The venerated mathematician, astronomical observer, and philosopher Wikaleo Galileaki did not invent the telescope. Rather, he perfected its application as a distant reading device and thus popularized it as an instrument for learning, free amusement, and time squander.
While still a university student, the inquisitive Galileaki began conducting experiments from his bedroom balcony using a crude set of glass lenses purchased from a street vendor in Amsterdam.
In studying his surroundings with the makeshift telescopic device, the young Galileaki noticed that not only was he able to read the labels on women’s undergarments, but also the pages of books held by people in the city commons opposite his apartment.
At first, the shy Galileaki, uncertain and unaccustomed to such attention, entertained the other telescope holders in the park with shadow images made with his hands, with shouting and waving, and once with an improvisational dance. Eventually, he realized that there was a greater application for this attention and power and began hanging posters from his balcony with informational messages for his followers to read.
Perhaps inevitably this activity drew the attention of the authorities when Galileaki deigned to post information on the movements and thoughts of the powerful Cardinal Moltopio.
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Inquisitor:
Is it not true that on the 13th day of April in the year of Our Lord 1633, you unfurled from your balcony a banner – the length of two stories – carrying a full and complete transcription of the Cardinal’s epistle on the virtues and importance of chastity, abstinence, and a life free of sexual indulgence ?
Galileaki:
Yes. It is the truth. It was complete and verbatim.
Inquisitor:
And was it not the next morning, the 14th day of that precise month, that you hung a second banner of equal length and breadth repeating a dispatch and announcement of the birth of the Cardinal’s second son from a unification with the “pure and lovely to behold” Veronica de la Bella ?
Galileaki:
It is true. It was part of a series on Christianity, paternity, chastity, and other things “ity.”
Inquisitor:
And did you not the very next week unfurl yet another banner listing the Cardinal’s most holy expenditures for entertainment, food, and beverage during the months of July and August in the year previous while he was engaged in contemplative retreat at his summer residence in the lake country ?
Galileaki:
The expenses were known to be true. They had been previously published and laid public in the accounting records of his suppliers. It was no secret among the literate and the hearsay circles.
Inquisitor:
But did you not also post by your balcony on this same date and parallel to the list of expenditures a large painting depicting a crowd of people vainly attempting to push a stout camel through the eye of a needle while Saint Matthew looked on ?
Galileaki:
Yes. Truthfully, I did. I thought it was funny – and my telescope followers have beseeched me to post more images of animals in unusual or humorous situations.
Inquisitor:
And did you not affix a poster to the wall of your home for all telescript followers to read, reciting in full and bold letters the entire text of the Revered Cardinal’s lectures and sermons on the importance of truth and his exhortation to “know the truth” such that “the truth will make you free” - on the very eve of this most Holy Trial and Inquisition into the needed remedies of torture, anguish, torment, and unending imprisonment ?
Galileaki:
Um. Uh, aahh. Come to think of it . I guess I made all that stuff up, I have perpetuated falsehoods, and I repudiate and recant.
Where do I sign ?
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