Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress

"A nightmare!" I said with disgust. "But even so, paxorbi et urbi has been established, so perhaps it's worth it."

"Yes, there are certain benefits. The number of coronaries has fallen dramatically, for these long-distance sprints are excellent exercise. On the other hand there's an increase in the number of people suffering from fallen arches, varicose veins, emphysema and enlargement of the heart. Not everyone is fit to run in a marathon."

"And that's why you don't have a car!" I exclaimed.

The Professor only smiled wryly.

"An ecomomy model nowadays sells for around 450 dollars," he said. "But when you consider that the production costs come to, roughly, an eighth of a cent, that price is pretty steep. The people who make something real-they're a vanishing breed. Composers accept their fees, pay their patrons kickbacks, and to the public that comes to the philharmonium to hear the commissioned work performed they slip a little polysymphonicol contrapuntaline."

"Morally that's indefensible," I said, "but surely not harmful on the social level."

"So far, no. Though in the final analysis it all depends upon your point of view. With metamorphine, for example, you can have an affair with a goat, thinking it's Venus de Milo herself. Instead of scientific papers and conventions-congressil and decongressol, and yet there must exist some biological minimum-the bare necessities of life-which no fiction can ever replace. One has to live somewhere, after all, eat something, breathe something. Meanwhile actualysis robs us of one sphere of genuine activity after another. Besides which we are getting a frightening accumulation of side effects. And these require the use of dehallucinides, supermascons and fixators-with dubious success."

"What are they?"

"The dehallucinides? A new series. They create the illusion that there is no illusion. At the present they're given only to the mentally ill, but the number of people who suspect the authenticity of their surroundings is growing in leaps and bounds. The amnestives can do nothing against sursurmises or doubledoubts. For these are secondary fantasies, in other words twice removed. You don't understand? Well, say someone imagines that he is only imagining that he doesn't imagine-or the other way around. A typical problem for modern psychiatry, what they call multistage paranoia. But the most ominous are the new mascons. You see, all these drugs, they take their toll on the organism. People's hair starts falling out, ears grow horny, chitinous, and tails begin to disappear again… "

"Appear again, you meant to say."

"No, disappear. Everyone has a tail, for thirty years now. That was the result of orthographine. The price we had to pay for learning so quickly how to write."

"Nonsense-I was at the beach, Professor, and nobody has a tail!"

"Don't be a child. The tails are masked, of course, with anticaudalis, which in turn causes discoloration of the nails and teeth."

"Which is also masked?"

"Naturally. Mascons operate in milligram amounts, but all told an average person absorbs about one hundred and ninety kilograms in the course of a year, which is easy to understand, when you consider that it's necessary to simulate furniture, furnishings, food, drink, obedience from one's children, courtesy from officials, scientific discoveries, ownership of Rembrandts and scissors, ocean voyages, space flights, and a million other things. Were it not for the confidentiality practiced by the medical profession, it would be known that every second inhabitant of New York is spotted, has greenish bristles growing down his back, thorns on his ears, flat feet, and emphysema with an enlarged heart from constantly galloping about. All this must be concealed, and that is precisely the function of the supermascons."

"Nightmarish! Is there no hope?"

"Our congress will entertain alternative hencities. The experts are all saying that a radical change is imperative. At this moment we have before us eighteen proposals."

"To save the world?"

"You might put it that way. But why don't you take a seat and give these materials a lick? And also, well, I have a favor to ask of you. It's a delicate matter."

"I'll do what I can."

"I was counting on that. You see, I've received from a colleague of mine, a chemist, samples of two newly synthesized vigilax derivatives-up'n'at'mizers. They arrived in the morning mail, with this letter." Trottelreiner showed me the letter on his desk. "He says that my restorative, the one you've just been using, is not the genuine article. He writes, and I quote, 'The Federal Bureau of Suggestion, Division of Psychemeering (that's Psychemengineering), in order to divert the attention of the soothseers from many critical phenomena, is deliberately and maliciously supplying them with false counterhallucinatory agents containing neo-mascons.' "

"It doesn't make sense. The drug you gave me works, I experienced its effects myself. And anyway, what is a sooth-seer?"

"A position of high social standing, which a few-including myself-have the honor and privilege to hold. Soothseeing is the right to take vigilanimides-for the purpose of determining how things are in reality. For someone has to know. That's obvious, I think?"

"And as for the drug, my friend's guess is that it does indeed cancel out the influence of mascons of earlier vintage, mascons introduced some time ago, but doesn't stop them all-particularly not the most recent. In which case this"-the Professor held up the flask-"would be no restorative at all, but a most treacherously devised mascon, a counterfeit countermeasure, a double reagent, or in other words a wolf in sheep's clothing!"

"But -why? If it's necessary for someone to know… "

"Necessary for the general welfare, for society, for all mankind, but not from the point of view of the special interests of certain politicians, corporations, even departments of the government. If things are worse than we, the sooth-seers, suspect, then they don't want us sounding the alarm, and thus this drug is made available. Much like the old trick where one would set up easily discovered hiding places for a thief-in the hopes that he'd be satisfied with his first find and not seek out the real, far more cleverly concealed treasure!

"Yes, I think I understand. But just what do you want of me?"

"While you're acquainting yourself with these materials, take a sniff from the first vial, here, then a sniff from the second. Frankly, I haven't the courage."

"Is that all? Hand them over, then."

I took both glass tubes from the Professor, pulled up a chair and began to familiarize myself, one by one, with the abstracts of the papers submitted to the futurological congress. The first proposal envisaged a complete restructuring of attitudes, to be brought about by the introduction into the atmosphere of a thousand tons of reversol, which would effect a full 180-degree change in everyone's feelings. In the first phase, after the dispersion of the drug, comfort, abundance, delicious food, esthetic objects, elegance-all such things would overnight become despised, while crowding, poverty, ugliness and deprivation would be valued above all else. In the second phase the mascons and superneomascons would be totally removed or neutralized. Only now would the people, confronted with reality for the first time in their lives, find happiness, for they would have before them everything their hearts desired. One might even activate the exacerbands to worsen living conditions a little. But since reversol makes no exceptions in its inverting effect, erotic pleasures too would be rendered loathsome, and that would threaten mankind with extinction. Therefore once a year for 24 hours the drug's influence would be temporarily suspended by an appropriate antidote. On that day we would undoubtedly have a sharp rise in the number of suicides, yet this would be more than compensated for by the simultaneously initiated increase in the birth rate.