Page 27 - Unlikely Stories 5

The Law of the Wheel

The king of Zongo called for a ministerial meeting soon after the
celebrations of the new millennium ended. Those eight men, poised
between maturity and senility, were his most trusted executives and
advisers; in fact, he had no other sort of executive or adviser. They
filed silently into the palace conference room, each taking the seat
around a circular table corresponding to his geographical region of
responsibility. After a minute, apparatus above the center of the table
activated: a 360-degree camera focused on them, and a hologram of
their ruler on his throne appeared before them. They made obeisance
to it, understanding completely the panoptics of the situation.
“Gentlemen,” said the king, solemnly, “today we shall go around in
circles.” He paused, scrutinizing their faces for any inability to retain
gravity no matter what. “Some countries are organized like children’s
blocks, stacks of separate jurisdictions subject to topple if one is
imbalanced. Others, like ours, are centralized—but imperfectly: cones
and pyramids place the leadership too far above the base, out of
touch with important events affecting their position. Far better to be
flat. The spiral will not work; it provides but one path to the center,
with no view but the positions ahead and behind. No, Zongo has the
best and simplest model, the wheel.”
The advisers nodded sagely. As wisdom, this was ancient
consensus among the kingdom’s scholars and upper bureaucrats.
“The wheel turns, its strength transmitted between hub and rim via
spokes, each dependent upon the other to maintain continuity and
balance. This great principle we were taught by our first philosopher-
king, Concentrus. As microcosm of the movements of Heaven and
Earth, our kingdom rotates about a center of power responsible for
equalizing two opposing forces: that which threatens to crush inward
if the wheel of state moves too slowly and that which that which will
cause it to break apart if it moves too quickly. It is my duty to keep
the load distributed through judicious expenditures of my royal
authority. In the laws of purely physical dynamics this necessity is
well understood by engineers designing gears and rotating shafts. My
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