{"id":189,"date":"2004-12-01T13:07:19","date_gmt":"2004-12-01T18:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=189"},"modified":"2004-12-01T13:07:19","modified_gmt":"2004-12-01T18:07:19","slug":"automaton4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200412\/automaton4\/","title":{"rendered":"Automaton#4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previous Episodes: #1<\/a>, #2<\/a>,#3<\/a><\/p>\n

The Maikhana was crowded that particular night, and there were quite a few strangers in town. The news of the Cathedral’s collapse had traveled far and wide by The Word Of Mithe. No cathedral, no control, they’d all secretly thought. <\/p>\n

Most people who were pretending to be drunk and festive were in reality looking for clues, on how to make a killing during the chaos. The Mango Prophet had consumed more wine than he ordinarily would, and the Saki had turned up the ghazal to discourage him from speaking too much. The Sufi was still swaying to the words as they danced through the smoky air – <\/p>\n

“Sabki saki pe ho nazar,
\nyeh zaroori hai magar
\nsabpe saki ki nazar ho,
\nyeh zaroori to nahi…”<\/p>\n

Suddenly the gate swung open and a tall, lean, figure carrying a roll of blueprint and a satchel entered the Maikhana.
\n
\nHe seemed dirty from travels far and wide, deep and high, and had a certain air of unease about him. He also had a certain amount of confidence and surity in the way he walked. He was a man with perpetual purpose. <\/p>\n

“Friend or Foe?” asked the Saki. <\/p>\n

“I don’t know yet, Saki. I’m the Engineer!” <\/p>\n

Hearing this, the Saki was delighted. He announced to the whole place, “Hey Y’all! Welcome the Engineer! Drinks are on the house for the next thirty minutes. Lets see how many of you drunkards are solid enough to climb the roof. Ha! Ha!”<\/p>\n

After the festivities, next morning at the crack of dawn, the bleary-eyed Engineer, who hadn’t slept a wink since his arrival inspected the mound where lay the remains of the cathedral. A curious crowd had gathered around him, but it did not include the Mango Prophet. <\/p>\n

“Listen up, People! The BigSecret is that the Cathedral wasn’t really ruling any of us, so there’s no reason to behave as if anything has changed. The Cathedral hollowed it’s own foundations and, as you can see, it has met the foundation in this unfortunate manner. <\/p>\n

Let us declare this the Year Of The Automaton, the society that no one governs, the society that governs itself, Le Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Automatique!” The crowd cheered and threw their topees<\/i> in the air. <\/p>\n

“That man is nuts,” mutters the Mango Prophet. <\/p>\n

“And this is how we are going to do this…” begins the Engineer, framing the horizon in the right-angles of his hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous Episodes: #1, #2,#3 The Maikhana was crowded that particular night, and there were quite a few strangers in town. The news of the Cathedral’s collapse had traveled far and wide by The Word Of Mithe. No cathedral, no control, they’d all secretly thought. Most people who were pretending to be drunk and festive were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}