The Cyberiad

fell off, returning to the garbage from which they’d come, and the puddle rusted through the narrow waist, and his body slowly sank into the stagnant mire. But he had just put up some brand-new constellations, arranging them with loving care in the eternal darkness of his consciousness, which was his Gozmos, and did his level best to keep an accurate memory of everything that he had thought into existence, even though his head hurt from the effort, for he felt responsible for his Gozmos, deeply obligated, and needed. Meanwhile rust ate deeper and deeper into his cranial plates, which of course he had no way of knowing, and a fragment from Trurl’s jug, the selfsame jug that thousands of years ago had called him into being, came floating on the puddle’s surface, closer and closer to his unfortunate head, for only that now remained above the water. And at the very moment when Mymosh was imagining the gentle, crystal Baucis and her faithful Ondragor, and as they journeyed hand in hand among the dark suns of his mind, and all the people of the Gozmos looked on in rapt silence, including the Beadlies, and as the pair softly called to one another—the rust-eaten skull cracked open at the touch of the earthenware shard, pushed by a puff of air, and the murky water rushed in over the copper coils and extinguished the current in the logic circuits, and the Gozmos of Mymosh the Selfbegotten attained the perfection, the ultimate perfection that comes with nothingness. And those who unwittingly had brought him into the world never learned of his passing.

+ +

Here the black machine bowed, and King Genius sat plunged in gloomy meditation, and brooded so long, that the company began to murmur ill of Trurl, who had dared to cloud the royal mind with such a tale. But the King soon broke into a smile and asked:

“And have you not something else up your manifold for us, my good machine?”

“Sire,” it responded, bowing low, “I will tell you the story, remarkably profound, of Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph, intellectrician and pundit par excellence.”

+ +

It happened once that Klapaucius, the famed constructor, longing to rest after his great labors (he had just completed for King Thanaton a Machine That Wasn’t, but that is quite another story), arrived at the planet of the Mammonides and there roamed hither and yon, seeking solitude, until he saw, at the edge of a forest, a humble hut, all overgrown with wild cyberberries and smoke rising from its chimney. He would have gladly avoided it, but noticed on the doorstep a pile of empty inkwells, and this singular sight prompted him to take a peek inside. There, at a massive stone table sat an ancient sage, so broken-down, wired up and rusted through, it was a wonder to behold. The brow was dented in a hundred places, the eyes, turning in their sockets, creaked dreadfully, as did the limbs, unoiled, and it seemed withal that he owed his miserable existence entirely to patches, clamps and pieces of string—and miserable that existence was indeed, as witnessed by the bits of amber lying here and there: apparently, the poor soul obtained his daily current by rubbing them together! The spectacle of such penury moved Klapaucius to pity, and he was reaching into his purse discreetly, when the ancient one, only now fixing a cloudy eye upon him, piped in a reedy voice:

—Then you have come at last?!

—Well, yes… —mumbled Klapaucius, surprised that he was expected in a place he had never intended to be.

—In that case… may you rot, may you come to an evil end, may you break your arms and neck and legs— screeched the old sage, flying into a fury, and began to fling whatever lay at hand, and this was mainly odds and ends of trash, at the speechless Klapaucius. When finally he had tired and ceased this bombardment, the object of his fury calmly inquired as to the reason for so inhospitable a reception. For a while the sage still muttered things like: —May you blow a fuse! —May your mechanisms jam forever, O base corrosion!— but eventually calmed down, and his humor improved to the degree that, huffing, he raised his finger and— though he still dropped an occasional oath and threw off such sparks, that the air reeked with ozone—proceeded to tell his story in the following words:

—Know then, O foreigner, that I am a pundit, a pundit’s pundit, first among philosophists, for my lifelong passion and profession is ontology, and my name (which the stars must some day outshine) is Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph. I was born of impoverished parents and from earliest childhood felt an irresistible attraction to abstract thought. At the age of sixteen I wrote my first opus, The Gnostotron. It set forth the general theory of a posteriori deities, deities which had to be added to the Universe later by advanced civilizations, since, as everyone knows, Matter always comes first and no one, consequently, could have possibly thought in the very beginning. Clearly then, at the Dawn of Creation thoughtlessness reigned supreme, which is only obvious, really, when you take a look at this, this Cosmos of ours!!— Here the ancient one choked with sudden rage, stamped his feet, but then weakened, and finally went on. —I simply explained the necessity of providing gods after the fact, inasmuch as there were none available beforehand. Indeed, every civilization that engages in intellectronics strives for nothing else but to construct some Omniac, which, in Its infinite mercy, might rectify the currents of evil and plot the path of righteousness and true wisdom. Now in this work of mine I included a blueprint for the first Gnostotron, as well as graphs of its omnipotence output, measured in units called jehovahs. One jehovah would be equivalent to the working of one miracle with a radius of one billion parsecs. As soon as this treatise appeared in print (at my own expense), I rushed out into the street, certain that the people would lift me up on their shoulders, crown me with garlands, shower me with gold, but no one, not even so much as a lame cybernerian, approached with words of praise. Feeling dismay rather than disappointment at this neglect, I immediately sat down and wrote The Scourge of Reason, two volumes, in which I showed that each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable, and will not stop until the nebulae and planets have been processed to cradles, chamber pots and bombs, all in the name of Sublime Order, for only a Universe with pavement, plumbing, labels and catalogues is, in its sight, acceptable and wholly respectable. Then in the second volume, entitled Advocatus Materiae, I demonstrated how the Reason, a greedy, grasping thing, is only satisfied when it succeeds in chaining some cosmic geyser, or harnessing an atomic swarm—say, to produce an ointment for the removal of freckles. This accomplished, it hurries on to the next natural phenomenon, to add it, like a stuffed trophy, to its precious collection of scientific spoils. But alas, these two excellent volumes of mine were also received with silence by the world; I said to myself then, that patience was the way, and perseverance. Now having defended, first, the Reason against the Universe (the Reason absolved from blame, in that Matter permits all sorts of abominations only because it is mindless), and second, the Universe against the Reason (which I demolished utterly, I dare say), on a sudden inspiration I then wrote The Existential Tailor, where I proved conclusively the absurdity of more than one philosopher, for each must have his own philosophy, that fits him like a glove, or a coat cut to specifications. And as this work too was totally ignored, I straightway wrote another; in it I presented all the possible hypotheses concerning the origin of the Universe —first, the opinion that it doesn’t exist at all, second, that it’s the result of all the mistakes made by a certain Demiurgon, who set out to create the world without the faintest idea of how to go about it, third, that the world is actually an hallucination of some Superbrain gone berserk in a manner infinite but bounded, four, that it is an asinine thought materialized as a joke, five, that it is matter that thinks, but with an abysmally low IQ—and then I sat back and waited, expecting vehement attacks, heated debates, notoriety, laurels, lawsuits, fan mail and anonymous threats. But once again, nothing, absolutely nothing. It was quite beyond belief. Then I thought, well, perhaps I hadn’t read enough of other thinkers, and so, obtaining their works, I acquainted myself with the most famous among them, one by one— Phrensius Whiz, Buffon von Schneckon, founder of the Schneckonist movement, then Turbulo Turpitus Catafalicum, Ithm of Logar, and of course Lemuel the Balding.

Yet in all of this I discovered nothing of significance. Meanwhile my own books were gradually being sold, I assumed therefore that someone was reading them, and if so, I would sooner or later hear of it. In particular I had no doubt but that the Tyrant would summon me, with the demand that I devote myself exclusively to the immortalization of his glorious name. Of course I would tell him that Truth alone did I serve and would lay down my life for it, if necessary; the Tyrant, desirous of the praises my brilliant brain could formulate, would then attempt to bring me round with honeyed words and even toss sacks of clinking coins at my feet, but, seeing me unmoved and resolute, would say (prompted by his wise men) that as I dealt with the Universe, I ought to deal with him as well, for he represented, after all, a part of the Cosmic Whole. Outraged at this mockery, I would answer sharply, and he would have me put to torture. Thus I toughened my body in advance, that it might endure the worst with philosophical indifference. Yet days and months passed by, and nothing, no word from the Tyrant—so I had readied