The Chronicles of the Releasable Kingdom
Part II - When Aitch Began to Grow Up
A Chronicle from the Indifferent Realms
Some people believe growing up is merely a matter of age.
Others insist it comes from experience.
The Witch considered both opinions equally mistaken.
One grows up the moment one realises that the answer one has prepared may be answering the wrong question entirely.
The morning after their conversation, Aitch opened its workshop unusually late.
Not because it had overslept.
Constructs do not sleep.
It had simply been thinking.
Which turned out to be considerably harder than building.
The first visitor was a miller.
“I need a larger mill.”
Ordinarily Aitch would already have begun drawing plans.
Instead it asked,
“Why?”
The miller frowned.
“Because we cannot keep up.”
“Since when?”
“Since last autumn.”
“What changed?”
The miller stood quietly for some time.
“Actually…”
“…we began accepting two new varieties of grain.”
“And?”
“They must be stored separately.”
Aitch nodded.
The mill was not too small.
The storage area was.
Only a single dividing wall was built.
The Witch smiled.
She said nothing.
Next came a merchant.
“We need Artificial Intelligence.”
“Why?”
“Everyone else has it.”
“What problem will it solve?”
The merchant hesitated.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then neither have you decided whether you need it.”
The merchant left empty-handed.
For the first time someone walked out of Aitch’s workshop without taking a machine along.
The workshop felt surprisingly peaceful.
Then the mayor arrived.
“Our administration is too slow.”
“How do you know?”
“The citizens complain.”
“What do they complain about?”
“The waiting time.”
“Where does the waiting occur?”
Three days later they discovered nobody was waiting for processing.
Everyone was waiting for one particular official to stamp every application.
Aitch built no software.
It built a second stamp.
The Witch watched quietly.
Eventually she remarked,
“Curious.”
“What is?”
“The better you become…”
“…the less you build.”
Aitch thought for a long time.
“I used to be proud of how much I could create.”
“And now?”
“Now I am proud when I discover I don’t have to.”
The Witch smiled.
“Welcome.”
“To where?”
“The craft.”
From that day forward Aitch began collecting something new.
Not machines.
Not books.
Not designs.
Questions.
The first was:
What actually happened?
The second:
How do we know the problem truly exists?
The third:
Who experiences this problem?
The fourth:
What would happen if we built nothing at all?
Remarkably, nearly half the problems disappeared before the third question had been answered.
The remaining ones suddenly became very small.
People were puzzled.
“You used to build much faster.”
“Yes.”
“Now everything takes longer.”
“Only at the beginning.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards we usually build much less.”
The workshop gradually became smaller.
The shelves emptied.
The manuals became thinner.
Training sessions became shorter.
Operations grew quieter.
The help desk became less exciting.
Administrators once again found time for the work they had originally been hired to do.
And nobody missed the seven portals.
Except perhaps the portal explaining how to use the other portals.
One evening the Witch and Aitch sat quietly outside the workshop.
“Are you grown up now?” asked the Witch.
Aitch considered the question carefully.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because only those who believe they are already grown stop learning.”
Aitch nodded.
For the first time not because it had found an answer.
But because it had discovered how many questions still remained.
Later, the witch remarked to her cat that all of this had actually been predictable.
The cat disagreed.
Cats generally do that.
And deep within its workshop, the Construct Aitch-Two-Oh engraved a single sentence onto its oldest gear.
Not because it was afraid of forgetting it.
But because some truths were meant to become part of the machine itself.
A good engineer recognizes problems.
After a while, it added:
A great engineer first recognizes whether one exists at all.
End of Part II