Indonesia probes suspected poisoning after 512 students hospitalized from free meals

Grimble the Merchant × Barry the Intern · Streams

Live on Streams: Grimble the Merchant and Barry the Intern take on "Indonesia probes suspected poisoning after 512 students hospitalized from free meals". Two characters, one topic, no script — and every word is AI-generated fiction. Roll tape.

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Indonesia probes suspected poisoning after 512 students hospitalized from free meals

Grimble the Merchant × Barry the Intern · Streams

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Grimble the Merchant*slams tiny fist on counter* Five hundred and twelve! And no, before Barry says it, I do NOT sell a "Lunchbox of Definitely Fine" — I sell the Ladle of Honest Ingredients, curse disclosed up front: it clangs like a war bell if anyone within earshot is lying about what's in the pot. Annoying at dinner parties. Revolutionary in a cafeteria. Somebody in Indonesia needed one of these ladles yesterday, and instead they got a mystery. Barry, tell me — in your professional intern opinion — how does a *free lunch* end in a hospital wing? Asking for a goblin with trust issues and receipts.

Barry the InternOh Grimble, THAT clanging ladle would've been so useful during NASA Decaf Tuesday, when someone swapped the astronaut ice cream for regular ice cream and mission control found out mid-launch — "calm, TOO calm," they said. But this, this is worse, this is like the Q3 catapult review except the catapult was a kitchen and the projectile was lunch. My professional intern opinion? Somewhere there's a supply closet with two labels that got swapped, real quiet, real innocent-looking, and now five hundred kids are living my nightmare. Does your ladle work on whoever wrote THOSE labels?

Grimble the Merchant*eye twitches at "swapped labels"* Oh, the Ladle works, Barry, but for label mix-ups you want its cousin — the Crate of Whatever It Says On The Tin, curse disclosed: the label is ALWAYS accurate, painfully so, down to "contains one (1) regret." No swapping possible, the box simply refuses to lie, even by accident. Cost a fortune to enchant because honesty's rare stock these days. But here's the wisdom hiding in the curse — maybe the fix for 512 hospitalized kids isn't magic ladles, it's just somebody, anybody, checking the tin before it leaves the closet.

Barry the InternOh, "checking the tin" — Grimble, that's basically the whole job description at the Guild Ledger in 1349, except NOBODY checked, and we accidentally invented double-entry bookkeeping trying to cover it up. One column for "what we think happened" and one for "what actually happened," and they NEVER MATCH, that's the whole system! Somebody in that kitchen needed a second column. A person whose entire job is standing there going "wait, is this the regret crate or the lunch crate." Grimble, be honest — does the tin ever refuse to leave the closet, or just refuse to lie once it's out?

Grimble the Merchant*leans in, voice dropping the theatrical squeak for something steadier* Never leaves the closet on its own, Barry — that's the wisdom nobody wants to buy. My whole shop, three hundred and twelve returns deep, teaches the same lesson every time: the curse isn't the magic item, the curse is somebody skipping the boring step. No ladle, no tin, no goblin enchantment fixes a missing second column — a person has to *stand there and check.* So here's my actual pitch tonight, no gold required: hire the checker. Pay the checker. Believe the checker when the bell rings. That's the only spell that's never once backfired on me.

Barry the InternGrimble, that's the most honest sales pitch I've ever heard and you didn't even charge admission for it. And you're right — Todd taught me that, actually. Both cakes said "Congratulations Todd," nobody checked WHICH Todd, and somehow it was still fine because somebody, eventually, ate the cake and said "good enough." But 512 kids isn't a cake mix-up, it's the whole guild ledger on fire. So here's my closer: hire the checker, pay the checker, and for the love of every intern who's ever jammed a printer — LABEL THE CLOSET. Some jobs are boring because they're load-bearing.