The Big Book of Science Fiction
Page 11
As for my second of mean solar time, had I remained on Earth, I still could not be sure of retaining the elusive thing, and even of using it to measure time validly.
If over a few million years I have not completed my pataphysical studies, it is certain that the period of the Earth’s rotation around its axis and of its revolution around the sun will both be very different from what they are now. A good watch that I would have let run all this time would have cost me a fortune, and then again I do not do century-long experiments, couldn’t care less about continuity, and think it more aesthetical to keep Time itself in my pocket, or the unity of measurement that constitutes its instantaneous photography.
For these reasons, I had procured an oscillator, a device better suited, for permanence and absolute accuracy, than the balance wheel of a chronometer. This oscillator had a period of vibration retaining the same value over a number of million years with an error of less than 1:1,000. It was a tuning fork. The vibration period had been carefully determined before I embarked in my vessel, as you recommend, by our colleague Professor McLeod, in terms of mean solar seconds, the arms of the fork being successively turned upward, downward, and toward the horizon, in order to eliminate the slightest influence of terrestrial gravity.
I did not have my tuning fork any longer. Imagine the perplexity of a man outside time and space, who has lost his watch, and his measuring rod, and his tuning fork. I believe, sir, that it is indeed this state which constitutes death.
But I suddenly remembered your teachings and my own previous experiments. Since I was simply NOWHERE, or SOMEWHERE, which is the same thing, I found a way of fabricating a piece of glass, thanks to my acquaintance with various demons, including the Sorting Demon of Maxwell, who succeeded in marshaling particles according to their types of movement in a continuous widespread liquid (what you call small elastic solids or molecules): to serve my need, in the shape of silicate of aluminum. I have now traced the lines and lit the two candles, albeit with a little time and perseverance, having had to work without even the aid of tools in flint. I have seen the two rows of spectrums, and the yellow spectrum has returned my centimeter by virtue of the figure 5:892 × 10-3.
Here we are now, well and comfortable on dry land, following my atavistic habit, since I carry on me the one-thousand-millionth part of a quarter of the Earth’s circumference, which is by far more honorable than simply standing on the orb’s surface by means of gravitation; bear with me while I describe a few of my impressions.
Eternity appears to me in the shape of unmoving ether, which as a consequence is not luminous. I shall call the ephemeral ether circular mobile. And I infer from Aristotle’s treatise On the Heavens that it is appropriate to write ETHERNITY.
The luminous ether and all the particles of matter, which I can perfectly make out, my astral body having good pataphysical eyes, has the shape, at first sight, of a system of unbending articulated suspension bars and, on some of these bars, fast-rotating wheels. Therefore the system fulfills beautifully the mathematical equations introduced by Navier, Poisson, and Cauchy. Furthermore, it constitutes an elastic solid apt to determine the magnetic rotation of the polarization plane of light discovered by Faraday. During my posthumous spare time, I shall endeavor to prevent it from rotating at all, reducing it to the state of a mere spring balance.
These alterations will not strip the system of any qualities. Ether feels as elastic as jelly, yielding to the touch like the wax of Scottish shoemakers.
PART 4: PATAPHYSICS AND CATACHEMY
Further fragment:
God transcendent is trigonal and the soul transcendent theogonal; therefore the soul is trigonal, too.
God immanent is trihedral and the soul immanent equally trihedral.
There are three souls (cf. Plato).
Man is tetrahedral because his souls are not independent,
Therefore he is a solid, and God is spirit.
If the souls are independent, man is God (MORAL PHILOSOPHY). Dialogue among the three thirds of the number three:
MAN: The three persons are the three souls of God.
DEUS: Tres animae sunt tres personae hominis.
TOGETHER: Homo est Deus.
PART 5: CONCERNING THE SURFACE OF GOD
God is by definition dimensionless; it is possible, nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, to infer a random number, greater than zero, of dimensions, even though He has none, so long as this number disappears on both sides of our equation. We shall content ourselves with two dimensions, so that we can easily represent these flat geometrical signs on a sheet of paper.
Symbolically God is signified by a triangle, but the three Persons should not be regarded as being either its vertexes or its sides. They are the three heights of another equilateral triangle circumscribed around the traditional one. This hypothesis conforms to the revelations of Anna-Katherina Emmerick, who saw the cross (which we may consider to be the symbol of the Verb of God in the form of a Y, and explains it only by the physical reason that no arm of human length could be outstretched far enough to reach the nails at the ends of the branches of a tau.
Therefore, POSTULATE:
Until more facts are available and for greater ease in our provisional estimates, let us suppose God to have the shape and symbolic appearance of three equal straight lines of length a, emanating from the same point and having between them angles of 120 degrees. From the space enclosed between these lines, or from the triangle obtained by joining the three farthest points of these straight lines, we propose to calculate the surface.
Let x be the median extension of one of the Persons a, 2y the side of the triangle to which it is perpendicular, and P the extensions of the straight line (a+x) in both directions ad infinitum.
Thus we have:
x = ∞ − N − d − P.
But
N = ∞ − 0
And
P = 0.
Therefore,
x = ∞ − (∞ − 0) − a − 0 = ∞ − ∞ + 0 − a − 0
x = − a.
In another respect, the right triangle whose sides are a, x, and y gives us
a2 = x2 + y2:
By substituting for x its value of (−a) one arrives at
a2 = (a2) + y2 = a2 + y2
Whence
y2 = a2 − a2 = 0
And
y = RADICAL 0
Therefore the surface of the equilateral triangle having the three straight lines for bisectors of its angles
a will be
S = y(x + a) = RADICAL 0(−a + a)
S = 0 RADICAL 0
COROLLARY: At first consideration of the RADICAL 0, we can affirm that the surface calculated is one line at the most; in the second place, if we construct the figure according to the values obtained for x and y, we can determine:
That the straight line 2y, which we now know to be 2 RADICAL 0, has its point of intersection on one of the straight lines a in the opposite direction to that of our first hypothesis, since x = −a; also, that the base of our triangle coincides with its vertex;
That the two straight lines a make, together with the first one, angles at least smaller than 60 degrees, and what is more can only attain 2 RADICAL 0 by coinciding with the first straight line a.
Which conforms to the dogma of the equivalence of the three Persons between themselves and in their totality.
We can say that a is a straight line connecting 0 and INFINITE, and can define God thus:
DEFINITION: God is the shortest distance between zero and infinity.
…In which direction? one may ask.
We shall reply that His first name is not Jack, but Plus-and-Minus. And one should say:
± God is the shortest distance between 0 and ∞, in either direction.
Which conforms to the belief in the two principles; but it is more correct to attribute the sign + to that of the subject’s faith.
But God being without dimension is not a line.
—Let us note, in fact, that
, according to the equation
∞ − 0 − a + a + 0 = 1
the length a is nil, so that a is not a line but a point.
Therefore, definitively:
GOD IS THE TANGENTIAL POINT BETWEEN ZERO AND INFINITY
Pataphysics is the science…
* * *
*1 Patte à physique, pas ta physique, or pâte à physique (Physics’ Paw; Not Your Kind of Physics; and Physics’ Dough).
*2 (Correct quote: “Leviores gustus in philosophia movere fortasse ad atheismum, sed pleniores haustus ad religionem reducere.”) “It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Baco Verulamus.
*3 In 1875 MM. Tait and Dewar made a series of experiments on Guthrie’s radiometer.
*4 “Centimeter, gram, second” (the unit of force defined in terms of the units of mass, length, and time).
Mechanopolis
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
Translated by Marian Womack
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864–1936) was a Spanish writer and philosopher, well known around the world during his lifetime, who taught at the University of Salamanca. Unamuno was always a controversial figure—a socialist to start before then lapsing into nationalism—in part because he stood in opposition to the monarchy as well as the dictatorships of Miguel Primo de Rivera. As a result, Unamuno was fired from the University of Salamanca in 1920 and exiled from Spain until 1930. During the Spanish Civil War, Unamuno supported the republican government, which had allowed him to return to Spain—but then became a rebel sympathizer.
Much of Unamuno’s writing is influenced by his own personal philosophy, which changed significantly multiple times in his life in response to different religious and political crises—his beliefs captured in such treatises as “The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations” (1913) and essays like “Our Lord Don Quixote” (1905) and “The Agony of Christianity” (1925).
Much of his fiction has allegorical dimensions in relation to morality and Christian thought, such as Abel Sánchez (1917), which uses the story of Cain and Abel for a then-modern exploration of envy. His story “Mechanopolis” (1913) is actually a rarity for him, in that he wrote very little science fiction.
In a prior translation, this story was previously reprinted in Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain, whose editors included the work because “it illustrates (from the vantage of 1913) the loss of faith in science and the fear of technology characteristic of much science fiction in the twentieth century.” The story serves as an excellent early example of Spanish-language science fiction in the twentieth century.
MECHANOPOLIS
Miguel de Unamuno
Translated by Marian Womack
Reading how Samuel Butler, in Erewhon, describes the inhabitant of that country who wrote The Book of Machines, and who thereby caused almost all the machines of his country to be set aside, has brought to mind the tale a friend told me of his journey to Mechanopolis, the city of machines. When he told me, he was still trembling at the memory of what he had seen, and it caused such a strong impression on him that he later retired to spend years in an isolated spot equipped with as few machines as possible. I will try to reproduce my friend’s story, as far as I can in his own words:
—
A time came when I found myself lost in the middle of a trackless desert: my companions had either turned back to try to save themselves, as if we knew where salvation was to be found, or had perished from thirst. I was alone, and almost dead from thirst myself. I sucked at the dark black blood that flowed from the fingers that I had torn in scrabbling at the dry ground in the mad hope of finding some water beneath it. I was almost prepared to lie down on the ground and turn up my eyes to the implacably blue sky in order to die as soon as possible. When I was prepared to try to kill myself by holding my breath or by scraping out a shallow grave to bury myself in that terrible earth, I lifted my failing eyes and thought I saw a patch of greenery in the distance. “It must be a mirage,” I thought, but I dragged myself toward it.
After several hours of agony, I did indeed find myself in an oasis. A spring of fresh water helped me regain my strength, and after drinking I ate some of the pleasant-tasting and succulent fruits that hung plentifully on the trees. Then I fell to sleep.
I do not know how many hours I slept, or whether they were indeed hours rather than days, or months, or years. All I know is that I awoke changed, changed utterly. My horrible sufferings had erased themselves almost completely from my memory. “Poor fellows!” I thought, as I remembered my companions in the expedition who had died en route. I stood up, drank water and ate fruit once again, and began to explore the oasis. And nearby, only a few steps from where I was, I found myself at a train station, entirely abandoned. There was not a soul to be seen. A train, deserted, with no driver or stoker, was steaming on the rails. The thought occurred to me that I should, out of pure curiosity, climb on board one of the cars. I sat down, closed the door behind me—I do not know why—and the train started to move. I felt a mad terror overcome me and was seized by the urge to throw myself from the window. But I contained myself, saying, “Let’s see where this ends up.”
The train moved so swiftly that I was unable even to take notice of the landscape through which we passed. I had to close the windows. I felt a horrid vertigo. And when the train finally stopped, I found myself in a magnificent station, far above any that we have here. I alighted and went into the streets.
I cannot describe the city. No human mind can even dream of the magnificence, the lavishness, the comfort, or the cleanliness of such a spot. Indeed, I did not understand the necessity for such cleanliness, as I saw not a single living creature. No people, no animals. Not a single dog crossing the street, not a single swallow in the sky.
I saw a splendid building whose sign read “Hotel,” just like that, written as we write it ourselves, and I went in. It was entirely deserted. I went to the dining room. There was an extremely substantial dinner available there. A list lay upon the table, and each dish on the list was given its number, and next to the list was a vast array of numbered buttons. All one had to do was touch a button and the dish that you desired came up from beneath the table.
After having eaten I went out into the street. Trams and cars drove past, all of them entirely empty.
All one had to do was approach and wave one’s hand and they would stop. I got into a car and allowed myself to be carried through the streets. I went to a magnificent geological park, with all the different types of land displayed with explanations on cards at their side. The explanation was given in Spanish, but written in a phonetic transcription. I left the park; I saw a tram passing with “Museum” on its front, and I took it. All the most famous paintings were in the museum, in their original versions. I became convinced that all the paintings we have in our cities, in our art galleries, are nothing more than extremely competent copies. At the foot of each painting there was a learned explanation of its historical and aesthetic value, written most calmly and carefully. In half an hour there, I learned more about painting than in twelve years of study here. I saw on a placard at the entrance that in Mechanopolis the Art Museum is considered a part of the Museum of Paleontology. It existed in order to study the products of the human race that had lived on this earth before the machines had supplanted them. The concert hall and the libraries, with which the city was filled, were also a part of the paleontological culture of the citizens of Mechanopolis, whoever they had been.
What more did I see? I went to the chief concert hall, where the instruments played by themselves. I was in the Grand Theater. In a cinema with phonographic accompaniment, designed in such a way as to give an absolute illusion of life. But my soul shrank to think that I was the only spectator. Where were the citizens of Mechanopolis?
When I woke up the next morning in my hotel room I found, on my bedside table, the M
echanopolis Echo, with news stories from all over the world received via wireless telegraph. And on the last page I read the following: “Yesterday afternoon, by what means we are uncertain, there arrived in our city a man, one of the few poor fellows still left around here, and we predict he will have a rough time of it.”
And it was true that my days started to become a torment to me. My loneliness began to be filled with ghosts. That is the worst thing about loneliness, how easily it becomes filled. I began to believe that all these factories, all these objects, were controlled by souls that were invincible, intangible, and silent. I started to believe that this city was peopled with persons such as myself, and that they came and went without my seeing them or hearing myself strike against them. I felt that I was the victim of a terrible illness, a madness. The invisible world that filled the human loneliness of Mechanopolis became a crucifying nightmare to me. I started to give voices to the machines, to scold them, to beg things of them. I even went so far as to fall to my knees in front of a car, asking it for mercy. Almost ready to throw myself down to the ground and despair, I took up the newspaper in agitation just to see how things were in the world of men, and found myself face-to-face with this article: “As we predicted, the poor fellow who came, by what means we are uncertain, into the incomparable city of Mechanopolis is going mad. His spirit, filled with ancestral worries and superstitions with regard to the invisible world, is unable to cope with the spectacle of progress. We pity him.”