The Emperor Can't Do Math

In a grand hall of polished marble and echoing applause, the Emperor stood beneath a ceiling painted with victories no one could quite remember. Courtiers lined the walls in fine silk, their hands in anticipated position, ready, not to question, but to clap.

Before them sat a simple table. On it, one small item. A Pen.

The Emperor lifted it.
“This pen,” he screamed, “is only worth $100 but they are selling it to us for $600!”

A roar of disgust rippled through the room.

With pen raised, he exclaimed “they are making a 600% profit, they are ripping us off.”

The room erupted, applause, admiration. Heads nodded vigorously, as if truth itself had just been improved.

At the edge of the hall stood a quiet scribe. With ink-stained fingers hovering over parchment, his brows furrowed. He hesitated. The numbers didn’t add up. They couldn’t. But around him, the celebration grew louder, swallowing the space where doubt might have lived.

Moments later, the Emperor declared “by royal decree, I shall demand that this pen only cost $100, thereby saving our people 600%!”

The applause was even louder this time. Some courtiers rose to their feet. A few wiped tears from their eyes, overwhelmed by the brilliance of it all.

The scribe looked around, searching for someone, anyone, whose face held even a flicker of confusion. But all he saw were smiles stretched thin over committed expresssions of loyalty and obedience. Agreement had become performance. Understanding was no longer required.

Finally, he stepped forward, his voice small against the vastness of the hall.

“Your Majesty,” he said carefully, “if I may?”

The room went still. Not silent, never silent, but still in the way a forest goes still when something fragile is about to be crushed.

The Emperor tilted his head.

The scribe swallowed. “A thing cannot decrease by more than all of itself. And to grow from one hundred to six hundred is… five hundred percent, not six.”

For a moment, nothing happened.

Silence filled the air. Breathing stopped.

Then a courtier laughed. Another joined.

Soon the room was alive again, not with curiosity, but with relief. The tension dissolved into ridicule, as if the scribe had committed the gravest offense.

The Emperor smirked with the immediate disdain reserved for those who simply didn’t understand excellence.

“How stupid you are,” he said, “who let you in?"

“You will never understand the greatness of my math. It’s the best, better than anyone else has ever done before me!”

The scribe stepped back.

Applause resumed.

This time, louder than ever.