A sailing ship is sinking and the commanders and crew alike run from one side to the other carrying buckets and shouting unintelligible orders, in panic, trying to state in different languages nothing but the evident truth.

A commander gives the order to forge ahead; that the ship will not sink because it simply will not, and chooses different members of the crew to execute a plan that will save them from being wrecked; and thus gives orders to stop using the buckets as a way to get the water out of the ship, and use them instead to contain as much as fish and other seafood alive as possible, even if that meant more weight on board. 

People obey. Some know the orders are weak and ineffective, but still they execute the orders of a –to not sink the ship-plan that consists of putting as much weight on the ship as possible and somehow prevent it from sinking.

And what about the life vests and essential provisions? They are suddenly ordered to be burnt, since the fire, in plain light of day will make, according to the commanders, the little ships that sail that route to see them and in consequence alert other bigger ships that a rescue is badly needed.

And so they do. Repeating in a song that they are not doing anything else but preventing the ship from sinking. Commanders are praised. But when no ship could be seen and the fire got out of control, and the ship itself began to burn, then the emergency alert was activated. New members of the crew were called in for the job. The mission? Prevent the ship from sinking: a ship that was beginning to sink and beginning to be consumed by fire. 

And so they decided that the most intelligent thing to do was to end the fire with water; and from all the sides of the ship, the new commanders gave orders to fill every bucket, every pot and every container with salty sea water, and bring them to the center of the ship that was burning with more intensity by the minute. And that was the resolution. The rest of the crew complained but obeyed. Some went directly to the captain to explain how every single decision made up to that point had been irrational and ended up going directly to the dungeon and were left there to drown or burn alive, whatever happened first, while the commanders continued to execute the plan that would certainly prevent the ship from sinking.

And then the night fell down upon them. The ship was not burning then, but it was already half beneath the water, and a storm threatened to start. As rain was imminent and that would mean more water into the sinking ship, new sailors were called in to take the lead and they suggested that the only way to prevent rain from sinking the rest of the ship was to construct a second floor; so every single material that had not been affected by the fire was to be used for the construction of the second floor where, by the way, the captain was to have a meeting room with adequate luxury. So there, in the middle of the night, the crew began the construction of the second floor. Since rain was really imminent, all other activities were suspended, and no one was authorized to fish or hunt seagulls. The members of the crew who complained about fatigue or lack of food were sent to the dungeon to die from starvation, yet the construction continued.

When all the materials available were used and there was nothing left to use, the commanders gave the order to destroy the bottom of the ship so as to use that wood for the building of the extremely-necessary-and-justifiable second floor, and assured that, with that, the ship would never sink. And so they did. They began destroying the bottom of the ship in order to obtain the construction materials needed; and water began to enter the ship more rapidly, at the same time that it began to rain. Everyone was shocked, they had water coming from above and water coming from beneath; they were tired and hungry and, at the same time, they wanted the ship to remain afloat. So the commanders gave the order that everyone should remove their clothes to prevent the water from entering the ship from beneath and to harshly continue the construction of the second floor with the wood that was removed from the bottom; the commanders explained that removing their clothes would help them to be lighter and, at the same time, fill the holes left by the removed wood in order to stop the entrance of water. And so they did.

It was midnight then and all the crew was tired, hungry and naked, trying desperately to swim across the ship to construct the captain’s new floor which constituted the only possible way to prevent the ship from sinking. The captain, the only one still dressed, began shouting desperately that some volunteers should swim beneath the ship and push it upward, and that would prevent the ship from sinking. One hundred loyal men that were tired, hungry and naked swam beneath the ship into even more frozen waters. The rest of the crew was surprised to not see any of them emerge again, and their astonishment made them unable to listen to the new orders that would, this time once and for all, prevent the ship from sinking. They all were tired, hungry, naked and paralyzed in shock, but no one wanted the ship to sink. Did they?