Riddle Of The Owl - YA Fantasy

Out of "The Clarity"

September 1st 20.Tarris

STOCK MARKET CRASHES, THE BANKS ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE. EMPEROR TARRIS ADDRESSES THE PUBLIC.

A mournful silence hangs over the Callivar Stock Exchange Centre this morning as the Emperor called a trading halt to prevent the market's further decline. The opening bell will only be heard later today after prices are amended to accommodate the change in the previous year's length. The shockingly premature appearance of the solar eclipse yesterday triggered the panic that caused a staggering crash with the Avery Lort average at 12% at closing — the lowest it has been in the last decade.

"I call to the public to remain calm," His grace, Emperor Tarris, first of His name addressed the public in an emergency press conference early this morning. "What we are experiencing is a momentary setback in the Algorithm due to a slight change in the rotation of the planets. We must not lose our faith in a tool that has served us for hundreds of years. As we speak, the imperial bureaucracy is hard at work, introducing new equations into the algorithm that are due to be operative in a month's time. Thanks to these corrections, the year's length will be predicted with an accuracy we have never seen before."

While the emperor's words are reassuring — as they wont to be — other governments would see the algorithm's temporary failure as an opportunity to seize power from the empire. Aigrette Sef Kort, a Feremick mathematician, claims to have created a new algorithm that has been proven with an accuracy of 0.4%. If said algorithm will be found worthy of reaching operative status, it is feared that this may threaten the long-standing allegiance and dependency between the holy empire and 146 countries across the globe.

"The public's panic is justified," former Scholar Shimmering criticises the emperor's statement in an interview with THE CLARITY. "It's a frightening situation when you can't know how the year will look. How could we leave our money to the banks and the stock market if we have no certainty that it won't lose its value because the length of the year can't be predicted? The fear is causing everyone to pull out, which causes more people to pull out. The issue of the algorithm has been waiting to explode for ages. What will happen if the year is shorter again next year? Or even worse, what if next year is a year that will never end? I have no doubt we're at the beginning of a terrible Depression."

"In economics we have a term: 'time value of money'," explains economics specialist, Scholar Mennelic Hart, fellow of the Imperial Academy. "To simplify, this means without time, we cannot determine the value of our money. In other words, if the algorithm fails forever, all money everywhere will become meaningless and economies will crash. There won't be enough food and medicine to go around, governments will crumble and those who won't will probably fight each other. We're looking at famine, plagues, a staggering death-toll and war — if that doesn't sound like the end of the world, I don't know what is."

"I often get asked why we just don't find a way to have money without time," says Parpan Larres, head of Economic Philosophy in Demecry College. "Why not erect a completely new system? One that isn't dependent on year length and four seasons and a countable number of months. Throughout history, all over the world, attempts had been made, but in every case the conclusion is the same. Our biggest trouble is that we have what we have already. To create a new system, we must annihilate the old. Which means, to put a new system in place we must induce a state of complete economic failure and all that it entails."

While we have no choice but to believe that the problem will be addressed and solved in due time, the question still remains, who in the imperial bureaucracy will be heading the new amendments to the algorithm? So far, the only scholar to speak up on the matter is Fifth Paramount, Miss Alleria Bellencreek, the newest oddity in imperial politics who some speculate is just. the latest gimmick for the bureaucracy's public image. Thus, are we to assume that our great and competent bureaucracy has left our fate in the young hands of the female wonder child?