Stanislaw Lem: The Cyberiad

—Great Gauss!—I cried. —This must be the place!

But though I circled around again and again, until I was quite dizzy, there was not a living soul to be seen anywhere on the planet’s sandy surface. Only when I dropped to an altitude of six miles was I able to make out a group of dots, which proved to be, upon higher magnification, the inhabitants of this most unusual heavenly body. There were a hundred or so of them lying about in the sand, and so motionless, I thought for a moment they might all be dead. But then I saw one or two scratch themselves, and this clear sign of life encouraged me to land. In my excitement I didn’t wait for the rocket to cool after its descent through the planet’s atmosphere, but jumped out at once and shouted:

—-Excuse me, is this by any chance the Highest Possible Level of Development?!

No answer. In fact, they paid no attention to me at all. Somewhat taken aback by this show of utter indifference, I looked around. The plain shimmered beneath the square sun. Here and there, things stuck out of the sand, things like broken wheels, sticks, bits of paper and other rubbish, and the inhabitants lay any which way among them, one on his back, another on his stomach, and farther on was one with his legs up in the air. I walked around the nearest and examined him. He wasn’t a robot, but on the other hand neither was he a man, nor any sapient proteinoid of the glutinous-albuminous variety. The head was round and plump, with red cheeks, but for eyes it had two penny whistles, and for ears it had thuribles, which gave off a thick cloud of incense. He was dressed in orchid pantaloons, a dark blue stripe down either side and appliqued with dirty scraps of closely written paper, and he wore high heels. In one hand he held a mandolin made entirely of frosted gingerbread, a few bites already missing from the neck. He was snoring peacefully. I leaned over to read the appliques on his trousers, but could make out only a few since my eyes watered copiously from the incense. The inscriptions were most curious—for example, NO. 7 DIAMOND NET WEIGHT SEVEN HUNDRED CWT, NO. 8 THESPIAN CONFECTIONERY, SOBS WHEN CHEWED, RECITES HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY IN THE STOMACH, ‘OUT BRIEF CANDLE’ FARTHER DOWN, NO. 10 GOLLOCHON-DRILL FOR EMERGENCY SLURGING, FULL-GROWN, and many more, which I simply don’t remember now. As I touched one of these paper scraps in trying to read it, a depression quickly formed in the sand beneath this native’s knee and a tiny voice piped:

—Shall I come out now?

—Who’s that?—I cried.

—It’s me, the Gollochondrill… Are you ready? Is it time?

—No, not yet!—I was quick to reply, and backed off. The next native had a head in the shape of a bell, three horns, several arms of varying length (two massaging its belly), ears that were long and feathery, a cap with a pretty purple balcony on which someone was having an argument with someone else—quite heated too, judging from the little plates that came flying this way and that, shattering on the brim—and he also had a kind of throw pillow, all jewel-spangled, tucked under his shoulders. While I stood before this individual, he pulled one of the horns off his head, sniffed it and tossed it away with a look of disgust, then poured a handful of dirty sand in the opening. Nearby lay something I first took for a pair of twins, and then for a couple of lovers locked in an embrace. I was about to turn away discreetly, when I realized that it wasn’t two people at all, or one, but exactly one and a half. The head was quite ordinary, except for the ears: every now and then they would detach themselves and flit about like butterflies. The lids were closed, but numerous moles on the chin and cheeks were equipped with tiny eyes; these regarded me with undisguised hostility. This remarkable being had a bioad and muscular chest, which however was riddled with holes, as if someone had been careless with a drill, and the holes were haphazardly plugged with raspberry jam. There was only one leg, but it was unusually thick and shod in a handsome morocco leather slipper, its curled toe tipped with a little felt bell. Near the elbow was a sizable pile of apple cores, or perhaps they were pear. My astonishment grew as I walked along and came upon a robot with a human head, a miniature self-winding samovar whistling cheerfully in its left nostril, and then someone reclining on a bed of candied yams, and someone else with a trapdoor in his abdomen, open so I could look in and see the crystal works. Some mechanical elves were putting on a play in there, but it turned out to be so terribly obscene, that I left in a hurry, blushing like mad. In my confusion I tripped and fell, and when I got up I saw yet another inhabitant of this strange planet: stark naked, he was scratching his behind with a solid gold backscratcher, apparently enjoying himself thoroughly, even though he was quite headless. The head lay farther on, neck stuck in the sand; it was touching its teeth with the tip of its tongue. The chin was checkered chintz, the right ear a boiled cauliflower, while the left was an ear all right, but stopped up with a carrot that carried a tag saying PULL. Without thinking I pulled, and out with the carrot came a length of string and then another tag that read YOU’RE GETTING WARM! I kept pulling and pulling, until the string finally ended in a medicine bottle that bore the label NOSY, AREN’T WE?

All these impressions left me feeling so dizzy I hardly knew where I was. But at last I pulled myself together and began to look around for the kind of person who might be communicative enough to answer a question or two. A possible candidate, it seemed, was one fairly pudgy type squatting with his back to me and occupied with something he held on his knees—at least he had only one head, two ears, two arms, and so on. I went up to him and began:

—Pardon me, but if I’m not mistaken, you gentlemen have been fortunate enough to achieve the Highest Possible—

The words died on my lips. He didn’t seem to hear me at all, for he was wholly taken up with what lay on his knees, which happened to be his very own face, removed somehow from the rest of the head and sighing softly as he picked its nose. For a moment I was stupefied, but only for a moment —my curiosity returned in full force, and I simply had to find out, once and for all, just what was going on. I ran from one native to the next, spoke to them, questioned them, raised my voice, insisted, pleaded, reasoned, even threatened, all to no avail. In my exasperation I grabbed the nose picker’s arm, and was horrified to find that it came off in my hand, though that didn’t bother him in the least, he only poked about in the sand and pulled out another exactly like the first—except for the orange plaid fingernails—blew on it a little, then affixed it to the shoulder stump. Curious, I bent over to examine the first arm, but dropped it hastily when it snapped its fingers in my face. By now the sun was setting, already two corners below the horizon, the air grew cool, and the inhabitants of H. P. L. D. began to settle down for the night, scratching, yawning, gargling, one shaking out an emerald quilt, another methodically taking off his nose, ears and legs and carefully putting them in a row at his side. I stumbled around in the dark for a while, then gave it up with a sigh and lay down to sleep too. Making myself as comfortable as possible in the sand, I looked up at the starry sky and tried to think what to do next.

—Indeed-—I said to myself—by all indications this is the very planet both Cadaverius Malignus and Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph spoke of, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe, a civilization of a few hundred individuals who, being neither people nor robots, lie around on jeweled cushions all day in a dirty, littered desert and do nothing but scratch themselves and pick their noses. No, there has to be some terrible secret behind all of this, and I shall not rest till I’ve uncovered it!!