Artwork by Evgeny Kiselev, St. Petersburg, Russia. www.ekiselev.com

When Jerome awoke that fateful Friday morning, he was the same —aside from the infinite and infinitesimal molecular changes that occur in each of us every Planck time — as he’d been the previous 16,082 days (8,594 as a paid creative guy), except for one unnoticeable difference.

Where clever wordplay and compelling premises once sprung like Evian from la terre, there was now a hole in his head. A void. A being but nothingness.

He had no idea what had been done or how, but of this he was certain:

He had no ideas.

This was no amnesia. Amnesia is a loss of memory. Jerome could remember everything just fine — who he was, where he’d left his keys, who he’d played fantasy footsy with during the previous night’s sleep. Yup, all just fine.

This was a loss of thinking power. Of ingenuity and inspiration.

His vision to see The Next Big Thing had gone out the window. His deductive reasoning had gone AWOL for some reason.

Someone or something sinister had siphoned his ability to communicate, entertain, surprise and persuade. He’d been robbed of his power to command attention, start a trend, discover a breakthrough or make his mark. His brain had been purged of even the slightest curious notion that might begin with “What if?”

If necessity suddenly showed up on his doorstop, he’d need to hire a surrogate mother to bear its invention.

Overnight, he had gone from The Man With All The Answers to a great big empty hat. What would he do at work? What if there was a project that required a little brainstorming?

For Jerome, there were no brainstorms in the forecast. The outlook called for nothing but sunny blue skies. Yuma, Arizona, 91% of the time.

He decided to take a personal day (when someone steals your thinking, you bet it’s personal) to go find the culprit.

The moment Jerome stepped outside, he felt like a modern-day George Bailey, minus a guardian angel and in a life that was more Weird than Wonderful.

Everything looked more than just familiar. Around him everywhere were signs and evidence of where his mind had gone.

As a bus passed, he read the billboard on its side, advertising a movie about a man who builds a suit of power armor to save himself and the planet.

Jerome’s jaw nearly dropped.

“Hey, that was my idea!” he exclaimed, to anyone and everyone within earshot. But the people walking by just kept walking.

He went over to the salesman at the nearby newsstand, with the intensity of someone trying to enlist help in apprehending a purse snatcher.

“Did you see that?! That was my…” But before he could finish, the front page headline of that day’s newspaper caught his eye. It was about a presidential candidate who promised health care for every man, woman and child in the land.

Jerome was flabbergasted.

“Hey, that was my idea!”

The newspaper man couldn’t care less.

Jerome wheeled around into the path of a potentially sympathetic soul, a young woman student carrying an art portfolio. Surely she would help him get to the bottom of this conspiracy and injustice.

But she seemed to not even hear him. When Jerome noticed she was wearing tiny white headphones connected to a little music-playing device in her pocket, he nearly had a conniption.

“Hey, that was my idea!”

The rest of the day followed suit.

In the park, Jerome saw a tourist pull out a cell phone, take aim at the city skyline and then snap a photograph. The cell phone was also a camera!

He called out to the man.

“Hey, that was my idea!”

But the man wasn’t sticking around to indulge any stranger’s accusations.

Moments later, a police officer riding an odd two-wheeled, self-balancing electric vehicle approached, keeping a watchful eye on Jerome and his actions.

At this point, Jerome felt like he was the lead character in the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, so he did not dare say out loud what he was screaming inside to himself.

“THAT WAS MY IDEA!”

From a quick serve restaurant and cafe, Jerome witnessed more of the former contents of his brain exposed and exploited, everything from baggy pants on teenagers to wireless headsets on the salespeople to wi-fi connections for computers to video sharing sites to hybrid cars to double skim lattes to “green” living to widgets to on-demand books to Hannah Montana.

Exhausted, he drifted off into the kind of sleep that can only be matched by traveling on a plane as its nose gently lifts off the tarmac, tilting you back in your seat and rocking you ever so gently as you float toward the clouds. The kind of sleep that induces bobble-head nods and a slow ooze of drool.

In his dream, Jerome repeated his lament.

“THOSE WERE MY IDEAS!”

Except now, he actually stood (well, sat) face-to-face with the “thieves” behind this grand larceny.

He was in a boardroom, at the end of a long conference room table. Around the table were business people, all dressed in white. They had a cool, aloof demeanor, like Icelandic furniture designers.

A leader spoke.

“No, Jerome, that’s not how it works. Ideas come from IDEAS. Meaning here. Meaning us.”

Jerome saw the acronym on the wall near the big screen LCD monitors: IDEAS. Below it, in a hypnotic hologram block of Helvetica, was the full name.

“We are the International Design and Expression Agency Syndicate,” the leader said. “IDEAS. Your ideas are no longer your own. Seeking that kind of credit would be selfish, Jerome. There is no more “self” in an idea. Ideas may originate with you, but you cannot be trusted to deliver them. Therefore all ideas must come from IDEAS.”

The leader pointed to the big screen LCD monitors. On the monitors appeared another hologram image. It was a brain.

“That’s your brain, Jerome. Or it’s at least what we needed from your brain. We of course left the bits that allow you to order a slice of pizza or sit in that chair without falling over. But the creative parts are now ours.”

Jerome’s eyes widened with horror.

“NOOOOOOOO!”

Jerome awoke in a cold sweat in the corner of the quick serve restaurant and cafe. One of the teens with the baggy pants was staring at him.

“You OK?” asked the teen, Josh.

“Yeah, I think so,” answered Jerome. “Been a weird day.”

Jerome looked up at one of the TVs in the restaurant, where he saw a commercial for a new installment of a video game that allows a player to take on the role of a criminal who can pretty much do whatever he wants.

Jerome couldn’t believe his eyes. He leaned over to Josh.

“That was my idea!”

“Oh, that’s pretty cool,” Josh offered back sincerely, but nonchalantly. “Why didn’t you ever do anything with it?”

“Well, I had it up on my wall and I was gonna take it to this guy I knew…”

“But you didn’t…”

“No, see, because at the time I was working on this networking site for baby boomers…”

“Oh really, what’s it called?”

“Well, it never really materialized. I got caught up on this project for a new product that was going to revolutionize online shopping…”

“That’s too bad,” Josh responded, again sincerely.

“Well, look, if you ever have any similar ideas,” he added, “you should bring ‘em by our company. We’ve got a young staff of about 300, a bunch of VC suitors anxious to take us international and a new line of interactive games that’s gonna blow that one away. Here, I’ll give you a card.”

As Josh fished into his pocket, Jerome eyed his young new acquaintance with half admiration and half incredulity.

“So,” Jerome asked curiously,

“what is it you do at the company?”

Josh handed Jerome his business card.

“I run it.”

Chew on this: Ideas are yours for a limited time only. If you don’t make them happen, someone else will. Act now.

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