Blink Fiction™

The problem is, he thought, that I’m surrounded by idiots. Nobody here has any idea what is going on or what needs to be done. Nobody even knows enough to figure out what’s going on.

Before he’d lost his option to participate in the brainstorming, he’d been the guy they’d turned to at times like this. Now he didn’t have a vote, but they still came in here when they had a problem in his area. He could only remain quietly listening, acutely aware of their impotency and unable to do anything about it.

They were really only supposed to come into his area when they wanted to address a problem involving this area. But it had happened more than a few times that they came into the area and their discussions revolved around something completely outside the area. Sometimes they broke up into even smaller groups, even pairs, to talk about different problems, all of which had nothing to do with him or his area. That drove him nuts. Not only didn’t he have anything to say and they were not solving any of the problems in his area, but they were also wasting his time.

But even when they were discussing the problems in the area, their inability to reach viable decisions was frustrating. Perhaps these times would not be so trying if the problems they were addressing weren’t so intimately personal to him. Indeed, the problems were more like a matter of life and death to him. Worse yet, he knew the answers to most of their questions; but his present, recently acquired, status did not allow him to input.

Also frustrating to him was the fact that among the people discussing the problems were several so-called experts in the field. He listened to them and marveled at how inaccurate their observations were. It was sobering and frightening that the managers in the room would have to make a decision based on the inane babblings of these experts. He’d always taken their advice with a grain of salt, actually a whole shaker full of salt. Of course, sometimes he wondered if that might have had something to do with his recent arrival in his now powerless position.

But he’d had a long, fulfilling run in the power seat. He’d made an impact. He’d been the guy they’d come to when the problem was too hard for anyone else. He’d been the troubleshooter, the brainstormer, the quick fixer, the hard fixer. And he sometimes suspected that too might have had something to do with his present position.

The most frustrating aspect of the whole situation was that he knew he could still do those things. He could still handle the hard problems. He could still make the tough decisions. That made it even more nerve wracking listening to the pointless discussions with the inane input from the experts, the indecision from the decision makers, and no go to guy.

He had nothing to say at all on the problem they were discussing now. This was true even though it affected him more than any problem he’d ever been a party to. It had developed concurrently with his being relegated to the position he occupied now. And that meant that he could have no input at all.

But the solution to this problem really determined whether he stayed in the game at all. If they made the right decision, he would continue on and maybe regain his position of power and authority, although most of them probably considered that to be unlikely. But if they made the wrong decision, he was out of there immediately. Not only would he never regain a position of responsibility, he would not even be in the running anymore.

At least today, he thought, they had kept pretty much on topic. The discussion had been almost exclusively on the subject at hand, and they seemed to be building toward a final decision. The “experts” had recapped the pros and cons, the probabilities and likelihoods, the ifs, ands, and buts. And the managers had just now huddled in the far corner whispering among themselves.

As they broke their huddle, he saw the same fatalistic look on all the managers’ faces. He knew instantly they had decided to shut down the project. The lead manager, his older brother Kevin, looking even more solemn than the rest of the group, told the white coated lead expert, “We’ve decided the best thing to do is to go ahead and disconnect him. From what you’ve told us, it’s pretty obvious that there’s no life left in him at all.”

THE END