"
He began typing a furious, 5,000-word rebuttal, citing page numbers from the original German. The gang watched, a mixture of pity and triumph in their eyes. They had created a monster, but he was now their monster, and he was someone else's problem.
For three glorious days, there was peace. Alexander was constantly at the computer, engaged in a dozen different flame wars. He was arguing with a teenager from Nebraska about existentialism, a yoga instructor from Portland about Stoicism, and a particularly stubborn individual who believed Ayn Rand was the greatest philosopher of all time. The ghost was in heaven, or at least, a reasonable facsimile thereof.
But the internet, as it does, eventually broke him.
It happened on the fourth day. The gang came home to find Alexander floating listlessly in the corner, his glow dimmed. The computer was off.
"Alex?" Ethan asked cautiously. "Everything okay? Weren't you debating the ontological status of memes with a linguistics major?"
Alexander turned his mournful eyes toward them. "It's… pointless," he said, his voice hollow. "They don't engage with the arguments. They merely… react. They use phrases like 'cope' and 'seethe.' One individual told me to 'touch grass.' I am a disembodied spirit! The very concept is a non-sequitur!"
He had encountered the ultimate philosophical dead end: the troll.
"I have seen the abyss," he whispered, "and the abyss has terrible grammar."
The ghost of Alexander Plath, defeated by the internet, faded away into a state of profound, digital ennui. The Survivors Club had won. They had their lives back.
For about six hours.
---
At 3 a.m., Ethan was awoken by a sensation of icy cold on his forehead. He opened his eyes. Alexander was floating over his bed, holding a glowing, spectral copy of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Ethics of Ambiguity."
"The internet was a failed state of discourse," Alexander announced, his eyes burning with a new, terrifying light. "But it gave me an idea. A project far more worthy of my intellect."
Ethan groaned, pulling the pillow over his head. "No more projects, Alex. We're done with projects."
"This isn't for me," the ghost said, his voice dripping with purpose. "This is for you. All of you. Your lives are a mess of unexamined impulses and bad decisions. It's time for a change."
"What are you talking about?"
Alexander Plath spread his translucent arms wide.
"I'm going to ethically, and with full philosophical rigor, optimize your lives."