I've worked at the same place for 10 years now. Started out at an entry level position at a Helpdesk. As I grew into the job and expanded my experience, my attention drifted from the solved and understood problems of my world to the problems of the facility system and software engineers and the ideas that solved them.

There was one guy who just seemed to know everything. Had worked in the facility since it's inception. Smart, humble, hard working, great family. No one was excluded from a conversation. No idea that couldn't be used to teach or solve a problem. And that idea itself solved the problem I was facing. How did these guys get so smart and good at their jobs? Collaboration.

I don't if anyone else feels it. I assume that in Silicon Valley this concept is much less inspiring than it is necessary and dangerous. I wonder how Nintendo employees would feel about that declaration. But God! I just grew and grew.

"Why doesn't this work?"
"You're an idiot."
"Oh. Yep. Your're right. I missed this"
:)

He passed away 4 years ago. At 44. Heart attack.

Then I understood. When you're young, you get inundated by the notion of someone's death "leaving the world worse without them" by movies and old relatives your Mother or Father have to tell you the name of. Because they were important to them. I think I mapped that notion to the value you and the latter provide for each other in this collaboration in the cosmic impossibility of life. And, in that context, how thin that foundation is laid. But then, inevitably, you are introduced to the terrible truth.

It is.

Here it is. That imperceptible void. The omission of a lifetime of beautiful, hard earned knowledge. Robbed in an instant by an unforgiving universe. And there you are. On the precipice.

"I can't possibly fill it."

But, for your despair, a keepsake and a wish. A pebble of knowledge from that giant void. For you, and you alone. And the wish?

"I hope someone will feel that way about me someday."

Two years ago I finally got a position as a System Engineer at the facility. The same office he worked out of. I was looking through the share drive getting familiar with everything. I found his old directory. Filled with many of his projects. I keep moving it around because those NetApps have been here as long as I have. It's why I was so excited when I heard Iwata's Golf had made it secretly on to the Switch. And so sad when they decided to remove it. We occupy such a truly unique existence. The prospect of filling that void seems possible now. Even donations of 24kb can make a significant contribution.

And what hope have you in this collaboration?

Seeing someone else at the precipice. Someone who will rend the world them self one day. Longing for the comfort of that fertile ground.