Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress

"Never heard of it. How does it work?"

To tell the truth, I had asked more out of politeness than curiosity, but he didn't seem to notice. Meanwhile the waiters brought our soup and, with it, a bottle of Chablis, vintage 1997. A good year.

"Linguistic futurology investigates the future through the transformational possibilities of the language," Trottelreiner explained.

"I don't understand."

"A man can control only what he comprehends, and comprehend only what he is able to put into words. The inexpressible therefore is unknowable. By examining future stages in the evolution of language we come to learn what discoveries, changes and social revolutions the language will be capable, some day, of reflecting."

"Amazing. How exactly is this done?"

"Our research is conducted with the aid of the very largest computers, for man by himself could never keep track of all the variations. By variations of course I mean the syntagmatic-paradigmatic permutations of the language, but quantized… "

"Professor, please!"

"Forgive me. The Chablis is excellent, by the way. A few examples ought to make the matter clear. Give me a word, any word."

"Myself."

"Myself? H'm. Myself. All right. I'm not a computer, you understand, so this will have to be simple. Very well then-myself. My, self, mine, mind. Mynd. Thy mind-thynd. Like ego, theego. And we makes wego. Do you see?"

"I don't see a thing."

"But it's perfectly obvious! We're speaking, first, of the possibility of the merging of the mynd with the thynd, in other words the fusion of two psychic entities. Secondly, the wego. Most interesting. A collective consciousness. Produced perhaps by the multiple dissociation of the personality, a mygraine. Another word, please."

"Foot."

"Good. Onefoot, twofoot. Threefooter, fourfooted. Footing, footingly, footling. Footage, befootery. Footment. And footloose gets you footless, unfooted, defected. Ah, defeetism. Feetish, feetus… feetback? Infoot and outfoot! I think we're getting somewhere. Feetality, twofootalitarianism."

"But these words have no meaning!"

"At the moment, no, but they will. Or rather, they may eventually acquire meaning, provided footeries and defeetism catch on. The word 'robot' meant nothing in the fifteenth century, and yet if they had had futurolinguistics then, they could have easily envisioned automata."

"So what is defeetism?"

"In this particular case I can tell you precisely, but only because it isn't a prognosis but something that already exists. Defeetism is a very recent concept, a new approach to human autoevolution."

"You, mean, creating men without feet?"

"Yes. Inasmuch as walking has become a vestigial activity and we're running out of space besides."

"But that's insane!"

"I quite agree. And yet such shining lights as Professor Hatzelklatzer and Foeshbeene are defeetists. You weren't aware of that, were you, when you gave me that word?"

"No. And the other derivations, what do they mean?"

"That is as yet unknown. If defeatism wins out over twofootalitarianism, such things as footments, infoots and underfeet will come into being. This is no prophecy, mind you, but a simple stock-taking of the possibilities in their purest form. Let's have another word."

"Interferent."

"Good. Inter and fero, fero, ferré, tuli, latum. It comes from the Latin, so we must seek a continuation in Latin.

Flos, floris. Interflorentrix. But of course. This is a virgin who has a child by an interferent, for it took her maidenhead."

"Where do you get the maidenhead?"

"Flos, floris-flower. She was deflowered, you see. Though they'll probably say: physigenitress, or physitress for short. Or simply reviewer wife. Or that she interloped. I assure you, we have a most fertile field at our disposal here. PV-dultery. Coitus interferentus. High-infidelity reception/conception, heterodyne insemination. A whole new world of social patterns opens up, a whole new morality!"

"I see that you are an enthusiast of this new science. Would you care to try another word? Trash."

"Why not? It doesn't matter that you're a skeptic. Not in the least. What was it again, trash? Very well… trash, trashcan, ashcan, trashman. Trashmass, trashmic, cata-trashmic. Trashmass, trashmosh. On a large enough scale, trashmos. And-of course-macrotrashm! Tichy, you come up with the best words! Really, just think of it, macrotrashm!"

"I'm afraid I don't follow. It's nonsense to me."

"First of all, we don't say follow now but swallow. You don't swallow. (Your speech, I've noticed, is full of anachronisms. This is not good. But we'll talk of that later.) Secondly, macrotrashm is nonsense so far, yet we can already guess its sense-to-be, its future significance. The word, observe, implies nothing less than a new psychozoic theory! Implies that the stars are of artificial origin!"

"Now where do you get that?"

"From the word itself. Macrotrashm indicates, or rather suggests, this image: in the course of many eons the Universe filled up with trash, the wastes of various civilizations. The wastes got in the way, of course, hampering astronomers and cosmonauts, and so enormous incinerators were built, all at extremely high temperatures, observe, to burn the trash, and with sufficient mass to pull it in from space themselves. Gradually space clears up and behold, there are your stars, those selfsame furnaces, and the dark nebulae-this is the trash that remains to be removed."

"You can't be serious! The Universe nothing but one big trash disposal? You don't really think that's possible? Professor!"

"It isn't a matter of what I think or don't think, Tichy. We have simply used futurological linguistics to create a new cosmogony, another theory for future generations to consider. They may or may not take it seriously, but the fact remains that it is possible to articulate such a hypothesis! Note that if morphological extrapolation had existed in the fifties of the last century, they could have foreseen, even then, the benignimizers-remember them?-by projective derivation from 'benign' and 'tranquilizer.' Language, my boy, is a gold mine of possibilitie's, though those possibilities are not limitless. Remember that the word 'utopia' literally means nowhere, a never-never land, an unattainable ideal, and you will better understand the pessimism of many of our futurologicians!"

The conversation had finally come around to the subject that concerned me most. I confessed to Trottelreiner my apprehensions, my loathing for this new world. He gave a snort, but patiently heard me out, and-kindly old soul that he was-actually began to sympathize. I even saw him reach for a pack of commiserine in his vest pocket, then stop halfway, so vehemently did I inveigh against all manner of psychem. When I had finished, however, his face assumed a stern expression, and he said:

"This is not good, Tichy. And anyway, your criticisms are quite beside the point. You see, you do not know the real truth. Nor indeed could you ever have guessed it. Compared to it, Procrustics and the psychemized society are mere trifles!"

I couldn't believe my ears.

"But… but… "I stammered, "what are you saying, Professor? What could be worse than that?"

He leaned over across the table.

"Tichy, for you I'll do it. I'll break a professional secret. Everything you've complained of is known to the littlest child. And how could it be otherwise? For progress was destined to travel this path the moment narcotics and early hallucinogens were replaced by the so-called psycholocalizers, drugs whose effects were highly selective. Yet the real revolution in experiential engineering took place only twenty-five years ago, when mascons were synthesized. These are psychotropes whose specificity is so great, they can actually influence isolated sites of the brain. Narcotics do not cut one off from the world, they only change one's attitude towards it. Hallucinogens, on the other hand, blot out and totally obscure the world. That you have learned from your own experience. But mascons, mascons falsify the world!"