various signals are set down in that drum, as on a phonograph record; that events are arranged like a melody, with all the notes, waiting only for a needle to bring them to life; that these boxes reproduce what are predetermined experiences. Wrong! Wrong!” He was yelling so loudly that the tin ceiling echoed. “That drum is to them what the world is to you! It never seems to you, does it, when you eat, sleep, get up, travel, and visit old madmen, that all that is a phonograph record whose touch you call the present!”
“But…” I said.
“Silence! I’m speaking!”
Those who called him a boor, I thought, were correct. But I had to pay attention, for what he said was fascinating. He went on:
“The fate of my iron boxes is not predetermined, because the events in the drum are laid out on rows of parallel tapes, and it is a random selector that decides from which tape the sensor of a given box will next draw content. Of course, it is not so simple as this, because the box itself can to some degree affect the movement of the selector, so that the selection is completely random only when the being I have created reacts passively… But they have free will, and it is limited only by what limits ours. Personality, compulsions, congenital deformities, external conditions, the level of intelligence — I can’t go into all the details…”
“Even so,” I interjected quickly, “they do not know that they are iron boxes.”
That was all I could blurt out before he cut me off:
“Don’t be an ass, Tichy. You’re made of atoms, aren’t you? Do you feel your atoms?”
“No.”
“Those atoms form molecules, proteins. Do you feel your proteins?”
“No.”
“Every second of the night and day, cosmic rays pass through your body. Do you feel that?”
“No.”
“Then how can my boxes discover that they are boxes, you ass? Just as this world is authentic and the only one for you, so the content that flows to their brains from my drum is authentic and the only real thing for them. The drum holds their world, Tichy, and their bodies — their bodies do not exist in our reality except as certain configurations of holes in perforated tapes. The box at the very end of the row considers itself a woman of unusual beauty. I can tell you exactly what she sees when she looks at herself naked in the mirror. What jewels she loves. The wiles she uses to trap men. I know all that, for it was I who created her and her form — a form imaginary to us but real to her — having a face, teeth, the smell of sweat, a stiletto scar on the shoulder blade, and hair into which she can stick orchids. A form no less real than your arms, legs, belly, neck, and head are real to you! You do not doubt your own existence?”
“No,” I answered calmly. No one had ever raised his voice to me like that, but I was too stunned by the words of the professor — whom I believed, seeing no reason to distrust him — to take offense at his lack of manners.
“Tichy,” Corcoran continued, somewhat more quietly, “I said that I had here, among others, a scientist. The box opposite you. He studies his world, but will never guess, never, that his world is unreal; that he is wasting his time and energy to fathom what is, in fact, a drum with wound-up tapes; that his hands, legs, and eyes, his own failing eyes, are merely an illusion induced by the discharge of suitably chosen impulses. To grasp that, he would need to get outside his iron box — that is, outside himself — and think without his electronic brain, which is as impossible as it is impossible for you to know the existence of that cold, heavy box other than by touch and sight.”
“But I know from physics that I’m made of atoms,” I shot back. Corcoran raised his hand in a peremptory gesture.
“He knows physics, too, Tichy. He has his own laboratory with all the equipment his world can provide… He looks at the stars through a telescope, studies their movements, and feels the cold weight of the glasses on his face. No, not now. Now, in keeping with his custom, he is in the garden that surrounds his laboratory, strolling in the sunlight — for the sun is just rising in his world.”
“But where are the other people — the ones he lives among?” I asked.
“The other people? Obviously, each of the boxes, each of the beings, moves among people… they’re in the drum, all of them. You still don’t understand! Perhaps an example, though a remote one, will make it clear to you. You encounter various people in your dreams — often people that you have never seen or known — and carry on conversations with them while you sleep. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“Those people are the products of your brain. But while you dream, you are not aware of that. Please note — that was only an example. It’s different with them' — he stretched out his arm — “they themselves do not create their families, friends, and strangers; these are in the drum, whole hosts of them, and when, let’s say, my scientist gets a sudden hankering to leave his garden and speak to the first passer-by, you could see what makes that happen by lifting the lid of the drum: his sensory reader, affected by an impulse, deviates imperceptibly from its previous course, moves onto another tape, and picks up what is recorded there. I say ‘reader,’ but actually it is hundreds of microscopic electrical collectors, because just as you perceive the world with your sight, smell, touch, hearing, and organ of balance, so he comes to know his world by means of separate sensory inputs and separate channels, and only his electronic brain unites all these impressions into one whole. But these are technical details, Tichy, of little consequence. Once the mechanism has been set in motion, I can assure you, it is only a question of patience, nothing more. Read the philosophers, Tichy, and you’ll see how little we can rely upon our sensory impressions, how uncertain, misleading, and mistaken they are. But they are all we have. It is the same with the boxes,” he said with upraised arm. “But that does not prevent them from loving, lusting, and hating, just as it does not prevent us. They can touch each other to kiss or to kill… . And my creations, in their perpetual iron immobility, also abandon themselves to passions and compulsions, they betray one another, they yearn, they dream…”
“In vain, do you think?” I asked suddenly.
Corcoran measured me with piercing eyes. For a long while he did not answer.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I’m glad I brought you here, Tichy. All the idiots I’ve shown this to ended by railing against my cruelty… What do you mean by your question?”
“You only supply them with raw material,” I said, “in the form of those impulses, just as the world supplies us. When I stand and gaze at the stars, what I feel and what I think belong to me alone, not to the world. With them' — I pointed to the rows of boxes — “it is the same.”
“That’s true,” the professor said dryly. He hunched over and seemed to become smaller. “But now that you’ve said it, you’ve spared me long arguments, for I suppose you understand by now why I created them?”
“I can guess. But tell me yourself.”
“All right. Once — a very long time ago — I doubted the reality of the world. I was a child then. The so- called malice of inanimate objects, Tichy — who has not experienced it? We can’t find some trifle, though we remember where we put it last; finally we find it somewhere else, and get the feeling that we have caught the world in the act of some imprecision or carelessness. Adults say, of course, that it’s a mistake, and the child’s natural distrust is suppressed… what they call
He approached the shelves and pointed to the highest box, which stood apart.
“The madman of my world,” he said, and his face broke into a smile. “Do you know far he has progressed in his madness, which has isolated him from others? He devotes himself to the search for the deficiency of his world. Because I do not claim, Tichy, that his world is flawless. The most efficient mechanism can jam at times; a draft may move the cables and they may meet for a split second, or an ant may get inside the drum. And do you know what he thinks, that madman? He thinks telepathy is caused by a short circuit in the wiring between two different boxes… that a glimpse into the future occurs when the reader, shaken loose, jumps suddenly from the right tape
