The Absurdity of Power

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Arthur Penhaligon was the most powerful man in New York, and he hated every second of it. Arthur possessed the ability to manipulate gravity with absolute precision. He could make a skyscraper float like a balloon or crush a tank into a soda can. There was only one catch: the power only worked when he was feeling completely, profoundly bored.

If Arthur felt passion, anger, or even a flicker of genuine interest, he became as powerless as a newborn kitten. Consequently, Arthur spent his entire life cultivating a state of aggressive indifference. He wore beige suits, ate bland porridge, and read the most tedious technical manuals he could find. He became a master of the "mental shrug."

The world, of course, viewed him as a stoic genius, a Zen master of the modern age. The government begged him to solve the energy crisis; the military wanted him to build floating fortresses. Arthur agreed to most of it, not because he cared, but because the requests were so repetitive that they induced the exact state of boredom required to execute the tasks.

He built a floating city over the Atlantic, not out of a vision for the future, but because the planning meetings were so dull that he accidentally lifted the entire construction site into the air. He ended a global war by making the opposing armies too lethargic to move, a feat achieved while he was halfway through a four-hour lecture on the history of beige paint.

The absurdity peaked when Arthur was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee flew him to Stockholm for a lavish ceremony. As he stood on the stage, surrounded by the most influential people on Earth, the sheer pomposity of the event—the gold medals, the swelling orchestras, the long-winded speeches—triggered a wave of intense boredom.

Suddenly, the entire concert hall began to drift upward. The dignitaries floated like confused fish in a sea of air. The champagne glasses drifted away, and the Nobel medal hovered inches from his nose.

The world watched in awe, interpreting this as a profound symbolic gesture of "transcending earthly bounds." Arthur, however, just sighed. He looked at the floating crowd and felt a sudden, genuine spark of amusement.

Instantly, the gravity returned. The entire hall crashed back to earth with a thunderous boom, leaving the world's elite in a heap of tangled limbs and broken glass.

Arthur walked out of the ruins, leaving the medal behind. He found a small, quiet park with a single, unremarkable bench. He sat down, closed his eyes, and focused on the absolute nothingness of the afternoon. He was the supreme master of the world, and his only ambition was to find a way to be truly, deeply, and permanently bored.

*** OTMES_v2_CODE: [V-08]-[T9-02]-[M3:8.0,M2:6.0,N1:0.5,K1:0.6,TI:20.0,theta:225deg]


© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) and his beloved father.

The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED (BRN74685111) all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement.

Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication.

To contact author, please email to datatorent@yeah.net

Based on the pending patent application document (202610351844.3), creationstamp.com has calculated the tensor feature encoding of this article:

OTMES-v2-UNKNOWN

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