1        Soul Bound 1.3      Making a Splash 1.3.4    An Adroit Pursuit 1.3.4.4  Sharpe Lecture: opportunism

Flashback to being a student in 2030s studying "Effective Political Activism" at University College London.

Dr. Sharpe started talking almost before the last student had entered the lecture theatre.

Sharpe: "Some cities are too useful to destroy."

He brought up a map on the projector showing river catchment basins.

Sharpe: "In Ancient Mesopotamia, in the top left corner of the Fertile Crescent, north of the Jordan and west of the Tigris and Euphrates, the walled city of Kadesh sat on a raised mound overlooking the Orontes River where it could control all the river traffic between Northern Levant and the Mediterranean Sea."

Sharpe: "At different times it was controlled by the Hittites, Assyrians and even the Egyptians (despite it being 800 km away, near the modern Turkish-Syrian border). They all realised that burning Kadesh to the ground would gain them nothing - within a decade, some other empire would rebuild a city on the same spot, attracted by the taxes they could charge merchants in exchange for letting their goods pass."

Sharpe: "And so it persisted, an artificial island of calm where the plains met the marshes, paying tribute to whichever power showed they were currently the strongest but loyal only to their own pockets - the wide boys of the ancient world."

He paused, as if re-thinking his own words.

Sharpe: "Did I say 'calm'? Perhaps 'carnage' would be a better word. In the year 1275 BCE it became the site of the world's largest, bloodiest chariot battle."

He pressed the 'next' button on the remote control for the projector but, instead of showing the battling chariots that the students were expecting, the new slide just displayed a QR code. He spoke in a brisker voice.

Sharpe: "Now, at the end of my last lecture, I asked people that still had some to bring along the watches and phone head-mount adapters that caused a bit of disruption at the end of last term. Because thanks to Provost Ashmore, I've received special permission for us to spend part of our two hour slot outside on the playing field behind this building, field testing the department of engineering's latest variant under strictly supervised conditions..."

His voice was drowned out for nearly two minutes by excited cheering, as students photographed the code on the projector and started installing the software that Alderney and Wellington had created. Dr. Sharpe waited patiently.

When the noise had died down sufficiently, he continued.

Sharpe: "We're going to run through two scenarios. The second, the main scenario, will be the Battle of Kadesh itself, and while yellow-tabarded members of the safety team go around helping you get set up and possibly loaning you some spare equipment, I'll be going over the rules and safety precautions. I suggest paying a bit of attention, because I will test you on them before play starts, and those failing will have to stand on the side lines with the other non-participants cheering their favourites on and trying to figure out the same truth those original warriors learned the hard way."

He gave them a mysterious look, then smiled broadly as he changed the slide to show a battered clay tablet.

Sharpe: "But before that we're going to pick two team leaders by playing a game, and to understand how they're linked I'm going to talk about solo hunting for a bit, and how the introduction of better bows and chariot wheels changed things."

Sharpe: "The attacker was an Egyptian pharaoh known as Ozymandias or Ramesses the Great, hero of fifteen military campaigns, ruler of their most powerful dynasty and their strongest general ever."

Sharpe: "The defender was an opportunistic bureaucrat named Muwatalli II - one of the last kings of the splintered Hittite Empire, shortly before its annexation by the Assyrians. His reign had been mostly peaceful and his heavy two-warrior chariots still used solid wooden cart wheels. On the face of it, the Egyptians should have been the sure winners."

He looked around, but the yellow-tabarded team members were still working their way along the lecture theatre's second row of seats, so he continued.

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Sharpe: "In fact, the Hittites had only one thing going for them; despite no longer being semi-nomadic tent-dwellers, they insisted that their kings prove their worth each year, using the same method the Assyrians did: they went hunting."

He spoke in a querulous voice: "Why hunting? Is the ability to shoot at helpless ducks a good basis for a system of government? Why derive supreme executive power from some farcical venatic ceremony?"

He paused a moment for the laughter to die down before continuing.

Sharpe: "To answer that, we have to go back to the start of the Bronze age and the days of Nimrod the Hunter, legendary founder of half the cities in the region and standard by which 'kingliness' was judged."

The lecturer's voice came alive, painting a picture in their minds; his bearing and broad arm gestures sketching out Nimrod's actions.

Sharpe: "Imagine Nimrod is wandering through the wild marshlands next to the Euphrates River; he's carrying a pair of javelins while eyeing the nearby flamingos, boar, aurochs and onagers. He's trying to decide which animal to hunt. He wants to come home with a more impressive kill than that showoff Adamu, the king of a rival encampment who is following an hour behind with his fancy recursive bow and pelican-feathered arrows."

Sharpe: "Boar are tasty, but they move fast and it can be hard to predict which way they'll swerve; aurochs are definitely impressive, but tough ones can gore you even after they've taken two hits. The calculation is complex. Nimrod has to take into account not only his chances of bringing a target down, but also the comparative benefit he stands to gain by doing so. There's a lot of eating on an aurochs and, if he shows his skill and courage by bringing one home, he'll have enough food to keep all his children alive over the winter months, and perhaps attract a few more warriors to guard his walls - his tribe will grow faster than Adamu's."

The lanky form of Dr. Sharpe reverted to that of an academic lecturer.

Sharpe: "In other words, he's demonstrating skill not just at killing beasts, but also at estimating how much net advantage he should expect by picking one particular target compared to his other options. But why are these such important skills? Not just for kings leading their nation into battle, but also for peacetime rulers? Or even for political activists planning protests? Let's try phrasing it more generically."

Sharpe: "Firstly, no matter how many times a hunter watches their javelin miss a boar trying to dodge it, or fail to penetrate an auroch's weak spot, they can't learn by rote the best strength, angle and timing to cast their weapon at, for every beast in every situation - there are too many variants. They have to create a model in their mind of what the world looks like to the beast and what it might be thinking; then use that model to predict what the beast is likely to decide and how it is likely to move. Let's give this property a name: being Predictable. The more accurate those predictions, the better; no matter what type of campaign you're planning. "

He brought up a new slide.

Aphorism

Meaning

opportunity knocks but once Build some flexibility into your plans, so you can take advantage of targets of opportunity cropping up. The Mantis Hunts the Cicada The potential gain right in front of you causes you to forget the potential disaster right behind you. keep your powder dry Prepare a reserve force in advance and stay vigilant for opportunities that herald traps or trends.

Sharpe: "Secondly, as received military wisdom makes clear, it is important to make efficient use of limited resources such as your time and ammunition, even when you're in a target-rich environment. Beware staking too much on successfully claiming a single target. Or, in your focus, you risk running your reserves so far down that stabbing you in the back to steal your resources without much threat of retaliation starts looking like an attractive attack of opportunity to your allies of convenience. The more you stand to gain by success and the less you stand to lose by failure, the better. So let's give this property a name too: being Advantageous."

He smiled as Alderney signalled that the end of the last row had been reached.

Sharpe: "Thank you Ms MacQuarrie. The rest of the tactics you'll all have to figure out yourselves. Please proceed to the field in an orderly fashion then answer the multiple choice question, to verify you have been paying attention, that you do consent and that you will stick to Provost Ashmore's safety requirements.

Ten minutes later they were creeping around a pair of football pitches, trying not to startled the flamboyance of fat flamingos fishing in the virtual river separating the two pitches. The discovery that players could pick up and reuse thrown javelins, even ones throw by others, was quickly followed by the discovery that others could pick up the trophies players dropped upon dying.

Kafana remembered feeling a visceral pleasure at the sight of her second virtual javelin plunge into the back of the student who, moments earlier, had stolen her first one. If the real thing had created even more adrenaline, she finally understood why so many warriors heeded their leader's call to battle. It was heady stuff.

The final surprise of the Nimrod emulation game was a pair of lionesses. They were smart, fast moving, well coordinated and each took three powerful and precisely aimed blows to bring down or nine less precise ones. Half the students died to feline mauling or retreated to the safety of the goal nets shown as virtual cities. The remainder gave up their pursuit of trophies and assembled into two teams, one for each pitch containing a lioness.

It was the leaders of these two teams who, in the following game, took on the roles of Ozymandias and Muwatalli. Simulating the Battle of Kadesh had been exhilarating, but it wasn't until they'd returned to the lecture theatre at the end, that Dr. Sharpe had revealed the truth.

It had been pointless.

Neither side had gained a net benefit by participating in the battle. There had never been a chance that they would; but it had taken fighting it out in order for them to realise this.

And, fifteen years later, the first ever peace treaty was signed. It was a document of such world-changing importance that multiple civilisations saw fit to keep the original intact, all the way to the present day, where the United Nations preserves it still.

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