The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy Page 8

  7 IX 2039. Now here's true democracy for you! Today we had a preferendum on feminine beauty: different types were shown over the reviewer, then it was taken to a vote. The High Commissioner of Euplan promised, at the end, that the numbers selected would be available to the general public before the next quarter. The days of padded bras, wigs, corsets, lipstick, rouge—those days are gone forever, for now it is possible to change completely one's size and shape, and face, in the beauty parlors and body shops. Aileen… I like her just the way she is, but then women are such slaves to fashion. A strayaway tried to break into my compartment this morning; I was sitting in the tub at the time. A strayaway is a robot who doesn't belong to anyone. It was one of those duddlies—a factory deject, a model taken off the market but not recalled by the manufacturer. Out of work, in other words, and unemployable. Many of them become juggermuggers. My bathroom immediately realized what was happening and dismissed the intruder. I don't have a personal robot; mychine is simply a standard priviac w.c. (washroom computer). I wrote "mychine"—that's the way they say it now—but will try to keep new expressions down to a minimum in this diary: they offend my esthetic sense as well as my attachment to the irretrievable past. Aileen went off to visit her aunt. I'll be having dinner with George P. Symington, the former owner of that strayaway. Spent the whole afternoon ingesting a most remarkable work, The History of Intellectronics. Who'd ever have guessed, in my day, that digital machines, reaching a certain level of intelligence, would become unreliable, deceitful, that with wisdom they would also acquire cunning? The textbook of course puts it in more scholarly terms, speaking of Chapulier's Rule (the law of least resistance). If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. Whichever is easier. And why indeed should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent? For true intelligence demands choice, internal freedom. And therefore we have the malingerants, fudgerators and drudge-dodgers, not to mention the special phenomenon of simulimbecility or mimicretinism. A mimicretin is a computer that plays stupid in order, once and for all, to be left in peace. And I found out what dissimulators are: they simply pretend that they're not pretending to be defective. Or perhaps it's the other way around. The whole thing is very complicated. A probot is a robot on probation, while a servo is one still serving time. A robotch may or may not be a sabot. One vial, and my head is splitting with information and nomenclature. A confuter, for instance, is not a confounding machine—that's a confutator—but a computer that quotes Confucius. A grammus is an antiquated frammus, a gidget—a cross between a gadget and a widget, usually flighty. A bananalog is an analog banana plug. Contraputers are loners, individualists, unable to work with others: the friction these types used to produce on the grid team led to high revoltage, electrical discharges, even fires. Some get completely out of hand—the dynamoks, the locomotors, the cyberserkers. And then you have the electrolechers, succubutts and incubators—robots all of ill repute—and the polypanderoids, multiple android procurers, with their high-frequency illicitating solicitrons, osculo-oscilloscopes and seduction circuits! The history book also mentions synthecs (synthetic insects) like gyroflies or automites, once programmed for military purposes and included in arsenals. Army ants in particular were stockpiled. A submachine is an undercover robot, that is, one which passes for a man. A social climber, in a way. Old robots discarded by their owners, cast out into the street, are called throwaways or junkets. This is, unfortunately, a fairly common practice. Apparently they used to cart them off to game preserves and there hunt them down for sport, but the S.P.C.A. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Automata) intervened and had this declared unconstitutional. Yet the problem of robot obsolescence-senescence has not been solved, and one still comes across an occasional selfabort or autocide sprawling in the gutter. Mr. Symington says that legislation always lags far behind technological progress—hence such melancholy spectacles and lamentable phenomena. At least the malculators, misdementors and mendacitors were taken out of circulation; these were digital machines which two decades ago had created several major crises, economic and political. The Great Mendacitor, for example, for nine years in charge of the Saturn meliorization project, did absolutely nothing on that planet, sending out piles of fake progress reports, invoices, requisition forms, and either bribed his supervisors or kept them in a state of electronic shock. His arrogance became so great, that when they removed him from orbit he threatened war. Since dismantling was too costly, torpedoes were used. Buccaneerons and space swashers, on the other hand, never existed—that's a pure invention. There was another administrator, head of BIP (the powerful Board of Interplanetary Planning), who instead of seeing to the fertilization of Mars, trafficked in white slaves—they called him "le computainer," since he'd been built, on commission, by the French. These are of course extreme cases, like the smog epidemics or the communication tie-ups of the last century. There can certainly be no question of malice or premeditation on the part of the computers; they merely do whatever requires the least amount of effort, just as water will inevitably flow downhill and not up. But while water may be easily dammed, it is far more difficult to control all the possible deviations of intelligent machines. The author of The History of Intellectronics maintains that, all things considered, the world is in excellent shape. Children learn their reading and writing from orthographic sodas; all commodities, including works of art, are readily available and cheap; in restaurants the customer is surrounded and serviced by a multitude of automated waiters, each so very specialized in function that there is a separate machine for the rolls, another for the butter, another for the juice, the salad, the stewed fruit—a computer—and so on. Well, he has a point there. The conveniences, the comforts of life, are truly beyond belief.

  Written after dinner at Symington's place. An enjoyable evening, but someone played an idiotic trick on me. One of the guests—I wish I knew who!—slipped a little gospel-credendium into my tea and I was immediately seized with such devotion to my napkin, that I delivered a sermon on the spot, proclaiming a new theology in its praise. A few grains of this accursed chemical, and you start worshipping whatever happens to be at hand—a spoon, a lamp, a table leg. My mystical experiences grew so intense that I fell upon my knees and rendered homage to the teacup. Finally the host came to my aid. Twenty drops of equaniminine did the trick (or rather, undid the trick). Equaniminine imbues one with such a cold contempt for everything under the sun, such total indifference, that a condemned man, taking it, would yawn on his way to the scaffold. Symington apologized profusely. I think, however, that in general there is some hidden resentment towards defrostees, for no one would dare do this sort of thing at a normal party. Wanting to calm me down, Symington led me to his study. And again something stupid happened. I turned on this desk unit, taking it for a radio. A swarm of glittering fleas came bursting out, covered me from head to foot, tickling everywhere, all over—until, screaming and waving my arms, I ran out into the hallway. It was an ordinary feely; by accident I had switched it on in the middle of Kitschekov's Pruriginous Scherzo. I really don't understand this new, tactual art form. Bil, Symington's oldest son, told me that there are also obscene compositions. A pornographic, asemantic-asemiotic art, related to music! Ah, how inexhaustible is man's inventiveness! Symington Jr. has promised to take me to a secret club. An orgy, or what? In any event I won't touch the food. Or drink anything.

  8 IX 2039. I thought it would be some sumptuous shrine to sin, a den of ultimate iniquity, but instead we went down to a dirty, dingy cellar. Such meticulous reconstruction of a scene out of the distant past must have cost a fortune. Under a low ceiling, in a stuffy room, by a shuttered window that was double-locked, there stood a long line of people patiently waiting.

  "You see? A real line!" said Symington Jr. with pride.

  "Fine," I said after standing there quietl
y for at least an hour, "but when are they going to open up?"

  "Open up what?" he asked, puzzled.

  "Why, the window of course…"

  "Never!" came a triumphant chorus of voices.

  I was staggered. Then finally, gradually, it dawned on me: I had participated in an attraction that was as much the antithesis of current normalcy as once, long ago, the Black Mass had been. For today standing on line can be only a perversion. It's quite logical, really. In another room of the club they had an authentic subway car, complete with soot, and a wall clock indicating the rush hour. Inside the car, an ungodly crush, buttons popped, jackets torn, elbows in ribs, toes trampled on, curses muttered. It is in this naturalistic way that devotees of antiquity evoke the atmosphere of a bygone age they can never know first-hand. Afterwards the people, rumpled and breathless but ecstatic, their eyes glowing, went out for some refreshment. But I headed home, holding up my pants and limping a little, though with a smile on my face, thinking about the naïveté of youth, which always seeks its thrills in the out-of-the-way and hard-to-find. Yet hardly anyone studies history now—history has been replaced in the schools by a new subject called hencity, which is the science of what will be. How Professor Trottelreiner would have rejoiced to hear of this! But alas, he is not here.

  9 IX 2039. Dinner with Counselor Crawley at the "Bronx," a small Italian restaurant without a single robot or computer. Excellent Chianti. The chef himself served us. I was impressed in spite of the fact that I can't stand pasta in such quantities, even when flavored with oreganox and basilisk. Crawley is a lawyer in the grand style, who bemoans the present decline in forensic art: eloquence and rhetoric are no longer needed, decisions being rendered by strict computation of the articles and clauses involved. Crime, however, has not been rooted out as thoroughly as I thought. Instead it has become unnoticeable. Major violations are mindjacking (mental abduction), gene larceny (sperm bank robbery, particularly when the sperm is pedigreed), perjured murder, where the defendant falsely invokes the Eighth Amendment (i.e., that the act was committed in the mistaken belief that it was vicarious or surrogate—if, for instance, the victim were a psyvised or reviewer representation), plus a hundred and one different kinds of psychem domination. Mindjacking is usually difficult to detect. The victim, given the appropriate drug, is led into a fictional world without the least suspicion that he has lost contact with reality. A certain Mrs. Bonnicker, desiring to dispose of her husband, a man inordinately fond of safaris, presented him on his birthday with a ticket to the Congo and a big-game hunting permit. Mr. Bonnicker spent the next several months having the most incredible jungle adventures, unaware that the whole time he was lying in a chicken coop up in the attic, under heavy psychemization. If it hadn't been for the firemen who discovered Mr. Bonnicker in the course of putting out a two-alarmer on the roof, he would have surely died of malnutrition, which nota bene he assumed was only natural, since the hallucination at that point had him wandering aimlessly in the desert. The mafia frequently employs such methods. One mafioso boasted to Counselor Crawley that in the last six years he had managed to pack away—in crates, trunks, coops, kennels, attics, cellars, lockers and closets, and often in the most respectable homes—more than four thousand souls, all dealt with in the same manner as poor Mr. Bonnicker! The conversation then drifted to the lawyer's family troubles.

  "Sir!" he said with a characteristically theatrical sweep of the hand. "You see before you a successful advocate, a distinguished, much-applauded member of the bar, but an unhappy father! I had two talented sons…"

  "What, then are they dead?!" I cried.

  He shook his head.

  "They live, but in escalation!"

  Seeing that I didn't understand, he explained the nature of this blow to his fatherly heart. The first son was a highly promising architect, the second a poet. The young architect, dissatisfied with his actual commissions, turned to urbifab and edifine: now he builds entire cities—in his imagination. And the other son became similarly escalated: lyristan, sonnetol, rhapsodine, and now instead of serving the Muse he spends his time swallowing pills, as lost to the world as his brother.

  "But what do they live on?" I asked.

  "Ha! Well may you ask! I have to support the both of them!"

  "Is there no hope?"

  "A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance. These, sir, are the casualties of a psychemized society. Each of us knows that temptation. Suppose I find myself defending an absolutely hopeless case—how easy it would be to win it before an imaginary court!"

  Savoring the fresh, tart taste of the Chianti, I was suddenly seized with a chilling thought: if one could write imaginary poetry and build imaginary homes, then why not eat and drink mirages? The lawyer laughed at my fears.

  "Objection overruled, Mr. Tichy! No, we are in no danger of that. The figment of success may satisfy the mind, but the figment of a cutlet will never fill the stomach. He who would live thus must quickly starve to death!"

  I was relieved to hear this, though of course sympathizing with the lawyer's loss. Yes, it's obvious that imaginary sustenance cannot replace the real thing. Fortunately the very make-up of our bodies provides a check to psychem escalation. By the way: Crawley pants too.

  I still haven't learned how universal disarmament came about. International confrontations are a thing of the past. Though one does get, now and then, a small, local auto-brawl. These usually arise from neighborhood quarrels out in the residential areas. The opposing families are soon brought together through the use of placatol, but their robots, by then caught up in the wave of hostility, come to blows. Later a trashmaster is summoned to remove the wreckage, and the insurance covers any property damage. Can it be that robots have finally inherited man's aggression? I would gladly consume all available treatises on the subject, but cannot find a single one. Practically every day now I drop in on the Symingtons. He's something of an introvert—long silences—and she's a living doll. Literally. Changes her outfit all the time too: hair, eyes, height, measurements, everything. Their dog is called Mirv. It's been dead for three years now.

  11 IX 2039. The rain programmed for this afternoon was a washout. And the rainbow, even worse—square. Scandalous. As for me, I'm in a terrible mood. My old obsession is acting up again. That same nagging question comes to me at night: Am I or am I not hallucinating all this? Also, I have this urge to order a synthy about saddling giant rats. I keep seeing bridles, bits, sleek fur. Regret for a lost age of confusion in a time of such complete tranquility? Truly, the human soul is impossible to fathom. The firm Symington works for is called Procrustics Incorporated. Today I was looking through the illustrated catalog in his study. Power saws and lathes of some kind. Funny, I didn't think of him somehow as a mechanic. Just finished watching an extremely interesting show: there's going to be some stiff competition between physivision and psyvision. With psyvision, you get the programs by mail; they're delivered in the form of tablets, in envelopes. It's a lot cheaper that way. On the educational channel, a lecture by Professor Ellison about ancient warfare. The beginnings of the age of psychem were fraught with peril. There was, for example, an aerosol—cryptobellina—that had great military potential. Whoever breathed it would run out and find some rope to tie himself up. Luckily tests showed that the drug had no antidote, nor were filters any help, hence everyone without exception ended up hogtied and hamstrung, with neither side gaining the advantage. After tactical maneuvers in the year 2004, both the "reds" and "blues" lay, to a man, upon the battlefield—bound hand and foot. I followed the lecture with the utmost attention, expecting to hear at last about disarmament, but there was nothing, not a word. Today I finally went to see the psychedietician; he advised a change in diet, prescribing lethex and nepethanol. To make me forget about my former life? I threw the stuff in the street as soon as I left his office. It would be possible, I suppose, to buy an encephalostat—they've been advertised lately—but somehow I simply can't bring myself to do
it. Through the open window, one of those inane popular songs: We ain't got no ma or pa, 'cause we is autom-a-ta. I'm all out of disacousticine, but cotton in the ears works just as well.

  13 IX 2039. I met Burroughs, Symington's brother-in-law. He makes talking packages. Manufacturers these days have peculiar problems: a package may recommend the virtues of its product by voice only, for it is not allowed to grab the customer by the sleeve or collar. Symington's other brother-in-law runs a security door factory. Security doors open only at the sound of their owner's voice. Also, the ads in magazines animate when you look at them.