Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs of a Space Traveler

“Mr. Tichy,” he said, “you fail to understand. What communication, what contact can there be between partners when the lot of one of them is eternity? Mankind, after all, will cease to exist in fifteen billion years at the most. Whom, then, would that immortal soul hear, to whom would it speak? Did I not say that it was eternal? The time that will have elapsed when Earth freezes, when the youngest and most powerful of today’s stars collapse, when the laws governing the Universe change to such an extent that it will take on a form completely unimaginable to us — that time does not constitute even the tiniest fraction of this soul’s duration, because this soul will last forever. Religions are quite right to ignore the body, for what use would a nose be, or legs, in eternity? What good, after Earth and flowers have disappeared, after the suns have burned out? But let’s skip this trivial aspect of the problem. You said ‘communicate with the outside world.’ Even if this soul made contact with the outer world only once every hundred years, then after a billion centuries, in order to contain the memories of those contacts, it would have to grow to the size of a continent… and after a trillion years, even the volume of Earth would not suffice. But what is a trillion years compared with eternity? However, it was not that technical difficulty that held me back, but the psychological consequences. You see, the thinking personality, the human psyche, would dissolve in that ocean of memory as a drop of blood in the sea, and what would become of guaranteed immortality then… ?”

“What?” I stammered. “So you claim… you say… there’s a complete severance…”

“Naturally. Did I say that the box contained the whole person? I was speaking only of the soul. Imagine that from this second on you stop receiving news from the outside, that your brain is removed from your body but continues to exist with all its vital powers intact. You will be blind and deaf, of course, and paralyzed, in a sense, because you will possess no body, but you will retain your inner vision, I mean your clearness of mind and imagination; you will be able to think freely, develop and shape your fantasies, experience hope, sorrow, the joy derived from the play of passing mental states. This is precisely what has been given to the soul I place on your desk.”

“Horrible,” I said. “To be blind, deaf, and paralyzed… for ages.”

“For eternity,” he corrected me. “I have said everything; there is only one thing to add. The medium is a crystal, a type of crystal that does not occur in nature, an independent substance that does not enter into any chemical or physical bonds. Its endlessly vibrating molecules contain the soul, which feels and thinks.”

“Monster,” I said quietly. “Do you realise what you have done? But wait" — I felt a sudden relief — “human consciousness cannot be reproduced. If your wife lives, walks, and thinks, this crystal contains, at most, a copy of her, and is not the real —”

“Yes,” replied Decantor, squinting at the white package, “you are completely right. It is impossible to create the soul of a living person. That would be nonsense, a paradoxical absurdity. He who exists obviously exists only once. Continuation can be realized only at the moment of death. But the process of determining the precise neurological pattern of the person whose soul I produce destroys, in any case, the living brain.”

“You… you killed your wife?”

“I gave her eternal life.” He drew himself up. “But that has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. It is a matter, if you like, between my wife" — he indicated the package — “and me, and the law. We are talking about something altogether different.”

For a while I was speechless. I reached out and touched the package with my fingertips; it was wrapped in thick paper and was quite heavy, as if containing lead.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else. Suppose I give you the funds you ask for. Do you honestly believe you will find one person willing to let himself be killed so that his soul can suffer unimaginable torment for all eternity, deprived even of the mercy of suicide?”

“Death does indeed present a difficulty,” Decantor admitted after a brief pause. I noticed that his dark eye was more hazel than brown. “But, to start with, we can count on such categories of people as the terminally ill, or those weary of life, old people physically infirm but in complete possession of their faculties…”

“Death is not the worst option compared to the immortality you propose,” I muttered.

Decantor smiled again.

“I will tell you something that may strike you as funny,” he said. The right side of his face remained serious. “I personally have never felt the need to possess a soul or the need for eternal existence. But mankind has lived by this dream for thousands of years. I have studied the subject a long time, Mr. Tichy. All religion is based on one thing: the promise of life everlasting, the hope of surviving the grave. I offer that, Mr. Tichy. I offer eternal life. The certainty of existence when the last particle of the body has crumbled into dust. Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” I replied, “it is not. You yourself said that it would be an immortality without the body, without the body’s energies, pleasures, experiences…”

“You repeat yourself. I can show you the sacred writings of all the religions, the works of philosophers, the songs of poets, summae theologicae, prayers, legends — I have found in them little concerning the eternal life of the body. They slight the body, scorn it, even. The soul — its infinite existence — that has been the goal and hope. The soul as the antithesis and antagonist of the body, as liberation from physical suffering, sudden danger, illness and decrepitude, from the struggle to satisfy the demands of the gradually disintegrating furnace called the organism as it smolders and burns out. No one has ever proclaimed the immortality of the body. The soul alone was to be saved. I, Decantor, have saved it for eternity. I have fulfilled the dream — not mine, but all humanity’s…”

“I understand,” I broke in. “Decantor, in a sense you are right. But right only in that your discovery has demonstrated — today to me, tomorrow perhaps to the world — that the soul is unnecessary; that the immortality treated in the sacred books, gospels, korans, Babylonian epics, vedas, and folk tales you cite is of no use to man. Anyone faced with the eternity you are ready to bestow on him will feel, I guarantee you, what I feel: the greatest aversion and fear. The thought that your promise could become my fate horrifies me. So, then, you have proved that humanity has been deluding itself for thousands of years. You have shattered that delusion.”

“You mean, no one will need my soul?” he asked in a suddenly wooden voice.

“I am sure of it. How can you think otherwise? Decantor! Would you want it? After all, you are human, too!”

“I already told you. I never felt the need for immortality. I believed, however, that that was my particular aberration, that humanity was of a different opinion. I wanted to satisfy others, not myself. I sought a problem that would be among the most difficult, one worthy of my abilities. I found it and solved it. In this respect, it was a personal thing; from an intellectual point of view, the problem interested me solely as a specific task to be tackled using the proper technology and resources. I took literally what the greatest thinkers in history had written. Tichy — you must have read of it. The fear of cessation, of the end, of consciousness suffering destruction at the time of its greatest richness, when it is ready to bear its finest fruits… at the end of a long life… They all repeated this. Their dream was to commune — with eternity. I have created that communion. Tichy, perhaps they … ? Perhaps the most outstanding individuals? The geniuses… ?”