The Cyberiad Page 15

  And so, though at first he had felt insulted by Trurl’s gift, in that the kingdom was too small and very like a child’s toy, the monarch saw that the thick glass lid made everything inside seem large; perhaps too he dully understood that size was not what mattered here, for government is not measured in meters and kilograms, and emotions are somehow the same, whether experienced by giants or dwarfs— and so he thanked the constructor, if somewhat stiffly. Who knows, he might even have liked to order him thrown in chains and tortured to death, just to be safe—that would have been a sure way of nipping in the bud any gossip about how some common vagabond tinkerer presented a mighty monarch with a kingdom.

  Excelsius was sensible enough, however, to see that this was out of the question, owing to a very fundamental disproportion, for fleas could sooner take their host into captivity than the king’s army seize Trurl. So with another cold nod, he stuck his orb and scepter under his arm, lifted the box kingdom with a grunt, and took it to his humble hut of exile. And as blazing day alternated with murky night outside, according to the rhythm of the asteroid’s rotation, the king, who was acknowledged by his subjects as the greatest in the world, diligently reigned, bidding this, forbidding that, beheading, rewarding—in all these ways incessantly spurring his little ones on to perfect fealty and worship of the throne.

  As for Trurl, he returned home and related to his friend Klapaucius, not without pride, how he had employed his constructor’s genius to indulge the autocratic aspirations of Excelsius and, at the same time, safeguard the democratic aspirations of his former subjects. But Klapaucius, surprisingly enough, had no words of praise for Trurl; in fact, there seemed to be rebuke in his expression.

  “Have I understood you correctly?” he said at last. “You gave that brutal despot, that born slave master, that slavering sadist of a painmonger, you gave him a whole civilization to rule and have dominion over forever? And you tell me, moreover, of the cries of joy brought on by the repeal of a fraction of his cruel decrees! Trurl, how could you have done such a thing?!”

  “You must be joking!” Trurl exclaimed. “Really, the whole kingdom fits into a box three feet by two by two and a half… it’s only a model…”

  “A model of what?”

  “What do you mean, of what? Of a civilization, obviously, except that it’s a hundred million times smaller.”

  “And how do you know there aren’t civilizations a hundred million times larger than our own? And if there were, would ours then be a model? And what importance do dimensions have anyway? In that box kingdom, doesn’t a journey from the capital to one of the corners take months —for those inhabitants? And don’t they suffer, don’t they know the burden of labor, don’t they die?”

  “Now just a minute, you know yourself that all these processes take place only because I programmed them, and so they aren’t genuine…”

  “Aren’t genuine? You mean to say the box is empty, and the parades, tortures and beheadings are merely an illusion?”

  “Not an illusion, no, since they have reality, though purely as certain microscopic phenomena, which I produced by manipulating atoms,” said Trurl. “The point is, these births, loves, acts of heroism and denunciations are nothing but the minuscule capering of electrons in space, precisely arranged by the skill of my nonlinear craft, which—”

  “Enough of your boasting, not another word!” Klapaucius snapped. “Are these processes self-organizing or not?”

  “Of course they are!”

  “And they occur among infinitesimal clouds of electrical charge?”

  “You know they do.”

  “And the phenomenological events of dawns, sunsets and bloody battles are generated by the concatenation of real variables?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And are not we as well, if you examine us physically, mechanistically, statistically and meticulously, nothing but the minuscule capering of electron clouds? Positive and negative charges arranged in space? And is our existence not the result of subatomic collisions and the interplay of particles, though we ourselves perceive those molecular cartwheels as fear, longing, or meditation? And when you daydream, what transpires within your brain but the binary algebra of connecting and disconnecting circuits, the continual meandering of electrons?”

  “What, Klapaucius, would you equate our existence with that of an imitation kingdom locked up in some glass box?!” cried Trurl. “No, really, that’s going too far! My purpose was simply to fashion a simulator of statehood, a model cybernetically perfect, nothing more!”

  “Trurl! Our perfection is our curse, for it draws down upon our every endeavor no end of unforeseeable consequences!” Klapaucius said in a stentorian voice. “If an imperfect imitator, wishing to inflict pain, were to build himself a crude idol of wood or wax, and further give it some makeshift semblance of a sentient being, his torture of the thing would be a paltry mockery indeed! But consider a succession of improvements on this practice! Consider the next sculptor, who builds a doll with a recording in its belly, that it may groan beneath his blows; consider a doll which, when beaten, begs for mercy, no longer a crude idol, but a homeostat; consider a doll that sheds tears, a doll that bleeds, a doll that fears death, though it also longs for the peace that only death can bring! Don’t you see, when the imitator is perfect, so must be the imitation, and the semblance becomes the truth, the pretense a reality! Trurl, you took an untold number of creatures capable of suffering and abandoned them forever to the rule of a wicked tyrant… Trurl, you have committed a terrible crime!”

  “Sheer sophistry!” shouted Trurl, all the louder because he felt the force of his friend’s argument. “Electrons meander not only in our brains, but in phonograph records as well, which proves nothing, and certainly gives no grounds for such hypostatical analogies! The subjects of that monster Excelsius do in fact die when decapitated, sob, fight, and fall in love, since that is how I set up the parameters, but it’s impossible to say, Klapaucius, that they feel anything in the process—the electrons jumping around in their heads will tell you nothing of 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 imitated suffering, and did not create it!”

  “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 succ
essful! 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…”

  At which the ring stirred in the palm of his hand and said:

  “The expression ‘do what he can’ indicates merely that King Genius, lacking a kingdom, is a king of limited means. He appeals to you, O constructor, as one philosopher to another—and apparently is not mistaken in so doing, for these words, I see, uttered though they be by a ring, do not surprise you. Be then not surprised at His Highness’ somewhat straitened circumstances. Have no fear, you shall receive your payment as is meet, albeit not in gold. Yet there are things more to be desired than gold.”

  “Indeed, Sir Ring,” observed Trurl wryly. “Philosophy is all very well and good, but the ergs and amps, the ions and the atoms, not to mention other odds and ends needed in the building of machines—they cost, they cost like the devil! So I like my contracts to be clear, everything spelled out in articles and clauses, and with plenty of signatures and seals. And, though I am hardly the greedy, grasping sort, I do love gold, particularly in large quantities, and am not ashamed to admit it! Its sparkle, its yellow hue, the sweet weight of it in the hand—these things, when I pour a sack or two of tinkling ducats on the floor and wallow in them, warm my heart and brighten my soul, as if someone had kindled a little sun within. Aye, damn it, I love my gold!” he cried, carried away by his own words.