Medusa

In the mountain city academy, the head scribe wrote replies for the county every day. He wrote steadily and made few typos, but each time he would only put down one stroke, and the students gathered around the desk waiting for the next sentence, the line growing longer and longer.

The director first brought in a fast apprentice and had him write drafts in advance, while the lead writer was only responsible for picking the right sentences. The apprentice was very fast, but sometimes the tone went off, and the lead writer still had to spend effort checking the drafts.

Someone suggested bringing in three more apprentices, each writing a version. The drafts piled up on the desk like a small mountain, and before the lead writer had even begun reviewing them, the director could no longer tell who had written which sheet. The time saved was eaten up again by organizing.

Later a block carver proposed another approach: instead of setting up a separate desk, add several auxiliary brushes to the main brush's own rack. While the main brush writes the current character, the auxiliary brushes casually guess the next few characters, and the main brush still does the final acceptance in one pass.

The secondary heads are not independent agents, nor do they revise the article on their own. They simply branch a few prediction directions from the same primary head's habits, laying possible continuations on the table in advance.

At first the assistant scribe often guessed wrong, so the head scribe would only accept the correct part at the front, cross out the wrong part, and keep writing. When the guess was accurate, several characters could be advanced at once; when it wasn't, the final meaning of the letter wouldn't change.

The academy finally no longer needed to maintain a draft team outside. The lead writer still finalized the text; the assistant writer was only responsible for laying out the possibilities for the next short passage, so the lead writer could avoid repeating the same raising and lowering of the brush.

Only then did the director see clearly that speed does not necessarily come from another, smaller author. Sometimes it comes from adding verifiable parallel anticipation to the same author, letting the slow confirmation action cover more of the future at once. Later the chief writer set rules for the assistant writer: only guess forward from the current sentence momentum, do not start a separate argument; the letter advances only as far as the chief writer confirms. If the assistant writer guesses wrong repeatedly, put it away first to avoid cluttering the desk. The students then understood that the assistant writer's skill lies not in making decisions for the chief writer, but in laying out possible correct continuations in advance, so the slow work of confirmation repeats fewer times. Later the director found that the number of assistant writers should not be excessive either. Too many anticipations crowded the desk, and the chief writer actually slowed down. Only a small number of guesses that can be quickly verified truly save time. Guesses must be quickly verifiable to deserve a place on the desk.