Section 03. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
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Most adult Flatlanders will reach a length of around eleven of your inches, or twenty-eight centimeters. Twelve inches, or around thirty centimeters, is considered the natural limit.
Our Women are Straight Lines.
Our Expendable Soldiers, and the Lowest Classes of Laborers, are Triangles with two equal sides, each about eleven inches, or twenty-eight centimeters long, with their third side, or base, so short (Usually less than half an inch, or two centimeters), that they form at their vertices an extremely sharp angle, or point.
When these sorts of Triangles have a base of the most degraded type (less than an eighth of an inch, or three millimeters), it’s almost impossible to tell them apart from Straight Lines or Women, so sharp are their needle-like points.
Just like you do in Spaceland, we refer to these kinds of Triangles as Isosceles, which is how I will refer to them from now on.
Our Middle Class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles.
Our Doctors and Lawyers and Gentlemen are Squares (which is the class I belong to) and Five-Sided Figures, otherwise known as Pentagons, as mentioned above.
Above us are the Nobility, with several classes, starting with Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons. After Hexagons, the numbers of sides increase until one is given the honorable title of “Polygonal”, or many-sided.
When the number of one’s sides become so high, and the sides themselves each so small, that the figure can’t be told apart from a circle, he becomes part of the Circular, or Priestly order. There is no class higher than that of the Circles.
It is a Law of Nature with us that a Male child will have one more side than his father, so that each generation rises in the ranks of nobility, as a rule.
This means that a Square (4 sides) will have Pentagonal sons (5 sides), and his grandsons will be Hexagons (6 sides), and his great-grandsons will be Septagons (7 sides), his great-great-grandsons Octogons (8 sides) and so on and so forth.
But this rule doesn’t always apply to the Tradesmen, the Equillateral Triangles, and it’s even less common in the Isosceles Soldiers and Workers. But, to be fair, they can hardly even be described as human beings, since their sides aren’t all of equal length.
Because they’re subhuman, this Law of Nature doesn’t work on them, and most of the time, the son of an Isosceles is still an Isosceles.
But things aren’t entirely hopeless! Your children’s position in society can always get better, even if you’re one of the most degraded of Isosceles, through hard work, dedication, and many successful military campaigns!
Often, when Workers and Soldiers prove themselves to be smarter than their peers, when they are measured again, the measurements will show that their third side, or base, has grown, while their two longer sides have shrunk, producing a larger angle at the vertex!
The Priests then graciously become involved, arranging the marriage of the lucky Isosceles to a suitable Straight Line, and the sons born to these arranged marriages are almost always born with larger angles than their fathers, much closer to being an Equal-Sided Triangle than others who married for love.
Very, very, very rarely, a true, certifiable Equal-Sided Triangle is born to Isosceles parents.
(And a critic might ask, “But why does he need to be certified? When he eventually gives birth to a Square son, isn’t that a certificate from Nature herself, proving that he’s truly Equal-Sided?” And I tell you that no self-respecting Lady would ever consent to marry an uncertified Triangle.
Square sons are sometimes born to slightly Irregular Triangles, which would seem like cause for celebration, but almost every time, the Triangle’s Irregularity is passed down to his grandson, who either fails to attain the rank of Pentagon by instead being born a Square, or relapses entirely by being born a Triangle.)
If an Equilateral Triangle has any hope of being born to Isosceles parents, there must be a careful plan of arranged marriages for several generations, as well as strict self-control and frugality. Each generation needs to become smarter than their parents, and make sure their children are smarter than they are, for many generations.
When a True Equillateral Triangle is born to Isosceles parents, the birth is celebrated for many miles around.
The Sanitary and Social board performs a strict examination of the newborn, and, if he is certified as Regular, he is, with all due seriousness, conducted into the class of Equilaterals.
He is then immediately take away from his proud, sorrowing Isosceles parents, and adopted by an Equilateral who has no children of his own, who has to promise never to let his adopted child go to the area where he was born, or even look at his biological parents, in case he mimics them without realizing it, and reverts to a degraded Isosceles.
The rare birth of an Equilateral from the masses of slaves is not only welcomed by the slaves themselves, as proof that their hope of their children climbing the social ladder isn’t misplaced, but it also gives them something to be temporarily happy about in their otherwise miserable lives, like a sudden, surprise holiday.
Such an event is also welcomed by the Aristocracy.
The Higher Classes know that their own social status won’t be threatened by these births, because it’s really the exact opposite – these births help maintain their power.
If the acute-angled rabble had been completely, absolutely without hope and ambition, it would have given rise to many leaders to start their rebellious phases, and, with their superior numbers and strength, they would have been too much for even the wisdom of the Circles to handle.
But Nature is even wiser, and has decided that, as the working-classes get smarter, they also get weaker, as their acute angle, which makes them so dangerous and stupid, grows wider, getting closer to the comparatively harmless angle of an Equilateral Triangle.
In the most brutal, acute, and threatening of the Isosceles – creatures almost on the same level of Women with their lack of angle and intelligence – their ability to kill is matched by their inability to plan how to do so efficiently.
And in return, when their descendants have finally become smart enough to plan what would be devastating acts of terrorism, they’re no longer physically capable of carrying them out.
[Image description start: A black and white illustration with a black border, titled, “The Law of Compensation”. In the center of the diagram are five triangles, starting from so acute it’s almost a straight line, until it finally becomes a much wider equal-sided triangle. Above and below are scales. The first, above, is labeled, “Intelligence”, and it increases as the shape gets wider. The second, below, is labled, “Physical threat”, and it decreases as the shape gets wider. Image description end.]
How admirable is this Law of Compensation! It just goes to show how natural, and -- dare I say, divinely inspired? -- the structure of our society is here in Flatland! It is as if Nature herself is helping our great Polygons and Circles to kill rebellion in the cradle!
Art, too, comes to the aid of Law and Order. Our doctors can usually figure out a way – through artificial compression or expansion of the exoskeleton – to make the more intelligent leaders of any given Isosceles rebellion become Equilaterals, allowing them to immediately join the privileged higher classes.
Many more of these rebel leaders, though, are too far below the standard for intelligence to be allowed the surgery, but, bewitched by the promises of becoming Regular through similar treatment, they are tricked into entering the State Hospitals, which they will never be allowed to leave. They spend the rest of their lives honorably confined to these hospitals.
Only a few of the more obstinate, foolish, or highly Irregular of the rebel leaders are actually put to death.
And then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, without a plan, without leadership, are either killed without resistance by the small group of Isosceles assassins the Chief Circle pays in case of emergencies such as this, or, more often, thanks to the suspicions and in-fighting stirred up by the Circular party, begin attacking and killing each other, until none of them are left alive.
There are a hundred and twenty rebellions recorded in our state records, and a further two hundred and thirty-five minor outbreaks.
All of them have ended as I have described above.
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