Every day, without fail, the average day in D115 starts with three simple words.
“That’s the bell,” Yug Talukdar bellows from tables of monitors. It doesn’t matter if the bell is ear-piercing or silenced for testing, the entire room quiets down to hear what he has to say. He is the Supreme Leader.
That title was originally just a joke made early in the year, and I’m sure its creators thought nothing of it. But Yug really is a leader, one I feel is of supreme quality.
Every section has an editor to look over its writer’s shoulders and teach them how things work, but even editors need lessons on certain things. To be the editor of editors — the executive editor-in-chief — is a very tall order for most, but to Yug, the job was simply made for him.
In his own letter from the editor for issue five, he wrote about his time ruling over a plastic LEGO kingdom once belonging to a much younger king. In the weeks of spring when The Sidekick had a Minecraft server, he constructed an entire nation with nothing but blocks, sweat and tears.
The Combined Company — as it was named — has since remained dormant following The War (where the server was copied just to destroy it), but it represented a great achievement. Even as the ruler of The Sidekick, Yug still held the spare time to construct nations.
But it isn’t just a strong ruler that builds a kingdom. A truly great society is made from followers who have the power to improve it.
When I first started Sidekick, I had no idea what I was doing. I was completely new to the art of journalism, and surrounded by almost 100 plaques celebrating the program’s achievements.
For my first story, the Supreme Leader was chosen as the copy editor. His edits were hard to complete as a first year, (especially one who’d grown used to the conformity of English essays) but it let the story grow into one infinitely stronger thanks to his guidance.To rule over a kingdom requires modesty; it needs a leader who acts tough but fair to his followers, as it is the only way to build them into their best form.
And that’s who the editor-in-chief is. A man dedicated to building the program into its best possible self, but still one who knew when to let the program engage in a bit of nonsense.
And so I take one final bow before his leave, to the Supreme Leader of The Sidekick.
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