An internal affair
Sometimes I wonder how I, Stomach, juror of endless cases, find myself sitting and watching, powerless, the unfolding of events. Pancreas, sleepy from the over-work of the last period, sits next to me, careless of how this one is going to be ruled.
Some time ago, Heart and Brain signed this contract again, the same usual contract: “Heart agrees to provide a standard rate for the entire period of the relationship, and Brain will not perform enquiries on the status of the involvement of any third parties with Heart”. Simple.
This time, however, Brain scheduled a private meeting with me and asked whether I could agree on a footnote together with Liver. It seemed harmless to commit to provide overage service upon request. Liver also had no objections. We were just not aware that Brain knew that Heart had signed another agreement with Intestine, the big guy.
In contrast to our agreement with Brain, this one read like a long service contract. It seemed that the purpose was to have Intestine acting as a guarantee of the agreement between Heart and Brain. Several notes and commas, and side notes, and addenda, and errata, contoured the main body of the contract. In other words: a mess. A mess as only Heart could do. Simply put, Intestine was to recall Brain activity on local issues according to an unnecessarily complicated list of conditions, with the exclusion of nameless exceptions.
After a while, we had this meeting with Liver and Pancreas. Pancreas is not exactly the kind of girl that would speak her issues out loud. Yet, in face of Liver complaints of the extra-work that Brain had assigned to the three of us, she just could not keep it any longer. She did not scream, she did not yell. She just made her point very clear: as her subcontract was with me and with me only, she was not going to respond of her performance with anybody else but me. She also added that I’d better not complain, else she would notify Heart of my agreement with Brain. Back then, I felt guilty and did not reply. However, I had the unpleasant sensation that I had overlooked something. Indeed I had!
Few moments ago, Liver sat as witness. Usual stuff. He had to clarify his role in the situation, recall the last time he had seen Heart, state whether he knew of the agreement between Heart and Brain. Then something happened, which surprised me. Liver was asked whether he and Heart had any relation of sort. Liver of course had none. Then he was asked whether he had any relation to Brain. Liver looked at me, grinned and again said he had none. He just claimed working extra hours on some tough products, which, according to his claim, were lost in the production, resulting in excess work of Heart for just nothing.
How smart! We shouldn’t have expected any less than this from Brain! The scum knew that, despite the restrictive contract, Heart was going to try the best. A couple more beats every now and then to give us all a good time and have us all push on Brain to let the barriers down. Was he really going to let Heart try? He certainly gave the poor thing the illusion of fairness by letting Heart to involve Intestine with the incomprehensible garble of conditions. Then, the stab came.
Liver and I, despite our past arguments, were brought to agree on working extra-time. Brain worked it smoothly, leveraging on the need to settle our old scores and to prove us considerate in providing the maximum for everybody. What was not clear from our contract was that we were going to work on nothing. So brilliant! Our purpose as pawns in the greater scheme, was to occupy Heart and wear it down, and put Intestine in constant alert, de facto driving it away from its controller role. So brilliant!
Now, the contract between Heart and Intestine has been unmasked, and Liver denies any involvement with Brain. Even better, Brain insists that Intestine was too distracted to provide Liver with the right stuff, and no one between Eye, the judge, or Aorta, the defending lawyer, will not ask me to confirm that I passed anything to Intestine, because I am in the jury. Most brilliant of all, Eye has insisted that I am in the jury. Eye! Who could be more corrupt and in favor of Brain than Eye? I still wonder how we all could have been so blind! Brain and Liver must have had this planned ever since. An absolute masterpiece!
I guess the case is closed. Brain has won.
At any rate, I did not really like this new guy: a very bad cook.
Originally Posted by Sophistikit
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