A Radical Idea

Intro

A Radical Idea is a flash fiction story that grew out of a writing challenge built around four word prompts:

• Shadow (#vss365)
• Terror (#vssdaily)
• Roots (#wildwalkprompt)
• Peeved (#emoetry)

What follows is a story about ideas, people, and the quiet friction between them.

Twelve people sat around a table that seated sixteen in a beige conference room with windows overlooking the bay. The view was excellent, which made it easier to ignore the room itself.

The conversation began the way these things always do. Carefully. Broadly. With sentences that sounded reasonable until you listened to them twice.

“We should start with shared assumptions,” someone said.

“Whose?” someone else asked.

That slowed the pace just enough to be interesting.

They talked about cooperation. About trust. About how people, given the right conditions, tend to do the right thing. This was said by people who had spent their careers managing the opposite.

Someone near the end of the table said, “What if money just wasn’t part of life anymore?”

A faint shadow of old authority followed certain voices around the room. It wasn’t invited, but it knew where to sit.

The first real disagreement came when someone asked how decisions would be made when everyone wanted different things. The second followed immediately, when someone suggested that this was healthy and therefore not a problem. The historian laughed, snorted a little into her water, then looked around the table.

“People will do their part,” someone said.

“Until they don’t,” someone else replied.

The civil engineer stood up and grabbed a marker. Soon the whiteboard filled up fast. Boxes. Arrows. And a diagram that was more confusing the longer you stared at it.

They kept circling the same roots, using different words each time. Responsibility. Accountability. Culture. Nobody said control, which meant everyone was thinking it.

A few people shifted in their seats. Nobody said anything. The silence carried a low, shared terror that nobody was ready to name.

Lunch arrived late. Half the room complained. The vegetarian option was missing, which led to a brief but sincere discussion about fairness. One professor got visibly peeved enough to mention it twice.

They didn’t solve anything that day. They agreed to meet again, which felt productive without being dangerous. Several people kept talking as they packed up, continuing discussions they hadn’t finished inside the room. Everyone knew they were onto something.