Stanislaw Lem: Peace on Earth

The prosperity that obtained after the weapons were moved to the moon had unfortunate consequences, made worse by automation. Russell called it the electronics Stone Age. Illiteracy increased, particularly since now you didn’t even have to sign a check, only a thumbprint was necessary and a computer scanner did the rest. The American Medical Association finally lost the battle to save their profession, because computers gave better diagnoses and were much more patient with patients. Prosthetic sex was replaced by a simple device called an Orgaz. This was a headset with electrodes and a handgrip that resembled a toy pistol. Pulling the trigger gave you the ultimate pleasure because the appropriate place in your brain was stimulated with no effort, no exertion necessary, plus there were no upkeep expenses for male or female remotes, nor indeed the aggravations of natural courtship and matrimony. Orgazes flooded the market. To be fitted you went to special clinics. Gynandroics and other firms that manufactured synthetic women, angels, nymphs, fauns, etc., went out of business with much gnashing of teeth. As for education, most of the developed countries did away with compulsory school attendance. “Children,” went the new doctrine, “should not be subjected to daily imprisonment and the psychological torture called learning.” Who needs to know how many men’s shirts you can sew out of six yards of Egyptian cotton if one shirt requires seven eighths of a yard, or when two trains will collide if one engineer is eighteen, drunk, and going 100 miles an hour and the other is colorblind and doing 75, if they’re separated by 15 miles of track and 43 pre-automation semaphores? Equally useless are facts about kings, wars, battles, crusades, and all the other rotten behavior of history. Geography is best learned by traveling. All you have to know is the price of the ticket and when the plane takes off. Why learn foreign languages when you can put a translator chip in your ear? The study of biology depresses and depraves young minds, nor is it practical since no one now can become a doctor or dentist (after the appearance of dentautomata, about thirty thousand out-of-work dentists in both the Americas and Eurasia have committed suicide each year). And chemistry is of no more value than a knowledge of hieroglyphics. Meanwhile on traffic signs and street signs words are slowly being replaced with pictures.

Russell saw no point complaining about this state of affairs because nothing could be done. There were still some fifty thousand scientists and scholars left in the world but their average age was now 61.7. Everything had been smothered in the boredom of prosperity, and that was why, said Russell, most people were actually pleased by the prospect of an invasion from the moon, and the panic reported in the papers and on television was only to increase sales. Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur, the ethnologist concluded, staring at the now empty bottle of bourbon. His field work was so disappointing that he had stopped aiming his telescope at the windows of the millionaires and turned it instead to the solarium where the nurses and their aides sunbathed in the nude. I thought that odd, since after all he could simply go there and look at them up close but when I said this, he shrugged, remarking that that was the problem: nowadays one could just do that.

In the rec room of the new pavilion workmen were almost finished setting up the fants. Russell took me there one evening. You put a cassette into a fant and an image appears in front of the machine. More than an image, a whole artificial reality, Mount Olympus, for example packed with gods and goddesses, or something more from life, a two-wheel tumbrel carrying a bunch of illustrious people through a furious crowd toward the guillotine. Or Hansel and Gretel at the witch’s house stuffing themselves with shingles of gingerbread. Or a convent after Tartars or Martians break in. The idea is that what happens next depends on the viewer, who has a pedal under each foot and a joystick in his hand. You can go from idyll to bloodbath, have the gods depose Zeus, put ear wings on the heads falling into the guillotine basket so they fly away. Anything is possible. The witch wants to make cutlets out of Hansel, but you can have Hansel make cutlets out of her. The Prince of Denmark can steal the royal jewels and run off with Ophelia, or with Rosencrantz, depending on which key you push, because some fants have a keyboard. The instruction manual is a thick book but you can do without it. We tired of the fants after fifteen minutes of playing, even though we were both a little drunk, and went to bed. The asylum bought twenty fants, but they are hardly ever used. Dr. House is not happy about that. He went from patient to patient, trying to persuade them to give it a try because it’s good therapy. But apparently none of the millionaires or billionaires ever heard of Hansel and Gretel or Olympus or Hamlet. Tartars or Martians, it’s all the same to them. The guillotine they consider an oversize cigar cutter and silly. Dr. House worked the fants himself, probably out of a sense of duty, mixing the Middle Ages, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and volcanoes, and tried to get me to join him, but I refused. I was still waiting for a sign from Professor Lax-Gugliborc. Kramer too seemed to be waiting for something, and that’s probably why he avoided me. Waiting for new instructions? But I was in a good mood, having reached an understanding with myself.

It was the end of August already, and before turning on my desk lamp in the evening, I had to close the window because of moths. Except for ladybugs I don’t much care for insects. Butterflies I can take or leave but moths for some reason frighten me. That August there were a lot of them and they kept fluttering outside my window. Some were so big I could hear their thuds against the glass. Since even looking at them bothers me, I got up to pull the curtains, when I heard a sound. A clear, sharp sound, as if someone was touching a pane with a metal rod. I approached the window, the lamp in my hand. Among the fluttering moths I saw one that was all black, larger than the others, and it gleamed in the reflected light. It backed away, then came at the window again and hit it with such force that I felt the frame shake. What’s more, the moth had a small beak instead of a head. I stood fascinated because it wasn’t hitting the glass at random but in regular intervals, groups of three; three dots, a pause, three dots, a pause, repeated until I realized it was the letter S in Morse code. I hesitated about opening the window. It wasn’t a live thing but I didn’t want to let real moths into the room either. I finally got up my nerve and I opened the window a crack, and it flew in immediately. I shut the window and looked around. The moth had lit on the papers covering the desk. It had no wings and now didn’t resemble a moth at all or any other bug. It looked most like a black olive. Then it was hovering above the desk and humming. I reached for it, and it let me take it between my fingers. It was hard, made of metal or plastic. Again I heard the humming, three dots, three dashes, three dots. I held it to my ear and heard a weak, distant, but distinct human voice.

“Owl here. Owl here. Do you read me?”

I put the olive in my ear and answered:

“Mouse here. Mouse here. I read you, Owl.”

“Good evening.”

“Greetings.” Expecting a long conversation, I pulled the curtains and double-locked the door. Now I could hear the professor perfectly. I recognized his voice.

“This way we can talk freely,” he said and chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m using a scrambler of my own invention. No one will understand us. But let’s stay Owl and Mouse to be safe.”

“Fine,” I replied and turned off the lamp.