Stanislaw Lem: The Cyberiad

—Know then, O foreigner, that I am a pundit, a pundit’s pundit, first among philosophists, for my lifelong passion and profession is ontology, and my name (which the stars must some day outshine) is Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph. I was born of impoverished parents and from earliest childhood felt an irresistible attraction to abstract thought. At the age of sixteen I wrote my first opus, The Gnostotron . It set forth the general theory of a posteriori deities, deities which had to be added to the Universe later by advanced civilizations, since, as everyone knows, Matter always comes first and no one, consequently, could have possibly thought in the very beginning. Clearly then, at the Dawn of Creation thoughtlessness reigned supreme, which is only obvious, really, when you take a look at this, this Cosmos of ours!!— Here the ancient one choked with sudden rage, stamped his feet, but then weakened, and finally went on. —I simply explained the necessity of providing gods after the fact, inasmuch as there were none available beforehand. Indeed, every civilization that engages in intellectronics strives for nothing else but to construct some Omniac, which, in Its infinite mercy, might rectify the currents of evil and plot the path of righteousness and true wisdom. Now in this work of mine I included a blueprint for the first Gnostotron, as well as graphs of its omnipotence output, measured in units called jehovahs. One jehovah would be equivalent to the working of one miracle with a radius of one billion parsecs. As soon as this treatise appeared in print (at my own expense), I rushed out into the street, certain that the people would lift me up on their shoulders, crown me with garlands, shower me with gold, but no one, not even so much as a lame cybernerian, approached with words of praise. Feeling dismay rather than disappointment at this neglect, I immediately sat down and wrote The Scourge of Reason , two volumes, in which I showed that each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable, and will not stop until the nebulae and planets have been processed to cradles, chamber pots and bombs, all in the name of Sublime Order, for only a Universe with pavement, plumbing, labels and catalogues is, in its sight, acceptable and wholly respectable. Then in the second volume, entitled Advocatus Materiae , I demonstrated how the Reason, a greedy, grasping thing, is only satisfied when it succeeds in chaining some cosmic geyser, or harnessing an atomic swarm—say, to produce an ointment for the removal of freckles. This accomplished, it hurries on to the next natural phenomenon, to add it, like a stuffed trophy, to its precious collection of scientific spoils. But alas, these two excellent volumes of mine were also received with silence by the world; I said to myself then, that patience was the way, and perseverance. Now having defended, first, the Reason against the Universe (the Reason absolved from blame, in that Matter permits all sorts of abominations only because it is mindless), and second, the Universe against the Reason (which I demolished utterly, I dare say), on a sudden inspiration I then wrote The Existential Tailor , where I proved conclusively the absurdity of more than one philosopher, for each must have his own philosophy, that fits him like a glove, or a coat cut to specifications. And as this work too was totally ignored, I straightway wrote another; in it I presented all the possible hypotheses concerning the origin of the Universe —first, the opinion that it doesn’t exist at all, second, that it’s the result of all the mistakes made by a certain Demiurgon, who set out to create the world without the faintest idea of how to go about it, third, that the world is actually an hallucination of some Superbrain gone berserk in a manner infinite but bounded, four, that it is an asinine thought materialized as a joke, five, that it is matter that thinks, but with an abysmally low IQ—and then I sat back and waited, expecting vehement attacks, heated debates, notoriety, laurels, lawsuits, fan mail and anonymous threats. But once again, nothing, absolutely nothing. It was quite beyond belief. Then I thought, well, perhaps I hadn’t read enough of other thinkers, and so, obtaining their works, I acquainted myself with the most famous among them, one by one— Phrensius Whiz, Buffon von Schneckon, founder of the Schneckonist movement, then Turbulo Turpitus Catafalicum, Ithm of Logar, and of course Lemuel the Balding.

Yet in all of this I discovered nothing of significance. Meanwhile my own books were gradually being sold, I assumed therefore that someone was reading them, and if so, I would sooner or later hear of it. In particular I had no doubt but that the Tyrant would summon me, with the demand that I devote myself exclusively to the immortalization of his glorious name. Of course I would tell him that Truth alone did I serve and would lay down my life for it, if necessary; the Tyrant, desirous of the praises my brilliant brain could formulate, would then attempt to bring me round with honeyed words and even toss sacks of clinking coins at my feet, but, seeing me unmoved and resolute, would say (prompted by his wise men) that as I dealt with the Universe, I ought to deal with him as well, for he represented, after all, a part of the Cosmic Whole. Outraged at this mockery, I would answer sharply, and he would have me put to torture. Thus I toughened my body in advance, that it might endure the worst with philosophical indifference. Yet days and months passed by, and nothing, no word from the Tyrant—so I had readied myself for martyrdom in vain. There was only a certain scribbler by the name of Noxion, who wrote in some cheap, vulgar evening gazette that this prankster Chlorian made up no end of farfetched yarns in his book facetiously entitled, The Gnostotron , or The Ultimate Omnipotentiometer , or A Pee into the Future. I rushed to my bookshelf—yes, there it was, the printer had somehow left out the k. . .. My first impulse was to go out and murder him, but reason prevailed. “My time will come!” I told myself. “It cannot be, for someone to cast forth pearls of eternal wisdom left and right, day and night, till the mind is blinded by the surging Light of Final Understanding—and nothing! No, fame will be mine, acclaim will be mine, thrones of ivory, the title of Prime Mentorian, the love of the people, sweet solace in a shaded grove, my very own school, pupils that hang on every word, and a cheering crowd!” For verily, O foreign one, every pundit cherishes such dreams. True, they’ll tell you that Knowledge is their only sustenance, and Truth their only joy, that not for them are the trappings of this world, the ribbons, medals and awards, the warm embrace of thermomours, and gold, and glory, and applause. Humbug, my dear sir, sheer humbug! They all crave the same thing, and the only difference between them and myself is that I, at least, have the greatness of spirit to admit to such frailties, openly and without shame. But the years went by, and I was referred to only as Chlorian the Fool, or Poor Old Chlorio. When the fortieth anniversary of my birth arrived, I was amazed to find myself still waiting for the masses to beat a path to my door. So I sat down and wrote a dissertation on the H. P. L. D.’s, that is, the civilization that has progressed the farthest in the entire Universe. What, you say you never heard of them? But then neither did I, nor did I see them, nor for that matter do I ever expect to; I established their existence on purely deductive grounds, in a manner that was strictly logical, inevitable and theoretical. For if—so went my argument —the Universe contains civilizations at varying stages of development, the majority must be more or less average, with a few that have either fallen behind or managed to forge ahead. And whenever you have a statistical distribution, say, for example, of height in a group of individuals, most will be medium, but one and only one may be the highest, and similarly, in the Universe there must exist a civilization that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of Development. Its inhabitants, the H. P. L. D.’s, know things of which we do not even dream. All this I placed in four volumes, paying for the glossy paper and the frontispiece portrait of the author out of my own pocket, but in vain—it shared the fate of its predecessors. A year ago I read the whole work through, from cover to cover, and wept, so brilliantly was the thing written, so full of the breath of the Absolute—no, it simply cannot be described! And then, at the age of fifty, I nearly hit the ceiling! You see, I would occasionally purchase the works of other sages, who enjoyed great riches and the sweets of success, to learn what sort of things they wrote about. Well, they wrote about the difference between the front and the rear, about the wondrous structure of the Tyrant’s throne, its sweeping arms and all-enduring legs, and tracts about good manners, and detailed descriptions of this and that, during which no one ever praised himself in any way, and yet it worked out somehow that Phrensius stood in awe of Schneckon, and Schneckon of Phrensius, while both were lauded by the Logarites. And then there were the three Voltaic brothers catapulted to fame: Vaultor elevated Vauntor, Vauntor elevated Vanitole, and Vanitole did likewise for Vaultor. As I studied all these works, suddenly I saw red, and wildly threw myself upon them, and ripped and tore, and gnashed and gnawed… until my sobs abated, and then, drying my tears, I proceeded to write T he Evolution of Reason As a Two-cycle Phenomenon. For, as I showed in that essay, robots and paleface are joined by a reciprocal bond. First, as the result of an accumulation of mucilaginous slime upon some saline shore, beings come into being, viscous, sticky, albescent and albuminous. After centuries, these finally learn how to breathe the breath of life into base metals, and they fashion Automata to be their slaves. In time, however, the process is reversed, and our Automata, having freed themselves from the Albuminids, eventually conduct experiments, to see if consciousness can subsist in any gelatinous substance, which of course it can, and does, in albuminose protein. But now those synthetic paleface, after millions of years, again discover iron, and so on, back and forth for all eternity. As you can see, I had thus settled the age-old question of which came first, robot or paleface. This opus I submitted to the Academy, six volumes bound in leather, and the expense of its publication quite exhausted the remainder of my inheritance. Need I tell you that it too was passed over in silence? I was already past sixty, going on seventy, and all hope of glory within my lifetime was swiftly fading. What then could I do? I began to think of posterity, of the future generations that must some day discover me and prostrate themselves in the dust before my name. But what benefit, I asked myself, would I derive from that, when I no longer was? And I was forced to conclude, in keeping with my teachings contained in four and forty volumes, with prolegomena, paralipomena and appendices, that there would be no benefit whatever. So, my soul seething with spleen, I sat down to write my Testament for Descendants , to kick them, spit upon them, abuse, revile and curse them as much as possible, and all in the most rigorously scientific way. What’s that, you say? That this was unjust, and my indignation would have been better directed at my contemporaries, who failed to recognize my genius? Bah! Consider, worthy stranger! By the time my Testament is enshrined by future fame, its every syllable refulgent with the glow of greatness, these contemporaries will have long since turned to dust, and how shall my curses reach them then? No, had I done as you say, their descendants would surely study my works with perfect equanimity, now and then remarking with a comfortable, self-righteous sigh: “Alas! With what quiet heroism did that master endure his cruel obscurity! How justified was his anger towards our forefathers, and yet how noble of him, to have bequeathed to us, even so, the fruits of his mighty wisdom!” Yes, that’s exactly what they’d say! And then what? Those idiots who buried me alive, are they to go unpunished, shielded from my wrath and vengeance by the grave? The very thought of it sets my oil aboil! What, the sons would read my works in peace, politely rebuking their fathers on my behalf? Never!! The least I can do is thumb my nose at them from afar, from the past! Let them know, they who will worship me and raise up gilded monuments to my memory, that in return I wish them all to— to sprain their sprockets, pop their valves, burn out their transmissions, and may their data be dumped, and verdigris cover them from head to foot, if all they are able to do is honor corpses exhumed from the cemetery of history! Perchance there will arise among them a new sage, but they, slavishly poring over the remains of some letters I wrote to my laundress, will take no notice of him! Let them know, I say, oh let them know, once and for all, that they have my heartfelt damnation and most sincere contempt, that I hold them all for skeleton-kissers, corpse-lickers, professional axle-jackals, who feed on carrion because they are blind to wisdom when it is alive! Let them, in publishing my Complete Works—which must include this Testament, my final curse upon their future heads-—let the vile thanatomites and necrophytes thereby be deprived of the chance to congratulate themselves, that Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph, peerless pundit of yore who limned the infinite tomorrow, was of their race! And as they grovel beneath my pedestal, let them have the knowledge that I wished them nothing but the very worst the Universe has to offer, and that the force of my hatred, hurled forth into the future, was equaled only by its impotence! Let them know that I disowned them utterly, and bestowed upon them nothing but my loathing and anathema!!!