!ROOPHLOCH 2025 --- agk's diary 20 September 2025 @ 20:39 UTC --- Written in zim on GPD MicroPC under the ground in a cave with 2 children --- Well, I'm not sending this by laser or lora, just carrying it back to an internet access point for posting. The kids are giving their balls of clay to the ceiling after making it into pokeballs. "Mama I want more gummyworms because I'm a bird," intones mine in a robot voice. "Wow, the clay splats really good. My hands are muddy now," says my friend's kid. "But it falls down." The water drips. The kids both fall silent at the same time, except my friend's kid's congested mouth breathing. --- Now they're making sandcastles. The cave sorts sand, gravel, rocks, clay, and mud. They're in the finest, silkiest sand. Our voices are resonant in this space. A borehole three feet high is off to our left. It loops around and comes back. "It's easy to make friends," says my friend's kid. "You just say Do you want to be friends, and Hey what is your name, and they tell you their name." Then he kicked down his sandcastle so my kid could have more sand. The cold from the rock breathes down my back, radiates up into my butt and legs from the wet rock beneath me. It's just the three of us, in a world full of texture but devoid of color. "Do you want to go with me?" My kid asks. "In the scary scary scary hole?" "Yes," says my friend's kid. "We'll go together." Am I gopher logging outdoors? The world out there could be night, pouring down rain, destroyed by wildfire, and we wouldn't know, unless maybe the cave drew in the smoke. Water drips. The kids have a conversation about having a conversation on a cooking contest. Only ground penetrating radar or a wired connection could get these words out of here. Or me, crawling, stoop-walking, squirming back to where there's green, sky, and living things other than us that make sound. --- Emerged from cave, creekwalked for fossils & play. Shucked cave-soiled clothes, drove narrow roads in rugged land. Connected to wifi at campground picnic shelter. Written underground, but outdoors pasted in a file on sdf gopher server, chmodded, edited to justify lines. Remote outdoor offgrid gopher challenge! My first roophloch.