The quiet seemed to settle deeper into the office now, like an old friend who arrived unexpectedly and never quite left. There was a softness in the air, a kind of dense stillness that hung between each email, each coffee break, each non-urgent meeting. The employees no longer hurried to their desks, nor did they rush to get up from their chairs. Time had slowed, stretched out by the collective understanding that, in this space, nothing really needed to happen. It was the ultimate irony—a place designed for work, now home to the art of doing absolutely nothing, but doing it in the most profound way possible.
Elias had stopped scheduling meetings for "reflection" and "clarification" because, well, there was nothing left to reflect upon, and nothing more to clarify. The ritual of expressing vague dissatisfaction had reached its zenith. There were no more memos, no more whiteboards filled with bullet points that sounded important but ultimately had no bearing on the actual work. The office had reached a state of comfortable stasis, an almost religious reverence for the lack of change.
Tam, of course, was the outlier. He had continued his work of silent subversion, as if he could singlehandedly defibrillate the entire organization’s sense of purpose. He had started small: tweaking the code on some internal tools, adding features that no one had asked for but everyone secretly appreciated. Automated systems for handling internal communication. Files that organized themselves. A small, unnoticed burst of progress in a sea of inertia.
The trouble with Tam’s efforts, however, was that no one seemed to notice anymore. The team simply accepted these tiny gifts of competence as part of the new, unspoken norm. It was as though he had become an invisible presence, quietly optimizing the machinery while the rest of the office remained blissfully unaware of the quiet revolution happening just under the surface.
One day, Gregor found himself wandering into the break room, where a small group had gathered around the coffee machine. Cassandra was there, dispensing some sort of tea that claimed to “restore your energy to its optimal vibrational frequency.” He politely declined, as always, and made himself a cup of black coffee, which, like his mood, had grown bitterer with time.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cassandra said, her voice languid and contemplative, “about the concept of achievement. You know, the ones who truly succeed in life—those people who somehow always do things, who make decisions and actually see things through.”
Gregor raised an eyebrow. “Is that a bad thing?”
Cassandra smiled serenely. “Of course it is. They’re blind to the deeper truths, the essence of life. We, on the other hand, are in tune with the subtle rhythms of existence. We don’t rush. We are at peace with our own non-action. We exist, and that’s the ultimate form of success.”
Gregor sipped his coffee, trying to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. This was the point they had reached now: a delicate web of self-delusion woven around a simple truth—no one was really doing anything. They just felt like they were, and perhaps that was all that really mattered anymore.
“I think,” he began cautiously, “that maybe we’ve gone a little too far in the other direction. What if we… actually did something? Just a little bit?”
The room fell silent, and all eyes turned to him as though he had just suggested they all take up juggling flaming swords in the break room.
“You don’t understand, Gregor,” Elias said, stepping into the room, his expression weary but resolute. “The doing—it’s not the point. The point is the being. The space between the action and the thought. That’s where the true beauty lies.”
Gregor felt a small, almost imperceptible shudder of doubt. It wasn’t the first time Elias had said something like this. It was, in fact, exactly the same thing he had said for the past year. And yet, for some reason, this time it sounded hollow, even to Gregor’s increasingly tired mind. There was no depth behind it anymore. Just repetition. A mantra that had lost its meaning, but was repeated out of habit.
“Being,” he muttered to himself, glancing around at the faces of his colleagues, who were all nodding, lost in the trance of it.
It was too much. It was too easy.
“I’ve been thinking,” Gregor said aloud, his voice louder now, more forceful. “Maybe we need to break this cycle. Maybe we need to fail at being so being all the time and actually try... try doing something again. Even if it’s small. Even if we fail. Maybe that's where the real growth happens. Not in perpetual contemplation, but in actual action.”
There was a moment of utter silence. A pause that stretched on too long.
And then, to his surprise, Tam—who had been quietly sipping his tea in the corner—stood up.
“I agree,” Tam said simply. “Maybe we’ve been staring at the puzzle for so long that we’ve forgotten the pieces are still in front of us, ready to be put together.”
Gregor stared at him, slack-jawed. For once, Tam wasn’t hiding behind code or algorithms. He was stepping out of the shadows of silent improvement into the harsh light of... well, something like action.
But the room wasn’t ready. Elias raised a hand, signaling the inevitable return to the safety of their existential fog.
“No,” Elias said softly, “this is the danger of overreaching. If we do something, we risk feeling... too much. We risk caring. And once we care, we are no longer free.”
Gregor met Elias’s eyes, feeling the weight of his words settle on him like an anchor. The entire office had been built around this delicate house of cards, and any attempt to do something real would bring it all crashing down.
And yet, a strange, perhaps foolish thought crept into his mind: Maybe that’s what we need.
Would you like to continue with Chapter 14? Or would you prefer to make any adjustments to the current direction?
Made with Bullet