The initial sheets emerged from the presses at the break of dawn, ink wet and the letters blurring where insensitive hands handled them too hastily. For the first time in history, the news of the empire was no longer restricted to rumor, priestly declaration, or noble rumors spoken in courtyards. It was written, printed, and copied in hundreds of identical pages.
Lord Bassana had taken Sharath's "news-broadside" vision and constructed it into something more—a newspaper. He called it The Imperial Voice, though several scribes had proposed that it should be called Sharath's Gazette. Bassana growled those away. "The empire is not a toy. A newspaper cannot be the emperor's diary. It must be more."
But the initial efforts were… disastrous.
Typewriters, lined in rows in the newly created editorial rooms, clacked and clacked as scribes struggled to keep up with dictated stories. One jammed so solidly that a whole key—R—popped loose and went flying across the room, striking a scribe on the forehead. Another machine came out with nothing but strings of random punctuation marks, a whole page reading only:
";;;;;;!!!!???;;;;"
The hapless operator offered it bashfully. "Perhaps… it is coded?"
Bassana pinched the bridge of his nose. "It is nonsense. Correct it."
Other fails were worse. The first front page boasted: "COW GIVES BIRTH TO THREE HEADED CALF; MAYBE OMEN, MAYBE DINNER". Below it, in smaller print, jammed between slanted margins: "Also, new tax decree."
People throughout the capital purchased copies in delight, not for the law but for the calf. Taverns were resounding with fierce debates by nightfall. Some swore that the three-headed calf was evidence of divine favor. Others said it spelled the downfall of the empire. One man wagered his home that the calf would be named the next general.
Sharath, hearing words, massaged his temples.
🐧NeuroBoop chuckled in his head. "Congratulations. You've united the people… around barnyard theology. Next decree: all cows must be vetted for imperial service."
The emperor could have quashed it then, demanded perfection, punished Bassana. Instead, he laughed. "Let them argue. At least they're reading."
The editorial room was the empire's oddest battlefield. Dozen or so scribes crouched over typewriters, hammering at keys with fingers blackened by ink. Inspectors patrolled the aisles, grabbing sheets and checking them for mistakes. Behind them, ranks of junior apprentices read from new pages, their voices rising and falling like a chorus:
"—new trade road completed—""—tax relief for farmers—""—MAYBE CALF IS DEMON—
Each page was read, rechecked, and oftentimes retyped. Efficiency gradually grew, agonizingly so, as Bassana enforced new habits:
One group of typists typed up drafts.
Another read aloud from typescripts.
The third fixed faults with neatness imposed by sheer terror of Bassana's glare.
What had consumed days initially now consumed hours. Typewriters tapped in unison, like an unholy music ringing in the stone hall.
But even speed was not sufficient. Distribution was crucial. And it was here that Sharath filled the gap.
Enchanted plates and wheels hummed with magic in the spacious printing room. Sharath had himself modified the press, attaching glyphs to metal so that a single etched sheet could reproduce itself a hundred times at the snap of a finger. When the magic was ignited, piles of newspapers materialized as if summoned by restless ghosts.
Occasionally, though, the spells went. awry.
One run set the same headline on each page of each section: "IMPERIAL BATHHOUSE LOSES SOAP". Another set all articles in reverse order, which made readers have to hold them against mirrors. On one occasion, in a cataclysm still spoken about in hushed tones in the editorial office, the presses would not stop reproducing. Before dawn, the capital's streets were ankle-deep in the same paper telling the same phrase over and over again: "SHARATH SAYS HELLO".
Bassana nearly had a stroke. Sharath merely grinned. "At least distribution is solved."
🐧NeuroBoop quipped: "History's first spam campaign. You've invented junk mail. Glorious."
Amidst the turmoil, the paper firmly took hold in the empire's veins. Street vendors now hawked not only bread and fish but crumpled copies of news. Messengers bore them to villages, where peasants huddled around the solitary literate individual in town to hear the words read out loud. Bars hummed with disputes about editorials, even when the stories were about nonsense.
One op-ed article demanded that road dust off newly laid highways was causing baldness in older men. Another asserted that chair-filled dungeons were "proof that ancient empires valued sitting more than anything." Citizens discussed such things with equal gravity as they would taxation or military conscription.
Sharath went to the editorial hall one evening, wondering how his child fared. He crept past rows of typewriters, observing scribes. Sweat beaded on brows, fingers tapped keys with military discipline. Pages circulated between three, sometimes four hands before they were sanctioned. A chart on the wall tallied blunders, names penned beside them. Bassana was merciless.
"Why so strict?" Sharath inquired of his grandfather as they strolled the floor.
Bassana's voice was a low growl. "Words fashion thought. If the people can't trust the words, they won't trust anything. And then, boy, your empire collapses quicker than any bridge."
Sharath nodded. It wasn't merely ink on paper. It was legitimacy.
He paused at a young scribe's desk, observing as she painstakingly retyped a page. "Do you enjoy this work?" he asked.
The girl jumped to her feet. "Y-Yes, Emperor. It is… faster than quill. Harder, too. My hands ache."
"Then use the machine, not fight it," Sharath said, pressing one key lightly with his finger. The clean click echoed. "It does not replace you. It strengthens you. A scribe with a typewriter is faster than any herald with a scroll. That is what the nobles failed to see."
The girl bowed low, her eyes glinting.
Later, Bassana cornered him. "You console them, but what of truth? These machines do steal jobs."
Sharath's face tightened. "No. They steal garbage. They make wasted hours words that travel faster than rumor. I will not let fear of the new bind us."
🐧NeuroBoop grumbled: "And so, the Emperor creates propaganda with a smile. Effective tyranny is still tyranny, Sharath."
Sharath dismissed the barb. He envisioned the grander vision—an empire not whispering in darkness, but arguing in sunlight, words borne not on rumor but on paper.
By the end of winter, The Imperial Voice was impossible to avoid. Illiterate farmers even debated what was "really written" in its columns. Governors swore it helped fan local controversies; priests whispered that it could spread heresy. But all of them secretly submitted their own letters pleading for decent coverage.
The editorial department became a battlefield of persuasion. Scribes were bribed by nobles. Victorious generals required effusive pieces praising their conquests. Priests slipped sermons in scrolls under doors. Bassana defied them all with equal disdain, though his desk became loaded with rejected bribes.
But Sharath noticed something else. He introduced a new page—Letters to the Editor. For the first time, common citizens could submit opinions, stories, even grievances, and have them published. The first letter, written in barely readable handwriting, said:
"Dear Emperor, why geese run after children on new roads? Are the roads haunted?"
Another requested: "If universities are constructed, can farmers go there to study, or rich men only?"
One simply said: "Tell Sharath to smile more."
The empire laughed, argued, and—most critically—read.
Sharath reclined in his throne one night, a new sheet of paper before him, and muttered to himself, "Now they all have one voice. Now, finally, we are one empire."
🐧NeuroBoop delivered one last zinger: "One empire, one newspaper, one three-headed calf. Glorious indeed."