Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress

"Then you too are the devil's advocate?"

"Come now, is it so satanical if, in some extreme case, a doctor chooses to hide the truth from his patient? I say that if this is the way we must live, eat, exist, at least let us have it in fancy wrappings. The mascons work perfectly-with one single exception-so what is the harm in them?"

"At the moment I'm in no condition to debate the issue with you," I said, regaining my composure somewhat. "Just answer me two questions, please, for old time's sake. What was that exception you mentioned in the mascons' effect? And how did universal disarmament come about? Or is that an illusion too?"

"No, fortunately it's quite real. But to explain it to you I'd have to give a lecture, and it's time for me to be off."

We agreed to meet on the following day. As we parted, I repeated my question about the defect in the mascons.

"Go to the Amusement Park," said the Professor. "If you like unpleasant revelations, take a seat on the largest merry-go-round, and when it builds up speed, cut a hole in the canvas cover of your cabin with a pair of scissors. The cover is there because, during gyration, the phantasma which the mascons create to substitute reality undergo displacement… as if the centrifugal force pulled aside one's blinders… Do this, and you shall see what then emerges from behind the painted lie."

It's three in the morning as I write these words, full of despair. What more is there to say? I'm seriously considering running away, fleeing this civilization, losing myself in the wilderness. Even the stars no longer beckon. A journey is a dismal thing when there can be no homecoming.

5 X 2039.Spent a few free hours this morning in the city. Could hardly control my horror as I looked at all the displays of wealth and prosperity. An art gallery in Manhattan practically giving away original Rembrandts and Matisses. And next door they have fabulous furniture, Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, marble mantelpieces, thrones, mirrors, Saracen armor. Auctions everywhere-houses selling like hotcakes. And I thought this was a paradise, where every man could bepalacize himself! The Self-nominating Nobel Prize Candidate Registration Center on Fifth Avenue is no less a fraud: anyone can have a Nobel Prize, just as anyone can grace his compartment walls with priceless works of art-when both are nothing but a pinch of powder that stimulates the brain! The fiendishness of it all is that part of this mass deception is open and voluntary, letting people think they can draw the line between fiction and fact. And since no one any longer responds to things spontaneously-you take drugs to study, drugs to love, drugs to rise up in revolt, drugs to forget-the distinction between manipulated and natural feelings has ceased to exist.

I walked the streets, fists clenched in my pockets. Oh, I had no need of amokoline or furiol to feel enraged! Like a bloodhound hot on the trail my mind sought out all the hollow, empty places in this monumental masquerade, this tinseled cheat that sprawled across the horizon. Yes, they give the children throttlepops, then develop their character with opinionates, uncompromil, rebellium, allaying their passions with sordidan and practicol; no police, and who needs them when you have constabuline and criminal tendencies are rendered harmless through the services of Procrustics, Inc.? A good thing I steered clear of the theoapotheterias, with their faith-giving, grace-bestowing, sin-absolving compounds, where with a gram of sacrosanctimonium you can be canonized on the spot. And while you're at it, why not a little dietary deitine, local allah-all, polyunsaturated brahmanox? Our nazarine anointium, with apocryphyll, puts you at the head of the line in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and a drop of sugar-free decaffeinated kingdom-come does the rest. Glory hallelucinujah! Paradisiacs for the pious, mephistol and ereban for the masochists, valhalla and valhella… it was all I could do to keep from storming into a pharmacopium on the corner, where the congregation was kneeling devoutly, popping paternostrums and taking orisol like snuff. But I restrained myself-they would only pacify me with obliterine. Anything but that! I took a scuttle to the Amusement Park, grasping a pair of scissors in my sweaty hand. Nothing came of it, however; the canvas cover turned out to be incredibly tough-like tempered steel.

Trottelreiner was staying in a rented room off Fifth Avenue. He wasn't at home when I arrived at the designated time, but he had told me that he might be late, and taught me the necessary whistle for the sesame door. So I entered and sat at his professorial desk, all cluttered with scientific publications and scribbled bits of paper. Out of boredom-or perhaps, too, to calm the turmoil in my soul-I began to leaf through Trottelreiner's notebook. "Macrotrashmic," "mi-crotroshm," "cosmicule," "propheteer." Of course, he was jotting down terms for that crazy futurology of his! "Oraculum," "resurrecreation hall," "howlitzer." "Obstetronics," "obstetron bomb." Well yes, with the population explosion. Every second eighty thousand babies were born. Or was it eight hundred thousand? And did it really matter? "Braindrop." From water on the brain? The result of a brainstorm? Part of a brainwave? Or a brainwash? "Braindrip." Down the braindrain? "Brainfall." In inches or IQ? Was this then how he spent his time? Oh Professor-I felt like shouting-here you sit, and out there the world is coming to an end! Suddenly there was a glint of something among the papers-that flask, up'n'at'm! A moment of hesitation, and then, my mind made up, I took a cautious whiff and looked about the room.

Most odd, there was hardly any change! The bookshelves, the pill directories, the files, everything remained the same, only the Dutch tile stove in the corner, adorning the room with the gleam of its enamel, had turned into an old black potbelly with a charred pipe stuck in the wall and the floor around it covered with cinders. I put the flask down quickly-as though caught in the act-for just then Trottelreiner whistled and walked in.

I told him about the Amusement Park. He was surprised. He asked me to show him the scissors, nodded, then picked up the flask, took a sniff himself and passed it to me. Instead of scissors I was holding a rotten twig. I looked up at the Professor: he seemed troubled, not as sure of himself as he'd been the previous day. He put his briefcase, full of conference gumdrops, down on the desk and sighed.

"Tichy," he said, "you have to understand that there is nothing particularly sinister about this inflation in the mascons… "

"Inflation?"

"A number of things that were real a month or year ago, well, it's been necessary to replace them with illusions-inasmuch as the authentic articles are becoming scarce if not completely unobtainable," he explained. And yet I had the feeling that something else was preying on his mind.

"I took a ride on that merry-go-round last quarter," he went on, "but couldn't guarantee that it's still there. In fact it's quite possible that, when you bought your ticket of admission, the diffusor gave you a squirt of carnival or carrousel, which would-after all-be a lot more economical. Yes, Tichy, the realm of mankind's real possessions is dwindling at an alarming rate. Before I moved in here I had a suite at the new Hilton, but couldn't stay there, not after I foolishly took some vigilan and found myself in a cubicle no larger than a chest of drawers, with my nose in a trough and a spigot sticking in my ribs, and my feet resting on the headboard of a bed in the next chest, I mean suite-mine was on the eighth floor, at ninety dollars a day. There just isn't enough room, and we're running out of the little there is! Research is now being done on the so-called spatial expanders or claustrolytics, but without much progress, for if the presence of a heavy crowd-say, on a street or square-is masked in such a way that you see only a few isolated individuals, you will begin bumping into those who have been psychemically-but not physically-removed, and this is the difficulty our experts, so far, have been unable to overcome!"