Hack:
The Stone Story

The day Peter joined that organization, he entered a flat, foggy, and empty field. At least, so it appeared to him. Somebody gave him a map to find his way around (that person called it "organigramme"). Peter binned it quickly. It was of no use as he soon lost his way. Peter was confused. But he was curious at the same time and began to explore the field, for days, weeks, months.

One day (the fog was particularly thick that day), he bumped into a stone heap. He stumbled and fell over. Nobody had warned him of this heap. After a few confused moments, he got up, walked around the heap, and, still a bit shaky, continued his exploration of the field. As he moved along, he bumped into a second, a third, and over time many other stone heaps. As time passed by, Peter realized that these heaps were scattered all over the field, without any apparent order.

By now the fog had lifted somewhat, and Peter was able to see a bit clearer. As he looked at the different stone heaps, he made some  observations.

All the heaps were of different sizes. There existed small heaps and bigger ones. Some in fact were so tall that he could not even see the peak.

He also saw people sitting on each of the heaps; the ones on the big stone heaps appeared to be more important than the ones on the smaller ones. (To be sure, he rarely was able to see the ones on these very big stone heaps at all.) It seemed that the people sitting on the bigger heaps had also a better view of the field, which for some reason appeared to be important for them.

And - it might have been coincidence - each of the stone heaps displayed one specific colour. One was blue, another one was yellow, and so on. "Quite boring," Peter thought. But for now it appeared that people were content with what they had.

But at the same time, Peter noticed, these people up there on their heaps were quite tense, watching jealously what happened in their neighbourhood.

Peter did not think much about his observations. He had a more immediate problem to address.

Peter's problem was that nobody had given him a stone heap. But sitting on a stone heap was the game in town, the "raison d'être" on the field. Without a stone heap, he was nothing, only somebody who had to be worried bumping into other peoples' stone heaps.

He decided to build his own heap from scratch. He found an empty space to get going. He had brought a few stones with him from another field he had been part of which he placed in the center of the space. He then thought about how to make his stone heap grow. So, he began to search the field for attarctive and, even more importantly, accessible stones.

During his earlier excursions, he had noticed stones at the fringes of the field. Apparently, the other fellows on the field had not yet discovered them. Some other stones were covered with dust and only difficult to identify. Peter hauled all of them to his space, and with time he built an attractive stone heap.

Peter was not very dogmatic concerning the color the stones displayed. Since there remained only few stones on the field, he had to pick whatever color was available, red, green, blue, and so on.

But then something strange happened.

One evening, he returned from a long trip across the field that by now had become more familiar to him. What he found was his heap destroyed and its stones torn apart. Apparently, his heap had tipped the balance of power that existed on the field and the owners of the older stone heaps sought to protect that old balance.

Being an optimist, Peter began to rebuild his stone heap. But as it reached a critical size, he thought about his experience. He began to sit longer hours on his heap to protect it. Even more so, his entire behavior and attitude changed: from being entrepreneurial, risk raking, and innovative, he became risk averse and resistant to change. Now it dawned upon him: all these stone heaps he bumped into had been built over the years and their owners did everything to protect them.

But it all felt very static, in fact too static and not agile enough to survive in competition with these other fields out there.

Peter felt uncomfortable. How long would he be able to enjoy sitting on his heap? For the time being he felt safe. He had learned how to protect his heap. But what if the field itself was in danger? Once and a while, he saw some dark clouds out there, where the field ended and other fields lingered. And once and a while, he saw how some of these clouds reached out to one of the other stone heaps on his field. Apparently, their owners were not agile enough to move and reinvent their heaps. So they disappeared. What if these clouds would one time take over the entire field, including his own stone heap?

This day arrived sooner than Peter thought. Clouds had gathered for weeks and one day they covered the field in a thick layer of mist.

Peter watched the scenery. Everybody panicked. The fog covered almost every heap now. But nobody moved as if in shock. All these people continued sitting on their stone heaps. They had not learned to reinvent what they had. They had not learned how to communicate and create new stone heaps that were able to withstand the fog. They had not learned to manage a crisis together. The obsession with preserving their own stone heaps and defending them against the competitors from within the field had left them collectively weak and exposed to the forces from outside. Now it was too late. The fog quickly covered one by one.

Peter realized that these were the field's final days. He climbed down from his stone heap, dismantled it, and as quickly as he could collect those stones that he was still able to see in the fog.  For whatever reason (and it does not really matter here) these were the green ones. He remembered that he had not been particularly choosy with regards to the stones’ colors, a fact that he appreciated in this time of crisis. Never would he have imagined, that the green stones would continue to shine when all the others would fade and eventually blend into the fog and disappear. He grabbed as many green stones as he could and left the field, before it was too late.

This experience changed Peter’s life. Never again would he move into an empty and flat, foggy open field.