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They are, no one denies it, mysterious and unapproachable, our elders, but by god with your help we’ll exploit if not respect their datatroves. Hello latecomers. There’s room down front. May I present to you, in a single meatbag, a salvageable stockpile of chess strategy, secondary math, and typography, if I’m saying the word right, not that anyone cares: let’s welcome Mister Oldman, whose successful transcriber will likely be promoted.
Mister Oldman you’re a sweet old man
and we’ll all be sweet of course
when our business is done
and our grandkids don’t come
and our days are as empty as yours.
Welcome, MO. My you are brittle residual and aromatic aren’t you? And deaf as a stump. No need to answer. Yesterday a man your age would have been devoured by predators, terminated by virus. Today nothing kills you. But the foundations you chair, sir, are lusty loaded and plunderable. We’ve taken a good look. Now, we don’t expect you to fall on your sword, sir, you prefer to obsolesce like the rest of us, but here’s the thing, your firmware won’t update. No it’s not a voltage disparity. Your gyroscope is losing speed, MO, you absorb energy with diminishing returns. Understand? Just nod. Don’t strain your neck please. It’s the last of its type. You don’t learn, MO, and what you know is fading, so we’ve asked you to mentor. We’ve gathered candidates to digitize your unverifiable memories of learning both chess and Euclid from your beloved granny. Candidates please present yourselves, and let’s help our esteemed elder produce Essence of Oldman in popular optical formats. With luck, Mister Oldman, your work will be the go-to guide for making fixed-size fonts of movable type from lead ingots. Just sign here, here, here, and once for the foundation.
Original Copyright © February 17, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 12, 2026
He wasn’t doing enough, for the world, and he knew it. It was killing him. Getting through another day was hard, for this man, knowing how little he was doing, for the world. It’s not like he wasn’t doing plenty. He was doing plenty, but however masterfully he did the indispensable work for which he was appreciated and renowned, and believe me there was plenty of that, there were others, he knew, who did it better, for less (in most cases much less) with fewer expectations, in places he wouldn’t practice, for patients who needed it more and who might even say thank you instead of suing you afterwards for crooked stitches. He hated those pussies, but he felt he needed to be more like them. He’d been enjoying having wealth while publicly despising it and acting suicidal about being so pampered by life (and again ridiculously overpaid) amidst such suffering, in the world. It was an appealing character, but it couldn’t, I’m looking for an analogy: the character couldn’t take root in his behavior, I guess. Anyway, it was hard to pull off “Woe is me I got another pay increase through arbitration; they basically forced it on me,” for a man who declined to donate to charities until he could scrupulously study their financials. After his reboot, he deflected all talk of money, saying he had accumulated wealth inadvertently by making more than he spent and not losing any. All the world required was that he be timely, do no harm, remove the proper organs and leave neat stitches, but he did more, for the world, but never enough. I should have told you. He deprived himself and resented it. It turned him into a bore. “Good deeds not done rob the world,” he said, and died.
Copyright © January 15, 2026
Very Short Novels 
This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…