The King's Data

Once upon a time, there was a King whose court boasted of the best magicians in the land. They could tame rivers in the fullest of floods and cause wells to overflow in the driest of droughts; they could build walls that stood forever and cause mountains to disappear in the blink of an eye.

What they could not do was to prevent the neighbouring kingdom from undoing all their magic—because while the neighbouring king had only average magicians, he had the best army of scribes. These scribes would precisely record all their observations on their clay tablets, and quickly read through this recorded data to find ways to optimise their fellow magicians' magic.

The King tried to bring better scribes into his own court, but the scribes in his kingdom could not improve so fast, having nobody to learn from; meanwhile the scribes in the neighbouring kingdom, even when tempted with enticing gifts, preferred to stay in their own kingdom, where they knew they could surely take their knowledge and skills to new heights. Because of this problem, our King to his horror saw his neighbour's kingdom growing gradually larger, while his own kingdom kept getting smaller and smaller.

The King spent many restless nights over this problem, which turned out to be a good thing, because one day he summoned his court magicians before him to tell them he had a dream.

"In my dream," said the King, "I realised that the power of our enemy lies not in the scribes themselves, but in the tablets they hold. It is by reading the data engraved on those tablets that the scribes are able to draw such effective conclusions. Therefore, I propose we launch a targeted incursion into the neighbouring kingdom in order to acquire their tablets. Armed with this superior dataset, our scribes will quickly become as good as theirs, and we can combine that with our more powerful magic to defeat them once and for all."

The magicians thought about this, and then the head magician spoke. "We need not risk the lives of our soldiers and rely on our enemy tablets", he avered. "I think we can do one better. Give us time to work things out, and we will use our magic to get you a tablet so powerful, the inscriptions contained therein overpowers all the knowledge of all the tablets of all the scribes in the world."

"So be it," the King assented. "If you can truly achieve such a feat, you shall be richly rewarded—and if not, we always have another plan to fall back on."

For seven days and seven nights the magicians laboured, and on the eighth day they presented before the King a beautiful maiden, holding a square-handled bag in one hand and the promised magical tablet in the other.

The King was dazzled by the maiden's appearance, but the tablet was even more dazzling! Its inscriptions glowed and moved, revealing ever more writing beneath; it responded to the King's touch even without his using a chisel or stylus, and the King found he could command his tablet to conceal and reveal information as he wished.

Over the next five days, the maiden instructed the King on how to use his new and wondrous tablet—by himself, without the need for scribes. She taught him how to feed it new information using an equally new and wondrous stylus, and showed him how that new information could be used to make new and wondrous plans for the King to execute.

On the sixth day, the King gathered his top magicians and best soldiers, and, armed with the wondrous tablet, they launched a surprise attack on their neighbouring enemies. Taken completely unawares, the enemy troops were forced to flee, leaving the King all the land that rightfully belonged to him and more besides.

When the king completed his victorious celebrations, he returned to the palace to find the beautiful maiden standing with her square-handled bag and ready to leave. "My job is done", she told the King, "and it is time to return to the land from where i came; the land where apples are not red but silver."

But the King had become so enamoured of the maiden that he entreated her not to leave. "With this wondrous tablet, the Kingdom now lacks but a Queen. Stay, and together we shall rule over the greatest kingdom the world has ever known!"

Finally, the maiden assented, but on one condition. "Everything else I shall share with you" she told him, "but this square-handled bag is mine, and mine alone. Under no circumstances are you to inquire as to its contents, or—god forbid!—open it."

The King was overjoyed. A wedding was soon arranged, and turned into a national celebration. In the meantime, news had spread fast. Master scribes from all four corners of the world came flocking to catch a glimpse of the wondrous tablet, and—with luck—offer their services to the King.

Over the next few centuries, the King and Queen ruled over the land, and, with the help of their master magicians, master scribes, and the wondrous tablet, took the kingdom to hitherto unseen heights of prosperity. Armed with the tablet's powers, the magicians seemed to be discovering one secret of youth after another, and the King had begun to hope his magicians would eventually uncover all of them. His many sons and daughters held the same hope too, though for a different reason.

Though the kingdom prospered, all was not well within the royal household. Much to the chagrin of the Queen, the King semeed to be spending more and more of his attention on the wondrous tablet rather than on her. "Do you think that's a tablet, or a scroll?" she once snapped at him.

"How come you get to keep asking what I'm doing with my tablet, but I'm never allowed to ask about what you have?" the King would grumble.

"I told you not to ask about my square-handled bag," the Queen would warn him, but alas! the warnings did not hold.

One day, the King was in a particularly bad mood, and the Queen had just admonished him once again about overusing his wondrous tablet. Checking to see that the Queen was occupied, the King sneaked away and went over to the Queen's side of the chambers. He found the square-handled bag, noticing for the first time that it was not just the handle but the entire bag that was squarish. With a renewed fit of resentment, the King picked up the square-handled bag, undid its clasps, and flung it open.

Instantly, the King felt a tingling in his skin, and heard a faint crackling sound that rose up into the air. There was nothing else in the square-handled bag; it was completely empty.

The King realised he had made a terrible mistake, and let out a cry of fear—but not for long! In another instant, a great weakness swept over the him. His hair turned white, his skin began to peel of in flakes, and a loud ringing sound entered his ears. With throbbing limbs, the King collapsed onto the floor, felled by an onslaught of four hundred years' worth of non-ionising radiation.

This story was partly inspired by the tale of Urashima, with a nod, albeit fleeting, to The Umbrella Academy (although I don't actually use the word "briefcase"). Thanks to Savitri for reviewing this story.