Idea by George S. Karagiannis

The mind pirates were very precise and efficient in their modus operandi. They came one night to his room after he turned the lights off. They sneaked behind his dream ganglion, after he fell asleep, and they paved their way in a targeted axon, guiding them towards his ideocortex. As soon as they reached the source core of his special ideas, they stole one and immediately set sail to another universe, trying to leave no tracks behind.

In the morning, when he woke up, he realized his recent idea – the one that would have shaped his near future — was no longer there. Desperately, he tried to look for it on the bed, then all around his room, and soon all around the house, but was unable to retrieve it.

He meticulously searched the library, where he had been spending most of his time these days. He ran across every single book he had, scouring every row in the bookcase, but never found anything but bookworms and dust. After a while, he had to accept his idea was nowhere inside.

He even looked for it in the oven, in case he had accidentally left it there after he had prepared a roast the day before, but all that was there were only bits of leftover marinated steak.

He then turned his focus to the back yard, in case he left it somewhere in the grass or the flowers, but he only saw a cornucopia of butterflies and earth insects enlivening the landscape.

He then took a taxi to his office and tried to shovel up all his documents and folders into a bureaucratic paperwork tower, hoping to sift through for something in there; however, he realized this search had yielded no idea either.

As a last effort, he logged onto his computer and tried Googling it, but no results were returned regarding its whereabouts.

That night, he got back home and had a hot shower. He then poured black coffee in a cartoonish mug resembling a rooster, sat back on the living room sofa, watching the steam evaporating slowly in funny configurations towards the open window, and he tried to relax from the stress of this awkward loss.

He began reorganizing his thoughts. Several seconds passed until he figured out that he couldn’t come up with an idea on what to do next.

© 2011 George S. Karagiannis

George S. Karagiannis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and is currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada. He enjoys writing science fiction (in a non-professional level, so far) in the subgenres of hard science fiction, bizzarro and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic settings. He is also an abstractionism/surreal artist and his blog can be found here: http://abstractsur.blogspot.com/

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