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The Kingdom of Transformation
The Kingdom Of Transformation
I am a wizard in the magical Kingdom of
Transformation and I slay dragons for a living.
Actually, I am a systems programmer. One of the
problems with systems programming is explaining to
noncomputer enthusiasts what that is. All of the terms
I use to describe my job are totally meaningless to
them.
Usually my response to questions about my work is
to say as little as possible. For instance, if someone
asks what happened at work this week, I say, "Nothing
much," and then I change the subject.
With the assistance of my brother, a mechanical
engineer, I have devised an analogy that everyone can
understand. The analogy describes the Kingdom of
Transformation, where travelers wander and become
magically transformed. The kingdom is the computer and
the travelers are information. The purpose of the
computer is to change information to a more meaningful
form. The law of conservation applies here: the
computer never creates and never intentionally destroys
data.
With no further ado, let us travel to the Kingdom
of Transformation....
Far, far away, there is a magical kingdom call the
Kingdom of Transformation. A king rules this land and
employs a Council of Wizardry. The main purpose of this
kingdom is to provide a way for neighbouring kingdoms
to make their citizens more useful. This is done by
letting the citizens enter the kingdom at one of its
rts and travel any of the kingdom's many roads.
Citizens are magically transformed along the way. The
income of the Kingdom of Transformation comes from the
many toll roads within its boundaries.
The Kingdom of Transformation was created when
several kingdoms got together and discovered a mutual
need for new talents and abilities for their citizens.
They employed CTK Inc. (Creators of Transformation
Kingdoms, Inc.) to create this kingdom. CTK designed
the country, its transportation routes and its laws of
transformation and created the major highway system.
Because magic is not truly controllable, CTK
invariably, but unknowingly, creates dragons. Dragons
are huge fire-breathing beasts which sometimes injure
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or kill travelers. Fortunately they do not travel but
always remain near their den.
The kingdom has other potential hazards. As roads
become older and more weatherbeaten, potholes develop,
trees fall on travelers and so on. CTK maintenance men
are called to fix these problems.
The wizards play a major role in creating and
maintaining the kingdom but get little credit for their
work because it is performed secretly. The wizards do
not want the workers or travelers to learn their
incantations because many laws would be broken and
chaos would result.
CTK's grand design is always general enough to be
applicable in many different situations. As a result,
it is often difficult to use. The first duty of the
wizards is to tailor the transformation laws to as to
be more beneficial and easier to use in their
particular environment.
After creation of the kingdom, a major duty of the
wizards is to search for and kill dragons. If travelers
do not return on time or if they return injured, the
ruler of the country contacts the wizards. If the
wizards determine that the injury or death occurred
because of the traveler's negligence, they provide the
traveler's country with additional warnings. If not,
they must determine if the cause was a road hazard or a
dragon, If they suspect a road hazard, they call in a
CTK maintenance man to locate the hazard and eliminate
it, as in repairing the pothole in the road. If they
think the cause was a dragon, they must find it and
slay it.
The most difficult part of eliminating a dragon is
finding it. Sometimes the wizard magically knows where
the dragon's lair is, but often the wizard must send
another traveler along the same route and watch to see
where he disappears. This sounds like a fail-safe
method for finding dragons (and a suicide mission for
the traveler), but the second traveller does not always
disappear. Some dragons eat any traveler who comes too
close, others are very picky.
The wizards may call in CTK, who designed the
highway system and the transformation laws, to help
devise a way to locate a dragon. CTK also helps provide
the right spell or incantation to slay the dragon.
(There is no general spell for slaying dragons; each
dragon must be eliminated with a different one.)
Because neither CTK nor the wizards are perfect,
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spells do not always work correctly. At best, nothing
happens when the wrong spell is uttered. At worst, the
dragon becomes much larger or multiplies into several
dragons. In either case, new spells must be found.
If all existing dragons are quiet (in other words,
have eaten sufficiently), wizards have time to do other
things. They hide in castles and practice spells and
incantations. They also devise shortcuts for travelers
and new laws of transformation.
As new transformation kingdoms are created and old
ones maintained, CTK Inc. constantly learns new
things. It learns ways to avoid creating some of the
dragons it has created before. It also discovers new
and better laws of transformation.
As a result, CTK periodically creates a new "Grand
Design" that is far better than the old. The wizards
determine when this new design should be brought in.
This usually happens when the tourist season is slow or
when no important travelers are scheduled to arrive.
The kingdom must be closed for the actual
implementation and is later reopened as a new and
better place to go.
A final question you might ask is what happens
when the number of tourists becomes too great for the
kingdom to handle in a reasonable period of time (that
is, the tourist lines at the ports are too long). The
Kingdom of Transformation has three options: 1) shorten
the paths that a tourist must travel, 2) convince CTK
to develop a faster breed of horses so travelers can
finish sooner, or 3) annex more territories so the
kingdom can handle more travelers.
Thus endeth the story.
December 13, 1984
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