The professor growled, grumbled, and finally said:
—That you may know how our great misfortune came to pass and why the four of us, forsaking worldly things, have formed this Holy Order of the Forge of Resurrection, consecrating the remainder of our days to sweet revenge, I will relate to you the history of our kind from the very beginning of creation…
—Must we go back that far?—I asked, afraid my hand would weaken beneath the weight of the pistol.
—Aye, Your Alienness! Listen and attend… There are legends, as you know, that speak of a race of paleface, who concocted robotkind out of a test tube, though anyone with a grain of sense knows this to be a foul lie… For in the Beginning there was naught but Formless Darkness, and in the Darkness, Magneticity, which moved the atoms, and whirling atom struck atom, and Current was thus created, and the First Light… from which the stars were kindled, and then the planets cooled, and in their cores the breath of Sacred Statisticality gave rise to microscopic Protomecha-noans, which begat Proteromechanoids, which begat the Primitive Mechanisms. These could not yet calculate, nor scarcely put two and two together, but thanks to Evolution and Natural Subtraction they soon multiplied and produced Omnistats, which gave birth to the Servostat, the Missing Clink, and from it came our progenitor, Automatus Sapiens…
After that there were the cave robots, the nomad robots, and then robot nations. Robots of Antiquity had to manufacture their life-giving electricity by hand, that is by rubbing, which meant great drudgery. Each lord had many knights, each knight many vassals, and the rubbing was feudal hence hierarchical, progressing from the lowly to the higher-up. This manual labor was replaced by machine when Ylem Symphiliac invented the rubberator, and Wolfram of Coulombia, the rubless lightning rod. Thus began the Battery Age, a most difficult time for all who did not possess their own accumulators, since on a clear day, without a cloud to tap, they had to scrimp and scrounge for every precious watt, and rub themselves constantly, else perish from a total loss of charge. And then there appeared a scholar, an infernal intellectrician and efficiency expert, who in his youth, doubtless owing to some diabolical intervention, never had his head staved in, and he began to teach and preach that the traditional method of electrical connection—namely parallel—was worthless, and they all ought to hook themselves up according to a revolutionary new plan of his, that is in series. For in series, if one rubs, the others are immediately supplied with current, even at a great distance, till every robot simply bubbles over with ohms and volts. And he showed his blueprints, and painted paradises of such parameters, that the old circuits, equal and independent, were disconnected and the system of Pandemonius promptly implemented.— Here the professor beat his head against the wall several times, rolled his eyes and finally continued. Now I understood why the surface of his knobby brow was so irregular. —And it came to pass that every second robot sat back and said, “Why should I rub if my neighbor rubs and it comes to the same thing?” And his neighbor did the same, and the drop in voltage became so severe, they had to place special taskmasters over everyone, and taskmasters over the taskmasters. Then a disciple of Malaputz, Clusticus the Mistaken, stepped forth and said that each should rub not himself but his neighbor, and after him was Dummis Altruicius with his program of flagellatory sadistomasochistorism, and after him was Magmndel Spoots, who proposed compulsory massage parlors, and after him appeared a new theoretician, Arsus Gargazon, saying that clouds should be gently stroked, not yoked, to yield their nimboid bolts, and then there was Blip of Leydonia, and Scrofulon Thermaphrodyne, advocating the installation of autofrotts, also called titillators or diddlegrids, and then Bestian Phystobufficus, who instead of rubbing recommended a good drubbing. Such differences of opinion produced great friction, which led to all sorts of exacerbations and excommunications, which in turn led to blasphemy, heresy, and finally Faradocius Offal, Prince and Heir to the Throne of the Alloys, was kicked in the pants, and war broke out between the Legarite Brassbound Umbutts and the Legaritian Empire of the Cold Welders, and it lasted eight and thirty years, and twelve more, for towards the end one could not tell, amid all the rubble, who had won, so they quarreled and fell to fighting again. And thus there was chaos and carnage, and a devastating decline in the vital voltage, an enervated emf and energy dissipation everywhere, or, as the simple folk put it, “total malaputziment'—all brought about by this infamous fiend and his thrice-accursed bright ideas!!
—My intentions were the best!! I swear it, Your Laserosity! It was always the general welfare I had in mind!— squeaked the kneeling Malaputz, and his outsize snout trembled. But the professor only elbowed him aside and continued:
—All this took place two hundred and twenty-five years ago. As you may have guessed, long before the outbreak of the Great Legarian War, long before this universal wretchi-tude began, Malapusticus Pandemonius, having spawned no end of ponderous treatises and tracts, in all of which he forwarded his vile, pernicious flummeries, died, smug and unruffled to the very end. Indeed, so pleased with himself was he, that in his last will and testament he wrote that he had every expectation of being named “Supreme Benefactor of Legaria.” At any rate, when it came time to settle accounts, there was no one with whom to settle, no one to make pay, no one that one might turn a little on a lathe. But I, O Illustrious Intruder, having formulated the General Theory of Facsimulation, studied the works of Malaputz until I was able to extract his algorithm, which, when fed into an atomic duplicating machine, could recreate ex
Horror-stricken, I blurted in reply:
—Why, you have surely taken leave of your senses, Professor, if you think for a minute that this person, this person as innocent as a brand-new fuse, whom you hammer together out of atoms every day, has to answer for the actions, whatever they were, of some scholar who died three centuries ago!
To which the professor said:
—Then who is this proboscidian sniveler who himself calls himself Malapusticus Pandemonius? Come, what is your name, O cosmic corrosion?
—Ma… Mala… Malaputz, Your Mighty Mercilessness… —stammered the groveling one through his nose.
—Still, it is not the same—I said.
—How, not the same?
—Did you not yourself say, Professor, that Malaputz no longer lives?
—But we have resurrected him!
—A double perhaps, an exact duplicate, but not the self-same, true original!
—Prove it, Sirrah!
—I don’t need to prove a thing—I said—seeing that I hold this laser in my hand; besides which, I am well aware, my fine Professor, that to attempt to prove what you ask would be most foolhardy, for the nonidenticality of the identicalized
—Many thanks, Your Magnanimitude!!—cried he in the bright red doublet, rising from his knees. —It so happens that here—he added, patting his vest pocket—I have an entirely new formula, this time foolproof, with which the Legarians may be brought to perfect bliss; it works by back coupling, that is, a hookup in reverse, and not in series, which was due purely to an error that crept into my calculations three centuries ago! I go immediately to convert this marvelous discovery into reality!!
And indeed, his hand was already upon the doorknob as we all gaped, dumbfounded. I lowered my weapon and, turning away, said weakly to the professor:
—I withdraw my objections… Do what you must…
With a hoarse roar the four of them lunged at Malaputz, threw him down and dealt with him—until, at last, he was no more.
Then, still panting, they straightened their frocks, adjusted their hoods, bowed stiffly to me, and left the cellar in single file, and I remained alone, the heavy laser in my trembling hand, full of dismay and melancholy.”
Thus did Trurl conclude his tale to enlighten King Thumbscrew of Tyrannia, who had summoned him for that purpose. When however the King demanded further explanation concerning the attainment of nonlinear perfection, Trurl said:
“Once, chancing upon the planet Ninnica, I was able to see the results of progress predicated on the perfectionistic principle. The Ninnicans had long ago assumed another name, that of Hedophagoi or Jubileaters, or just plain Jubilators. My arrival occurred during their Era of Plenty. Each and every Ninnican, or rather Jubilator, sat
