The Meeting We Did Not Plan
At Rabagas, even not-writing becomes a kind of creation. One by one, the cast slipped into MEETROM3 and covered the board in refusals, until the meeting they never planned became the most decisive one yet.
Date: Unknown
Recorder: Nobody volunteered (transcribed by collective silence)
Jonas is alone. Or at least he thinks he is. The meeting room is still, the kind of stillness that makes every noise feel magnified — the buzzing of the fluorescent tube, the ticking of the old clock on the wall, the faint shuffle of his own shoes as he shifts nervously under the weight of the chalk he hasn’t yet picked up.
The blackboard looms in front of him, clean, bare, accusing. A slab of silence demanding to be broken. Jonas squints at it, as though the board might reveal its secret if only he narrows his eyes hard enough, if only he concentrates until sweat beads at his temple. He is young, and new, and he wants very badly not to get this wrong.
He whispers trial ideas under his breath, muttering them like spells, each one falling flat against the emptiness of the room:
“Why TikTok killed irony… no.”
“The secret war between forks and spoons… no, too sharp.”
“My week living as a potted plant… tempting…”
He sighs. The chalk rests on the tray beneath the board, ordinary and innocent. But when Jonas picks it up, it feels impossibly heavy, as though the act of refusal he’s about to commit carries all the weight of an oath. He grips it like a knight lifting a sword, and in his head, for one reckless moment, it is Excalibur.
Slowly, deliberately, he raises the chalk and presses it to the board. The sound is harsh, chalk scratching against the black surface, each stroke deliberate. He writes:
WE WILL NOT WRITE ABOUT WAR LIKE IT’S A STAND-UP ROUTINE.
Letter by letter, he mouths the words as he writes them, as though the act of speaking them silently into the air is what makes them real. When the sentence is complete, he drops his hand, takes one long step back, and breathes out. For a moment he simply stares at what he has written, chest rising and falling, his face caught between pride and disbelief.
Then, with the air of a man sealing something sacred, he claps. Once. Firm. Decisive.
A second clap echoes from the shadows.
Jonas freezes, every nerve in his body seizing with the jolt of being caught. Slowly, he turns his head. Hampus is seated at the back of the room, as though he has been there the whole time. The older man’s mouth twitches into a smile, not mocking but amused, approving even. He has slipped in silently, letting the youngest member of the cast twist his brain in knots, watching him wrestle with the impossible puzzle of what not to write.
Before Jonas can speak, another clap cuts through the room. From the corner, Dag steps out of the shadows, leaning against the filing cabinet, cigarette unlit but dangling like punctuation. He looks like he’s been waiting there for days, patient as dust, just to witness this exact moment.
The applause is no longer just sound. It’s a current, a ripple of recognition passing between them. Jonas feels his ears burn, but the clapping is not cruel, not mocking. It is warm. It is applause for the fact that he treated the act of refusal with all the seriousness of creation.
The door creaks.
Ragna storms in, letters clutched to her chest, her voice already halfway through a sentence no one else can hear. Without hesitation she grabs the chalk from Jonas’ hand, and in firm, angry strokes scrawls beneath his line:
NO OFFICE PLANTS AS METAPHORS FOR GROWTH.
Before the chalk has stopped squealing, Alexander drifts into the room, headphones hanging loose around his neck. He barely looks at the board, his eyes elsewhere, as if listening to music only he can hear. In a trance, he adds:
NO PRODUCTIVITY APPS THAT CURE LONELINESS.
Ruth follows quietly, her presence so soft it almost doesn’t register until she’s already writing. Her script is elegant, looping, a deliberate contrast to the heavy block letters before her:
NO MORE CATS THAT TEACH US ABOUT CAPITALISM.
Dakota arrives with the sound of his shoes scraping the floor, his face half-apologetic, half-indifferent. He shrugs, takes the chalk, and adds in bold, blunt strokes:
NO REVIEWS OF FILMS WE DIDN’T WATCH. AGAIN.
Herman is next, pushing the door wide with one hand while the other balances a glass. The sharp scent of citrus and alcohol follows him as he breezes in, relaxed, smirking. He doesn’t even put down his drink before scrawling:
NO TOP TEN COCKTAIL LISTS THAT ‘DEFINE A GENERATION.’
Ulrikk slips in behind him, quieter, carrying himself with the gravity of a man attending a funeral. His line comes like scripture, simple and inevitable:
WE WILL NOT DIGNIFY POWERPOINTS AS ART.
Then Laila appears, muttering under her breath, chalk in hand before anyone can greet her. She scrawls almost to herself, her words edged with fatigue:
NO PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. WE’RE TIRED ENOUGH.
The door slams open one last time. JTV barrels in, late as always, unapologetic, with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. He surveys the crowded board, grins at Jonas, and with letters crooked and uneven but bold as a shout, he writes:
WE WILL NOT WRITE ABOUT WHAT WE WILL NOT WRITE ABOUT.
The room is full now. The chalkboard is covered in refusals, layered and overlapping, but together they form something that looks less like avoidance and more like a manifesto. For a moment, no one moves. They stand shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same charged air, staring at the words they’ve made.
Dag clears his throat. His voice, usually sharp and dry, carries weight and clarity:
“The moral is this: sometimes the truest editorial vision is knowing which stones not to turn. Every refusal is a kind of creation.”
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the sound of applause fills the room again, but this time it’s everyone — a ragged, rising chorus of claps, laughter, and a kind of strange joy. Not for any one sentence on the board, but for all of them together.
The meeting they never planned has found its own purpose. Nothing was scheduled, nothing was decided, but something true was written in the act of refusing to write.
Editorial Note
Rabagas does not confirm or deny that MEETROM3 is equipped with recording devices. The material presented here is reproduced as received, timestamps unverified, chalk dust untested. Readers should be aware that every moving image in this article ceases motion the moment it is observed. Whether this is a glitch, a curse, or an editorial choice remains unknown.
— Internal Affairs, Office of Plausible Deniability
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RABAGAS INTERNAL AFFAIRS
Document Class: MEETROM3/Chalkboard
Clearance Level: Plausible Deniability
Status: Certified for Non-Existence
Verification Code: IZO/#000000.0
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✅ That’s it.
