“It is frightful important,” said Gus with a face stuffed full of a moon pie, “that we plan.”

“Plan what?” said Tib, who until now had been as quiet as the walls.

“Everything! Good lord – the lot. To plan is to understand, is to solve, is to see the road for the trees.”

Yub offered his first contribution, too, for that afternoon, “The forest for the trees?”

“No the road! Of course the road! Who gives a hog about some gathering of trees. No planning there, none at all. But a road…” And Gus went on like this, revealing unwarranted bites of in the pauses between the things he barked.

“But what are we planning? Most of the project is unknown at this point, we don’t even have the parts to lay a plan,” said Tib.

“Ah,” and Gus jammed the rest of the moon pie in his mouth so it swelled like a baboon. He rode the moment by traipsing around the room, meeting the eye of each person, nodding until his chin folded over itself so much it might have been a croissant in the making. He swallowed deep, “that is the beauty of planning. We must plan to plan.”

Morice, who had been unusually silent for this meeting but was taking notes on a manilla notebook so fast the pages were flying, finally spoke up, “And how do we do that?” He looked up at Gus, standing at the front of the room, like a puppy awaiting its first command.

“Planning to plan, perhaps the most technical of all planning, involves three parts.” Gus walked up the easel at the front of the room. He went to flip over the used paper on it to access a new one, but the jerk of his arm knocked the easel over instead. Tib gasped as if she had just discovered the body of a dead family member.

“Thank you,” said Gus, who bent down to pick up the easel, “A tad dramatic, but thank you, Tib.” His success in not looking like he was not athletic failed. Already the strain spawned two dark patches under both the sleeves of his white shirt. Accepting the fate of his knees, he lowered himself first on one, then the other, until he was on all fours. Then he paused.

Everyone except Morice – who was causing sparks on his paper about who knows what – stared at Morice as he sat there hunched on the floor, his knees and hands making him very much the figure of a hippopotamus on its way to the bank.

Yub finally asked, “Are you – “

“– I can’t get up. I can’t. Get up.” said Gus. His neck was functioning perfectly well, but he did not want to lift it and see the eyes of everyone on him.

A few people asked if he would like some help. Gus batted them away with one hand and almost toppled by the action, for three points of contact was very unsteady.

“Should we call someone?” offered a voice, perhaps Tib’s.

“No, no. No. Just. Let me think.” And Gus took three long breaths that seemed to ripple form head to foot. He searched, deeply, in the fluff of the carpet. It was mostly grey, with choice placement of colours as random as a lollipop twirl, the design such that its dirtiness would be hard to point to. Suddenly Gus looked up, his face glowing, “Ah hah! I got it. This will be a perfect time to demonstrate planning of planning.” His smile was broken by a wink of a wince, probably because of his knobbly knees, and then went back to a smile. A manager, believed Gus, is the emotion-body of the team – if he beams, everyone around him will.

“So, let’s start with the first lesson,” said Gus. He mixed his audience between those in the room, and when his neck tired, the grey speckled floor. “The pool.”

Whenever Gus gave these lessons he always had by his side a whiteboard or an easel. His easel was still close by, but pretty much useless in his current state. Drawings helped to handle the words that Gus could not. He was an expert at circles, for example, and making these overlap with another – a hard task, for the Venn Diagram’s overlap region must be just right, too large and you have poisoned the team with ambition. Too small, and the plan is hopeless. Graphs were his forte. The secret to them, passed down to him by the saints of upper management, was to keep the plot always moving up and to the right. It was fine to err – in fact, important – for you did not want to make the graph unbelievable. You lost the confidence of your team that way. Be honest, a little dip here, a plateau for, oh, a day or so, and then excite them!, draw a spire to challenge the great Everest themselves! It came so natural to him, those inspirational plots, that he now drew them while maintaining direct eye contact with the audience.

But braying on the floor like a stunted mule, there was no hope of diagrams for this lesson. It would be words or nothing. For a moment, he imagined himself, raincoat and hat, the captain of a sinking trawler. The rain shearing the skin from his face, but he would not let his hand off the helm. He called to his shipmates, rallying words that inspired them to keep scooping water, keep her steady to where the clear skies are.

“Pardon?” said Tip.

“What?” said Gus, looking back up at those in the room. His neck was starting to sore quite a bit now.

“You said, ‘keep her steady’ or something.”

Morice cut in, having just finished another page of notes. He was dripping from the forehead, panting, “Yes! He said, ‘keep her steady! I see clear skies ahead.’ Isn’t it simply obvious. This is our lesson – it’s a test, but this is the lesson.” And Morice’s eyes bounced to various points on the wall so quick he could not have been looking at anything.

“No, no.” said Gus. He admired Morice’s dedication, but the man treated him like medieval scholars had treated the words of Jesus Christ, totally twisted the messaging to their own liking.

Gus continued, “The pool. Here we assemble a large collection of possible actions we could take, were this a plan, not a plan for a plan. We will use these actions to plan out possible plans.” Gus’s whiteboard would have had an isometric drawing of a garden pond. Two ducks quacking on the side, a lilly-pad. Under the waters he then put all the ideas everyone wrote, in little boxes, until the pond was all filled. But whiteboard-less, Gus resorted to describing this scene instead.

“Now imagine a pond, there are two ducks…”

Gus went on like this for at least ten minutes. He was careful to mention the vasculature of the lily-pads and leaves, the Fresnel reflection of the muddy green water. Except for Morice, the bodies in the meetings had transformed into shells, each planning not the work ahead, but what they would eat for dinner that evening.

And then they froze.

A hand lifted up from the chair. It shook, like the remote it was holding was a lead weight and not a sun-bleached bit of old tech. The designer of the remote had conveniently provided forty-nine buttons that had no purpose, coloured an off-white to indicate their lack of function. One button, red as mail van, stuck out at the top of the remote and was the only thing that had a wire attached to the controller. The thumb of the hand pushed the red button, wore it a way a little at the rim.