The Instruction Tablet

Glagalbagal's problem was no longer conceptual. He had counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The problem was volume. Three locations, each requiring monthly counts, quarterly growth reports, annual feed calculations, tax computations, and grazing rebalancing — all of it done by Glagalbagal personally. With the new requirement to maintain separate counts for adults and young animals, the workload had roughly doubled. He was, by any reasonable measure, drowning.

He needed to delegate the arithmetic to his velociraptors. Not the decision-making — just the mechanical procedures. A velociraptor could move pebbles between baskets as well as Glagalbagal could, provided it knew what to do.

The First Attempt

Glagalbagal carved an instruction tablet for the most basic task: counting a herd as it exited the enclosure in the morning.

The tablet read:

Count the herd.

He handed it to a velociraptor named Krothva. Krothva stared at the tablet. Then she stared at Glagalbagal. Then she stared at the herd. Then she sat down.

Glagalbagal: Why are you not counting?

Krothva: What does "count" mean?

Glagalbagal: You know what counting means. You have seen me do it a hundred times.

Krothva: I have seen you move pebbles. Is that what you want me to do?

This was the first lesson. Glagalbagal knew how to count. He had internalised the procedure so thoroughly that it felt like a single action — "count." But to Krothva, who had never performed the procedure herself, "count" was meaningless. She needed every physical action spelled out.

The Second Attempt

Glagalbagal carved a new, much longer tablet:

Step 1. Take a pebble from the box. Step 2. Wait for an animal to exit the enclosure. Step 3. When an animal exits, place the pebble in basket 1. Step 4. If basket 1 contains eight pebbles, empty basket 1 back into the box and place one pebble in basket 2. Step 5. Return to Step 1.

He handed it to Krothva. She read it carefully and began. The first seven animals went smoothly — one pebble each into basket 1. The eighth animal exited. Krothva placed the eighth pebble, saw that basket 1 contained eight, emptied it, and carried one pebble to basket 2. Perfect.

The procedure ran smoothly until the herd count exceeded the capacity of baskets 1 and 2 combined. Basket 2 reached five pebbles. Krothva placed the next pebble and basket 2 now held six — but the tablet said nothing about basket 2 overflowing. The instructions only mentioned basket 1.

Krothva kept going. Basket 2 reached ten, then fifteen. Pebbles were spilling onto the floor. She was following the instructions exactly: Step 4 said "if basket 1 contains eight pebbles, carry to basket 2." It said nothing about basket 2 carrying to basket 3.

The Lesson

Glagalbagal had assumed that the carrying rule was obviously general — that Krothva would understand "carry from basket 1 when full" to imply "carry from any basket when full." But Krothva was not interpreting. She was executing. She did exactly what the tablet said and nothing else.

Blortz: You wrote instructions for basket 1. You did not write instructions for basket 2, or basket 3, or basket 4. She cannot apply a rule you have not stated.

The Third Attempt

Glagalbagal rewrote the tablet. This time, every carry rule was explicit:

Step 4a. If basket 1 contains eight pebbles, empty basket 1 and place one pebble in basket 2. Step 4b. If basket 2 contains five pebbles, empty basket 2 and place one pebble in basket 3. Step 4c. If basket 3 contains four pebbles, empty basket 3 and place one pebble in basket 4.

The tablet was long. It was tedious to carve. But when Krothva followed it, the count came out correct — for the first time, a velociraptor had performed a complete herd count without Glagalbagal's involvement.

That evening, Glagalbagal stared at the tablet on his wall. It was, in a sense, his first piece of infrastructure that could operate without him. The instructions were not clever. They did not require insight or judgment. But they were complete and unambiguous, and that turned out to be enough.