Long ago, on a planet far away, there was a country full of farmland
and farmers.  The planet had a large and hungry population, and so
most of the farmers had enormous estates with heavily automated
equipment to grow lots of food as efficiently as possible.

But one farmer was different.  Alyssa P. Hacker had a small plot of
land, with hardly any equipment (but her few tools were quite
versatile), and she specialized in growing a few beautiful flowers,
with lots of tender loving care.  She didn't make nearly as much money
as the other farmers with their enormous yields, but she became quite
well-known among lovers of beautiful things.  She didn't try to make
waves.  "All the other farmers are doing very valuable work, feeding
the population, and they're doing a fine job of it.  On my little
farm, I'm doing a different kind of work.  There's room for all of us."
Her flowers were shown on television, and professors from the local
Ag College liked to send young, enthusiastic farming students to work on
Alyssa's farm because its structure was so simple that a youth could
examine every aspect of it and really come to understand how the farm
functioned.

Naturally, the other farmers, even though they were much more rich and
powerful, were consumed with envy.  It didn't help that sometimes a
reporter from Time Magazine would ask Alyssa about her philosophy of
farming and she'd say something like, "Farms should be designed not by
piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and
restrictions that make additional features appear necessary."  Boy, did
that piss off the other farmers!

At first, the other farmers expressed their envy through direct attacks
on Alyssa.  "Inefficient!" they bellowed.  "This silly little farm is
not in the mainstream of modern farming science!"  And in some ways their
strategy was successful, because most people didn't know about Alyssa's
farm, and thought about farming only in terms of producing the most food
possible in the shortest time.  But of course Alyssa wasn't interested in
popularity contests; she just did her job the way she understood it and
provided beautiful flowers to her few steady customers.

Well, this was intolerable.  The other farmers had a Farmers Association
meeting, where they worked out a secret plan.  They decided that they'd
befriend Alyssa, pretend to love her style of work, and manipulate her
into becoming more like themselves.  Several of the farmers came to visit
Alyssa and asked her if they could spend some time on her farm and learn
from her.  Of course she agreed.

One day Farmer Bitdiddle came to visit.  Alyssa was a little intimidated
by him, because he had a Ph.D. from Ag College.  (Although Alyssa helped
teach the college students, and was deeply respected by the college
faculty, she herself was an old-style farmer with no formal schooling.)
"Alyssa, I really love this farm!" said Farmer Bitdiddle.  "Everything
is so beautiful, and you work with such simplicity and grace.  But, as
your friend, I feel I ought to tell you that you really should be more
careful about your language.  Sometimes you get the words 'no' and
'nothing' mixed up, for example."  Well, Alyssa had never studied the
parts of speech, and for her there seemed to be a lot of similarity
between 'no' and 'nothing,' but she certainly didn't want to offend the
linguisitic sensibility of Farmer Bitdiddle, so she promised to try her
best to keep them separate.

Everyone was very impressed with Alyssa's newfound way of speaking.  The
farmers said to each other, "It's 'no' and 'nothing' that kept her in her
place, not her ragged clothes and dirty face!"  Young Farmer Tweakit was
particularly smitten, and came to visit next.  "Alyssa, I love you!  Would
you show me all around your farm?"  And she did.  She showed him the
delicate flower beds, the careful attention to each flower, and the austere
collection of tools.  Alyssa's only power tool was an old tractor.  "But,
Alyssa, that tractor's all dirty!" said Farmer Tweakit.  "I don't understand,"
she replied, "Aren't tractors supposed to get dirty?"  Then Farmer Tweakit
told her about the new, hygienic tractors with self-cleaning attachments.
He insisted on giving her a new tractor as a present.  When the tractor
arrived, Alyssa was shocked.  "This tractor is as big as my entire farm!"
But Farmer Tweakit reminded her that land was cheap these days; you could
get a megabyte for less than $100.  "You can double the size of your farm
and it'll still be much smaller than everyone else's."  And so Alyssa bought
another plot of land to house her new hygienic tractor.

Farmer Reasoner visited next.  He, too, told Alyssa how much he respected
her elegant farming methods.  "But, Alyssa," he continued, "you only have
one shovel that you use for all types of shovelling!  You should have one
shovel for digging up whole plants, and a different shovel for digging up
fractional plants.  Why, you even let your little baby use your shovel for
pretend farming.  You can't use a real shovel to dig imaginary plants!
He should have an imaginary shovel."  Poor Alyssa thought to herself that
she'd always been perfectly happy with the one shovel, but Farmer Reasoner
explained very patiently that she could save a lot of effort by using the
right shovel for the right task.  It's much more efficient that way.  "You're
not a young woman any more, you know.  Time to start making things a little
easier on yourself."

Alyssa was sad.  She had to admit that each of the farmers had nothing but
her own best interests at heart.  Everyone listened respectfully when she
kept 'no' and 'nothing' straight.  The new tractor was clean and shiny, and
looked great on television.  And indeed it was much faster to dig a hole
if she picked out the proper shovel first.  But, she sighed, these days she
always seemed to be walking back to the farmhouse to get another shovel
instead of spending her time out in the dirt with her beloved flowers.
Somehow farming had gotten so complicated!

Farmer Warbucks was one of the richest farmers around, with lots of workers
to supervise, so he'd been too busy to spend much time visiting Alyssa.  But
when he heard how well the farmers' campaign was working, he decided to see
for himself.  He appeared at Alyssa's door in his three-piece suit, and
Alyssa was very impressed and eager to show him around.  He gravely
complimented Alyssa on her state-of-the-art tractor, and her complete
collection of shovels.  "Do you need any more new equipment," he asked.
"Nothing!  Umm, I mean, no!"  Poor Alyssa was flustered in the company of
this important farmer.  She knew she needed to calm herself down, so she
decided to take Farmer Warbucks along as she carried out one of her favorite
tasks, watering the flowers.  She smiled as she visited each flower, running
around in all directions as her fancy took her.  First she'd water an orchid
at the north end of her farm, then the color would remind her of a rose at
the south, and then she'd think of a tulip in the middle.  "Stop!  Stop!" said
Farmer Warbucks.  "You can't just wander around any old way.  What if you
forget one of the flowers?  You should start here at the left end and just
move down the row, systematically, flower by flower, until you get to the
right end."  "Oh, I could never forget one of my flowers; I love them all,"
Alyssa answered.  Now, you have to remember that Farmer Warbucks was a very
important man, and he was accustomed to telling his workers what to do and
being obeyed.  So, even though he'd been told about the farmers' secret
strategy of pretending to respect Alyssa, he just couldn't avoid letting
a hint of arrogance show in his voice as he said, "If you want to do *real*
farming, you have to water left to right.  This meandering is okay for a
few hand-tended flowers, and for teaching undergraduates at the Ag College,
but not for real work."

At this, Alyssa seemed to wake up, as if from a deep spell.  "But I *like*
teaching undergraduates!  And I love my hand-tended flowers.  That's exactly
the sort of work I want to do!  Why don't you go tell the people at
Common Farm what to do, and leave me alone?"  Farmer Warbucks was very upset
at this, but he tried to calm her down.  "Alyssa, don't you want to be
part of the community of serious farmers?"  "NOTHING!" shouted Alyssa,
and she kicked Farmer Warbucks off the farm, and all the rest of them too.
And she went back to her beautiful flowers and her eager students, and
they lived happily ever after.

============================== THE END ==============================