Once upon a time in the kingdom of Plebnia, the king was having a
real problem with his letters to the outlying regions. His messages
always seemed to arrive too late. No matter how early he mailed them,
his Christmas cards arrived in July and his Valentines arrived on
December 24, creating confusion and uncertainty among the people
and giving the Problem Element an excuse to arouse the Rabble
against him.
After some thought, the king had an idea: he would give ten million
greedos (their monetary unit) and the hand of his totally gorgeous
daughter to the person who could make his mail arrive the fastest.
His loyal subjects immediately rushed to solve the problem, setting
themselves to this task with an enthusiasm that an objective observer
might well have described as manic. People ran back and forth, up and
down, muttering, "Move the mail, shove the mail, fling it, sling it.
Run. Hurry. Shoot the mail, toss it, heave it," and such like.
Included in the many and varied offered solutions were proposals to
build a rocket sled, crisscross the countryside with pneumatic tubes,
use fast horses stimulated by strong coffee, borrow a dragster from
the sports arena, set up a reliable airline, make a jet-powered
conveyor belt, or just use ordinary mailmen under the threat of
immediate, violent death if they delayed the mail.
However, Sir Reginald, the young, handsome hero of this tale, out of
the goodness of his heart, his love for the king, and the excitement
of the challenge (and scarcely considering the money or the girl more
than four or five hours a day), decided to take a few minutes to
examine the problem before he tried to solve it.
"Just what is it the king wants to do?" he asked himself. "He wants
to send his mail quickly. And just what is mail? It's a message,
information. Information, hmm. Information can be sent
electronically, by wire or transmission. Yes. Hmm. Yes--A
transmitter on one end and a printer on the other end would permit
the king's mail to be sent at the speed of light. That should pretty
much squash Sir Rodney's proposal to use battery-powered frisbees."
Well, what can we say? The brilliance of this proposal was so
obvious that Sir Reginald was declared the winner and the plan was
immediately instituted. The mail began to arrive on time, the king
soon became popular again in the outlying regions, and Sir Reginald
retired to spend the rest of his days in a spiffy castle on top of
a hill, with his totally gorgeous wife and, later, seventeen children.