The Adjoining Room
It was the ninth of the ninth. Time for the nine Daves to meet in the Adjoining Room. Eight Daves were already present, they were just waiting on the last. The light above door number nine blinked softly. What the blinking signified, none of the Daves knew. They waited patiently — it was customary to wait until everyone arrived before anyone spoke. Meanwhile the ice-cream cake was melting.
Control Dave looked like he was about to say something, but changed his mind. Cowboy Dave pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and began whistling a low tune. Engineer Dave was the only one out of his chair. He was examining the blinking light above door number seven, exploring the fittings with his fingernails.
Finally Fastfood Dave broke the silence. “I gotta be at work in an hour…” His knee was bobbing up and down, like a heavy metal drummer operating the bass drum.
“I can’t believe you continue with that experience,” said Chef Dave. “Absolutely ridiculous.”
“Hey!” Fastfood Dave objected. “The idea was to experience different lives. Why should we only choose the glamorous ones? That would exclude the majority of the human experience.” Writer Dave took out a notepad and scribbled down Fastfood Dave’s words verbatim.
“Right on, man,” said Rockstar Dave.
Chef Dave rolled his eyes. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Control Dave leaned forward. “You swear a lot more than we used to, Chef.”
“Yeah, more than Rockstar, even,” said Coach Dave. “Got more tattoos, too.”
Chef Dave grinned and admired the tats on his arms. “Chefs are the rockstars of the new millennium. And he—” he jabbed a finger at Rockstar Dave “—is no rockstar.”
“Well you definitely are in the sense of cocaine use,” said Engineer Dave. He was still inspecting the door frame. It was mostly aluminium, and seemed to be hiding electronics inside. Writer Dave sniggered, and wrote that line down also. “You think he’ll show up?” He pointed his thumb at door number nine. “He’s probably real busy nowadays.”
“I hope so,” said Fastfood. “I can’t wait around long. I can’t get another warning for being late.”
“You’re a peasant,” said the Chef.
“Is that helpful?” asked Control Dave.
“Wasn’t meant to be.” Chef eyed both Fastfood Dave and then the ice-cream cake with equal amounts of professional disgust.
Coach Dave looked wistfully at the door. “Could do with his kinda money. Could buy kit for both the boys and girls teams.”
Engineer nodded. “Could pay off the mortgage. Take the kids on holiday.”
Four of the Daves sighed approvingly at the same time.
Fastfood Dave picked at his black slacks nervously. “I gotta pay rent,” he said, barely audibly.
“Only need a bedroll and the open sky,” said Cowboy Dave from deep within his hat.
“Sure, Cowboy,” said Chef. “Ex-wife would love me having the kids living like it’s Eighteen-ought-dickety-doo. You got toilet paper out there, at least?”
“Yuuup.” Cowboy sunk even further into his hat.
“Oh, thank God,” muttered two of the Daves.
Writer Dave turned to Control Dave. “You think he’ll still contribute? He’s an exec now. You know how the bourgeoisie behave.”
“You don’t have to use fancy words just because you’re a ‘writer’ now,” said Chef Dave.
“Don’t need no five dollar words,” agreed Cowboy Dave.
“Hmm, I think this is interesting,” said Control Dave. “We’re showing real divergence here.”
“‘Discord’ is probably the better word.” said Engineer Dave. He’d given up inspecting the door frame and had retaken his seat.
Control Dave shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Difference is okay. Difference is—”
“Growth,” came the monotone chorus. Chef Dave rolled his eyes. Rockstar Dave gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. Cowboy Dave looked like he might actually be napping. It was hard to see with the hat over his eyes.
The Daves settled into an awkward silence after that. At some point four of them simultaneously began whistling the Harlem Globetrotters theme, stopping and chuckling after they realised their synchronicity. Suddenly the light on door nine turned green. The Daves’ attention snapped to the door as the steel handle was turned and the door thrown open. Entrepreneur Dave stepped through, his arms spread wide. He was in his new uniform: sports coat, shirt and jeans. No tie.
“Hello, my Daves!” he declared. He went around the circle, shaking each of their hands. The room instantly gained more energy. There was no denying that he’d developed a rather un-Dave-like command of a room since taking the Entrepreneur experience. His handshake was firm. He looked each of them in the eye. He smelt like an executive. Even the more cynical Daves couldn’t help but smile. “Already a year! Time flies! You all look well!” He finally took his seat. He clapped and rubbed his hands together, ready to get started.
Finally assembled, the group looked at itself, wondering who would start. Finally Entrepreneur Dave broke the stalemate. “Control Dave! You usually do such a great job running these things, why don’t you start us off?”
Control Dave brightened considerably. “Okay.” He opened his clipboard and flipped through some pages. “Let’s start with—”
A phone rang. The Daves all went “heyooo,” at the same time — except Fastfood Dave who was scrambling out of his seat and apologising. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “But I have to.” He took the call to the corner of the room.
“Peasant,” Chef Dave hissed after him. Fastfood Dave shot a middle finger back. The finger was wrapped with a bright blue bandaid.
After a short, muted conversation, Fastfood hung up and turned to the group. “I have to go real soon.”
“Oh, that’s a shame!” said Entrepreneur. “But ya gotta get out there and make that money!”
Fastfood Dave looked nervously at Control Dave. “Can we… expedite things?”
“He wants to get to the kitty,” explained Engineer Dave. Fastfood nodded, approximating a dog hoping to get fed. Engineer reached into his backpack and pulled out an envelope. “12,000 dollars,” he said.
“I’d prefer to do this in the correct order, if possible,” said Control Dave. “But I guess if Fastfood’s in a rush…” He reached behind his chair for the biscuit tin and put it down in the middle of the room. He took a wad of cash secured by a rubber band from the inside of his hiking vest and plonked it into the tin. “$9,000.”
Engineer Dave emptied his envelope into the biscuit tin. Fastfood Dave rushed over and dropped a single fifty dollar note. He shrugged apologetically as Chef guffawed.
One by one they contributed to the kitty. Coach Dave put in his $5,500. His cash was also secured by a rubber band. He shot finger-guns at Control Dave in solidarity. Chef Dave put in $7,000 dollars he’d secured in a zip-lock bag. Writer Dave was able to put in $500, but also gave each Dave a copy of his self-published book of poetry: An Explosion of Delight. Only Cowboy Dave seemed to actually appreciate this.
The cowboy himself moseyed over and dropped in a dirty fist-sized chunk of quartz.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do with that?” asked Chef Dave.
“Dunno,” shrugged Cowboy. “Trade it for loose tobacco and nudie mags at the truck stop. It’s what I normally do.” He tugged his hat back down low.
“You know we’re inside, right?” Chef asked. Cowboy just shrugged again.
Rockstar Dave, meanwhile, put in $800 and a bag of weed.
“Uh…” Control Dave objected, but wasn’t sure of the proper neutral way to tell Daves not to bring drugs to meetings.
Rockstar pointed at the weed. “You don’t want that?” Most of the Daves shook their head.
“I’ll split it with you,” said Chef.
“Right on!” said Rockstar, and the pair shared a fist-bump. Fastfood Dave looked like he was about to enquire, but thought better of it.
Finally the moment that every-Dave had been waiting for: Entrepreneur Dave stood up, strode to the centre, fished out something small from his sports coat, and plopped it into the tin.
“Uh, what the fuck is that?” asked Chef Dave.
Sitting on the pile of cash, next to the dirty chunk of quartz, was now a single nondescript USB drive.
“That, my Daves, is millions, potentially billions worth of ‘crypto currency.’”
“Ugh,” groaned Engineer Dave.
“What is it?” asked Writer Dave, his pen at the ready to take notes.
“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” said Engineer.
Entrepreneur Dave straightened his sports coat. He was ready to command the room again. “Crypto currency is short for Cryptographic currency! It’s secure, it’s censorship proof, and, most importantly, it only goes up in value!”
Fastfood Dave was ignoring the spiel. His eyes were fixed firmly on the cash. “Can we split this up now? I really, really, have to go. You can just keep the rock, Cowboy.”
“How can you put money on a USB stick?” asked Coach Dave. “It is money, right? You said it was worth ‘millions’.”
“…or perhaps ‘billions’,” said Chef Dave, lathering it with sarcasm.
Entrepreneur Dave pointed at Coach Dave excitedly. “Great question, Coach! The future of cash isn’t this stuff…” he dramatically ruffled through the notes in the tin. Fastfood Dave salivated. “…or a number in your bank account. It’s…” he held the USB drive up in triumph… “It’s DaveCoin!”
Chef Dave spluttered half a laugh. Engineer Dave let out a twinge of pain. Rockstar Dave’s head cocked to the side like a confused spaniel. Fastfood Dave muttered, “oh God, that’s useless to me,” under his breath.
Coach could be seen thinking through the consequences. “Coins are real things I can spend at the shop. Not numbers on a USB stick.” He looked slightly proud of himself for making a good point.
“Great question again, Coach!” the Entrepreneur had slipped comfortably into his salesman role. “DaveCoin can be spent from our cryptographically secure app stored on your phone. All you have to do is scan a QR code!”
Engineer’s head slumped into his hands. The muffled words, “oh, for fuck’s sake it requires infrastructure,” escaped.
“Can we not just have cash?” Fastfood Dave asked hesitantly. He was still fixated on the cash in the kitty tin.
“This is the future of money,” said Entrepreneur Dave. “Money 2.0! It’s going to disrupt the entire economic system. That’s why we have to get in, right here, on the ground floor. The ceiling is… well there is no ceiling!” He sat back down with a satisfied sigh.
Fastfood Dave ignored the spiel. “If we just split up the actual money, how much is it?” He was looking more and more anxious.
“I’ll calculate it,” said Control Dave. He’d recorded the contributions in his notes.
“Do you need a computer for this dealio?” asked Cowboy, gesturing loosely at the kitty tin.
“Well yes,” answered Entrepreneur Dave. “It’s digital cash, if you will.”
Cowboy Dave lost interest. “Eh, I don’t have one.” He sank back into his hat and kicked his boots out.
“That actually does raise the question of how we’re even supposed to split this ‘DaveCoin’ up. You only brought one USB drive.” This was Writer Dave. He was still ready, pen in hand, to steal any-Dave’s words.
The Entrepreneur gestured at the Engineer. “Engineer always brings his laptop. He can send it to everyone’s phone.”
Engineer Dave raised his eyebrows. “Uh, I could send every one here a useless blob of data, that doesn’t mean they can use it to buy things.”
“That makes it worthless,” said Chef Dave, picking at his fingernails.
“Yeah, sorry man,” said Rockstar Dave. “I don’t think this is useful where I’m from.”
“I don’t think it’s useful where he’s from,” said Engineer.
For the first time since he’d made his grand entrance, Entrepreneur Dave’s facade looked slightly shaken. “Hey! Even the best ideas are only worth something if people get behind them!” If he was hoping for an approving buzz around the circle of Daves, he got none. Instead there was just an awkward silence until someone started humming the Harlem Globetrotters theme again.
Control Dave completed his calculations on his phone. “$34,850 total. $3,872.22 each.”
Fastfood Dave shot over to the kitty tin and started counting money. “I’ll just take $3,800.”
“Geez,” said Engineer Dave. “Round it up to four thousand. Take it from my portion.”
“You can have some of mine, too,” said Cowboy Dave. “Don’t need any of it.”
“Really?” asked Rockstar Dave. “What about, like, horse food?” Cowboy just shrugged.
Fastfood looked at Engineer and Cowboy with glassy eyes. “Oh, wow, thanks. I’ll pay you back…” Engineer Dave waved him away.
“Are you regretting this experience, yet?” asked Chef Dave.
“No. And now I have to go. Sorry everyone, I really have to go.” Fastfood Dave grabbed his backpack and went for the nearest door.
“That’s not your door!” someone shouted.
Fastfood span around, trying to find the right one. “Shit, almost ended up in the wrong timeline.” He scrambled for door number two. “Bye everyone! Sorry!” And he disappeared.
“There he goes,” said Chef. “The biggest martyr of all the Daves.”
Entrepreneur Dave waved his hand at the air, dismissing a concern that no-one had raised. “We’ll keep his share of DaveCoin for him next year. It’ll be worth even more!”
“It’s not worth anything now,” said Chef Dave.
The Entrepreneur’s mask of complete optimism cracked a fraction. “Look,” he said, “you can’t make great things happen if you don’t give your all to the mission!”
“You know just declaring things doesn’t make them true, right?” said Engineer Dave.
Control Dave held his hands up to the group. “It seems we have a bit of a disagreement about how the tithe should be paid. Most of us have paid in the official currency of our timelines, but others have chosen something else that they see as valuable. Cowboy Dave, for example, contributed a beautiful crystal. He probably spent a lot of time trying to acquire that crystal…”
“I dug it up when I was digging a hole to take a shit,” said Cowboy.
“…Nevertheless, you see it as a worthy contribution, while Entrepreneur Dave sees this ‘DaveCoin’ as worthy. We have to recognise that.”
“It’s worth less than Cowboy’s bush toilet crystal,” said Engineer Dave. “Quartz is an actual thing that we can sell for actual money.”
Entrepreneur Dave stood up again. It was time to turn up the heat and bring this one home. “Listen. I know some of you are skeptical.” This was an understatement. He strode to the centre of the room. He straightened his sports coat and steepled his fingers and began. “Historians divide history at the point before and after the invention of the steam engine…”
A collective groan.
“You’re not bringing us the fucking Industrial fucking Revolution!” snapped Chef Dave.
“Listen, guys,” said Entrepreneur. “I feel like you’re only interested in my hard-earned money. I feel like there’s a lot of the politics of envy in this group.”
Most of the Daves rolled their eyes. “Are you making any money over there? I mean actual cash money?” asked Engineer Dave. “Because it seems like you’ve only brought us a sales pitch.”
Entrepreneur Dave raised his hands in self-defence. “I’ll have you know that I’ve founded a very exciting consultancy group. It’s called Dynamic Systems, and we’re all about re-inventing the world.”
“Dynamic Systems is a rather generic name, no?” asked Writer Dave.
“Yeah, it is,” said Coach Dave. “What is it you actually do?”
“We have several exciting ideas and loads of talent that has attracted interest from some of the hottest VC firms around!”
“Sorry, bro. Sounds like a load of nothing,” said Rockstar Dave, drumming a rhythm on his knees.
“No, not at all! The future is extremely bright for Dynamic Systems!”
Engineer Dave popped his finger up. “Wait.. Where did you get this idea from? I’ve never heard anything like it.”
The Entrepreneur’s face brightened. “That’s a great question. Well it came from our talented group of engineers! You’d fit right in, actually.” He winked at Engineer.
Engineer made a face like someone had poured orange juice into his coffee. “But you said it’s cryptographically proven, right? So there must be some serious math behind it…”
Entrepreneur Dave felt like he’d finally hooked the big fish in the group. Finally, some real interest! “Oh, there’s a whole proof behind it. A paper by a professor at… Well it doesn’t exist in every timeline.”
“Wait, what?” Control Dave had been quietly scribbling notes in his log book up until this point. Now he looked slightly alarmed. “There’s a whole university in your timeline that isn’t in ours? How new is it?”
Entrepreneur Dave scratched the side of his temple, as all Daves do when they’re hiding something. The others glared at him, and he knew he’d been sprung. “Well… It’s not in my timeline either…”
Rockstar Dave looked like his mind had just been blown by the greatest of guitar solos. “Holy shit. You found another timeline!”
“Oh wow…” Engineer Dave was staring into the distance, as if calculating something. “I guess it makes sense that we’re not the first to find this room. Or maybe there are others like it…” He had to get up to pace around, his mind trying to untangle the possibilities.
“Wait,” asked Coach Dave. “Are they also Daves?”
Entrepreneur Dave was now concerned that he’d reeled them in, only to sidetrack them completely. “No, no. These ones are ‘Zoës’.” He stumbled back to his chair in defeat.
“This is wild,” said Chef Dave.
“How did you even find them?” asked Control Dave.
Entrepreneur put his hand to his heart solemnly. “Networking. That’s my passion and my skill.” The other Daves groaned.
“How are you the same person as us?” asked Chef Dave.
Engineer Dave stopped pacing momentarily to look quizzically at Chef — there was some irony in that question. Then he turned to Entrepreneur Dave. “So you just found them on LinkedIn or something?”
“I started a bootcamp for ‘dangerous ideas’. The Zoë from my timeline joined up.”
“How did you work out she was like us?” asked Coach Dave.
“She was quite open about it. Spelled it out in her application. Actually, she was originally weeded out by my PA and I had to chase her down.”
Engineer Dave was still pacing. “So how did she split her timeline? The same way as us? Was it in this room?”
“No, her room was in Geneva. She was a computer science student. Liked to hack into things, and found a schematic for a room that wasn’t there. So she broke in and was confronted by five other Zoës.”
“Only five?” asked Writer Dave.
“Yeah, just five for her. Six Zoës in total.” Entrepreneur Dave had entirely lost his former zeal, and was now in a more introspective mood. “You know what’s weird? On the schematic the room was just a triangle. But when she went in, it was a hexagon. Like this room.”
“This is not a hexagon,” said Engineer Dave.
“It’s a… nonagon?” offered Writer Dave, writing the word down with some question marks around it.
Engineer walked to the centre of the room, making angles with his hands. He shoved the kitty tin away with his foot. “It’s a triangle… until someone walks in… every one is from a different timeline… and so is their triangle and door. Everything is arranged radially…” He swept his arm around the room.“…into a polygon. Wow.”
“My head hurts,” said Rockstar Dave.
“It is ‘nonagon’!” declared a satisfied Coach, who’d been looking it up on his phone. He gave Writer Dave a congratulatory nod.
“If there’s a group of Daves, and a group of Zoës, then there’s probably other groups out there,” said Cowboy Dave, who was at least pretending not to be fussed about the commotion.
“Did the Zoës try the same experiment we did? Purposefully choosing different experiences?” asked Control Dave.
“No, they only try to use their extra selves to split up a problem into six parts to tackle.”
“Oh, shit, that’s genius,” said Writer Dave. “Maybe we should’ve done that?”
“We were a community therapist, not a computer scientist,” said Coach Dave. Writer Dave accepted the point with a small nod.
“Some of us still are therapists,” Control Dave said with a sigh.
“Anyway,” Entrepreneur Dave continued, “they were out there developing new ideas, and they came up with DaveCoin!”
“There is no way they called it ‘DaveCoin’,” said Chef Dave.
“Okay, okay. They called it FreedomCoin.”
“That’s actually worse,” said Engineer.
Suddenly the number two door opened and Fastfood Dave returned to his seat, glumly. He dropped his backpack with a thud. “Never mind,” he said. “They fired me. Didn’t even get on the bus before they called me.”
Rockstar Dave reached out for a consolatory fist bump. “Wow, that sucks dude.”
“They said they can get some sixteen year old to take my job and they would only have to pay them half my rate.” He kicked his bag and it slid into the middle of the room, resting next to Engineer Dave’s foot.
“Well, yeah, because your job is pointless and can be done by any primate,” said Chef Dave, savouring the news. Fastfood glared at him.
“Now, that’s not helpful—” began Control Dave, but he was interrupted by the Coach, who was eager to tell Fastfood Dave the news.
“Entrepreneur Dave found a whole group of other people who split their timeline!” The words came out all at once. “They are Zoës,” he added, helpfully.
Fastfood Dave blinked under the fluorescent lights. “There are others?”
“Who knows how many walk the streets,” said Cowboy.
“I can’t believe—” Fastfood shook his head. “No, I can’t care about any of this. I have to find another job.”
Control Dave leant forward and wrested his chin on his fist. He tried his best to look fatherly to a group of men who were quite literally the same age. “Maybe you don’t have to be Fastfood Dave anymore? You can pick another experience. We won’t mind.”
Fastfood Dave exhaled sharply and looked to the heavens, as all Daves did when they were getting angry. “I shouldn’t have to pick another experience!”
Engineer Dave, who’d been staring into the middle distance, pondering the Daves and the Zoës and the Whoever-Elses in different timelines, snapped back to attention. “But it sounds shit, and now you’re finding it hard to get these jobs because you’re being out-bid by teenagers. Just pick something else. Something with a better career path.”
Fastfood jumped from his chair. He pointed at Cowboy Dave. “He gets to live on nothing but beans and fresh air.” Cowboy nodded in agreement. “He doesn’t even take any of the kitty. Why don’t I get to live my experience?”
“Cowboy also shits in the woods,” said Chef. Cowboy Dave nodded again. “Become a chef, man, the chicks dig it.” He stretched his arms behind his head, showing off his tats.
“Fucking no. I’d just become like you!” Fastfood Dave sat back down and crossed his arms.
“Woah, let’s settle down!” said Control Dave. Chef Dave simply shrugged. He’d got the reaction he wanted.
“He has become a bit of a shit,” said Engineer Dave. He finally returned to his seat.
“We’ve all changed a bit,” said Control Dave. “That was part of the experiment. But the other part was that we’d let it happen without judgement.”
“Well tell him that!” Fastfood nodded sharply at the Chef.
“Hey! I’m perfectly happy with how I turned out!” said Chef Dave.
Suddenly Entrepreneur Dave appeared in front of Engineer Dave with his USB drive. “May as well copy this now and send it to everyone’s phones. Then we can get on with earning together.”
Engineer brushed the USB drive away. “No, I’m not going to do that. Bring real money next time.”
“Well, you see, entrepreneurs’ assets aren’t always what we call ‘liquid’.”
Engineer was getting annoyed. “I know what ‘liquid assets’ means! The deal was ten percent of what we make. That was to account for some of us adopting less lucrative experiences. It wasn’t about finding investment opportunities. If you don’t have ‘liquid assets’ then fine. Your contribution is zero dollars.”
Writer Dave was anxiously chewing his pen, a habit they all had. Coach Dave quietly reached over and pushed his hand away from his mouth. “Oh, thanks, Coach. Does this mean I make more than Entrepreneur?”
“Shit, Fastfood makes more than him,” said Chef Dave. “At least, he was.”
“Fuck you, Chef,” was the response.
“Hey, if you’ve been aged out of the burger business, then you can always become a lunch lady at a school’s tuck shop.”
Fastfood was up so fast that his chair flew backwards. His face was bright red with anger. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” he shouted.
“Woah!” Chef Dave held his hands up in protest. “You forgot to ask if I wanted fries with that.”
Fastfood Dave launched himself at Chef Dave. Chef’s plastic chair buckled in half, and both of them thudded to the floor. There was a flurry of ineffectual haymakers and a thrashing of feet. It looked more like kid brothers in a scrap over the only game controller in the living room, than a serious fight.
Cowboy Dave hollered and waved his hat in the air, excited by the Dave-on-Dave action. “Finally! A donnybrook!”
It ended abruptly when Chef managed to knee Fastfood in the groin. Fastfood rolled off onto the floor, doubled over and groaning. Chef, lying on his back, began laughing. Rockstar and Coach rushed over to help Fastfood up.
“This is unfortunate,” said Control Dave.
“Unfortunate?” said Writer Dave, incredulously. “Chef is being a complete villain.”
“He’s working against the team,” added Coach Dave.
Chef Dave stopped laughing long enough to ask, “you gonna drag me, Coach? Bench me? Make me run laps?” He struggled to sit up, pulled his t-shirt back down over his developing gut. “Am I the only one who’s enjoying his experience? Or is it just that I’m the only one who can hack it?”
“We’re the same person, Chef,” said Writer Dave. “You just got lucky with your draw.”
“No, we are not the same person anymore,” said Chef.
“I agree, said Engineer Dave, “you’ve become a complete arsehole, for example.”
Chef raised his arms in triumph, still sitting cross legged on the floor. “Thank God I’ve changed! We walked in here a loser! Someone who couldn’t decide what to do with himself! We were directionless, depressed, uninspired… We were pathetic!” He threw the crumpled plastic chair away triumphantly. “Best decision we ever made!” He looked around the room, settling his gaze on Fastfood Dave. “For some of us, at least.” Fastfood glared at him and waddled delicately back to fetch his chair.
“Agreed,” said Cowboy Dave.
Engineer considered Cowboy for a second. “I’m not convinced that you don’t just live in the ’burbs as an accountant, and rent a cowboy outfit once a year.”
Cowboy dipped his hat to Engineer. “I’ll bring my horse next time.”
“Chef’s being a jerk, but he’s right about something,” said Writer Dave. “The power of simply making a choice on what to be is incredible. I feel more focused than ever.”
Chef plucked at the carpet. “Apparently you made $5,000 last year, so it can’t be that powerful.”
Control Dave felt he had to quickly put a damper on things. “This is why we instituted the tithe system, remember? So Daves with a less lucrative experience would get compensated.”
“Yeah, man,” said Rockstar Dave. “Society doesn’t value artists like it does corporate types. Not that there’s anything wrong with you guys.” He shot Engineer and Entrepreneur finger-guns.
“It’s fine,” said Engineer Dave. “We all agreed to it. Actually that’s an understatement — we all had literally the same idea. As a collective, we were only hours old at that point. Some of us make more than others, and that’s part of our Experience. Otherwise we’d all just end up as corporate drones.”
“Sure,” said Chef Dave. “Some of us bring in a few thousand. Others bring in a few hundred. Others bring in a bunch of ones and zeroes on a USB stick and tell us to imagine that it’s worth millions. Or even billions.”
“Hey!” objected Executive Dave.
“It’s pretty much what you did,” said Coach Dave. “You just made a big speech and expected us to believe there’s a thing that’s worth something on that USB key. Without anything real to back it up.”
“To be fair,” said Writer Dave. “That’s pretty accurate to the entrepreneur experience.”
Entrepreneur stood up. It was time again to bring the inspiration. “Look,” he gestured meaninglessly around the room. “The World isn’t changed by—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” interjected several Daves at once.
“Are we done?” asked Chef Dave. “I’ve gotta meet this young thing who wants to ‘learn about the business’.” A smile came across his face.
“Gross,” said Writer Dave, then looked to Control Dave.
Control Dave was still looking at Chef, as if he was processing something. “Okay, okay. Is there anything else anyone wants to bring up before we wrap?” There was a chorus of “No“s. “Well, let’s divide the kitty, and we’ll see each other next year, I guess.” He clapped his binder shut and stood up.
“And bring actual money next time,” said Chef Dave. He got to his feet and dusted himself off. “Not dubious business plans or dirty rocks.”
Entrepreneur Dave looked defensive. Cowboy just chuckled. “Depends on what I find out there,” he said.
Control Dave carefully divvied up the kitty. Fastfood tried to put his extra back in, but was rebuffed. Rockstar Dave patted him on the back.
Finally every-Dave began to move to their appropriate exits. Except one. Coach Dave was still in his chair, wringing his hands and chewing his lip. The Daves were about to exit, and it was now or never. “Wait!” he shouted and stood up. The Daves turned around. “I want to join a Buddhist monastery!”
The other Daves looked at each other.
“Okay…” said Control Dave, dubiously.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Chef Dave and turned and left through door three.
“Can’t wait to get bowls of rice in the annual kitty,” said Engineer Dave, before stepping through door seven.
Rockstar came over and hugged Coach Dave. “That’s fucking awesome, Coach— I mean, Brother Dave.”
Brother Dave smiled, a massive weight had been lifted from him. He stayed a while after the others had gone. He took a plastic spoon and dug into the now three-quarters melted ice-cream cake.
“I can’t wait to come back next year and show them my kung fu.”
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