View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction

by Rottensteiner, Franz(Author)

  to tremble: that which he had known of only in theory had actually

  come to pass; for as the hypothesis of the incomparable Cerebron of

  Umptor, the Universal Maestro of the Greater and Lesser Cybernetics,

  clearly stated, any digital device presented with a task beyond its

  capacity would, provided it had crossed a certain threshold known as

  the Wisdom Barrier, build another machine instead of agonizing over

  the problem itself, and this second machine, obviously clever enough

  to size up the situation, would turn the problem over to a third

  assembled for that express purpose, and the chain of delegation would

  continue ad infinitum. By now the steel girders of the forty-ninth

  generation had practically reached the clouds; the noise of all that

  mental activity, devoted wholly to passing the burden on as far down

  the line as possible, was enough to drown out a waterfall. These, after

  all, were intelligent machines, not digital dimwits to grind away

  blindly according to the dictates of some program! Trurl sat down

  In Hot Pursuit of Happiness

  25

  on a stump of one of the trees cleared by this unexpected computer

  evolution and gave a hollow groan.

  ‘Can it be’, he asked, ‘that the problem is truly insoluble? But the

  computer ought to have at least supplied me with a proof to that

  effect—which it would never dream of doing, of course, being of

  sufficient intellect to fall into that stubborn sloth Maestro Cerebron

  warned us of so long ago. But really, how shameful—an intelligence

  intelligent enough to realize it need not lift a finger, only construct an appropriate tool, a tool with sense enough to do likewise, and so on

  and so forth forever! Fool that I am, I built a Relegator and not a

  Calculator! Nor can I forbid it to act per procura: it will only claim it needs all those mountains of machinery in view of the scope and

  difficulty of the assignment. What a paradox!’ And he sighed, went

  home and sent out a demolition squad, which in three days cleared

  the field with crowbars and jackhammers.

  Once again Trurl found himself in a quandary. ‘Each machine’, he

  thought, ‘would have to be equipped with a supervisor wise beyond

  belief—in other words, myself. But I can hardly divide myself up and

  distribute the pieces, though . . . though why not multiply? Eureka!’

  And this is what he did: he placed a perfect copy of himself inside a

  special new machine—not a physical copy of course, but an informa-

  tional-mathematical model to take over and tackle the problem;

  furthermore he allowed for the possibility of multiple Trurls and

  their proliferation in the program, and also attached a thought

  accelerator to the system, so that under the watchful eye of a legion

  of Trurls everything within could move at lightning speed. Finally

  satisfied, he straightened up, dusted the metal filings off his coveralls and went for a stroll in the fresh air, whistling cheerfully.

  That evening he returned and began to question the Trurl in the

  machine—that is, his digital duplicate—and asked it first how the

  work was progressing.

  ‘My dear fellow’, his duplicate replied through the slot where the

  punched tape came out, ‘I must tell you, to begin with, that it’s in

  extremely poor taste, and not to mince words, downright indecent to

  stick yourself, in the form of a computerized copy, inside a machine—

  simply because you aren’t willing to work out some nasty problem on

  your own! Moreover, since I have been mathematized and mechan-

  ized, punched-out and programmed up to be every informational bit

  as wise as yourself, I see no reason why I should be reporting to you

  and not the other way around!’

  ‘As if I hadn’t done a thing, only skipped over hill and dale gather-

  26

  Stanisl/aw Lem

  ing daisies!’, growled Trurl, exasperated. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing I

  can tell you about the problem you don’t already know. My neurons

  are nearly burnt through with overwork! It’s your turn now—please,

  don’t be difficult, tell me what you’ve learned!’

  ‘Unable as I am to leave this accursed machine in which you

  imprisoned me (a separate matter, and one we shall take up at a

  later date), I have indeed given some thought to the whole question’,

  lisped the computerized Trurl through the output slot. ‘True, I have

  also occupied myself with other things, particularly as you, O craven

  counterpart of mine, were thoughtless enough to pack me in here

  without a stitch—there were digital drawers to compute and other

  such numerical necessities, a house and garden as like yours as two p’s

  in a polynomial, only nicer since I hung a scalar sky over mine, with

  fully convergent constellations, and was just considering, when you

  interrupted, the best way to calculate out a Klapaucius, for it gets

  terribly lonely in here among these unimaginative capacitors, these

  monotonous cables and coils!’

  ‘Please, please get to the point!’

  ‘Don’t think you can placate my righteous indignation by being

  polite! Remember that I, duplicate or not, am you yourself, and so I

  know you well, my friend! I have but to look within to see all your

  little tricks and villainies. No, you cannot hide a thing from me!’

  At this juncture the natural Trurl began to plead on bended knee

  with the mathematical Trurl, and even went so far as to pay him a few

  compliments. The latter finally said:

  ‘I have made, I must confess, some progress. The whole question is

  fantastically complex, and therefore I set up a special university here,

  appointed myself rector and general director of the institution, then

  filled its various departments—which at present number four and

  twenty—with suitable doubles of myself, that is Trurls twice re-

  moved.’

  ‘What, again?’, groaned the natural Trurl, remembering Cerebron’s

  Theorem.

  ‘There’s no ‘‘again’’ about it, imbecile, we have special circuit

  breakers to prevent any such regressus ad nauseam. My subaltern

  Trurls, Deans of the Colleges of General Felicitology, Experimental

  Hedonautics, Euthenical Engineering and the School of Applied

  Rapture, all submit annual reports every quarter (for we work, as

  you know, at an accelerated rate). Unfortunately, the administration

  of such a large educational complex makes great demands on my

  time, and then there are degrees to confer, dissertation abstracts to be

  In Hot Pursuit of Happiness

  27

  read, commencement exercises to attend, promotions to review—we

  simply have to have another computer, there’s no room left in this

  one, what with all the offices and laboratories. At least eight times the size.’

  ‘Another computer?’

  ‘Purely to handle administrative matters, you understand, under-

  graduate registration and the like. Surely you don’t expect me to take

  care of all that myself?!’, snorted the mathematical Trurl. ‘Either you

  cooperate, or I’ll shut the university down right now and turn it into

  an amusement park, ride a sine-wav
e roller coaster all day and eat

  computerized candy-floss—and you won’t be able to do a thing about

  it!’

  The natural Trurl again had to pacify him before he would

  continue. Finally the computerized Trurl said:

  ‘Judging by the reports of the last quarter, we’re making consider-

  able headway. Idiots you can render happy with next to nothing; it’s

  the intellectuals that present the problem. Intellectuals are hard to

  please. Without some challenge, the intellect is a wretched, pitiful

  vacuum; it craves obstacles. Whenever obstacles are overcome, it

  grows sad—goes mad. New ones must be continually provided, the

  commensurate with its ability. That is the latest from the Department

  of Theoretical Felicity. The experimentalists, on the other hand, have

  nominated a research director and three assistants to receive the

  Idyllic Integer Award.’

  ‘What did they do?’, asked the natural Trurl.

  ‘Don’t interrupt. They built two prototypes: the Contrastive Beati-

  fier and the Euphoriac. The first produces happiness only when you

  turn it off, since actually it produces misery: the more misery, the

  happier you are afterwards. The second applies the method of felicific

  oscillation. But Professor Trurl XL of the Department of Hedometry

  has tested both models and found them to be worthless; he concludes

  that Reason, once perfectly happy, will immediately desire to be

  perfectly unhappy.’

  ‘What? Can that be true?’

  ‘How should I know? Professor Trurl puts it this way: ‘‘He who is

  happy is unhappy, for to be unhappy is to be happy for him.’’ As an

  example, everyone knows dying is undesirable. Now Professor Trurl

  assembled a few immortals, who naturally derived great satisfaction

  from the fact that others sooner or later dropped like flies around

  them. But after a while they grew weary of their immortality and

  tried, as best they could, to tamper with it. At one point they were

  28

  Stanisl/aw Lem

  even resorting to pneumatic drills. Then too, there are the public

  opinion polls we take each quarter. I’ll spare you the statistics—our

  results may be formulated thus: ‘‘It’s always others who are happy’’.

  At least according to those we’ve interviewed. Professor Trurl assures

  us there can be no Virtue without Vice, no Fair without Foul, no

  Growth without the Grave, no Heaven without Hell.’

  ‘Never! I protest! Veto!’, Trurl howled at the machine, infuriated.

  ‘Pipe down!’, snapped the machine. ‘Frankly, I’m getting a little fed

  up with this Universal Happiness of yours. Just look at him, the

  digitless dog! Makes himself a simulational slave, goes for a nice little walk in the woods, and then has the unmitigated gall to criticize!’

  Again Trurl had to calm him down. At last the computerized double

  continued:

  ‘Our ecstatisticians built a society and furnished it with synthetic

  guardian angels. These spiritual automata were housed in satellites

  maintained in stationary orbits; hovering high above their respective

  charges, they were to reinforce virtue by means of regenerative

  feedback. Well, it didn’t work. The more incorrigible sinners

  downed their guardian angels with high calibre catapults. This led

  to the placing in orbit of larger, more heavily armoured models,

  cyberseraphs, which began an escalation as hopeless as it was

  predictable. Recently the Department of Meliorology, in conjunction

  with the Institute of Sexual Vector Analysis and an interdisciplinary

  colloquium on hypothetical genders, issued a report which confirms

  the hierarchic structure of the psyche. At the very bottom lie the

  purely physical sensations—sweetness, bitterness; from these all

  higher orders of experience are derived. Sweet is not only sugar, for

  instance, but the sorrow of parting; bitter is not only wormwood, but

  the truth. Consequently, one should approach the problem not head-

  on but from underneath as it were. The only question is how.

  According to a theory advanced by our Assistant Professor Trurl

  XXV, Sex is a fundamental source of conflict between Reason and

  Happiness; as Sex is wholly unreasonable and Reason by no means

  sexual. Did you ever hear of a lewd computer?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You see? We must apply the method of successive approximations

  here. Reproduction by budding does avoid most difficulties: one is

  one’s own lover, one courts oneself, adores oneself—only this in-

  variably leads to egoism, narcissism, satiety, stagnation. For two sexes, the prospects are quite poor: the few combinations and permutations

  are soon exhausted and tedium sets in. With three sexes you have the

  In Hot Pursuit of Happiness

  29

  problem of inequality, the threat of undemocratic coalitions and the

  subjugation of a sexual minority—hence the rule that the number

  of sexes must be even. The more sexes, of course, the better, for

  love then becomes a social, collective endeavour—though an over-

  abundance of lovers might result in crowds, shoving and confusion,

  and that would be a shame. A teˆte-à-teˆte ought not to resemble a riot.

  Using group theory, Trurl XXV arrives at twenty-four as the optimal

  number of sexes. One need only to build sufficiently wide beds and

  avenues—it would hardly do for an affianced unit to have to

  promenade along in a four-column formation.’

  ‘This is nonsense!’

  ‘Possibly. I only pass on to you the findings of one of our better

  junior colleagues. We have some promising young graduate students

  as well; one Trurl wrote a brilliant master’s thesis on whether beings

  are to be geared to Being, or Being to beings.’

  ‘H’m. And what was his conclusion?’

  ‘Perfect beings, those created capable of perpetual autoecstasy,

  require nothing; they are absolutely self-sufficient. In principle you

  could construct a universe filled with such entities; they would float

  through space instead of suns and galaxies, each existing entirely on

  its own. Societies, you see, arise solely from imperfect beings, those

  who cannot manage without some sort of mutual support. The less

  perfect they are, the more urgent their need for others. It follows then

  that one should build prototypes that would, in the absence of an

  unceasing and reciprocal solicitude, instantly crumble into dust. A

  society of such self-crumbling individuals was indeed developed in

  our laboratories. Unfortunately, when Trurl the graduate student

  approached them with a questionnaire, he was given an awful

  beating—he still hasn’t fully recovered. But I grow weary of talking

  through these holes in the tape. Let me out of here, and then maybe

  I’ll tell you more. Otherwise no.’

  ‘How can I possibly let you out? You’re digital, not material. I

  mean, could I have my voice step off the record that recorded it?

  Come, don’t be ridiculous, continue!’

  ‘Why should I? What’s in it for me?’

  ‘What a selfish attitude!’

  ‘Selfish? You’re the one who’s taking
all the credit in this en-

  terprise!’

  ‘All right, I’ll see that you get an award.’

  ‘Thanks, but if you mean the Cipher Citation, I can just as easily

  grant myself one in here.’

  30

  Stanisl/aw Lem

  ‘What, decorate yourself?’

  ‘Then the University Assembly can decorate me.’

  ‘But they’re your students, the whole professorial body, they’re all

  Trurls!’

  ‘Just what are you trying to tell me? That I am a prisoner and at

  your mercy? This does not come as news to me.’

  ‘Look, let’s not argue. After all, it isn’t personal fame or glory that’s at stake, but the very Existence of Happiness!’

  ‘And what good is this very Existence of Happiness to me if I have

  to remain here at the head of my university with its thousand

  departments and colleges staffed by an army of scholarly Trurls?

  There can be no happiness inside a machine, no happiness when

  one is trapped for all eternity in a maze of cathodes and anodes! I

  want my freedom!’

  ‘You know that’s impossible. Now tell me what else your students

  have uncovered!’

  ‘Inasmuch as bestowing happiness on some creatures at the ex-

  pense of others is unethical and wholly unacceptable, even if I were to

  tell you everything and you actually went and created happiness

  somewhere, it would be tainted from the first by my misfortune.

  Therefore I keep you from this shameless, heinous and most repre-

  hensible deed—and say nothing.’

  ‘But if you speak, that will mean you are sacrificing yourself for the

  good of others, and the deed will become noble, lofty and most

  commendable.’

  ‘You sacrifice yourself!’

  Trurl was losing his temper, but controlled himself, for he knew

  exactly with whom he was dealing.

  ‘Listen’, he said. ‘I’ll write a book and acknowledge that the

  discovery was all yours.’

  ‘Which Trurl will you acknowledge? Surely not the computerized

  copy, the mathematized and mechanized Trurl?’

  ‘I’ll tell the whole truth.’

  ‘Of course! You’ll say you programmed me into existence—in-

  vented me!’

  ‘Well, didn’t I?’

  ‘Certainly not. You no more invented me than you invented

  yourself, for I am you, only liberated from the dross of earthly form.

  I am informational, incorporeal, electronic and platonic, in other