Monuments

Jason folded the letter with an audible swish. His wife Rhiannon looked up from her book, marking her place with a finger against the spine. "Is everything all right?" she asked.

"Yeah, another bit of good news for today..." Jason chuckled wryly. "Orion Tech decided to forgo my proposal."

"Shame on them," Rhiannon said, setting down her book entirely now. "You've put more guile and guts into it than anybody I know. And they're not even half the workaholic you are."

"People in my department would agree, but they also claim that I'm... rebellious."

Jason stared out the window at the rain-soaked parking lot of their apartment complex, watching droplets race down the glass like tears on a giant's face. Three months he'd spent on that proposal. Three months of eighteen-hour days, of revolutionary algorithms that could transform how Orion Tech processed their data. His team at Pergola Technologies had called it inspired—a digital tabernacle that would house all of Orion's most sacred operations.

He'd named the system "Shiloh"—a place of worship where all data streams would converge in perfect harmony. The technical documentation alone was 847 pages, complete with architectural diagrams that looked like blueprints for a cathedral. Jason had been proud of its complexity, its elegance, its sheer audacity. He'd envisioned Orion's executives marveling at the intricate beauty of his creation, the way pilgrims might gaze upon stained glass windows.

"Who did they choose?" Rhiannon asked gently, though she already seemed to know the answer would sting.

Jason pulled out his phone and scrolled through the industry news. There it was: "Orion Tech Awards Major Contract to Franklin-Judd Systems." He showed her the screen.

"Franklin-Judd Systems?" Rhiannon frowned, leaning over to read the headline. "That small firm downtown? They've only been around two years."

"Derek's company," Jason muttered. "Fresh out of grad school, probably never pulled an all-nighter in his life." He remembered Derek's proposal presentation—only twelve slides, delivered in twenty minutes with the casual confidence of someone who had nothing to prove. Jason's had taken two hours and required three different projectors to display his architectural diagrams properly.

"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," Rhiannon said quietly, reaching across the couch to touch his arm. "You've been burning yourself out, Jason. When's the last time you actually slept through the night without dreaming about code? When's the last time we had dinner together without your laptop open?"

Jason couldn't remember. For the past decade, since founding Pergola Technologies in his garage with two college friends who'd long since moved on to easier lives, he'd driven himself like a man possessed. He'd built the most sophisticated systems in the industry, won awards that gathered dust on his office shelves, earned the grudging respect of competitors who whispered about his genius at conferences. But somehow, it never felt like enough. There was always another mountain to climb, another proof of his brilliance to deliver to a world that seemed perpetually unimpressed.

His father had been the same way—a research physicist who'd spent Jason's childhood chasing theoretical breakthroughs that would revolutionize quantum computing. Jason still remembered visiting his father's lab as a boy, staring up at whiteboards covered in equations that looked like hieroglyphs, feeling both awed and abandoned. His father had died at fifty-three, alone in that lab at two in the morning, found the next day slumped over a computer running simulations that no one else could understand.

He remembered Derek from the industry conference last spring, held at the gleaming convention center downtown. While Jason had commanded the main stage during the keynote session, Derek had presented in a small breakout room to maybe thirty people. Jason had wandered in late, expecting to find the usual corporate presentation filled with buzzwords and meaningless charts. Instead, he'd found Derek speaking quietly about "building bridges, not monuments," about technology that served rather than impressed.

At the time, Jason had dismissed it as undergraduate idealism, the naive optimism of someone who hadn't yet learned how brutal the industry could be. He'd left after ten minutes to schmooze with venture capitalists at the reception, collecting business cards and dispensing technical wisdom like a benevolent professor. Derek, he'd noticed, had spent the entire reception in a corner booth, deep in conversation with three middle-aged women who turned out to be operations managers from various tech companies. They'd been showing him screenshots on their phones, explaining their daily frustrations with clunky interfaces and overcomplicated workflows.

Now, staring at the rejection letter, those words echoed differently. Jason's Shiloh system had been a monument, all right—a towering testament to his own capabilities. But had it been what Orion Tech actually needed?

The memory of the proposal defense stung even more now. When the committee had asked about scalability, Jason had launched into a twenty-minute discourse on distributed computing theory, complete with hand-drawn diagrams on the whiteboard that looked like molecular structures. When they'd asked about maintenance costs, he'd assured them that his system was so elegantly designed it would practically maintain itself—a self-healing digital organism that would evolve with their needs. When they'd asked about training their existing staff, he'd suggested they hire new people who could appreciate the sophistication of what he'd built.

He'd seen their faces during that last exchange—the subtle tightening around their eyes, the way they'd glanced at each other when they thought he wasn't looking. But he'd misread it as awe rather than concern.

Derek, from what Jason had heard through the industry grapevine, had spent most of his presentation asking questions. What did their current workflow look like? What frustrated their employees most? What would success actually mean to them in practical terms? He'd brought a junior developer with him—a young woman named Sarah who'd apparently spent the week before the presentation shadowing Orion's data entry staff, learning their daily routines, understanding their pain points.

The next morning, Jason found himself walking past Franklin-Judd Systems' modest office building, a converted warehouse in the arts district that couldn't have cost a tenth of what Jason paid for his sleek downtown space. Through the glass doors, he could see Derek at a whiteboard, explaining something to his small team with patient gestures. No ego, no grandstanding—just clear communication and genuine collaboration.

The scene was so different from Jason's own office, where his team often seemed intimidated to interrupt his focused work sessions. Jason ruled his kingdom of code like a benevolent dictator, brilliant but isolated, dispensing wisdom from on high while his employees nodded and took notes. Derek looked like he was conducting a conversation, not delivering a lecture.

Jason watched as Derek drew simple boxes and arrows on the whiteboard—nothing fancy, nothing that would impress a computer science journal. But his team was engaged, leaning forward, nodding, asking questions, building on each other's ideas. One young developer—she couldn't be more than twenty-five—pointed to something on the diagram and Derek actually paused, considered her input, then erased part of his drawing to incorporate her suggestion. The whole team seemed to brighten, as if they'd all contributed to a small victory.

When had Jason last changed his mind based on someone else's input? When had he last admitted that someone on his team might have a better idea? When had he last asked a question instead of providing an answer?

Standing there in the rain, watching this display of collaborative humility, Jason felt something crack open inside his chest—a fissure in the armor of certainty he'd built around himself over the years. He thought about his father's equations, beautiful and incomprehensible, gathering dust in academic journals that no one read. He thought about his own code, elegant and complex, impressing judges at industry competitions while failing to solve the problems people actually faced.

Jason's phone buzzed. An email from Gary Abrams at Orion Tech: "Jason, I wanted to personally explain our decision. Your technical solution was brilliant, perhaps the most sophisticated we reviewed. The innovation was remarkable, and frankly, it made our other proposals look pedestrian by comparison. But Franklin-Judd Systems understood something fundamental—they listened to what we actually needed, not what they wanted to build. They asked about our people, our processes, our daily struggles. Sometimes the most innovative answer is also the most humble one. We chose the team that wanted to serve us, not the one that wanted to impress us."

Jason read the email twice, then slipped his phone back into his pocket. For years, he'd built increasingly complex monuments to his own brilliance, digital towers reaching toward heaven like some technological Tower of Babel. But Derek had simply asked: "What would serve you best?" and had the patience to hear the answer.

That evening, Jason sat at his home computer, staring at the blinking cursor on an empty email draft. He'd already deleted his first response to Orion Tech—the one filled with technical arguments and wounded pride, explaining why they'd made a mistake, why his solution was objectively superior. Now he found himself typing and deleting the same simple message over and over: "Congratulations on the Orion contract. Would Franklin-Judd Systems need any consulting help?"

Rhiannon appeared behind him with two cups of tea, setting one beside his keyboard. "You've been sitting here for an hour," she said softly.

"I know." Jason leaned back in his chair, accepting the warm mug gratefully. "I keep thinking about something Derek said at that conference. About building bridges instead of monuments."

"What do you think he meant?"

"I think..." Jason paused, watching steam rise from his tea. "I think he meant that monuments are for the people who build them. Bridges are for the people who need to cross the river."

Through his window, he could see his own office building in the distance, its lights still blazing at nine PM. His team was probably still there, working late, building the next monument to their collective brilliance. Some tabernacles, he thought, were meant to be torn down so that better ones could be built by humbler hands. But the question remained—could he actually bring himself to step away from the altar of his own making?

The cursor blinked. Waiting.

Behind him, Rhiannon settled into her reading chair with a soft sigh, returning to her book. The apartment was quiet except for the gentle patter of rain against the windows and the distant hum of traffic. In this moment, surrounded by simple domestic peace, Jason could almost imagine a different kind of life—one where success meant solving problems rather than proving superiority, where innovation meant listening rather than lecturing.

His finger hovered over the send button. The email was short, humble, and uncertain. It contained none of the technical bravado that had defined his career, none of the confident assertions that had built his reputation. It was, he realized, exactly the kind of message his father would never have sent.

Jason closed his eyes, took a breath, and made his choice.