Master Suku and her three apprentices had spent several
sweltering days crossing a weedy marshland, seeking a temple
somewhere near its center. The thickness of the air had long
since stifled any desire for conversation. For many hours
the only sounds were the buzzing of microdrones and the
group’s own squelching footsteps.
Finally they arrived at a rickety structure on stilts,
housing only one abbess and a dozen novices.
“The Drowning Temple is a poor one in every respect,” said
the abbess. “Our investments are currently under water, and
the average grade of our novices is well below C level. But
name your fee for speaking and we’ll see what we can do.”
“We trade only in knowledge,” said Suku. “Have your temple
lecture on the first day, and mine will lecture on the day
following.”
“This pleases us,” said the abbess.
“Then make space for us to sleep on the floor,” said Suku.
“Come the morning we will learn from each other.”
When the preparations were made, and the last lantern had
been turned down for the night, Suku’s eldest apprentice
whispered: “Master, what can these people teach us?”
Suku made a ∅ sign on the moldy floorboards, fell back on
her mat, and closed her eyes.
On the first day, Suku and her apprentices sat patiently
while the novices of the Drowning Temple spoke of their
doings and observations. As he expected, Suku’s eldest
apprentice heard nothing that he did not already know.
Indeed, he found some of the Drowning Temple’s coding
practices so completely absurd that he had to mask his
laughter by coughing violently and blaming his outbursts on
a rare pollen allergy.
On the second day, Suku’s eldest apprentice spoke for a full
two hours on the superior coding practices of his own
temple. Yet he found himself so beleaguered by challenges
from the Drowning Temple that he nearly walked out in
frustration. To make matters worse, some of novices of the
Drowning Temple had apparently contracted his unique pollen
allergy.
That night, Suku quietly asked the eldest apprentice what he
had learned from the novices.
The eldest apprentice made the ∅ sign of the empty-set on
the moldy floorboards, fell back on his mat, and closed his
eyes.
Suku whacked him on the nose and repeated her question to
the others.
The second apprentice answered, “Our eldest knows how to
chastise, but not how to convince.”
The third apprentice answered, “Our eldest wishes to make
others accept, but has failed to first make them reject.”
“Excellent,” said Suku. “Some of us have learned, so our Fee
has been paid.”
She grabbed the index finger of the eldest apprentice,
saying to him: “You speak to your peers as if they were
empty registers waiting to be filled with the bits of your
wisdom. Ours may be a dry digital world, but it is built
atop wetware, which is squishy and irrational and prone to
overheating. You cannot flip a brain from zero to one simply
by praising the one. You must start at the zero, extoll its
virtues, explore its faults, exhort your listeners to look
beyond it. To weigh the zero against the one, the listener
must have both in mind together. Only when they have freely
chosen the one will they abandon the zero.”
Still holding the index finger of the eldest apprentice,
Suku slowly drew a zero on the floorboards and a one across
its center. Considering the symbol anew, the eldest was
corrected.
