Stanislaw Lem: The Cyberiad

Then I thought:

—A terrible secret it must be indeed, to account for not only a square sun and planet, but lecherous elves inside bodies and insulting messages in ears! I always thought that if I, a simple robot, could spend my time in study and the pursuit of knowledge, think of the kind of intellectual ferment that went on among those more highly developed— no, the most highly developed! Yet these, whatever they do, they certainly don’t spend their time in edifying conversation; they don’t even care to answer a few questions. I’ll have to force them—but how? Perhaps, if I pester them enough, get under their skin, so to speak, make such a nuisance of myself that they’ll agree to anything, just to get rid of me! Of course, there is some risk involved: they might get angry, and, without a doubt, they could destroy me as easily as swatting a fly.… But no, I cannot believe they’d resort to such brutal measures—and anyway, I simply must find out! Well, here goes!!

And I jumped up in the darkness and started to scream at the top of my lungs, did somersaults and cartwheels, hopped around and kicked sand in their eyes, danced and sang until I was hoarse, did a few sit-ups and deep knee bends, then hurled myself among them like a mad dog. They turned their backs to me and held up their cushions and quilts for protection, and then, in the middle of my hundredth cartwheel, a voice said inside my head:

—And what would your good friend Trurl think if he could see you now, see how you pass your time on the planet that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of Development, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe?!—But I ignored the hint and continued to stomp and howl, encouraged by what they were whispering to one another:

—Psst!

—What do you want?

—You hear that?

—How can I help but hear it?

—He practically kicked my head in.

—You can get another.

—But I can’t sleep.

—What?

—I said, I can’t sleep.

—He’s curious—whispered a third.

—He’s awfully curious!

—This is really too much. We’ll have to do something.

—Like what?

—I don’t know… Change his personality?

—No, that’s unethical…

—Just listen to him howl!

—Wait, I have an idea…

They whispered something while I kept jumping around, raising an unholy racket, concentrating my efforts especially in the area where I heard them talking. Then, just as I was doing a headstand on someone’s abdomen, everything went black, and the next thing I knew, I was back on my ship and out in space. My limbs ached from all that exercise, but I could hardly move them anyway, for I was sitting in a pile of trombones, jars of green marmalade, teddy bears, platinum glockenspiels, ducats and doubloons, golden earmuffs, bracelets and brooches glittering so bright they hurt my eyes. When finally I crawled out from under all these valuables and dragged myself to a window, I saw that the constellations were entirely different—not a trace of anything remotely resembling a square sun! A few quick calculations revealed that I would have to travel six thousand years at top velocity to get back to the H. P. L. D.’s. They had disposed of me, indeed. And going back would achieve nothing, that was clear: they would merely send me packing again with that instantaneous hyperspatial telekinesis of theirs, or whatever it was. And so, my good Bonhomius, I decided to tackle the problem in an altogether different way.…” And with these words, most kind and noble sir, did the distinguished constructor Klapaucius finish his tale…

“Surely that’s not all he said?!” cried Trurl.

“Nay, he said a great deal more, O benefactor of mine! And therein lies my misfortune!” replied the robot with considerable perturbation. “When I asked him what he had then decided to do, he leaned over and said…

“The problem did seem insoluble at first, but I’ve found a way. You say you lived as a hermetic hermit and are but a simple, unschooled robot, so I’ll not trouble you with explanations that touch the arcane art of cybernetic generation. To put it simply, then, all we have to do is construct a digital device, a computer capable of producing an informational model of absolutely anything in existence. Properly programmed, it will provide us with an exact simulation of the Highest Possible Level of Development, which we can then question and thereby obtain the Ultimate Answers!”

“But how does one build such a device?” I asked. “And how can you be sure, O illustrious Klapaucius, that it won’t respond by sending us packing in much the same instamatic hyperstitial and so forth manner the original H. P. L. D.’s employed, as you say, on your worthy person?”

“Leave that to me,” he said. “Rest assured, I shall learn the Great Mystery of the H. P. L. D.’s, good Bonhomius, and you shall find the optimal way in which to put your natural abhorrence of evil into action!”

You can imagine, kind sir, the great joy that filled me upon hearing these words, and the eagerness with which I assisted Klapaucius in the execution of his plan. As it turned out, this digital device was none other than the famed Gnostotron conceived by Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph just before his lamentable demise, a machine able literally to contain the Universe Itself within its innumerable memory banks. (Klapaucius, however, was not satisfied with the name, and now and then tried to think up others to christen it: the Omniac, the Pansophoscope, APOC for All Purpose Ontologue Computer, or the Mahatmatic 500, to mention a few.) In exactly one year and six days, this mighty machine was completed, and so enormous was it, we had to house it in Phlaphundria, the hollowed-out moon of the Phlists-—and truly, an ant had been no more lost aboard an ocean liner than we in the bowels of this binary behemoth, among its endless coils and cables, eschatological toggles and transformers, those hagiopneumatic rectifiers and tempta-tional resistors. I confess my wire hair stood on end and my laminated alternator skipped a beat when my distinguished mentor sat me down before the Central Control Console and left me face-to-face with this awesome, towering thing. The flashing lights that played across its panels were like the very stars in the firmament; everywhere were signs that read danger: highly ineffable!; and potentiometers, their dials spinning wildly, showed logic and semantic fields building up to unheard-of levels of intensity. Beneath my feet heaved a sea of preternatural and pretermechanical wisdom, wisdom that swirled like a spell through parsecs of circuitry and megahectares of magnets, swirled and surrounded me on every side, that I felt, in my shameful ignorance, of no more consequence than a mere mote of dust. I overcame this weakness only by recalling my lifelong love of Good, the passion I had conceived for Truth and Beauty when little more than a gleam in my constructor’s oscilloscope. Thus fortified, I managed to stammer out the first question: “Speak, what manner of machine art thou?”

A hot wind then arose from its glowing tubes, and there came a voice from that wind, a whispering thunder that seared me to the core, and the voice said:

Ego sum Ens Omnipotens, Omnisapiens, in Spiritu Intellectronico Navigans, luce cybernetica in saecula saeculorum litterus opera omnia cognoscens, et caetera, et caetera.

Such was my fright upon hearing this reply, that I was quite unable to continue the interrogation until Klapaucius returned and reduced the EMF (epistemotive force) to one billionth of its voltage by adjusting the theostats. Then I asked the Gnostotron if it would be so kind as to answer questions touching the Highest Possible Level of Development and its Terrible Secret. But Klapaucius said that that was not the way: one should instead request the Ontologue Computer to model within its silver and crystal depths a single inhabitant of that square planet, and at the same time provide the model with an adequate degree of loquacity. This promptly done, we were ready to begin in earnest.