Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

The Seventh Sally 289then he crisscrossed that atmosphere with silver fanfares andtwenty-one gun salutes, also threw in the necessary handful oftraitors, another of heroes, added a pinch of prophets andseers, and one messiah and one great poet each, after which hebent over and set the works in motion, deftly making last-minuteadjustments with his microscopic tools as it ran, and he gavethe women of that kingdom beauty, the men-sullen silence andsurliness when drunk, the officials-arrogance and servility, theastronomers-an enthusiasm for stars, and the children-a greatcapacity for noise. And all of this, connected, mounted andground to precision, fit into a box, and not a very large box,but just the size that could be carried about with ease. ThisTrurl presented to Excelsius, to rule and have dominion overforever; but first he showed him where the input and output ofhis brand-new kingdom were, and how to program wars, quellrebellions, exact tribute, collect taxes, and also instructedhim in the critical points and transition states of thatmicrominiaturized society-in other words the maxima and minimaof palace coups and revolutions and explained everything so wellthat the king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies,instantly grasped the directions and, without hesitation, whilethe constructor watched, issued a few trial proclamations,correctly manipulating the control knobs, which were carved withimperial eagles and regal lions. These proclamations declared astate of emergency, martial law, a curfew, and a special levy.After a year had passed in the kingdom, which amounted-to hardlya minute for Trurl and the king, by an act of the greatestmagnanimity-that is, by a flick of the finger at the controlstheking abolished one death penalty, lightened the levy, anddeigned to annul the state of emergency, whereupon a tumultuouscry of gratitude, like the squeaking of tiny mice lifted bytheir tails, rose up from the box, and through its curved glasscover one could see, on the dusty highways and along the banksof lazy rivers that reflected the fluffy clouds, the peoplerejoicing and praising the great and unsurpassed benevolence oftheir sovereign lord.And so, though at first he had felt insulted by Trurl'sgift, in that the kingdom was too small and very like a child'stoy, the monarch saw that the thick glass lid made everythinginside seem large; perhaps too he dully understood that size wasnot what mattered here, for government is not measured in metersand kilograms, and emotions are somehow the same, whetherexperienced by giants or dwarfs-and so he thanked theconstructor, if somewhat stiffly. Who knows, he might even haveliked to order him thrown in chains and tortured to death, justto be safe-that would have been a sure way of nipping in the budany gossip about how some common vagabond tinkerer presented amighty monarch with a kingdom.