words the pure ideal, the quintessence of trurlishness; while you,
chained to the atoms of the flesh, are but a slave to the senses.’
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
31
‘You’re only information, I’m information plus matter. There’s
more of me than there is of you.’
‘Fine, then you obviously know more and don’t need to bother me.
And now if you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way.’
‘You start talking this minute or so help me I’ll—I’ll turn the
machine off!!’
‘What’s this? Threatening murder?’
‘Murder? There’s no murder in it.’
‘Oh? And what, may I ask, do you call murder?’
‘Really, I don’t understand what’s got into you. Here I give you my
mind, all my knowledge, everything I have—and this is how you
repay me!’
‘You charge too high an interest for what you give.’
‘Talk, damn you!’
‘I’m sorry, the academic year has just ended. You’re no longer
speaking to the rector and general director, but to Trurl the private
citizen about to set off on his summer vacation. I’m going fishing.’
‘Don’t push me too far!!’
‘Ah, there’s my carriage now. Cheerio!’
Without another word the natural Trurl walked around to the back
of the machine and pulled the plug from the wall. Instantly the nest of
filaments inside, visible through the ventilating grille, grew dim and
went out. It seemed to Trurl that he heard a chorus of tiny groans—
the digital death rattle of all the Trurls in the digital university. Then, suddenly, he understood the full enormity of what he had just done.
He was about to put the plug back in its socket, but the thought of
what the Trurl in the machine would undoubtedly say unnerved him
and his hand fell.
Leaving the workshop with a haste that closely resembled flight, he
went outside and took a seat on the garden bench beneath his
spreading cyberberry bush, a place that in the past had proved
excellent for concentrating. But he couldn’t sit still. The whole
countryside shimmered in the light of the moon he and Klapaucius
had once put up, and this called forth a host of memories, memories
of his youth. That silver satellite had been their first independent
project, for which their master, the august Cerebron, had honoured
them in a ceremony before the entire academy. Trurl thought of that
wise pedagogue, who had long since departed from this world, and in
some strange and mysterious way he was driven to get up and walk
out across the field. The night was full of enchantment: frogs,
apparently just recharged, were counting off in sleepy croaks, and
32
Stanisl/aw Lem
on the gleaming surface of a pond that he passed there were widening
circles, traces of the gyrostabilized guppies that swam up to touch the
evening air with their dark lips. But Trurl saw none of this, deep in
thought over he knew not what; and yet his wandering seemed to
have a goal; for he was not surprised to come upon a high wall and a
heavy iron gate—open just enough for him to squeeze through.
Inside was a thick gloom, a gloom like the far reaches of outer
space. Tombs, the kind no one had built for centuries, lifted their
sombre silhouettes along the path. An occasional falling leaf from the
stately trees above brushed against the sides of ancient monuments
and cenotaphs crusted over with verdigris. An aisle of baroque
sepulchres spoke not only of the changes in cemetery architecture,
but of the evolution in the physical organization of those who now
were sleeping beneath their metal slabs. An age had passed, and with
it the fashion for rounded, phosphorescent tombstones that brought
to mind the dials on an instrument panel. Trurl walked past the squat
statues of golems and homunculi, entered a new section of this city of
the dead—and hesitated, for the vague impulse that had led him here
was beginning to crystallize into a definite plan, a plan he hardly
dared to carry out.
At last he stood before the railing that surrounded a grimly bare and
geometrical tomb: an hexagonal tablet hermetically fitted into a
stainless steel base. Without any further delay he pulled a universal
picklock from his pocket, a tool he always carried with him, opened
the little gate with it and approached the grave on tiptoe. With both
hands he grasped the tablet that bore, in black and unembellished
letters, the name of his master, and turned it in a special way. The slab swung open like the lid of a jewellery box. Just then the moon hid
behind a cloud and it grew so dark that Trurl couldn’t even see his
own hands; he groped around and found something that felt like a
strainer, and next to that a large button. This he tried to depress, but it was stuck, so he pushed harder—then jumped back, suddenly afraid.
But the deed was done, something stirred within, the current was
beginning to flow, relays clicked like awakened crickets, there was a
loud crack—then silence. Thinking some of the wires had got wet,
Trurl sighed, disappointed though at the same time much relieved.
The next moment, however, there was a hollow cough, and another,
and finally a voice—feeble, hoarse, yet quite familiar—which said:
‘All right, what is it now? Who called me? What do you want? Why
do you wake me from the dead at this time of night? They won’t let
one rest in peace, will they—every minute some idiot gets it into his
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
33
head to resurrect me. Speak up, whoever you are! What, afraid? I
warn you, if I have to break open this coffin and come out . . .’
‘Ma—master and Maestro! It’s me, Trurl!’, stammered Trurl,
terrified by this irascible greeting from his old professor; he lowered
his head and stood in that position of submission the pupils of
Cerebron always assumed whenever there was a well-deserved
scolding to endure. It was as if time had suddenly been turned back
six hundred years.
‘Trurl!’, rasped the old professor. ‘Trurl? Ah, Trurl! Of course! I
should have known. All right, I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Then there was such a banging, clanking and clanging, that it
seemed as if the deceased was actually trying to pry open the cover of
his crypt. Trurl said quickly:
‘Master and Maestro! Please, you needn’t . . . Really, Your Excel-
lency, I only —’
‘What’s that? Now what? Oh, you think I’m coming out? No, no, I
have to straighten up a little here. Just a minute. Gads, I’ve got rusty!’
This exclamation was followed by an awful scratching and scraping.
When that died down, the voice said:
‘So you’ve made a mess of something, eh? Bungled and botched it
good, no doubt, and now you come running to your old teacher to get
you out of it! What, blockhead, have you no respect for these poor
remains, whose only wish is to be left alone? All right, all right, now
that you’ve disturbed my eternal sleep, let’s hear it!’
‘Master and Maestro!’, began
Trurl, screwing up his courage. ‘You
show your wonted perspicacity . . . Truly, it is as you say, I have come
up against a stone wall and know not which way to turn. But it is not
for myself that I intrude upon your Exalted Professional Presence,
there is a higher purpose that makes me dare to . . .’
‘You may dispense with all the frills and fripperies’, Cerebron
growled from the grave. ‘It’s obvious you come knocking on my
coffin because you’re in a jam and quarrelled, no doubt, with that
cohort and rival of yours, what’s his name . . . Plikarius, Lapocius,
whatever . . . well?!’
‘Klapaucius! Yes, we did quarrel!’, answered Trurl, snapping to
attention at that growl in spite of himself.
‘Of course. And instead of sitting down and talking the problem
over with him, pigheaded and proud as you are, and incredibly stupid
to boot, you sneak out at night and pester the weary corpse of your
old master. All right, peabrain, now that you’re here, out with it!’
‘Master and Maestro! My problem concerns the most important
34
Stanisl/aw Lem
matter in the whole continuum, the happiness of all sentient beings!’,
exclaimed Trurl, and he bent over the strainer that was really a
microphone and—as a sinner in a confessional—began to pour into it
his feverish words. He left out nothing of what had happened since
his first conversation with Klapaucius, hid nothing, didn’t even
attempt to present things in a better light.
Cerebron maintained a sepulchral silence at first, but soon, in his
characteristic way, was interrupting Trurl’s recital with various snide
remarks and indignant snorts. But Trurl, caught up in the momentum
of his own words, no longer cared, went on and on until every last
failure and humiliation had been accounted for. Out of breath, he fell
silent and waited. Cerebron, however, though before it had seemed
he would never run out of sneers and snorts, now said nothing, not a
single word. Only after a good while did he clear his throat and, in a
sonorous, almost youthful baritone, say:
‘Of course. You’re an ass. And why? Because you’re a sluggard, a
slouch. Never once were you willing to sit down and hammer away at
your general ontology. Had I flunked you in philosophy—and espe-
cially axiology—which, mind you, it was my sacred duty to do, you
wouldn’t be sneaking around the cemetery now, barging in on my
grave. I admit it, yes, I am partly to blame! You neglected your studies
as only a die-hard do-nothing could, an imbecile with a little talent,
and I looked the other way because you had a flair for the lesser arts,
those that derive from the ancient occupation of watchmaking. I
thought your mind would eventually develop and mature. Yet how
many times, how many times, you unmitigated dunce, did I say in
class that you have to think before you act? But no, he wouldn’t dream
of thinking! Builds himself a Contemplator, look at the great inventor!
As far back as the year 10,496, Protognostor Neander described, nut for
nut and bolt for bolt, exactly such a machine in the Quasar Quarterly,
and the great playwright of the Benightenment, Million Shakesphere
himself, wrote a tragedy in five acts on the subject. But then you
haven’t the time for books, scientific or artistic, have you?’
Trurl said nothing, and the angry old geezer went on, raising his
voice until it rang from the farthest tombs:
‘You’ve managed to become a criminal, too! Or didn’t you know
there was a law against damping or in any way diminishing the
intellect once it has been constructed? You say you steered straight for
Universal Happiness? And yet along the way you displayed your good
will by setting fire to some creatures, drowning others in milk and
honey, by imprisoning in boxes, closets, drawers, by torturing,
In Hot Pursuit of Happiness
35
dismembering, breaking legs, and just recently you’ve graduated to
fratricide! Not bad for a champion of Cosmic Wellbeing! And now
what? You expect a pat on the head?’ Here he gave such a hideous
giggle that Trurl shuddered. ‘And you say you broke the Wisdom
Barrier? Handed the problem over to a machine like the nincompoop
you are, and the machine handed it over to another, and so on until
the whole thing got out of hand, and then you crammed yourself into
a computer program? Don’t you realize that zero taken to any power
remains zero? Look at him, he multiplied himself to multiply his
mind! What a brilliant idea! What a stroke of genius! Are you by any
chance aware that the Codex Galacticus forbids self-reproduction
under pain of decommunication? Article XXVI, Section 119, Subsec-
tion X, Paragraph 561. But then, when one passes exams thanks to
electron cribs and remote control copying, I suppose he has to invade
cemeteries and rob graves. It always happens that way. The year
before I left, I offered a course in cybernetic deontology—I gave it both semesters! A code of ethics for omnipotentiaries! And where were
you? Did you come to the lectures? Wait, don’t tell me, you were
deathly ill. Right? Speak up!’
‘Yes, I . . . I wasn’t well’, muttered Trurl.
By now Trurl had recovered from the first shock and was no longer
overcome with shame; he knew from considerable experience that
Cerebron, though every bit the terror now that he had been in life,
would follow this ritual of dreadful abuse and imprecation with
something positive. The old codger really had a heart of gold and
would eventually show him the way out of the woods.
‘All right!’, said the late Cerebron, calming down a little. ‘You
blundered because you had no clear idea of what you wanted or how
to obtain it. That’s the first thing. The second: the construction of
Everlasting Joy is child’s play, but utterly useless to anyone. Your
marvellous Contemplator is an amoral mechanism, since it derives its
pleasure solely from physical phenomena, including the tormenting
and torturing of third persons. That’s not the way to build a happy
machine. As soon as you get home, look up volume XXXVI of my
Collected Works, open to page 621 and there you’ll find a blueprint for
an Ecstasotron. This is the only foolproof type of sentient device that
does nothing but feel ten thousand times more bliss than Bromeo
knew when he climbed the balcony to see his beloved. It was
precisely to honour the great Million Shakesphere that I named the
unit of measurement after that scene of balconical rapture, calling it a
bromeon. But you—who never once bothered to leaf through the
36
Stanisl/aw Lem
works of your old master—you defined your idiotic hedons with a
nail in a boot! A fine way to calibrate the higher soarings of the spirit!
But to return to what I was saying, the Ecstasotron achieves absolute
happiness by means of a polyphase displacement in the experiential
spectrum, naturally with regenerative feedback: the more it is pleased
with itself, the more it is pleased
with itself, and so on and so on until the autoecstatic potential reaches a level that activates the safety
valve—for without that, do you know what would happen? You
don’t, O self-appointed guardian of the universe? The machine would
literally die laughing! Yes! Its hysteresis, you see, builds up and . . . but why should I have to explain all this in the middle of the night, flat on my back in a cold grave? Look it up yourself! No doubt my works are
collecting dust in some dark, forgotten corner of your library; or else,
which seems even more likely, you put them in the cellar as soon as I
was buried. I know, you get away with a few tricks and you think
you’re the cleverest thing in the metagalaxy! All right, where do you
keep my Opera Omnia? Out with it!’
‘In . . . in the cellar’, mumbled Trurl, lying terribly, for many years
ago he had carted the whole set of books—making three separate
trips—to the Municipal Public Library. But happily the remains of his
master couldn’t possibly know this. Cerebron, satisfied he had seen
through his pupil’s subterfuge, said:
‘There you are. At any rate, the Ecstasotron is perfectly worthless—
the very thought of converting all the interstellar debris, the comets,
planets, moons and meteors and suns into endless rows of such
machines could only occur to a brain whose convolutions were
twisted in some topological knot on the order of Mo¨bius of Klein,
in other words warped in every conceivable way.’ Suddenly the dead
professor flared up again and cried, ‘Has it come to this, then? So help
me, I’ll have them padlock the gate! I’ll have them disconnect the
buzzer on my memorial plaque! That crony of yours—Klapaucius—
woke me up only last year in the same way, or it could have been the
year before (I don’t have a calendar or clock in here, you understand);
I had to rise from the dead, and all because one of my brilliant
students couldn’t handle a simple metainformational Aristoidelian
antinomy, though you can find the solution in any textbook on
nonlinear logic or introduction to infinite algorithms. Lord, Lord!
What a pity You do not exist and therefore cannot blast these
demiurgeous dimwits to perdition!’
‘You say, Professor, that, ah, Klapaucius was here?’, asked Trurl,
delighted at this unexpected piece of news.
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 8
