Kingdom of Laggardnessia and Slownessland

Ten years after his accession to the throne of the Kingdom of Laggardnessia and Slownessland, king Laggard III, called the Slow, saw it well to start his reign with a remarkable work that would commemorate his name among the Laggardnessian people. After a complete year of serious thought, he decided to attend the graduation ceremony of the first rescue team that would be held in Lagardnessia's Institution of Emergency Services, and take a look over the work undergoing on the New Royal Palace his father, king Laggard II, had ordered to be built sixty years earlier.

The arrangements for the king's visit to the institution took only thirteen months to be carried out, for the king had duly allotted to this mission his new prime minister, Earnest the Galvanized, a member of an old naturalized family whose ancestors were obliged, owing to some political disputes raged furiously in their homeland, to flee by sea to Slownessland some three centuries previously.

The institution and the in-progress new palace were located on Slownessland, an island in the Sea of Laggardia, separating between it and the mainland of Laggardnessia was a narrow, three-hundred-meter-wide gulf, the Laggardian Gulf.

On the exact day prearranged for the visitation, the king and his noble companions started out early in the morning towards the harbor, which was within sight of the Temporary Royal Residence established by the founder of the kingdom, King Laggard I, known as the Lethargic. Arriving at the harbor at sunset, they embarked the royal yacht at midnight, and, as they were hurried, they made their journey immediately at dawn. Luckily, the wind was favorable―two meters per an hour―and, so, the royal yacht reached Slownessland a week earlier.

A day later, when the king and his guests of honor disembarked onto the shore of the island, the very first sight the king's eyes fell upon was a magnificent, forty- meter-high tower―the only part of the palace to be accomplished, exactly according the time-plan put by the architecture. King Laggard III was indeed too ambitious to get a close view of that high tower of the New Royal Palace which he could always glance its upper part from his royal residence in Laggardnessia. So elated by the splendor of the building, the king hurried, in zeal, to climb up the scaffold led the top of the tower.

The king's abrupt action was neither planned for nor expected to occur: the workers had unfastened the iron joints that fixed the scaffold to the walls of the tower a year earlier, and it was planned to break up the scaffold the year to come. And so, just as King Laggard III reached the top of the tower, the scaffold, with the king on its top, began, little by little, to incline towards the ground.

While all the assembly, breathless and helpless, watched their dear king fall from that dazing height, Earnest the Galvanized was not slow to recognize that it was necessary to take a prompt decision to save the king's life. "This affair requires some serious thought," the prime minister whispered, half to himself. "I must go to a nearby open café to decide what I should do while having a cup of tea."

Neither during the four hours after which the tea was served, nor during the two hours he had to wait until the tea cooled down, could the Galvanized make any decision. At the time of sunset, as he was sipping the last sip of his tea, a thought struck him. "Tomorrow will see the graduation of the first Laggardnessian rescue team! It is a fitting occasion to put their qualifications to a practical test! I will go the institution tomorrow to tell them of the accident," he murmured insistently.

With the first glimmerings of the following day's dawn, Earnest the galvanized headed, hot foot, for the Institution of Emergency Service, and reached it almost at noon. He announced the tragic incident to the rescuers of the institution, who all become saddened by the news of the disaster, and they all would have canceled their preparations for their graduation festival for the loss of the dear king, had not the Galvanized persuaded them to do their best to save the king and not to lose hope.

Encouraged by the prime minister's inspiring words, the rescue team started out from the institution early in the next morning, reaching the targeted site late in the afternoon. Their arrival was prompt indeed, as they succeeded in saving the magnificent king, safe and sound and without a scratch.

(The prompt arrival of the first Laggardnessian rescue team is recorded as the best ever prompt arrival accomplished by a rescue team in the whole history of the world: the members of this rescue team are indeed the only rescuers known to history to reach the emergency area for which they headed before the disaster they started out to relieve take place―for when they reached the intended site, King Laggard the Slow, King of Laggardnessia and Slownessland, was still falling down and had not yet hit against the ground.)