sob, fight, and fall in love, since that
“And if I were to look inside your head, I would also see nothing but electrons,” replied Klapaucius. “Come now, don’t pretend not to understand what I’m saying, I know you’re not that stupid! A phonograph record won’t run errands for you, won’t beg for mercy or fall on its knees! You say there’s no way of knowing whether Excelsius’ subjects groan, when beaten, purely because of the electrons hopping about inside—like wheels grinding out the mimicry of a voice—or whether they really groan, that is, because they honestly experience the pain? A pretty distinction, this! No, Trurl, a sufferer is not one who hands you his suffering, that you may touch it, weigh it, bite it like a coin; a sufferer is one who behaves like a sufferer! Prove to me here and now, once and for all, that they do not feel, that they do not think, that they do not in any way exist as beings conscious of their enclosure between the two abysses of oblivion—the abyss before birth and the abyss that follows death—prove this to me, Trurl, and I’ll leave you be! Prove that you only
“You know perfectly well that’s impossible,” answered Trurl quietly. “Even before I took my instruments in hand, when the box was still empty, I had to anticipate the possibility of precisely such a proof—in order to rule it out. For otherwise the monarch of that kingdom sooner or later would have gotten the impression that his subjects were not real subjects at all, but puppets, marionettes. Try to understand, there was no other way to do it! Anything that would have destroyed in the littlest way the illusion of complete reality, would have also destroyed the importance, the dignity of governing, and turned it into nothing but a mechanical game.…”
“I understand, I understand all too well!” cried Klapau-cius. “Your intentions were the noblest—you only sought to construct a kingdom as lifelike as possible, so similar to a real kingdom, that no one, absolutely no one, could ever tell the difference, and in this, I am afraid, you were successful! Only hours have passed since your return, but for them, the ones imprisoned in that box, whole centuries have gone by —how many beings, how many lives wasted, and all to gratify and feed the vanity of King Excelsius!”
Without another word Trurl rushed back to his ship, but saw that his friend was coming with him. When he had blasted off into space, pointed the bow between two great clusters of eternal flame and opened the throttle all the way, Klapauciussaid:
“Trurl, you’re hopeless. You always act first, think later. And now what do you intend to do when we get there?”
“I’ll take the kingdom away from him!”
“And what will you do with it?”
“Destroy it!” Trurl was about to shout, but choked on the first syllable when he realized what he was saying. Finally he mumbled:
“I’ll hold an election. Let them choose just rulers from among themselves.”
“You programmed them all to be feudal lords or shiftless vassals. What good would an election do? First you’d have to undo the entire structure of the kingdom, then assemble from scratch…”
“And where,” exclaimed Trurl, “does the changing of structures end and the tampering with minds begin?!” Klapaucius had no answer for this, and they flew on in gloomy silence, till the planet of Excelsius came into view. As they circled it, preparing to land, they beheld a most amazing sight.
The entire planet was covered with countless signs of intelligent life. Microscopic bridges, like tiny lines, spanned every rill and rivulet, while the puddles, reflecting the stars, were full of microscopic boats like floating chips… The night side of the sphere was dotted with glimmering cities, and on the day side one could make out flourishing metropolises, though the inhabitants themselves were much too little to observe, even through the strongest lens. Of the king there was not a trace, as if the earth had swallowed him up.
“He isn’t here,” said Trurl in an awed whisper. “What have they done with him? Somehow they managed to break through the walls of their box and occupy the asteroid…”
“Look!” said Klapaucius, pointing to a little cloud no larger than a thimble and shaped like a mushroom; it slowly rose into the atmosphere. “They’ve discovered atomic energy… And over there—you see that bit of glass? It’s the remains of the box, they’ve made it into some sort of tern-pie…”
“I don’t understand. It was only a model, after all. A process with a large number of parameters, a simulation, a mock-up for a monarch to practice on, with the necessary feedback, variables, multistats…” muttered Trurl, dumbfounded.
“Yes. But you made the unforgivable mistake of over-perfecting your replica. Not wanting to build a mere clock-like mechanism, you inadvertently—in your punctilious way —created that which was possible, logical and inevitable, that which became the very antithesis of a mechanism…”
“Please, no more!” cried Trurl. And they looked out upon the asteroid in silence, when suddenly something bumped their ship, or rather grazed it slightly. They saw this object, for it was illumined by the thin ribbon of flame that issued from its tail. A ship, probably, or perhaps an artificial satellite, though remarkably similar to one of those steel boots the tyrant Excelsius used to wear. And when the constructors raised their eyes, they beheld a heavenly body shining high above the tiny planet—it hadn’t been there previously—and they recognized, in that cold, pale orb, the stern features of Excelsius himself, who had in this way become the Moon of the Microminians.
TALE OF THE THREE STORYTELLING MACHINES OF KING GENIUS
One day to Trurl’s abode there came a stranger, and it was plain just as soon as he alighted from his photon phaeton that here was no ordinary personage but one who hailed from distant parts, for where all of us have arms he had only a gentle breeze, and where there are usually legs he had nothing but a shimmering rainbow, and in lieu of a head he sported a plumed fedora; his voice issued forth from his center, and indeed, he was a perfect sphere, a sphere of the most engaging appearance and girdled with an elegant semipermeable cummerbund. Bowing low to Trurl, he revealed that there were really two of him, the top half and the bottom; the top was called Synchronicus, the bottom Symphonicus. To Trurl this seemed an excellent solution to the problem of constructing intelligent beings, and he had to confess he had never met an individual so well turned, so precise, and with such a fine shine. The stranger returned the compliment by praising Trurl’s corpus, then broached the purpose of his visit: a close friend and loyal servant of the famous King Genius, he had come to place an order for three storytelling machines.
“Our mighty lord and sovereign,” he said, “has long refrained from all reigning and ruling, to which total abdication he was brought by a wisdom achieved through careful study of the ways of this and other worlds. Leaving his kingdom, he retired to a dry and airy cave, there to give himself up to meditation. Yet oft times sorrow comes upon him, and self-abhorrence, and then nothing can console him but stories, stories that are new and unusual. But alas, the few of us who have remained faithfully at his side ran out of new stories long ago. And so we turn to you, O constructor, to help us divert our King by means of machines, which you do build so well.”
“Yes, that’s possible,” said Trurl. “But why do you need as many as three?”
“We should like,” replied Symchrophonicus, spinning slowly, “the first to tell stories that are involved but untroubled, the second, stories that are cunning and full of fun, and the third, stories profound and compelling.”
“In other words, to (1) exercise, (2) entertain and (3) edify the mind,” said Trurl. “I understand. Shall we speak of payment now, or later?”
“When you have completed the machines, rub this ring,” was the reply, “and the phaeton shall appear before you. Climb into it with your machines, and it shall carry you at once to the cave of King Genius. There voice your wishes; he shall do what he can to grant them.”
And he bowed again, handed Trurl a ring, gave a radiant wink and floated back to the phaeton, which was instantly wrapped in a cloud of blinding light, and the next moment Trurl was standing alone in front of his house, holding the ring, not overly happy about what had just transpired.
“Do what he can,” he muttered, returning to his workshop. “Oh, how I hate it when they say that! It means only one thing: you bring up the matter of the fee, and that’s the end of the curtsies and courtesies; all you get for your pains is a lot of trouble, and bruises, more often than not…”
