Mobile Entertainment

In the beginning was Fixed Line, which begat the Candybar and the Clamshell, and the gift of mobility. The people could tell their village folk they were ‘On The Train’ or ‘Late for Work’; or that they were waiting in front of the cinema.

But the Spoken Word proved insufficient to keep Man amused. Far away, to the East, the clever tribe of the EyeModes found ways to enhance their candybars and clams with strange, wonderful new powers; which allowed the people of those lands to write and send short letters to each other and play games miraculously untethered to the life-giving wires.

More or less at the same time, in the Middle Kingdom, similar progress was being made: the druids of these lands were even able to make the communicator sing any tune they wanted it to upon ringing, which proved irresistibly Magical to the youth of those hamlets and soon the young people of the entire world. The customs spread to all neighboring states and peoples, until the Jee-ehsehm Creed became the “Pax Mobilita” of the entire Middle Kingdom.

Only the tribes far to the West, in the Land of Wheat and Cattle, failed to adopt the new Magic, or at best adopted it inconsistently. Some saw a schism between those priests preaching The Way of the Jee-ehsehm and those that practiced the dark arts of the CDMA. The schism manifested itself in all forms of the Magic, with the Jee-ehsehmists opting for the extract of boiled beans from the island of Java as their ceremonial drink, whereas the CMDA adepts preferred a filtered beverage known as BREW.

For many years, the Middle Kingdom felt a sense of vast superiority over the Western tribes, also known as the Ameri-kahns. The Middle Kingdom, after all, invented the changeable tune; they had candybars (they largely shunned the clam), which could call any other candybar throughout the land, and nearly everyone throughout the Kingdom was so connected.

Such was their sense of power that the potentates who controlled access to the Magic – the dynasty of the Kah-Riers – soon began to want more of the riches generated from the Magic, keeping over half of the offerings made by the artisans who created the tunes, scripts and games. The potentates began to take the people for granted, not telling them about the Magic in a way the people could understand and paying no heed to the practices that had made the Magic so loved and trusted by the Doh-Coh-Mos to the East.

The Ameri-kahns, however, came to understand the wisdom and emulate it, sharing more of the offerings with the makers of tunes and games, educating people, and keeping the level of expected offerings “flat” so that the people could try out new forms of Magic without unexpected demands made of them by the Kah-Riers upon the full moon.

In return, the common people to the West grew to know and like the Magic, the potentates became big and their rules magnanimous (with occasional gifts of free clams and free Magic-time, which the people rewarded with loyalty to their rulers), and the guilds of the tunes and games makers came to prefer plying their trades in Ameri-kah that the Middle Kingdom.

So it was the Middle Kingdom began to be seen as the Backward Land, with entire tribes paying their rulers with tiny “pre-payed” offerings instead of regularly at the end of the full moon. Barely one in 20 of the people participated in the rites of the Games, and there descended upon the land a general reluctance to try new Magic. Before long, the Middle Kingdom rulers grew tired of the Magic, reducing the number of shamans and assigning the religious duties to hired priests (often from the island of Akkrekator). In order to pay the hired priests, the Middle Kingdom potentates began to share even less of the offerings, creating of Cycle of Viciousness which saw the Magic virtually stop growing in those lands.

What will the future hold? Will the few Middle Kingdom shamans blessed with Vision see the error of their ways, and follow their counterparts among the Western Tribes in adopting practices more in tune with the successful Doh-Coh-Moh philosophy? Or will they continue down the Cycle of Viciousness, finally abandoning their Magic to the circling barbarians (notably the brazen tribe of the Advertizers) in return for a few pieces of silver? Stay tuned….