Stanislaw Lem - Peace on Earth

The old woman dropped her shawl on the sidewalk and turned to us. She held a short machine gun with both hands and fired a volley at the car, putting holes in the radiator and tires. The white-haired black man, not drinking beer now, was behind the wheel and with one sharp turn his truck blocked the Lincoln’s way. The shaggy mongrel sprang at the old woman but fell writhing to the asphalt, meanwhile the mailman let go of me, jumped back, took from his bag something round and black, and hurled it at the women. There was a boom and white smoke and the young woman fell to her knees behind the baby carriage which opened up and started shooting a column of foamy liquid like a huge fire extinguisher at the driver of the Lincoln who had jumped out onto the sidewalk. Before the foam covered him I saw that he was not a black man but only wore a black mask and held a revolver. The stream hit the windshield of the limousine with such force that the glass shattered and some of it hit the mailman. The fat man who gripped me from behind all this time retreated, protecting himself with my body. From the garage several people in overalls ran out and pulled him off me. All this took no more than five seconds.

One of the cars inside the garage backed out and two men in smocks threw a net over the driver of the Lincoln, taking care not to touch him as he was covered with gluey foam. The fat man and the mailman, now handcuffed, were pushed into this car. I stood staring as the man who had opened the rear door of the Lincoln got out slowly with his hands up and walked obediently to the truck where the white-haired black man put handcuffs on him. No one even spoke to me. The car drove away. The truck holding the driver who’d been shot and his accomplice also pulled away, and the woman picked up the black shawl, brushed it off, put the machine gun back into the carriage, raised its hood, and walked on as if nothing had happened. The street was again quiet and empty. Only the large limousine with flat tires and broken headlights plus the dead dog were proof that I hadn’t dreamed this.

Next to the department store was a low wooden house with a porch and a garden full of sunflowers. A sunburned gentleman, his hair so blond it was almost white, stood in the open window with his elbows comfortably on the windowsill and a pipe in his hand. He gave me a quiet but eloquent look that seemed to say: “You see?” Only then did I become aware of something that was even stranger than the kidnapping attempt: though my ears still rang with the shots, the screams, and the explosions, not a single window had opened and no one was looking out into the street — as if I was on an empty movie set. I stood there for a good while, not sure what to do. Buying a typewriter no longer seemed important.

“Mr. Tichy,” said the director, “our people will fill you in on the details of the Mission. I would just like to give you the general picture — so you don’t miss the forest for the trees. The Geneva Agreement made four impossibilities possible. A continuing arms race at the same time as universal disarmament — that’s one. Arming at maximum speed and at no cost — that’s two. Full protection of each nation against surprise attack while each reserves the right to wage war — that’s three. And finally the liquidation of all armies despite their continued existence. No troops, but the staffs stay on and can think up anything they like. In a nutshell, we’ve instituted pacem in terris."

“True,” I remarked. “But I read the papers. They say we’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire. That the moon is silent and swallowing all probes because Someone has been able to enter into a secret understanding with the robots there. That an unnamed nation is behind everything that’s now happening on the moon. And that the Agency knows this.”

“Pure drivel,” said the director. We were sitting in his enormous office. On a platform at one end stood a huge globe of the moon covered with its smallpox of craters. The sectors of the different nations, colored green, rose, yellow, and red like a political map, went from pole to pole, making the sphere look like a child’s toy or illuminated glass orange without its peel. On the wall behind the director hung the flag of the United Nations.

“There’s a lot of that now,” he said with a pitying smile on his swarthy face. “The press prints it all, and it’s all nonsense.”

“But that movement, those neopacifists, the lunarians, don’t they exist?”

“Oh yes. Have you read their statement? Their program?”

“I have. They call for negotiation with the moon…”

” ‘Negotiation!’ ” the director snorted with contempt. “Not negotiation, capitulation! And nobody knows to whom! Those muddled heads think the moon has become a party, that it can enter into agreements and pacts, that it’s intelligent and powerful. That up there now is some giant computer that has devoured all the sectors. Fear not only has big eyes, Mr. Tichy, it has a small brain.”

“Yes, but can we really rule out the possibility of some sort of unification of all those weapons up there — of those armies, if they are armies? How can we be sure this hasn’t happened, if we are in the dark… ?”

“Because even in the dark we know that certain things are impossible. The sector of each country was installed as a self-evolving testing range. Take a look.” He held a small flat box. The different sectors of the moon lit up, until the globe was as bright as a Chinese lantern. “The larger areas belong to the superpowers. Of course we know what we put there: the Agency acted as transporter, after all. We also dug the foundations for the simulators. Each sector has two simulators surrounded by a production compound. The sectors cannot fight each other; it’s impossible. One simulator designs new weapons and the other works to counter them. Both are computers programmed on the sword-and-shield principle. It’s as if each nation put on the moon a computer that played chess with itself. Except that the game is played with weapons instead of chess pieces and everything can change: the moves, the pieces, the board, everything.”

“You mean,” I asked, surprised, “there’s nothing up there but computers simulating an arms race? Then how is this a threat to Earth? Surely the simulation of a weapon no more dangerous than a piece of paper…”

“Oh no! The weapons that survive selection go into real production. The whole problem is when. You see, the simulators design not just a new weapon but a whole new system of warfare. These are, of course, nonhuman systems. The soldier becomes one with the weapon. Think of natural evolution, the struggle for existence, Darwin. One simulator designs, say, a kind of predator, and the other finds its weakness in order to destroy it. Then the first simulator thinks up something new, and the second parries that too. In principle a contest like this, with endless improvements, could go on for a million years — but each sector after a certain time must begin actual production of the weapons. The time — and the effectiveness required of the prototypes — was determined in advance by the programmers of each nation. Because each nation wanted to have an arsenal of real weapons on the moon, not just simulations like blueprints on paper. Therein lies the rub, the contradiction. Do you understand?”

“Not entirely. What contradiction?”

“Simulated evolution proceeds much more swiftly than natural evolution. He who waits longer obtains the better weapon. But for as long as he waits, he is defenseless. While the one who accepts a shorter simulation run will obtain his weapon sooner. We call this the coefficient of risk. Every nation, placing its military might on the moon, had to decide first whether it wanted better weapons later or poorer weapons sooner.”