The Cyberiad

“Phlogisticosh. Rhomothriglyph. Floof.”

“Is that it?” inquired Klapaucius after a pause, extremely polite. Trurl only bit his lip, gave the machine a few kicks of current, and tried again. This time the voice came through much more clearly; it was a thrilling baritone, solemn yet intriguingly sensual:

Pev’t o’ tay merlong gumin gots,
Untie yun furly pazzen ye,
Confre an’ ayzor, ayzor ots,
Bither de furloss bochre blee!

“Am I missing something?” said Klapaucius, calmly watching a panic-stricken Trurl struggling at the controls.

Finally Trurl waved his arms in despair, dashed clattering several flights up the metal stairs, got down on all fours and crawled into the machine through a trapdoor; he hammered away inside, swearing like a maniac, tightened something, pried at something, crawled out again and ran frantically to another tier. At long last he let out a cry of triumph, threw a burnt tube over his shoulder—it bounced off the railing and fell to the floor, shattering at the feet of Klapau-cius. But Trurl didn’t bother to apologize; he quickly put in a new tube, wiped his hands on a chammy cloth and hollered down for Klapaucius to try it now. The following words rang out:

Mockles! Fent on silpen tree,
Blockards three a-feening,
Mockles, what silps came to thee
In thy pantry dreaming?

“Well, that’s an improvement!” shouted Trurl, not entirely convinced. “The last line particularly, did you notice?”

“If this is all you have to show me…” said Klapaucius, the very soul of politeness.

“Damn!” said Trurl and again disappeared inside the machine. There was a fierce banging and clanging, the sputtering of shorted wires and the muttering of an even shorter temper, then Trurl stuck his head out of a trapdoor on the third story and yelled, “Now try it!”

Klaupaucius complied. The electronic bard shuddered from stem to stern and began:

Oft, in that wickless chalet all begorn,
Where whilom soughed the mossy sappertort
And you were wont to bong—

Trurl yanked out a few cables in a fury, something rattled and wheezed, the machine fell silent. Klapaucius laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor. Then suddenly, as Trurl was rushing back and forth, there was a crackle, a clack, and the machine with perfect poise said:

The Petty and the Small;
Are overcome with gall;
When Genius, having faltered, fails to fall.

Klapaucius too, I ween,
Will turn the deepest green
To hear such flawless verse from Trurl’s machine.

“There you are, an epigram! And wonderfully apropos!” laughed Trurl, racing down the metal stairs and flinging himself delightedly into his colleague’s arms. Klapaucius, quite taken aback, was no longer laughing.

“What, that?” he said. “That’s nothing. Besides, you had it all set up beforehand.”

“Setup?!”

“Oh, it’s quite obvious… the ill-disguised hostility, the poverty of thought, the crudeness of execution.”

“All right, then ask it something else! Whatever you like! Go on! What are you waiting for? Afraid?!”

“Just a minute,” said Klapaucius, annoyed. He was trying to think of a request as difficult as possible, aware that any argument on the quality of the verse the machine might be able to produce would be hard if not impossible to settle either way. Suddenly he brightened and said:

“Have it compose a poem—a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!”

“And why not throw in a full exposition of the general theory of nonlinear automata while you’re at it?” growled Trurl. “You can’t give it such idiotic—”

But he didn’t finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

“Well, what do you say to that?” asked Trurl, his arms folded proudly. But Klapaucius was already shouting:

“Now all in g! A sonnet, trochaic hexameter, about an old cyclotron who kept sixteen artificial mistresses, blue and radioactive, had four wings, three purple pavilions, two lacquered chests, each containing exactly one thousand medallions bearing the likeness of Czar Murdicog the Headless…”

“Grinding gleeful gears, Gerontogyron grabbed / Giggling gynecobalt-6o golems,” began the machine, but Trurl leaped to the console, shut off the power and turned, defending the machine with his body.

“Enough!” he said, hoarse with indignation. “How dare you waste a great talent on such drivel? Either give it decent poems to write or I call the whole thing off!”

“What, those aren’t decent poems?” protested Klapaucius.

“Certainly not! I didn’t build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That’s hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like…”

Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:

“Very well. Let’s have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit.”