Once upon a time there was a magical orb. If you had possession of this orb, your opponents could not touch you. You however could touch them. If one of the downtrodden wanted to stop you from claiming your hard earned rewards, all they could do was stand in front of you hoping you ran into them. It wasn't likely, but they still tried. For if you did run into them while they were standing straight and perfectly still, the orb magically became theirs. [You may be down on your luck and really need an orb some day, so this is why you must learn to sit up straight, without fidgeting during dinner.]
Now where were we. Oh yes. The obstacles. At first these stationary obstacles were but a minor nuisance and easily avoided. After all, how hard is it to avoid a stationary object? Then the economy went bad and people got desperate. They tried all sorts of things and eventually came upon one that caused great confusion. The desperate people started moving in front of the glorious orb carriers after they had leapt into the air to make their final delivery. Being in the air, the orb carriers had no way to avoid them. What a vile, dangerous, trick. Should the possession of the orb change when someone pulled such a stunt? Thankfully, the orb, being so precious, is always being watched by a set of Xebras. They somehow always knew exactly who should own the orb.
The great Scholars of Embarrassment (near Dustu on the Wahtn Sea) studied these Xebras and their decisions for decades trying to decide how the Xebras always knew. It led to the deep philosophical discussions such as: What constituted standing still? How long did they have to stand still before the impact to be deemed standing still? Was one ever standing perfectly straight? How much slouching or leaning was allowed? How could the observing Xebra, often on the move themselves, determine if another object was at rest? The last was termed the Xebras paradox. After many years, the scholars never found an answer. For any theory there were always many, many, counter examples.
In the book of Slo-mo Revelation, it came out that not only did the Xebras didn't always know, their errors were muddying the timeline. This caused great embarrassment. At first the almighty No Correcting Aristocratic Affiliates, progenitors of the Xebras, waited to see if their children could resolve the matter on their own. Eventually the timeline was so muddied that they stepped in. They proclaimed that the orb shall not change possession if the orb carrier had planted their foot in preparation for the final leap toward their rewards. Thus it became much clearer on how long the downtrodden needed to be standing, and that extra time made it easier to determine if they were standing straight. The timeline was saved; and the Scholars of Embarrassment were out of jobs; or so they thought. While on the surface it appears to create Xebras paradise, a new gremlin was birthed. What constitutes the planing of the foot?
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