Inner Thoughts

Short Story

“Sir, I have this amazing idea.  If you could just give me two min…”

“Already been done.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whatever you are about to sell me, it’s been done kid.  Whatever podcast, cooking site, dream big crap you got going on, trust me.  It’s been done and done, and then redone.  Go away.”

While at home, with his wife reheating his dinner for him, tells her about his day…for whatever reason a crazed up magazine editor wrote about the relationship that day.

“So I told the kid to scram.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know for certain that what he was going to produce wasn’t going to be the ‘next big thing’?”

“Honey.  I have been at this business for over 25 years.  I have seen every gadget that has been made; every podcast idea; new ways to make life easier and easier to point out that we don't even need to leave our bed.  I have seen wars subsided from peace talks with a click of a button. We have surpassed the ideas of Star Trek, a harmonious peaceful free world.  We have reached the stars; we have seen the core of Earth and all other planets.  We are harvesting diamonds from Neptune; we built cities on Mars.  We have underwater cities that have solved our overpopulation.  Our Earth is the most economical planet there is and we have gone to great lengths at preserving all four elements.  We’ve brought back so many extinct creatures we had to move some of the zoos off planet!  You can read anything, watch anything, play anything with a flick of your eye.  What could this kid possibly have made that I have NOT seen, heard, felt, smelt, tasted, and lived through?”

“Then why still work there?”

“If I don’t work, put hours in like regular people I will honestly go insane.  No amount of music being implanted into my head will heal my troubled mind.  I just wish someone, somewhere will invent something that would literally blow my mind.”

“Then why doesn’t that someone be you?”

“What?”

“You just said that you’ve seen it all.  You know all that was made.  Then you, more than anyone, would see what is missing.  Where the cracks are in the system.  You should be able to see a missing piece to the puzzle that no one knows about.”

“I…well…the puzzle is complete.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“You know something I don’t, love?”

“Not more than usual.  But I know you.”

“Love, even God rested after making Man and stopped creating after that.  What more could He make after that?”

“You think God was completely done ‘creating’ after he made Man?  All the inventions Man has created had to come from somewhere.  All those ideas, the pictures in Man’s mind.  Had to come from somewhere.  And you think after EVERYTHING we have right now, that even God Himself says we are done thinking up new things?  Maybe something even greater is just a reach away.  Just have to be the right person to reach for it.”

“I…well…there isn’t that….humph.  When did you get to be so smart?”

“When I asked you to marry me.”

After kissing his wife while heading to his study, that nagging feeling in the back of his skull started poking at him.  It wasn’t until he sat at his dusty desk when he realized an idea was starting to form something…….new.  

What could the man have thought of that wasn’t invented yet?  What could possibly be a new idea in a world of already made items?  Where is the crack in our new dawn of age?  What shape is this missing puzzle piece?  Everyone’s bucket list has been scratched off.  What new thing can be used by everyone, can be useful in a world that doesn’t need anything more?