Cradle of Civilization and Knowledge (2)
Al-Fazari's long-cherished wish had finally come true. As he pored over the books in the library, there was one thing he simply could not bring himself to believe. Could a single nation truly endure for over three thousand years? And without so much as a single rebellion or a power grab?
"What kind of nation could it be?"
"Surely an advanced one, Master."
"I worry the records might be fabricated."
And wasn't that a fair concern? History was stuffed to the brim with forgeries and inventions.
Pshee-e-eek!
"Look at that thing they call a train. Does it not surpass anything we could imagine?"
"How in the world was it built?"
"Watching it quietly, I believe it harnesses water and fire."
"Hm..."
Water and fire, making such a monstrous thing move? His hands itched at the thought of how wonderful it would be to pry open that thing and look inside.
"Let us ride it first, shall we?"
"Yes, Master."
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of many different woods. What fascinated him most was that each compartment held not chairs but beds—actual beds one could lie down on.
"So they are sleeping berths?"
"Then wouldn't that mean it travels enormous distances, Master?"
"Perhaps this 'train' is slower than I imagined."
"If it weren't, why would anyone bother with it over carriages and horses?"
This boy with the bright, intelligent eyes was, in al-Khwarizmi's judgment, a disciple brimming with promise—a boy who, whenever they discussed astronomy or mathematics together, showed flashes of insight that could startle even an old man.
"Haha. True enough."
Pshee-e-eek! Chunk!
At that moment, as if the preheating were complete, the train lurched into motion with a groan of machinery.
"Ah! It's moving!"
"So it really does move!"
Even at a crawl, they thought the mere fact of it moving was extraordinary. There was that enormous machine at the very front, but weren't these carriages heavy enough by themselves?
Screeeech, screeeech...
It started slowly, then—
Clack-clack, clack-clack.
—gradually picked up speed.
"Master? It isn't slow at all."
Once a technology began to advance, it accelerated. The train, which had been running at the speed of a galloping horse, had long since blown past it.
"At this speed!"
"I wonder how fast we're going?"
"A shame we have no reference to calculate it by..."
In that moment, both scholars regretted nothing more than being unable to work out the train's speed.
The same drama was playing out in every other carriage aboard the train, and the mathematicians were suffering the worst of it.
"Uuuurgh. I must know!"
"I want to calculate it!"
"Someone, anyone, just tell me the length of this track!"
Scholars writhing in torment. A torture train was on the rails.
The train stopped once in a while to take on fuel and water, then ran on day and night without pause.
"This is just..."
"How vast can it possibly be?"
"Are we truly heading in a fixed direction, toward where the sun rises?"
It was hard to believe. How many days had they been traveling at this speed already?
"Master! The cities are growing larger!"
They had been stunned by the sheer size of Seonju when they passed through it on the first day. Yet the cities they kept encountering only grew bigger and bigger.
And with every mile, more small towns and villages appeared—and the cities swelled larger still.
"An empire like THIS exists!?"
"Master, I'm frightened..."
No one could have imagined it. They had thought Daehan was merely a country in the East that made fine silks and jewels. Never a colossal empire like this.
Judging by land area alone, the territory under Daehan's influence already spanned roughly a tenth of the world's land.
And they had seen only a fraction of it. Small wonder they were awestruck.
The train gradually curved southward.
"Whoaah..."
"Is that really a city?"
"It can't be a mirage..."
No—a mirage would show a place that actually existed somewhere, wouldn't it?
Mabang, Samgang, Samsu. The train, drawing ever closer to the capital, was packed with people, yet nothing but silence hung over the carriages.
And then they saw them: the great steel machines plowing the fields. The Gulleongsoe.
"Wh... what is that?"
"Is it my time to die? My eyes must be deceiving me."
"It looks like it's plowing a field..."
"It seems machines, not oxen or horses, are turning the soil, Master..."
It was simply another world. Some passengers even began to suspect that the moment they had boarded the train, they'd been spirited away to somewhere unrecognizable.
"Huh? What's that?"
"It looks like a tree, but..."
"Can a tree really grow that large?"
"Could it be some kind of building?"
"If it's a building, how was it even raised?"
"Where on earth are we?"
The colossal tree at the heart of Sinsi. A strange country where a man flying through the air would hardly warrant a second glance.
They visited the museum. For an entire week.
"Master..."
"Those relics... they seem genuine."
"Do you suppose they've been beside us for thousands of years?"
Master and disciple alike found themselves wondering: could the plunderers, monsters, demons, angels, and all the rest described in their own chronicles have set out from this very place?
But there was something even more astonishing.
"You mean they've been observing the heavens and building sundials since three thousand years ago!"
"Even in their earliest days, they kept separate observations to track the hours by season!"
This was knowledge of astronomy—their own field of study.
"This place truly is the cradle of civilization."
"Every record of the past we never knew is here!"
"AHAHAHAHA!"
Laughter burst out of Al-Fazari. All his life he had believed himself the greatest of men—and now he saw how far he still had to go.
"When I return home, I shall exercise and live longer!"
"Master, I shall join you!"
It seemed they would have far more to do once they returned. How could they simply pass over the ancient things recorded in the histories?
Everything they had overlooked, dismissed as trivial—all of it would surely be real. And who knew what seeds of new discovery it might hold? Thinking so made both men long for long life.
Though this is merely an epilogue to their visit, an exercise craze began to sweep through the scholars of Mudo.
Scholars who cut out anything bad for the body, ate only what was good, and exercised diligently.
Somehow, they all seemed likely to outlive their natural lifespans.
"What? Since when do we have exercise equipment?"
"They say they've started working out to take care of their bodies."
"Why?"
"Apparently they want to live longer?"
I gathered them together to study, and they all started exercising? Is something wrong with the country? They only got like this after visiting, didn't they?
"Their research is still going well, right?"
"Yes. The results are actually improving, so we're supporting them in everything."
What? So they can spend time exercising AND do good research? Why can't my kids do that?
Is it just different stock? Are they telling me my kids are hopeless?...
Fine. Whatever. Just grow up healthy and strong, all of you.
"If any of our kids show an interest in studying, send them over to learn."
"Yes. There are quite a few of those oddballs around, probably because there are so many people."
So if you study well and you're smart, you're an oddball now?
"Do you think people would flock to my class if I taught something at the school?"
"Hmm..."
That sounds plausible, doesn't it?
"I don't think they'd take anything but yours."
"Huh?"
Really? So they'd sit through my lesson and then all go straight home?
"How about mathematics? Wouldn't it help with building the clocks?"
"Yes. Apparently he's been so excited lately that he does nothing but read books."
"But how big is the error that got him all worked up?"
I meant to ask last time and forgot.
"He says about ten minutes a year."
"That's plenty good enough, isn't it?"
"Yes?"
"How would you even account for iron expanding and contracting with temperature? An error like that is to be expected."
"Huh?"
I wondered what nonsense he'd been up to. It's not like he's building an atomic clock—how accurate did he think a mechanical clock needed to be?
"It's supposed to be impossible to match perfectly! You can't make it perfectly accurate. Still, the effort is commendable."
It's precision machinery, so there's nothing wrong with him trying to push it further.
"Tell him to try making something with that level of accuracy that can be used aboard a ship. Then teach the kids how to figure out a ship's position with it, and let's draw some maps."
"Maps, Your Holiness?"
"Yes. Otherwise how would we know what's where? Include coastal water depths too."
Plenty of places operate on first-come-first-served, so we need maps with marks on them.
"Our ocean friends are going to have a lot more work to do."
"They're already busy. Should I really add more?"
"No need to overdo it, but more is good in all sorts of ways, isn't it?"
I won't bury them until they burst, at least.
"Hehehe."
"Hey!"
"Yes?"
"Not that! I can tell you're thinking something weird right now!"
He's definitely thinking something strange!
"Then just a little..."
"The more ships we build, the more money goes into maintenance and weapons—you have to account for that!"
"Of course, Your Holiness!"
"Not scraping by, barely squeaking through—there has to be slack in the budget!"
"Ah..."
Does this kid think the navy runs exactly like the army?
Hold on a second. I've never actually seen anything like a budget plan, have I? How is this country even being run?
"Why have you never brought me a budget plan?"
"What's a budget plan?"
Huh? What is this fresh development? He doesn't know at all?
"A document that says: this much tax was collected, and the Ministry of Defense will spend this much, the Ministry of Works this much, and so on and so forth."
"Why would we need that?"
"Then where do you think the money to run a country comes from?"
"We take it from the Temple."
Huh? Just like that? Wait—so we've been lucky? The Temple's income is bigger than the state's spending, and that's the only reason we're still alive?
Hold on. If it's Temple property, isn't that MY private property?
"Hey! Why are you spending Temple money as the national budget! Collect taxes!"
"We DO collect taxes! We spend all of them!"
"Then you make do with what you have! That money is mine in the end!"
"What are you saying, Haneul-nim? It's YOUR country, so of course we should spend YOUR money! Whose money would we take instead?"
Huh? That... kind of makes sense? No, no, that's not the point!
"You—! You wretched brat! That's not it either! The point is you can't leave holes in the tax revenue!"
"But then the things we can do would shrink!?"
"Then you find ways to raise taxes, or you spend only what you have! You idiot!"
"No!"
Oh? Digging his heels in, are we? It's been a while.
"Come on, it's Haneul-nim's country, so just let us use the Temple money! There's hardly anywhere to spend it anyway!"
Hm? Is that so? It's just piling up in the Temple with nowhere to go, isn't it?
"Then in exchange, you submit a report on how much tax comes in and how much is spent where."
"Gah..."
I knew it. He figured out it means extra work and was trying to dodge it, wasn't he?
"You've been avoiding this on purpose, haven't you?"
"..."
"Do you want to die?"
"..."
"Never mind. It'd be hard to find someone to do your work if you died, so let's kill you halfway."
Whoosh.
"Huh? Wha—? Haneul-nim? Why am I floating in the air?"
Why do you THINK you're floating? I'm letting you see the sky up close. The prayer room's medicine seems to be wearing off, so I have to touch things up once in a while, don't I?
"Have a safe trip~"
"Wh... where to?"
Where else? The top of the sky.
Shwooom.
"AAAAAAAHHH—"
Oh? Did I throw him too hard? The scream cut off before I could hear the end of it—he's become a little dot?
I figured he'd be less scared if I threw him really high, so I aimed for a decent height, but why isn't he coming down?
"...AAAAAAAHHH"
Thud.
Oh dear. That was close. I almost made ketchup out of the front yard.
"..."
"Hm? Did he die?"
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ah. Something that should be flowing during a funeral rite is flowing right here instead. He must have been scared?
"Hey."
"..."
"Are you asleep?"
"..."
Tremble-tremble-tremble.
Nope. He's shaking. Clearly not asleep. I can smell it. The smell.
"Should I send you up again? Maybe that'll wake you."
"..."
"One~ two—"
"NO! I'm here! I'm right here!"
"Weren't you pretending not to hear me?"
"I'm sorry! I'll do better from now on!"
The little brat deserves it, but that smell. Ugh, how does someone so grown act like this?
"Good grief. A fully grown boy, this sloppy. Go clean yourself up and get moving."
"Yes! Thank you, Haneul-nim!"
Watching him clean up while sobbing was a little pathetic. Well, he'll probably go take it out on the kids downstairs anyway.