On the Cohabitation Tolerance of Adult Gremlins

The ordinary statement that adult Gremlins dislike the company of other Gremlins is correct, but scientifically inadequate. It tells us very little about what “dislike” means, how quickly it emerges, or whether the effect scales predictably with the number of individuals involved. Several years ago I assisted Doctor Merrow in an experiment intended to answer precisely these questions.

The study was conducted with adult volunteers, all unrelated so far as could be established, all medically healthy, and all compensated well enough that several informed us they would tolerate considerably worse than one another for the agreed period. The participants were housed in a large converted warehouse divided into comfortable residential suites. Food, bedding, tools, books, entertainment, and private sleeping spaces were provided. No participant was required to remain, and departure at any time carried no financial penalty. This last condition was essential both ethically and methodologically, since forcing Gremlins to remain together would measure confinement more readily than cohabitation.

We began with pairs, and the result was unexpectedly uneventful. Two Gremlins sharing a residence generally established boundaries within the first day and then tolerated one another surprisingly well. They divided cupboards, selected separate sleeping areas, negotiated use of common rooms, and thereafter interacted rather like two Human lodgers who had discovered they had nothing in common but rent.

Conversation was limited but not absent. Meals were occasionally shared, and tools were borrowed, though never without objection. One pair remained together for the entire three-week trial and, when questioned afterwards, independently described the arrangement as “fine.” This caused premature excitement among several observers.

Then we introduced a third Gremlin, and the change was immediate. Three did not behave like two plus one. In nearly every trial, the presence of a third individual transformed a stable arrangement into a continuously shifting social problem. Two would temporarily align against the third, then one member of the pair would quarrel with the other, producing a new alliance, which would itself dissolve within hours. Possessions migrated. Sleeping locations changed, common areas became contested, and participants who had previously ignored one another began monitoring where the others were and what they were doing.

The attention was more remarkable than the hostility. Two Gremlins could apparently establish a simple relationship: you are there, I am here, these things are mine, those things are yours. Three had to keep track of the relationships among all three, and they hated it.

One participant summarised the problem more elegantly than any of us had managed in our preliminary notes. “With two,” he said, “I only need to know where he is.” He pointed at the other two. “With three, I need to know what those idiots are doing with each other.”

Groups of four produced a different pattern. The unstable triangle largely disappeared because the residents tended to divide into pairs, which was initially interpreted as an improvement. It was not. The pairs became territorial, moving furniture to create informal boundaries and dividing the common supplies. One group used chalk to mark a line down the centre of the kitchen. Another moved two wardrobes into a corridor, creating what was functionally a barricade and what its builders insisted was “better shelving.” Interactions across the emerging divisions were generally civil provided nobody touched anything, and nobody was able to agree upon what counted as anything. The first physical fight of the study occurred over a kettle. Both sides possessed kettles, a fact introduced during mediation and not considered relevant.

At five and six individuals, the pair structure became unstable again. Gremlins attempted to create smaller social units but found that the numbers did not divide cleanly enough to prevent continual rearrangement. Individuals changed rooms. Alliances formed around occupations, sleep schedules, food preferences, and in one memorable case a shared hatred of another participant’s whistling.

The residence itself began to change, which was the result that interested me most. Rather than simply quarrel, the Gremlins modified their environment to reduce contact. Screens appeared between tables and new shelves divided rooms. Curtains went up across corridors, and secondary entrances were improvised. One participant discovered an unused maintenance hatch and thereafter entered and exited his quarters almost exclusively through the wall. Nobody had instructed them to do any of it, and the original building plan became increasingly irrelevant. By the end of the six-person trial, the suite technically contained one household and functionally contained five.

At eight Gremlins, something still stranger occurred: they ceased trying to maintain a common residence at all. Within four days, the participants had divided the available space into discrete territories with minimal shared circulation. Meals were taken separately and schedules staggered, and a complicated system of knocks developed to indicate whether a corridor was occupied. Several participants began leaving the building for hours at a time despite having no assigned tasks outside it. One slept in the workshop and another on the roof. When reminded that bedrooms were available, the latter replied that the roof had fewer Gremlins, which was difficult to dispute.

At twelve individuals, the experiment effectively collapsed under the weight of its own success. The warehouse was large enough to accommodate all twelve comfortably by the standards of any of the other Principal Races. The Gremlins disagreed. Within the first week, seven had established sleeping spaces outside the designated residential rooms, and three spent increasing amounts of time in neighbouring businesses. One negotiated permission to sleep in a bakery storeroom. Another disappeared for nearly two days and was eventually found assisting a locksmith several streets away. He claimed he had not left the experiment and was merely “living somewhere else temporarily.” Doctor Merrow argued that this constituted withdrawal, while the participant argued that the consent form contained no clause specifying where he had to sleep. He was correct. I have disliked lawyers ever since, including amateur ones.

The most revealing trial involved twenty adult Gremlins, whom we did not house in a single residence. By that point we had learned something. The group was given unrestricted use of the entire warehouse complex, including several connected rooms, workshops, storage spaces, two courtyards, and an unused stable, and we predicted that they would distribute themselves into small clusters. They did not. They dispersed almost perfectly.

Within ten days, nearly every participant had established an individual territory. Shared facilities were used according to informal schedules which emerged without central agreement. Individuals who had occupations or interests in common cooperated when necessary and then separated again. Several developed friendly relationships, but friendship did not translate into proximity, and that distinction proved important.

Gremlins do not appear to dislike one another in the ordinary emotional sense so much as they dislike continuous mutual presence. A Gremlin may enjoy another Gremlin’s conversation and still prefer that conversation to occur in a workshop twice a week rather than across a breakfast table every morning. This became especially clear when we interviewed participants after the trials, since many expressed favourable opinions of individuals they had actively avoided while cohabiting. One described another participant as “a good man” immediately after spending two weeks constructing an alternate staircase so that he would not have to pass him in the hall. Human observers tend to interpret avoidance as hostility. With Gremlins, it is often preventative maintenance.

There was also a striking threshold effect. Pairs were broadly stable. Triads, by contrast, were disproportionately unstable, and groups of four often partitioned into pairs. Medium-sized groups reorganised the environment into increasingly isolated subspaces, and larger groups ceased behaving like a household altogether, becoming a collection of neighbouring individuals. The change at each threshold was abrupt and structural.

One Gremlin can live alone; two can negotiate; three become politics, four borders, six architecture, and twelve emigration. This formulation is not sufficiently precise for publication. I include it here because it is, nevertheless, correct.

The study also explains why genuine Gremlin districts are so rare even in cities with large Gremlin populations. There is no need to invoke historical persecution, nomadic ancestry, or some forgotten collapse of Gremlin civilisation, though all three have been proposed by scholars who apparently prefer dramatic explanations to observing Gremlins. Large populations do not consolidate; they diffuse. A city containing ten thousand Gremlins may contain them everywhere while possessing no quarter that can meaningfully be called Gremlin.

The experiment ended after the twenty-person trial. Officially, this was because we had collected sufficient data. Unofficially, it was because the warehouse owner inspected the property and was displeased by the additional doors.