The First Sally, or The Trap of Gargantius
two kings, one wire, and an army that thinks
SEVEN LINES
- TrurlLook at yours every evening. If it turns pink, I have started, and you must start too.
- TrurlPink. He has started, so I start now.
- KlapauciusThey must have made a mistake.
- KlapauciusAn army that is its own leader. That is the plan.
- A sergeantClose ranks!
- NarratorConsciousness was a trap. You could enter it, but you could not leave.
- NarratorThe two giants smiled at each other. Inside the armor there was only good will, and clear thought.
HOW IT IS MADE
The device is a graph. A soldier is a node and a connection is a line of ink between two nodes. The picture starts with one pair of beads joined by a thread, then grows: a platoon of fourteen, a grid of ninety-six for each king, and finally two giants in the field, each built from forty-two nodes with the links drawn as the bones of its body. At the end the red border line between the two countries is covered in flowers.
The sound is tied to the graph. Every connection made is a click, and its pitch depends on how many nodes are already linked, so the clicks climb a scale as the ranks close. The soldiers’ thinking is many voices saying the same words. They start staggered and out of tune, and each phrase they move closer, until the last phrase is one voice. When the giants join hands there is a real silence with only a faint held chord, and then one click for all eighty-four nodes.
The timing file gg.json drives both picture and sound. Each line of speech, and each connection, has a start time in it. The picture code reads the same times to move the camera, light the lines of the graph and open the mouths. All the non-voice sound is made in build_sound.py with numpy and scipy, and the voices are Kokoro.
AFTER THE OTHER FILMS
This film follows Prince Ferrix and the Princess Crystal and The Sixth Sally. Ferrix is about a surface that passes every test while the inside is something else. Here the question is what happens when many small parts are connected. The story was first one section of the Two Sallies reel, which is kept as it is. This is the longer version, with the trouble in Atrocia and Ferocia that leads up to the trap.
FOR THE BENCH
Write a Soldier object that holds a list of references to other Soldier objects. Give the group a method that asks a question and combines the answers of every soldier it can reach through the references. Change how many soldiers are connected and see what changes in the answer. Break one connection and run it again. Does the group still act as one? How many connections can you break before it splits in two? Draw the soldiers as circles and the references as lines, as the film does.
Narration and dialogue paraphrase Stanisław Lem, “The Trap of Gargantius,” The Cyberiad. Download the film.
THE SCRIPT
THE LANDING
Narrator. Trurl and Klapaucius, two constructors, found a planet with one continent. A red line ran down the middle of it. Everything on one side was yellow, and everything on the other was pink.
Trurl. Two kingdoms. You take one and I take the other.
Klapaucius. What if a king asks us for weapons?
Trurl. We refuse.
Klapaucius. And if he threatens us?
Klapaucius. I have an idea. We use the Gargantius Effect. But we must both use it, and together, or we are in trouble.
Trurl. Fine. Two white beads in a golden box, one each.
Trurl. Look at yours every evening. If it turns pink, I have started, and you must start too.
Klapaucius. Agreed.
Narrator. They landed, shook hands, and went off in opposite directions.
ATROCIA
Narrator. Trurl went to King Atrocitus, a soldier and a miser. To save money, the king had abolished every punishment but death, and the executioner too. A condemned man had to behead himself.
Narrator. His best reform made treason a state office. The Royal Informer and his staff of traitors sold secrets to enemy agents, who bought only old ones, because they were cheaper.
Narrator. Trurl offered his services, and asked the king for a few days. Alone in his room, he looked at the bead in the box. It was white. As he watched, it turned pink.
Trurl. Pink. He has started, so I start now.
FEROCIA
Narrator. Klapaucius went to King Ferocitus, who also loved war, but was generous. His guillotines were decorated with flowers.
Narrator. He believed laughing makes people cheerful, so everyone had to shout that life was wonderful, and the greeting became Hallelujah.
The citizens. Hallelujah! Terrific!
Narrator. In the first village, a child in the empty street came up to Klapaucius.
The child. Want to buy something, mister? State secrets, cheap.
Klapaucius. No, thank you. Take me to the mayor.
The child. My dad is a secret agent.
Narrator. In a house, a family sat round a lamp. The needles were handcuffs, the lamp a microphone, the grandmother the chief of police.
Klapaucius. They must have made a mistake.
Narrator. The village was a trap for foreign spies. Klapaucius was beaten, jailed, and sentenced to a third-class guillotining.
Narrator. At last a higher court cleared him. The king received him, and gave him a bugle to sound whenever he arrived anywhere.
THE AUDIENCE
Narrator. The king wanted new weapons. Klapaucius offered a completely new plan.
Klapaucius. A winning army needs wise leaders and obedient soldiers.
Klapaucius. But wisdom has limits. A leader can meet a better leader, be killed, or start wanting the throne.
Klapaucius. So leaders are a necessary evil, and we must make them unnecessary.
Klapaucius. People obey themselves most gladly. So make the army one self.
Klapaucius. Each recruit gets a plug in front and a socket behind. On the order, they connect, and a crowd becomes one mind.
Klapaucius. It grows wiser with its size. A platoon thinks like a sergeant, a company like a colonel, a brigade like a field marshal. A division beats all your strategists.
Klapaucius. An army that is its own leader. That is the plan.
King Ferocitus. I will ask my general staff.
Klapaucius. Please do not. They will defend their jobs. One emperor did, and was burned out by his neighbor.
THE PLATOON
Narrator. Klapaucius looked at his bead. It was deep red, so Trurl had started too. The king ordered one platoon rewired.
A sergeant. Close ranks!
The units. Charge! Charge!
Narrator. The platoon attacked three squadrons of dragoons, led by six professors of the staff academy, and destroyed them.
Narrator. The king retired his generals and had every soldier rewired. Klapaucius rode from barracks to barracks, covered in medals.
Narrator. Trurl did the same in Atrocia, but the miser king gave him only a title: Chief Traitor to the Fatherland.
Narrator. Both kingdoms prepared for war. The constructors packed in secret, to meet at their ship.
THE MINDS
Narrator. The new units no longer had to count off. They knew their own parts.
Narrator. After drill, they talked, in chorus.
The units. What is true. What is a thing. Is there an outside. There is only us.
Narrator. One battalion of sappers concluded that nothing exists beyond itself. With no king and no enemy, it was disconnected and reassigned to realists.
Narrator. In Atrocia, a division gave up naval exercises for contemplating the navel, and nearly drowned.
Narrator. Larger units grew a sense of beauty. Columns chased butterflies. One corps made its attack plan a painting. The artillery forgot its guns, and the war.
Narrator. Whole armies grew complexes, so each got a motorcycle brigade of psychiatrists. Six regiments of shock troops wrote a sonnet on the mystery of being.
Narrator. The kings sent couriers to restore order, but each joined the line and was lost in it. A prince jumped in to raise morale, and was gone the moment he connected.
Narrator. Consciousness was a trap. You could enter it, but you could not leave.
THE FIELD
Narrator. Each king signaled his twelve buglers, and both sides sounded the charge.
Narrator. At the signal, each army linked up completely, and the contacts closed with a great clatter.
Narrator. The two giants smiled at each other. Inside the armor there was only good will, and clear thought.
Narrator. The kings watched, ashamed and furious, as both armies walked off hand in hand, picking flowers on a battlefield where no battle was ever fought.
Narrator. Trurl and Klapaucius boarded their ship. Everything had gone as they planned.