"Dr. Kellerman, I haven't slept in three days."
Bryce Kellerman barely looked up from his clipboard where he measured the time it took him to chew each bite of his protein bar. Forty-seven seconds. Too long. He jotted down a note to blend all future meals into smoothies.
"Sleep is overrated, Janet. You're here for maximization, not comfort." He swallowed and clicked his stopwatch. "Next."
Janet Morales shifted her feet -- literally. The standing desks in Kellerman's office were just the beginning. Chairs were outright banned from his "Peak Human Performance Institute." Even sitting and thinking was, in his latest manual, "suboptimal brain function."
"But Dr. Kellerman, I hardly accomplish anything at work. My boss thinks I'm going crazy because I'm sleeping through all the meetings."
Kellerman finally looked at her, his eyes blinking rhythmically. He'd been working on his own "Vertical Sleep Protocol" for six months. The concept was simple: eight hours that humans slept could be used being productive. His solution had a advanced harness system holding the body upright as the brain rested in twenty-minute increments.
"Your boss lacks vision," he stated, squatting to talk. "When you're operating at peak efficiency, lesser minds always will try to cut you down."
Janet watched him squat and wondered (for the umpteenth time) if she'd thrown her money down the drain. She'd spent three thousand on the seminar. Follow-up coaching sessions another five hundred each. And the mandatory "optimization gear" -- the standing desk converter, the chewing timer, the sleep harness -- had sent her credit card to orbit.
"Dr. Kellerman, about the acronym thing--
"ATAP," he interrupted, not breaking his squatting rhythm. "All Talk Acronym Protocol. We covered this last week."
Janet exhaled. "Yes. My husband divorced me yesterday. He told me he couldn't stand listening to me speak in abbreviations any longer."
Kellerman froze in mid-squat. This was not supposed to occur. His system was designed to make people more efficient, not destroy their marriages. But then, inefficient relationships were simply being naturally selected out. Evolution in action.
"IUS," he said finally. "Inefficient Unit Shed. Your husband was clearly an optimization barrier."
Janet glared at him. "He was my twelve-year husband."
"TPW," Kellerman replied robotically. "Time Previously Wasted."
Three months ago, Bryce Kellerman was a relatively well-known life coach with a decent following and a decent income. He'd written two books on balance and authenticity. His proudest boast was a TEDx talk, "The Power of Enough," which had been viewed half a million times.
But "enough" no longer seemed enough.
He started observing: people waste a tremendous amount of time. They stay seated when they could stand up. They eat slowly when they could eat hurriedly. They spend hours sleeping when micro-sleeps could perhaps suffice. They use full sentences when abbreviations could do.
He was sitting through a very unengaging client session, listening to a woman gripe about the work-life balance, when Kellerman began calculating how much time she wasted just breathing inefficiently. If she could breathe more superficially, she would save nearly forty minutes a day. That was nearly five hours per week. Two hundred hours per annum.
The math was hypnotic.
Why walk when you can pace? Why shakes when you can take pills? Why three words when one is enough?
Within weeks, he had developed the "Maximum Human Potential Protocol" -- an integrated system for eliminating each and every lost second from human existence. He tested it on himself first, naturally. The results were phenomenal. He was performing better than ever before. He was bursting with energy. He felt like he was operating on a level that other humans could hardly even imagine.
The fact that he had not had a proper conversation with another human being for months didn't seem to concern him. Neither did the constant headaches or the shaking of his hands. These were mere collateral damage from operating at peak human capacity.
His initial customers were doubtful, but the evidence was on their faces. At least, that was what Kellerman was reassuring himself when he watched his schedule fill with increasingly desperate people seeking optimization.
The door opened. "Dr. Kellerman, we need to talk."
Frank Delacroix had been among Kellerman's first clients to optimize. He'd also been among the most passionate. Where other clients had struggled with the Vertical Sleep Protocol, Frank had embraced it. Where other clients had become mired in the acronyms, Frank had created his own extra abbreviations.
But now Frank stood in Kellerman's office pale and defeated.
"WNTYT?" asked Kellerman, not lifting his eyes from what he was working on -- a contraption that would enable him to type while performing push-ups. "What's Next, That's Your Time?"
"I was fired," Frank replied.
Kellerman hesitated. The fourth client this month to have come in with problems about working. "UR," he said. "Underperforming Rejector. Your company clearly couldn't keep up with your increased productivity."
"Bryce, I fell asleep standing during a board meeting. I knocked over a projector and concussed my manager."
"Asth," Kellerman replied instinctively. "Accidental Synchronicity Through Harmony. Your manager had to be taught the limitations of conventional thinking."
Frank sank into the corner -- the only remaining chair in the structure, wedged behind a file cabinet. "Listen to yourself, man. You sound like a machine. When did you ever have a normal conversation?"
"Normal conversation is temporal waste. We covered this with Module Seven."
"When did you ever sleep on your back?"
"Horizontal sleep is evolutionary regression."
"When did you ever eat something that you actually chewed?"
"Mastication optimization saves fourteen minutes per meal."
Frank gradually got on his feet. "I'm done. I'm demanding a refund."
"No refunds. Section twelve of your contract."
"Then I'll sue you."
Kellerman shrugged and returned to his push-up typing machine. "Legal challenges are temporal distractions. You'll lose."
Frank walked to the door and stopped. "You know what's ironic? I came to you because I felt like I was wasting my life. Now I realize that I was actually living it."
The real problem was that his clients were dropping out. And not just dropping out -- they were warning off others from him actively. Frank had started a blog, "Optimization Nightmare," chronicling what it was like to use Kellerman's system. Janet had been a guest on a local morning TV show to discuss "the dangers of excess self-help." Even his most devoted followers were reporting burnout, relationship problems, and medical problems.
But Kellerman was too caught up optimizing to see the trend. He was experimenting with something new -- a means of doing away with the inefficiency of blinking by training individuals to hold their eyes open for extended times. He'd been trying it on himself for two weeks, applying eye drops to avoid drying.
The ongoing eye annoyance was merely another side effect of peak performance.
"Dr. Kellerman?"
The voice was coming from somewhere at his back. Kellerman suspended in his office, upside-down from his new "Inverted Productivity Station" -- a device that was designed to maximize cerebral blood flow while working. He'd been there for three hours, and the world had started to have a very purple color.
"WKTM?" he said without turning around. "Who Knocks This Moment?"
"It's Carol. Your assistant? I've been calling you for days."
Kellerman couldn't remember that he even had an assistant. When did he last see Carol? Last week? Last month? Time had become irrelevant since he'd started the optimization program.
"DCNR," he replied. "Don't Care, Not Relevant."
"Dr. Kellerman, I'm quitting. And I have to say something to you."
"QNSM," Kellerman replied. "Quitting, Not Significant Matter."
Carol walked over so she could catch a glimpse of his face. "You don't have any clients anymore. They've all canceled. The last one left yesterday."
This penetrated the optimization fog. "TMNT?" he asked. "Time Management, Not True?"
"They're all gone. And something else. The Business Bureau called. They're investigating you. Something about fraud charges."
"SIBU," he spoke weakly. "System Interference, Business Unusual."
Carol looked at him swaying there, his purplish face, his bloodshot and unfocused eyes, mumbling acronyms that no longer mean anything.
"Dr. Kellerman, you need help. Real help."
But Kellerman was so busy doing the math. If only he could make his hanging time more optimal, say to four hours, then he could make his blood flow efficiency even more optimal. The problems of business were merely distractions outside. The actual issue was that he hadn't optimized enough.
Six months later, Bryce Kellerman stood in the empty office that had once housed his Peak Human Performance Institute. The sleep harness hung from the ceiling like a medieval torture rack. The push-up typing station leaned against the corner, its keyboard smashed from repeated crashes.
He'd been evicted that morning. The criminal charges had been dismissed following the fraud investigation, but the civil lawsuits by the former clients had financially ruined him. His books were pulled from publication. His TEDx talk was removed from YouTube.
But the worst of it wasn't the financial ruin. It wasn't even that he'd destroyed his career and shattered his reputation. The worst of it was that he couldn't still stop optimizing.
There in the empty office, Kellerman was calculating in his mind how many steps it would take to get to the door. How many seconds he could cut by walking at a calculated pace. How many breaths he could cut out by holding his breath for optimal durations.
He tried to stop. Tried to just stand there and think like a normal person. But normal thinking was impossible. His brain had been rewritten for productivity. Even as his world around him fell apart, he couldn't stop measuring, calculating, and cutting corners.
Kellerman took his briefcase -- the only remaining vestige of his empire -- and moved towards the door. Forty-seven steps. Thirty-two seconds. Twelve breaths.
He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at the wreckage of his grand experiment. All those people who'd trusted him. All those lives he'd reorganized for the sake of optimum efficiency.
For a moment, he felt something that might have been remorse.
Then he started timing how long the feeling lasted.
>>> All images were generated with chatGPT.
