Jan
8
the efficiency monologues – Philo
Alex was an Efficiency Expert.
Not a sterling first line but it’s short, concise and gives you the information you need to move forward.
I was going to start with “Alex designed, developed and evaluated integrated systems for production processes to increase efficiencies across an organization” but then I thought “How would Alex say that?”
Alex was an Efficiency Expert.
For the purposes of this story it doesn’t really matter what he does for a living.
Or does it?
You be the judge (without being judgmental, if that’s possible).
That night he had three dreams scheduled;
- The one where he has sex with the neighbor (the wife… for a change).
- The one where he wins the lottery.
- The one where he designs a better integrated system for a production process and increases efficiency across his organization.
The first two dreams go off without a hitch.
The third however…
began with him rising from his bed and sleepwalking to his own front door. He took a few steps back from his front step and began a monologue;
“I will work—work—work! Not a voice to help me—not a smile of hope—not a touch of sympathy. … Perhaps the time is not ripe for larger knowledge. Nature and the Divinity that guides her must protect their new evolving creatures. A too sudden revelation and they might perish from sheer wonder…. Yes, truth must come softened, as a dream, to the man child’s brain. Its naked light would sere and blind him forever…. But to me it has been given to see—to hear—and keep sane in the light. Oh, from what planet is the call? From what one of the hundred million spheres? How many centuries has it been sent outward to the deaf, the dumb, and the blind? And what is the word? Is it Hail? Help? Hope?… Or is it an answer? An answer to some signal of mine? How shall I know?… How shall I know?”
He then went back inside, climbed the stairs to his bedroom and went back to sleep. He only knew about what he’d done that night because he’d recently installed a new doorbell that records everyone and everything that happens in front of it. He watched himself the next morning.
He’d never seen Olive Tilford and Fredrick Peterson’s play The Flutter of the Goldleaf so he had no idea how he could recite something from it word for word.
He had no idea what it could possibly mean.
That’s where you come in.
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