Robert Sheckley - Mindswap

The problem is always prediction: how to tell what world you are in before the Twisted World reveals it disastrously to you.

In the Twisted World, as in any other, you are apt to discover yourself. But only in the Twisted World is that meeting usually fatal.

Familiarity breeds shock – in the Twisted World.

The Twisted World may conveniently, (but incorrectly) be thought of as a reversed world of Maya, of illusion. You may find that the shapes around you are real, while You, the examining consciousness, are illusion. Such a discovery is enlightening, albeit mortifying.

A wise man once asked, 'What would happen if I could enter the Twisted World without preconceptions?' A final answer to his question is impossible; but we would hazard that he would have some preconceptions by the time he came out. Lack of opinion is not armour.

Some men feel that the height of intelligence is the discovery that all things may be reversed, and thereby become their opposites. Many clever games can be played with this proposition, but we do not advocate its use in the Twisted World. There all doctrines are equally arbitrary, including the doctrine of the arbitrariness of doctrines.

Do not expect to outwit the Twisted World. It is bigger, smaller, longer and shorter than you; it does not prove; it is.

Something that is never has to prove anything. All proofs are attempts at becoming. A proof is true only to itself, and it implies nothing except the existence of proofs, which prove nothing.

Anything that is , is improbable, since everything is extraneous, unnecessary, and a threat to the reason.

Three comments concerning the Twisted World may have nothing to do with the Twisted World. The traveller is warned.

The transition was abrupt, and not at all what Marvin thought it would be. He had heard stories about the Twisted World, and had hazily expected to find a place of melting shapes and shifting colours, of grotesques and marvels. But he saw at once that his viewpoint had been romantic and limited.

He was in a small waiting-room. The air was stuffy with sweat and steam heat, and he sat on a long wooden bench with several dozen other people. Bored-looking clerks strolled up and down, consulting papers, and occasionally calling for one of the waiting people. Then there would be a whispered conference. Sometimes a man would lose patience and leave. Sometimes a new applicant would arrive.

Marvin waited, watched, daydreamed. Time passed slowly, the room grew shadowy, someone switched on overhead lights. Still no one called his name. Marvin glanced at the men on either side of him, bored rather than curious.

The man on his left was very tall and cadaverous, with an inflamed boil on his neck where the collar rubbed. The man on his right was short and fat and red-faced, and he wheezed with every breath.

'How much longer do you think it should take?' Marvin asked the fat man, more to pass the time than in a serious attempt to gain knowledge.

'Long? How long?' the fat man said. ' Damned long, that's how long it'll take. You can't hurry their goddamned majesties here in the Automobile Bureau, not even when all you want is to have a perfectly ordinary driver's licence renewed, which is what I'm here for.'

The cadaverous man laughed: a sound like a stick of wood rapping against an empty gasoline can.

'You'll wait a goddamned long time, baby,' he said, 'since you happen to be sitting in the Department of Welfare, Small Accounts Division.'

Marvin spat thoughtfully on the dusty floor and said, 'It happens that both of you gentlemen are wrong. We are seated in the Department, in the anteroom of the Department, to be precise, of the Department of Fisheries, I was trying to say. And in my opinion it is a pretty state of affairs when a citizen and taxpayer cannot even go fishing in a tax-supported body of water without wasting half a day or more applying for a licence.'

The three glared at each other. (There are no heroes in the Twisted World, damned few promises, a mere scattering of viewpoints, and not a conclusion in a carload.)

They stared at each other with not particularly wild surmise. The cadaverous man began to bleed slightly from the fingertips. Marvin and the fat man frowned with embarrassment and affected not to notice, The cadaverous man jauntily thrust his offending hand into a waterproof pocket. A clerk came over to them.

'Which of you is James Grinnell Starmacher?' the clerk asked.

'That's me,' Marvin replied. 'And I want to say that I've been waiting here for some little time, and I think this department is run in quite an inefficient fashion.'

'Yeah, well,' the clerk said, 'it's because we haven't got in the machines yet.' He glanced at his papers. 'You have made application for a corpse?'

'That is correct,' Marvin said.

'And you affirm that said corpse will not be used for immoral purposes?'

'I so affirm.'

'Kindly state your reasons for acquiring this corpse.'

'I wish to use it in a purely decorative capacity.'

'Your qualifications?'

'I have studied interior decorating.'

'State the name and/or identification code number of the most recent corpse obtained by you.'

'Cockroach.' Marvin replied. 'Brood number 3/32/A45345.'

'Killed by?'

'Myself. I am licensed to kill all creatures not of my subspecies, with certain exceptions, such as the golden eagle and the manatee.'

'The purpose of your last killing?'

'Ritual purification.'

'Request granted,' the clerk said. 'Choose your corpse.'

The fat man and the cadaverous man looked at him with wet, hopeful eyes. Marvin was tempted, but managed to resist. He turned and said to the clerk, 'I choose you.'

'It shall be so noted,' the clerk said, scribbling on his papers. His face changed to the face of the pseudo-Flynn. Marvin borrowed a crosscut saw from the cadaverous man, and, with some difficulty, cut the clerk's right arm from his body. The clerk expired unctuously, his face changing once again to his clerk's face.

The fat man laughed at Marvin's discomfiture. 'A little transubstantiality goes a long way,' he sneered. 'But not far enough, eh? Desire shapes flesh, but death is the final sculptor.'

Marvin was crying. The cadaverous man touched his arm in a kindly manner. 'Don't take it so hard, kid. Symbolic revenge is better than no revenge at all. Your plan was good; its flaw was external to yourself. I am James Grinnell Starmacher.'

'I am a corpse,' said the corpse of the clerk 'Transposed revenge is better than no revenge at all.'

'I came here to renew my driving licence,' the fat man said. 'To hell with all you deep thinkers, how about a little service?'

'Certainly sir,' said the corpse of the clerk. 'But in my present condition, I can license you only to fish for dead fish.'

'Dead, alive, what difference does it make?' the fat man said. 'Fishing is the thing; it doesn't matter so much what you catch.'

He turned to Marvin, perhaps to amplify that statement. But Marvin had left

and, after an unpersuasive transition, found himself in a large, square, empty room. The walls were made of steel plates, and the ceiling was a hundred feet above his head. There were floodlights up there, and a glassed-in control booth. Peering at him through the glass was Kraggash.

'Experiment 342,' Kraggash intoned crisply. 'Subject: Death. Proposition: Can a human being be killed? Remarks: This question concerning the possible mortality of human beings has long perplexed our finest thinkers. A considerable folklore has sprung up around the subject of death, and unverified reports of killings have been made throughout the ages. Furthermore, corpses have been brought forth from time to time, indubitably dead, and represented as the remains of human beings. Despite the ubiquity of these corpses, no causal link has ever been proven to show that they ever lived, much less that they were once human beings. Therefore, in an attempt to settle the question once and for all, we have set up the following experiment. Step one …'