Alexander Plath's "Life Optimization Project" began with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to a stained-glass window. He didn't just offer advice; he issued philosophical imperatives.
His first target was Mason's sleep schedule, which he described as "a nihilistic rejection of cosmic order." At 7 a.m. sharp, Mason was jolted awake by his entire bed frame vibrating violently.
"Arise!" Alexander's voice boomed from the springs. "The sun has achieved its apogee in the celestial sphere, and you lie here in a state of metabolic stagnation! This is not sleep; it is a petty rehearsal for death!"
"Five more minutes," Mason mumbled, swatting at the air.
A torrent of ice-cold water, seemingly conjured from the very air, drenched him from head to toe. Mason shot out of bed with a strangled scream.
"The body must be mastered by the will!" Alexander declared, now floating by the window. "As Nietzsche said, one must have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star. Your chaos currently gives birth only to discarded energy drink cans. We start with calisthenics."
For the next hour, Mason was put through a grueling regimen of jumping jacks and push-ups, all while Alexander critiqued his form from a Stoic perspective. "Your spirit is weak! Your lumbar alignment is a testament to poor character!"
Meanwhile, Chloe found her iced coffee habit under assault. She reached for her usual morning cup, only to have it slide away from her on the table.
"You cannot drown the scream of existence in caffeine and sucrose," Alexander intoned, materializing inside the refrigerator. "This beverage is a crutch. A liquid manifestation of your alienation from authentic experience. Try this."
He gestured, and a cup of hot, murky tea appeared on the counter. It smelled like a forest fire in a compost bin.
"What is it?" Chloe asked, suspicious.
"A blend of nettle, dandelion root, and a minute quantity of existential acceptance. It will cleanse your palate and your soul."
Chloe took a hesitant sip. It tasted like dirt and regret. "It's horrible."
"Good," Alexander said, looking pleased. "Pleasure is a distraction. Discomfort fosters growth. Now, let's discuss your crippling reliance on sarcasm as a defense mechanism."
Liam, however, was the primary focus of Alexander's new project. The ghost had decided that Liam's romantic failures were the most pressing philosophical crisis facing the group.
"You can't be serious," Liam pleaded as Alexander floated alongside him on his way to class. "My love life is not a suitable topic for phenomenological analysis."
"Nonsense!" Alexander retorted. "Eros is the fundamental drive! Your approach, however, is a catastrophic failure of intentionality. You are not projecting your authentic self toward the Other—in this case, the female barista—you are projecting a hazy cloud of anxiety and poorly digested pop psychology."
"He has a point," Jade muttered, walking on Liam's other side. "Your 'flirting' sounds like a hostage negotiation."
"I'm working on it!" Liam cried.
"Work is not enough! We need a radical restructuring of your entire amorous paradigm!" Alexander declared. "We shall begin with a historical audit. I need to understand the root of your failure. We are examining your past relationships."
"That's private!"
"Privacy is the enemy of truth! Meet in the common room at 1900 hours. It's time for… the tribunal."
---
That evening, the common room felt more like a courtroom. Alexander had arranged the chairs in a semicircle. He floated where a judge's bench would be, a glowing, spectral gavel in his hand—which was just a oversized ethereal spoon he'd bent into shape.
Liam sat in a single chair in the center, looking like he was on trial for his life. The rest of the Survivors Club sat as the jury, armed with popcorn and a deep sense of schadenfreude.
"The tribunal is now in session," Alexander announced, banging his spoon-gavel on a floating textbook. "We are here to deconstruct the romantic history of the subject, Liam, to diagnose the core epistemological error that condemns him to perpetual solitude. Call the first witness."
Ethan, reading from a notepad, said, "The ghost calls… Liam's first kiss. Jessica. Eighth grade. School dance."
A faint, shimmering image of a 13-year-old girl with braces and a blue dress appeared in the middle of the room. The image-Liam leaned in for a clumsy, closed-mouth kiss.
"Stop!" Alexander boomed. "Analyze the moment! What was your fundamental intention?"
The real Liam hid his face in his hands. "I don't know! To not have cooties?"
"A weak premise! You were operating on social programming, not genuine desire! This foundational trauma set a precedent of inauthenticity! The court notes this failure." He scribbled in a glowing notepad. "Next witness!"
One by one, Alexander summoned spectral reconstructions of Liam's romantic past. There was Sarah from high school, whom he'd dated for two weeks because she had a car.
"You used her for vehicular convenience!" Alexander accused. "This is a blatant example of Kantian bad faith! You treated her as a means, not an end!"
"There was also the emotional unavailability of your father to consider," Jade added, munching on her popcorn.
"Whose side are you on?!" Liam yelped.
Then came the image of Maya, his college girlfriend. The spectral Maya was saying, "I just feel like you're not really here, you know? Like you're always thinking about what you're going to say next instead of listening."
"Aha!" Alexander shouted, pointing his gavel-spoon at Liam. "The Heideggerian 'they-self'! You were lost in the potentiality-for-Being, neglecting your Being-in-the-moment-with-Maya! A catastrophic error in temporal ontology!"
"This is the worst therapy session ever," Liam moaned.
After an hour of this brutal dissection, Alexander floated down in front of Liam, his expression solemn.
"The diagnosis is clear. You suffer from a profound state of inauthenticity. You seek a relationship not as a mutual project of becoming, as Sartre would suggest, but as a pre-fabricated solution to your own existential anxiety. You are looking for a 'girlfriend' concept to fill a 'Liam-shaped' void."
The room was quiet. Even Mason had stopped laughing.
Liam looked down, defeated. "So what do I do?"
Alexander's form softened slightly. "You must first learn to be alone without being lonely. You must become a subject, not an object seeking its missing piece. You must… find your own damn coffee."
---
The next day, a transformed Liam walked into the coffee shop. He didn't practice a face in the bathroom. He didn't rehearse a line. He just walked up to the counter. The cute barista, Maya (a different, non-spectral Maya), smiled at him.
"Hey," she said. "The usual? Three sugars, vanilla?"
Liam took a deep breath. Alexander's voice whispered in his ear, a ghostly pep talk. "Remember! Act in good faith! Project your authentic Dasein!"
"No," Liam said, his voice surprisingly steady. "You know what? I'll just have a black coffee today. I think I need to get used to the bitterness."
Maya's eyebrows went up. She poured the coffee and handed it to him. "Brave move. Everything okay?"
Liam shrugged, a genuine, un-rehearsed smile touching his lips. "Just… trying something new. Trying to be… here."
He paid for his coffee, turned, and walked out. He didn't look back. It was, by any measure, a complete failure of flirting. But for the first time, it wasn't a performance.
Back in the dorm, the Survivors Club watched from the window.
"He didn't even get her number," Mason said, disappointed. "That was awful."
"On the contrary," Alexander said, materializing with a proud smile. "It was a resounding success. For the first time, he engaged in an authentic interaction, free from the tyranny of desired outcomes. He was. He did not merely seem."
Chloe looked from the ghost to the retreating figure of Liam, then back again. "You know, for an insufferable, undead pedant… you might not be totally useless."
Alexander Plath puffed out his spectral chest. "It is a burden I bear. Now," he said, turning his gaze to Mason's YouTube analytics, "let us discuss the ethical implications of your clickbait thumbnails. The use of a surprised face is a manipulative appeal to base curiosity, and we must—"
Mason screamed and ran from the room. The ghost sighed, a sound of infinite patience.
"Progress," he murmured, "is a slow and painful dialectic."