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Mingli Books · Years 7–10

The Sorting Engine

It had no favourites, it could not be bribed, and it never once explained itself. That was the part everybody liked.

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Before the engine, the town decided things in the ordinary way, which is to say in the hall, badly, and at length.

Who got the tenancies on the good side of the hill. Whose children got the four places at the school. Who was let into the market and who had to sell from the road. Every year it took eleven evenings and every year somebody's uncle was on the committee.

So when the engine came, the town was ready to like it.

It worked like this. You went up to the slot on the front of it and you gave it your name, and it thought for about as long as it takes to boil a kettle, and then it put out a card.

You took your card to the wall, where there were two arches. Which arch you went through was on the card.

Through the left arch were the tenancies, the school places, and the stalls in the market. Through the right arch were not.

The town liked the engine for four reasons, and they were good reasons.

It had no uncle. It had never met you. It could not be argued with, wept at, or bought. And it took a morning instead of eleven evenings.

Nobody's feelings were hurt by the engine, because the engine did not have any opinion of you. That is a real thing to be able to say about a decision and it had never been true in that hall.

Nobody knew how it decided.

That was not a secret being kept from anybody. The people who sold it did not know either; they sold six of them that year and had never opened one. It was simply not a question the engine could be asked, having no way to be asked anything.

And here is the thing I have never got to the bottom of: not knowing was part of why they trusted it.

A rule you can see is a rule somebody chose. A rule nobody can see feels like weather.

In the fourth year a schoolteacher called Ise, who taught the younger class and was not on any committee, wrote down every name that had gone in and which arch it had come out at. It took her two years and she did it in a ledger, in the evenings, and nobody asked her to.

The rule is this.

If the number of letters in your name is even, you go left. If it is odd, you go right.

That is the whole of it. It is not a proxy for anything. It is not a clumsy measure of some real quality. It is the number of letters in your name.

She took the ledger to the hall and they read it, and I will tell you what did not happen. Nobody was angry.

What happened was that the room began, quite genuinely and quite quickly, to look for what the rule might really be measuring. Somebody said that longer names ran in the older families. Somebody said that it was a way of spreading things out, which is a kind of fairness. Somebody said that Ise's arithmetic would want checking, and it did, and it was correct.

Everybody in that room could do better than the engine. What none of them could do was be the one who said so first.

What settled it was the following spring, when the mayor put his own name in.

He had married the year before and taken his wife's name, which is a perfectly usual thing in that town, and his new name is one letter longer than his old one.

He stood there a while with the card. Then he went and stood under the right arch, on his own, because that is what the card said, and he had spent four years explaining to people that it was.

They fixed it that summer.

The scaffolding was up for eleven weeks and it cost a good deal, and the engine now takes the length of your name into account alongside a number of other things, and it is much harder to work out what it does.

Nobody proposed turning it off. I have read the minutes twice. It is not that the idea was voted down.

Ise still teaches the younger class. She was asked, once, whether she felt the two years had been worth it, and she said that she had found out what the rule was, which is what she set out to do.

The queue is shorter now, because the engine is quicker.

Afterwards

For whoever is reading alongside

This is the newest story in the set and the one most likely to turn up in your actual life. Things that sort people without being able to explain themselves are not science fiction any more; they mark work, rank feeds, screen job applications and set prices, and the argument the town has in the hall is the argument that is currently being had about them.

A word worth stealing

Weather — a rule that gets trusted because nobody can see it. The town's mistake is not that they believed a machine. It is that not being able to question something felt to them like the same thing as it not having an opinion.

Two ways to read it, and they disagree

  • The engine is the problem. A decision nobody can inspect should not be allowed to matter, however impartial it looks. Impartial and arbitrary are not opposites — the engine is both.
  • The engine is a relief. Look at what it replaced: eleven evenings, and somebody's uncle. A rule that is arbitrary but applies to everybody may genuinely be fairer than a rule that is reasonable and applies to whoever is liked.

Both are arguable from the text. If you find yourself certain, go back and find the sentence that is working hardest to persuade you.

Questions with no answer key

  1. Ise takes two years and nobody asks her to. Explain what kind of person the story is making her, using only things it actually tells you.
  2. "Everybody in that room could do better than the engine. What none of them could do was be the one who said so first." Discuss what is stopping them.
  3. Why does the story end with the queue, and with the queue being shorter? Say what that last line is doing.
  4. Identify something in your own week that is decided by a rule you cannot see. How would you find out what it is?
  5. The mayor obeys his own card. Form an opinion: is that admirable, or is it the worst thing anybody does in this story?

Something to make

Write the notice the town puts up the summer after the mending, explaining the improved engine to everybody. It must be reassuring, it must be true, and it must not explain how the engine decides — because nobody knows. Half a page.

One text, four years

This story reads whole at Year 7 — nothing in it needs a device a Year 7 has not met. What changes up the years is the job, not the text. The four descriptors below are quoted from the Australian Curriculum v9.

  1. Year 7 AC9E7LE05
    how characters, settings and events combine to make meaningThe committee, the mayor and the townspeople are deliberately flat. Ise is not. Explain how the story tells you that without ever saying it.
  2. Year 8 AC9E8LE03
    how language and images position readers to respondYou are shown the inside of the machine and it explains nothing at all. Explain what that picture is doing, and why a cutaway diagram would have wrecked the story.
  3. Year 9 AC9E9LE05
    allegory, symbolism and literary devicesThis is the one in the set with a live referent outside the book. Name it, then test the analogy until it breaks — a good allegory has an edge and finding it is the exercise.
  4. Year 10 AC9E10LE04
    evaluate the social, moral or ethical positions representedTwo positions are set out in the notes: arbitrary-but-equal against reasonable-but-partial. Evaluate both, including the strength of the one you do not hold.

Year 8’s descriptor is the one this collection was built for: its own elaboration reads “discussing how a complex picture book combines words and images to position readers to respond”. Every story here is a complex picture book, and the picture is never a decoration of the sentence beside it.

The analytical ethical work belongs under Ethical Understanding, Level 5 (Years 7–8) and Level 6 (Years 9–10) rather than under the English Literature strand, which has no moral-position descriptor before Year 10.