“That did it, that was great, really hammered the old nail home, didn’t it, boys?” he said happily, no longer even conscious of the absurdity of talking to himself.  You have to talk to someone, after all, or you wind up talking to yourself after a while.   Pleasure unshared is only half pleasure, after all.   He had nothing against half pleasure, mind you, he preferred it to everything else, everything but shared pleasure.  

“Share this, wimp,” said the bully, preparing to nip the crippled man’s delight precisely in the proverbial bud.  Nobody celebrating around here — the bully’s credo.   The bully stopped, like an elk putting its nose to the wind, pausing to get the scent, as the crippled man smiled.

“Thank you for sharing,” said the crippled man.  The bully regarded him warily.  “I mean, which hell would be worse?   A hell where you are the only person, for eternity, or a hell where there is one other person there with you, for eternity.”

“That would depend on who the other person is, wouldn’t it?” said the bully.  

“I would say that’s right,” the cripple said cheerily.  “but if there were virtually any other sentient being alive with you, ready to improvise at any time, your torment would be less profound.   You’d be in a much more tolerable hell.”

“Except it would be ten times worse if that person died,” the bully said, thoughtfully.  It is part of the bully’s nature to fear and anticipate all of the worst outcomes.   Bullies are not casually made, an insane sadist has put in hours of hard work to hand craft each of these insatiably angry victimizers.

 “And you can stop referring to me as the ‘crippled man’,” said the crippled man, his jaw determined.  “I don’t have to tolerate that kind of abuse, even from my author.”

Have it your way, crippled man, of course you are correct.  

The crippled man doesn’t have to take any abuse.  Not from me, not from anybody.  He has only to write clearly; in short, punchy sentences.  

But, truly, no reason for any of it, except to reaffirm the trampled value of creativity.   Intense, collaborative creativity is needed in the world, now and going forward, more than at any previous time in human history.   The world will be irrevocably broken for human life very soon.  This is the time for action.  There’s no time to stall.