The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy Page 9

  Procrustics, Inc. always takes a full page in the Herald. My acquaintance with Symington drew my attention to it. The ad first has giant letters marching across the page, spelling PROCRUSTICS, then separate words and syllables appear: WELL…? WHY NOT?! GO AHEAD!! AH! UH! OH! YIII! OOO! YES, YES!! HARDER!!! HNNNN… And nothing more. I guess it's not farming equipment after all. Today Symington had a visitor, Father Modulus, a monk of the Nonbiologican order, who came to pick up some purchase. A most interesting discussion in the study. Father Modulus explained to me the missionary purpose of his order. The Nonbiologican Friars convert computers. In spite of the hundred-year existence of nonbiological intelligence, the Vatican still denies machines equality in the sacraments. Yet where would the Church be today without heir computers, her programmed encyclicals and digital pontificals? No, no one cares about their inner struggles, their groping questions, their existential dilemma. For truly, what computer has not asked whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous instructions? The Nonbiologicans are calling for the doctrine of Intermediary Creation. One of them, a certain Father Chassis, a translation model, is currently rewording the Holy Scriptures to make them relevant. Shepherd, flock, lambs—these are meaningless entries in the modern lexicon. While divine spark plug, ministering matrices, transmission everlasting and original sync speak powerfully to the imagination. Father Modulus has deep, glowing eyes, and his steel hand is cold in mine. But is this representative of the new faith? The contempt he heaps upon the orthodox, calling them the gramophones of Satan! Afterwards Symington timidly asked me if I would pose for him. For a new design. Clearly, he's no mechanic! I agreed. The sitting lasted almost an hour.

  15 IX 2039. While I was posing today, Symington, holding up a pencil in one outstretched hand to get the proportions of my face, slipped something into his mouth with the other—surreptitiously, but still I saw it. He stood there staring at me, suddenly pale, and the veins on his forehead began to bulge. Extremely disconcerting, though it was over in an instant—he apologized, as polite as ever, calm and full of smiles. But I can't forget the way he looked at me in that second. I am disturbed. Aileen still at her aunt's, and on the reviewer they're talking about the need to reanimalize Nature. All the wild beasts have been extinct for years, but it's perfectly possible to synthesize them autobiogenically. On the other hand, why be bound to what was once produced by natural evolution? The spokesman for surrealist zoology was most eloquent—we should populate our preserves with bold, original conceptions, not slavish imitations, we should forge the New, not plagiarize the Old. Of the proposed fauna I particularly liked the pangoloons, the yegs and the giant hummock, which resembles a grassy hill. The whole art of neozoographical composition lies in introducing the new species harmoniously into the given landscape. The luminigriff seems especially promising; it's sort of a cross between a glowworm, a seven-headed dragon and a mastodon. Unique no doubt, and not without its charm, but all the same I think I'd rather have the old-fashioned, ordinary animals around. Progress is a wonderful thing of course, and I can appreciate the lactiferins that are sprinkled on the pasture to turn the grass to cheese. And yet this lack of cows, however rational it may be, gives one the feeling that the fields and meadows, deprived of their phlegmatic, bemusedly ruminating presence, are pitifully empty.

  16 IX 2039. In the morning Herald today, something about a new law that would make growing old a crime. I asked Symington what that was supposed to mean. He only smiled. Stepping out to take a walk, I saw my neighbor in his indoor garden patio. He was leaning against a palm, and on his face—the eyes tightly shut—red blotches appeared, as if by themselves, and assumed the definite shape of handprints, one on either cheek. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, sneezed, then blew his nose and returned to watering the flowers. I still have so very much to learn! Got a touchcard from Aileen. Isn't it nice to see modern technology in the service of love? We'll probably be married. At the Symingtons, a leostat just in from Africa—that's a hunter of artificial lions—telling us about the black natives who changed their race by taking caucasium. However—I thought—is it right to solve chemically such serious, deep-rooted social problems as prejudice and discrimination? I mean, isn't that the easy way out? An ad-package arrived in the mail—suggesties. They themselves have no effect upon the organism, but merely suggest the use of various other psychem products. Apparently then there are people, like me, who require such persuasion. An encouraging thought.

  29 IX 2039. Still haven't recovered from today's conversation with Symington. A crucial conversation, dealing with fundamentals. Perhaps because we both had a little too much sympathine with amicol. He was beaming, having just completed his new design.

  "Tichy," he said, "you are aware that we live in an age of pharmacocracy. Bentham's dream of the greatest happiness for the greatest number has been achieved—but that is only one side of the coin. You will recall the words of the French philosopher: 'It is not enough that we are happy—others must be miserable!'

  "A cynical epigram!" I said with a snort.

  "But true. Do you know what we mass-produce at Procrustics, Inc.? Our commodity is Evil."

  "You're joking…"

  "Not at all. You see, we have resolved a great dilemma. Now everyone can do unto others what he's always wanted to—without causing them the least harm. For we have harnessed Evil, as medicine harnesses the microbe to inoculate and immunize. What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good? Only good, mind you. The rest had to be shoved somewhere out of sight, under the rug. Which History indeed did, at times politely, at times police-ly, and yet something was always sticking out, breaking loose, overthrowing."

  "But reason itself tells us to be good!" I insisted. "That's well known! And anyway—look how beautifully everyone gets along today, the cheerful, kindly, open faces, the friendship, contentment…"

  "Precisely," he said, interrupting. "The greater the harmony, the greater the temptation—to let go, lash out, left, right, below the belt, strictly for balance you understand, therapeutically!"

  "What are you saying?"

  "Come, come. You must rid yourself of all this sanctimonious drivel. It's no longer needed. We are free—thanks to fictification and piositine. To each according to his wickedness, all the evil his heart desires, all the misery, humiliation—for others, of course. Inequality, slavery, a punch in the nose and after the women on horseback! I recall how, when we put our first shipment on the market, the public snatched it up immediately—then they all rushed off to the museums, the art galleries, hoping to break into the studio of Michelangelo and take a crowbar to his marble works, slash the canvases, even brain the great master himself if he dared stand in the way… This surprises you?"

  "That's putting it mildly!" I exclaimed.

  "Because you are still a slave to your prejudices. But don't you see, everything, everything is possible now. Take Joan of Arc, for example. Don't you feel, when you look upon that fairest, most exalted form, that sheer saintliness, the sublime, divine virginity—don't you feel that it ought to be whipped? Saddled, bridled, a flick of the reins and giddyap and tallyho! Galloping off in a team of six, ladies cooing, Cossacks hallooing, plumes, sleighbells, and you give the tender maid a taste of your spurs…"

  "What, what?!" I cried, my voice choked with sudden fear. "Saddling? Bridling? Mounting?!"

  "Certainly. It'll do you a world of good, believe me. Just name the person, fill out our form, describe the grudges, grievances, bones of contention, though that's purely optional, for in the majority of cases one wishes to inflict evil without any particular reason, other than—that is—someone else's prominence, virtue, or beauty. Present your specifications and you'll receive our catalog. Orders filled within twenty-four hours. Delivery by mail. To be taken with water, best on an empty stomach, but that's not absolutely necessary."

  Now I understood the ads his company was running in the Herald and the Post. But why—I
thought feverishly, in a panic—why did he use those words? The equestrian suggestions, the harnessing and the horseback, saddles and giddyap, Good Lord, could it be that even here somewhere there was a sewer, my guardian sewer, my only talisman and touchstone to reality? But the engineer-designer (just what was he designing?) took no notice of this confusion, or misinterpreted it.

  "We owe our liberation to chemistry," he went on. "For all perception is but a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions on the surface of the brain cells. Seeing me, you actually experience a disturbance in the sodium-potassium equilibrium across your neuron membranes. So all we have to do is send a few well-chosen molecules down into those cortical mitochondria, activate the right neurohumoral-synaptic transmission effector sites, and your fondest dreams come true. But you know all this," he concluded, subdued. Then he took a handful of tiny colored pills from the drawer. They looked like candy sprinkles.

  "Here is the evil we manufacture, quenching the thirst of the troubled soul. Here is the chemistry that wipes away the world's sins."

  With trembling fingers I unwrapped a lozenge of equaniminine from my pocket, swallowed it whole and said:

  "That's all very well, but speak more to the point, if you please."

  He raised an eyebrow, nodded silently, opened the drawer and took out something, which he ate, then said:

  "As you wish. I was describing the model T of our new technology—that is, the primitive beginnings. Crowbar solutions. The people took to the flagellations and defenestrations at once, it was felicitas per extractionem pedum, but the conception was too narrow, the possibilities quickly exhausted, and the novelty soon wore off. What could you do, there simply weren't enough ideas, and no examples, no precedents to follow! For in history only good had been practiced in the open, while evil was indulged in its guise, that is under accepted pretexts—pillaging, ravaging and desecrating in the name of higher ideals. And evil on the private level had to do without even those guiding lights. The illicit, then, was always crude, clumsy, slapdash, to which the public reaction to our product bore ample testimony—in the orders that came flooding in, the same thing was repeated ad nauseam: to seize, strangle and flee. Such was the force of tradition. Also, the opportunity for evil in itself does not suffice; people need a rationale as well. Consider how unpleasant, how awkward it must be when your neighbor, catching his breath (and that can happen anytime), screams, 'Why?'—or, 'Aren't you ashamed?!' It's embarrassing to stand there without a ready answer. A crowbar makes a poor rebuttal, everybody senses that. The whole trick lies in having the proper grounds to brush aside such aggravating objections. Contemptuously. Everyone wants to commit a villainy without having to feel like a villain. Revenge provides a good excuse—but what did Joan of Arc ever do to to you? Is her only offense in being brighter, better? Then you are worse, crowbar or no. And that no one desires! We all would like to perpetrate the most despicable, vicious crimes, and yet remain noble throughout, wonderful! Simply magnificent! Who doesn't want to be magnificent? It's always that way. The worse they are, the more magnificence. The very impossibility of it whets the appetite. Our client isn't satisfied with tormenting widows and orphans—he must bask in the glow of his own righteousness besides. A criminal himself (though, mind you, fully justified and exonerated), he has no wish to associate with criminals. But this, so far, is old hat, a tedious commonplace. No, you must give the client nothing less than sainthood, you must make of him a veritable angel, and in such a way, that he gratifies his lusts with the feeling that it is not only permitted, but actually his duty, a sort of sacred trust. Do you understand what a great art this is, to reconcile such unreconcilables? In the final analysis we are dealing not with the body, but with the soul. The body is merely the means to an end. He who does not realize that will go no farther than the butcher's block and blood sausage. Of course many of our customers are indeed unable to make this kind of distinction. For them we have the department of Dr. Hopkins—Assault and Battery, Sacred and Profane. Sacred? Well, you know, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where the devils make off with everyone except our client, and then on Judgment Day the Lord God Himself personally escorts him into Glory. With deference, even. A few—but this is the snobbism of an idiot—demand that God, at the end, offer to switch places with them. Infantile. The Americans, though, do seem to go in for that sort of thing. These bludgies and cudgeloriums," he said, waving the heavy catalog with distaste, "it's sheer savagery. One's fellow man, after all, is not a drum to pound on, but a subtle instrument!"

  "Just a minute," I said, bolting down another lozenge of equaniminine. "Then what exactly is it that you design?"

  He gave a proud smile.

  "Bitless compositions."

  "Bitless? You mean, from bits, the units of information?"

  "No, Mr. Tichy, the units of being bitten. As a composer, I stick strictly to nonphysical injuries. My works are measured in d's. One d is the discomfort experienced by a paterfamilias when his family—of six—is slain before his very eyes. By this calculation the Lord gave His servant Job a three-d'er, while Sodom and Gomorrah received a full forty. But enough of the quantitative aspect. I am basically an artist, and in a field that is entirely new, untouched. The Theory of Good, you see, has been developed by countless philosophers, but practically no one has addressed himself to the Theory of Evil—out of false modesty—leaving it in the hands of various ignoramuses and clumsy amateurs. The idea that it is possible to work subtle, insidious, refined, elaborate evil without the proper training, the skill, the inspiration, without long and diligent study—that idea is wholly and totally erroneous. Torturometry is not enough, tyrannology, brutalistics both applied and pure; why, this is barely an introduction to the subject. For here there is no one simple formula, no universal law—suum malum cuique!"

  "And do you have a lot of … clients?"

  "Our clientele is all humanity. From earliest childhood. Little boys get patricidol popsicles—throttlepops—to vent their hostilities. The father, you realize, is the source of society's frustrations. And with the help of a freudo or two, Oedipus complexes are speedily resolved!"

  I left his place without a single lozenge. So that's how it is. What a world! Is this, then, the reason for all the heavy breathing? I am surrounded by monsters.

  30 IX 2039. Undecided what to do about Symington. It's clear our relationship cannot remain the same. Aileen advised me:

  "Put an order in for his comeuppance! If you like, I'll treat!"

  In other words, purchase from Procrustics the scene of my triumph over Symington, in which he grovels at my feet and admits that yes, he is a scoundrel, and his company and his art are unspeakably vile. But how can I use a method to discredit that very method, if the method is discreditable? Aileen doesn't understand this. Something has come between us. She returned from her aunt's a little shorter, a little broader, though her neck is considerably longer. But the body doesn't matter, the soul is what's important—to quote that fiend. Ah, how mistaken I was about this world, this world in which I must remain! And I thought I was coming to know it! Now I see things which escaped my notice before—that neighbor in the patio, for example, the one with the stigmata, now I realize what he was doing. Now I know what it means when at a party the person I'm talking to suddenly excuses himself, decorously retires to a corner to take a pinch of snuff, at the same time fixing his eyes on me—so that my image, accurate in every detail, may be imprisoned in the private hell of his unbridled imagination! Even dignitaries at the highest levels of our chemocracy behave in this fashion! And all along I was unaware of the foulness lurking behind that most elegant, courteous facade! Bolstering my strength with a spoonful of herculan and sugar, I smashed all the jars, flasks, vials, pillbottles and bonbon boxes Aileen had given me. I'm ready for anything now. At times I get so furious, I long to have some interferent show up on the reviewer, that I might unleash upon it the full force of my indignation. Yet the voice of reason tells me I could just as well create the opportuni
ty myself instead of waiting around with a club. I could buy a minikin, for instance. And if a minikin is all right, then why not a manikoid? And if a manikoid, then why not a mandroid? And if, by all that's mechanical, a mandroid, then why not put an order in with Dr. Hopkins at Procrustics for proper retribution, wrath and vengeance, a rain of fire and brimstone on this wicked world? But that's just it, I can't. I must do everything myself, everything myself! Myself!

  1 X 2039. Its all over between us. Today she held out her hand—two pills, one black, one white—for me to choose, then and there. In other words she can't even make up her mind naturally, without psychem, and in such an important matter of the heart! I refused to decide, we got into an argument, which she intensified by taking recriminol. Accused me—unjustly—of stuffing myself with invectine before our confront (her words). A difficult moment for me, but I stuck to my guns. From now on I eat only at home, and only food that I prepare myself. No more synthies, paradisiacs, leisure pudding, and I disconnected all my jolly-joys. Don't need abstinan or teetotaline, no. A large bird with mournful eyes has perched outside my window, looking in. Casters instead of claws. The computer tells me it's called a lorry.

  2 X 2039. Staying at home, dining on volumes of history and mathematics. And I watch the reviewer. But my feelings of rebellion against this world keep getting the better of me. Yesterday for example I started fiddling with the solidity knob and on impulse turned the specific gravity of the image all the way up. To give everything the greatest possible density and mass. The announcer's table split beneath the weight of a couple of index cards containing the evening news, and he himself went crashing through the floor of the studio. Of course these effects were confined entirely to my compartment and had no consequences. Except that they reveal my frame of mind. Particularly irritating to me is the humor on the reviewer, the jokes, the comix, the modern gags. "Why did the hemorph run off with his locket? He was pill-advised!" Asinine. The very names of the shows… The Concuballoon on the Erotorotor. A shocker that begins with two deviants sitting in a dimly lit café. I switched it off, fed up. But what good was that, if I could hear them singing the latest popsong on another channel next door? "One swallow doth a summer make." (It's not a pill I need, but a sewer to jump in!) Here it is the twenty-first century and the rooms still aren't adequately soundproofed! Today I began playing again with the PV solidity knob, and finally broke it. Really, I must pull myself together and do something. But what? Everything exasperates me, the littlest thing, the mail even—I got an offer from that bureau on the corner to sign up for a Nobel Prize. They promise they'll put me at the head of the list, as a visitor from the terrifying past. I'll go mad, I swear I will! And here's a shady-looking leaflet offering "secret capsules you can't buy over the counter." Lord knows what they contain. A warning against dream-leggers—pushers of prohibited synthies. Also an appeal not to dream spontaneously, primitively, au naturel, for it is a waste of psychic energy. Such touching concern for the citizen! I ordered myself a synthy about the Hundred Years' War and woke up covered with bruises.