APPENDIX B : The Top theory of the world by Goblin Newton
The Top theory of the world had first been speculated in 2020 by Goblin Newton, a pimply teenager who would often ponder the world under the shade of an apple tree in his backyard in Tasmania, out of reach of his mother’s call to clean up his room, do the dishes and put his clothes away.
He had capitalized on the sheer volume of internet hits and had created his own very lucrative sect by predicting a Big Topple for 2031. Where his theory had crumbled however was when he had attempted to buy his way out of choring with his new found wealth and had ended up with a sore bottom anyway, a shameful fact he had always managed to keep quiet.
The theory goes as follows:
Grand creativity indeed sets humans apart in the world. Initially humans created irregular makeshift structures of stone just because they could. After a few thousand years of making rock mounds, iron was gradually added to the endeavor, and the structures added up to ugly scattered rusty piles of rubble and scrap.
One day a little boy shouted “No no no, you have it all wrong, I was told to do it that way by my dad!”, and he started making a sketch of what he wanted for no reason other than because he would then be very busy telling people what to do and so would be excused from doing the dishes as requested by his mother. He called himself an architect and a rosy chore-free future now loomed. Those primitive societies had been pronounced ugly, badly in need of being reorganized, and apparently that statement came from high up and could therefore not be questioned.
When that boy’s mother started to ask who told him to carry out what seemed like a pretty obvious copout from his duties as a dishwasher, pointing out that she had always been a single mother, so little John could not claim to have been told anything from his father, she was promptly silenced through a bit of primitive might. Matricide was not uncommon in those days and was taught from a young age as it could always come in handy.
Getting others to build structures for you as a distraction from chores quickly became a trend in a small circle of very naughty boys and various models all competed for being the prettiest and fairest of them all. Some architects had of course better taste than others. If God existed, he would probably have voted the austere gothic cathedrals the pits, but would have quite enjoyed St Basil’s in Moscow. Real God would have liked color and harmony. In that sense the Gothic cathedral was once theorized in some circles as tangible proof that God is just a figment of our imagination.
Some pieces of the new improved structures were being pinched off by hunter gatherers who thought they could just pick up what was there, just as they had done since time immemorial. Such primitive behavior could not be tolerated by the builders who had been working hard with mostly much less to show for than the hunter gatherers, so in a fit of what could only be explained as jealousy, the edifices were reshaped into tops and set in motion by the builders with the approval of the architects who could not care less as long as they could still avoid doing the dishes. The architects were smart enough to know they needed to keep the builders on their side.
Initially the structures were spinning just fast enough to prevent the primitives from grabbing anything from it, also because that was as fast as they could manage with oxen and/or slaves. Ever so gradually the tops grew and were draining their surroundings. The builder then devised new forms of energy to make the tops spin faster. They were also bumping into each other a fair bit on that small round table, all the more frequently that they were getting bigger.
The primitives that hadn’t jumped on board a top were just left to stay put and try to avoid being caught in one of the grooves that were being gouged out in the delicate surface of the table by the various spinning tops.
One day not so long ago came another young aspiring architect called Adam who decided he really really didn’t like doing the dishes and wanted in to the whole architect game. The table was getting crowded with tops so starting from scratch was now a delicate exercise. Adam was smarter than average and a very good sweet talker, he thought for a bit under the pressure of an ultimatum from his mother to do the dishes now or face the consequences. He came up with a merger idea which seemed like a no brainer to all the other architects. One great big and beautiful spinning top rather than a number of smaller wobbly ones.
A few marbles were exchanged under the table to get together on the same wavelength and presto, the path was clear for one great big beautiful spinning top on the table.
Adam’s mother didn’t need to be killed as an army of Pakistani dishwashers was soon at her disposal along with all the Polish plumbers she could wish for, thanks to the hefty commission on the building works and the interest on the money loaned for the works.
Money was now being created out of thin air, and it was in the interest of the whole system to keep that fact under wrap. Adam had taught the builders that they had to therefore put on a stern face, come up with some incomprehensible Latin jargon, pretend that at least a minimum of effort was required to reach financial Nirvana, and maintain fear by looking constantly worried about the state of the economy.
People had been conditioned for centuries by a system which was dealing in Brownie points and fear of damnation. Adam’s new theory was simply a natural evolution switching faith from statues of bearded men to pictures of bearded men on rectangular pieces of paper. Very little lubrication was actually required to firmly implant the new theory deep into the bowels of human society.
A collection of societies with different cultures had just become a civilization worshipping money, and Adam saw what he had done, and he said that it was good. Then he could rest every day whilst his minions would pretend to work to maintain appearances.
Soon after the merger all the other architects but Adam went to play with their newly acquired marbles as they had somewhat lost interest in the shiny new toy which was beautiful in shape and sheer size indeed but the lack of bumping into each other was getting boring. It would just spin and grow, shiny but monotonous after a while.
Adam was noticing that the weight of the top was cutting deep grooves in the table which would send it into wobbles at times. In 1914 and in 1939 he thought it might actually topple. A few quick taps to send it spinning faster fixed all that and even though it was no longer wobbling, it would now meander on the whole surface of the table and the increased centrifugal force was starting to disintegrate it, millions of specks were being flung off and either landed on the table to be ground to a lubricating paste by the top or were simply ejected far enough to fall directly into the void.
The scramble by the primitives to avoid the top seemed by now almost futile, but Adam had never really taken his eyes off the beautifully shiny spinning toy. He did notice that the grooves were making the surface uneven and the top was starting to get caught in the grooves to the point of almost drilling through the table. Adam thought he should probably stop the thing before it damaged the table. Since it