The Cyberiad
Stanislaw Lem
A brilliantly crafted collection of stories from celebrated science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem
Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. Over the course of their adventures in The Cyberiad, they travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their unsuspecting employers. Playfully written, and ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem’s vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.
Stanislaw Lem
THE CYBERIAD
Fables for the Cybernetic Age
Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel
Illustrated by Daniel Mroz
HOW THE WORLD WAS SAVED
One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, naiads, and natrium. This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation.
“Never heard of it,” said the machine.
“What? But it’s only sodium. You know, the metal, the element…”
“Sodium starts with an s, and I work only in n.”
“But in Latin it’s natrium.”
“Look, old boy,” said the machine, “if I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I’d be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It’s not that easy. I can’t go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium.”
“Very well,” said Trurl and ordered it to make Night, which it made at once—small perhaps, but perfectly nocturnal. Only then did Trurl invite over his friend Klapaucius the constructor, and introduced him to the machine, praising its extraordinary skill at such length, that Klapaucius grew annoyed and inquired whether he too might not test the machine.
“Be my guest,” said Trurl. “But it has to start with n.”
“N?” said Klapaucius. “All right, let it make Nature.”
The machine whined, and in a trice Trurl’s front yard was packed with naturalists. They argued, each publishing heavy volumes, which the others tore to pieces; in the distance one could see flaming pyres, on which martyrs to Nature were sizzling; there was thunder, and strange mushroom-shaped columns of smoke rose up; everyone talked at once, no one listened, and there were all sorts of memoranda, appeals, subpoenas and other documents, while off to the side sat a few old men, feverishly scribbling on scraps of paper.
“Not bad, eh?” said Trurl with pride. “Nature to a T, admit it!”
But Klapaucius wasn’t satisfied.
“What, that mob? Surely you’re not going to tell me that’s Nature?”
“Then give the machine something else,” snapped Trurl. “Whatever you like.” For a moment Klapaucius was at a loss for what to ask. But after a little thought he declared that he would put two more tasks to the machine; if it could fulfill them, he would admit that it was all Trurl said it was. Trurl agreed to this, whereupon Klapaucius requested Negative.
“Negative?!” cried Trurl. “What on earth is Negative?”
“The opposite of positive, of course,” Klapaucius coolly replied. “Negative attitudes, the negative of a picture, for example. Now don’t try to pretend you never heard of Negative. All right, machine, get to work!”
The machine, however, had already begun. First it manufactured antiprotons, then antielectrons, antineutrons, antineutrinos, and labored on, until from out of all this antimatter an antiworld took shape, glowing like a ghostly cloud above their heads.
“H’m,” muttered Klapaucius, displeased. “That’s supposed to be Negative? Well… let’s say it is, for the sake of peace.… But now here’s the third command: Machine, do Nothing!”
The machine sat still. Klapaucius rubbed his hands in triumph, but Trurl said:
“Well, what did you expect? You asked it to do nothing, and it’s doing nothing.”
“Correction: I asked it to do Nothing, but it’s doing nothing.”
“Nothing is nothing!”
“Come, come. It was supposed to do Nothing, but it hasn’t done anything, and therefore I’ve won. For Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme, in its very own nonperson!”
“You’re confusing the machine!” cried Trurl. But suddenly its metallic voice rang out:
“Really, how can you two bicker at a time like this? Oh yes, I know what Nothing is, and Nothingness, Nonexistence, Nonentity, Negation, Nullity and Nihility, since all these come under the heading of n, n as in Nil. Look then upon your world for the last time, gentlemen! Soon it shall no longer be…”
The constructors froze, forgetting their quarrel, for the machine was in actual fact doing Nothing, and it did it in this fashion: one by one, various things were removed from the world, and the things, thus removed, ceased to exist, as if they had never been. The machine had already disposed of nolars, nightzebs, nocs, necs, nallyrakers, neotremes and nonmalrigers. At moments, though, it seemed that instead of reducing, diminishing and subtracting, the machine was increasing, enhancing and adding, since it liquidated, in turn: nonconformists, nonentities, nonsense, nonsupport, nearsightedness, narrowmindedness, naughtiness, neglect, nausea, necrophilia and nepotism. But after a while the world very definitely began to thin out around Trurl and Klapaucius.
“Omigosh!” said Trurl. “If only nothing bad comes out of all this…”
“Don’t worry,” said Klapaucius. “You can see it’s not producing Universal Nothingness, but only causing the absence of whatever starts with n. Which is really nothing in the way of nothing, and nothing is what your machine, dear Trurl, is worth!”
“Do not be deceived,” replied the machine. “I’ve begun, it’s true, with everything in n, but only out of familiarity. To create however is one thing, to destroy, another thing entirely. I can blot out the world for the simple reason that I’m able to do anything and everything—and everything means everything—in n, and consequently Nothingness is child’s play for me. In less than a minute now you will cease to have existence, along with everything else, so tell me now, Klapaucius, and quickly, that I am really and truly everything I was programmed to be, before it is too late.”
“But—” Klapaucius was about to protest, but noticed, just then, that a number of things were indeed disappearing, and not merely those that started with n. The constructors were no longer surrounded by the gruncheons, the targalisks, the shupops, the calinatifacts, the thists, worches and pritons.
“Stop! I take it all back! Desist! Whoa! Don’t do Nothing!!” screamed Klapaucius. But before the machine could come to a full stop, all the brashations, plusters, laries and zits had vanished away. Now the machine stood motionless. The world was a dreadful sight. The sky had particularly suffered: there were only a few, isolated points of light in the heavens—no trace of the glorious worches and zits that had, till now, graced the horizon!
“Great Gauss!” cried Klapaucius. “And where are the gruncheons? Where my dear, favorite pritons? Where now the gentle zits?!”
“They no longer ar
e, nor ever will exist again,” the machine said calmly. “I executed, or rather only began to execute, your order…”
“I tell you to do Nothing, and you… you…”
“Klapaucius, don’t pretend to be a greater idiot than you are,” said the machine. “Had I made Nothing outright, in one fell swoop, everything would have ceased to exist, and that includes Trurl, the sky, the Universe, and you—and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom could it be said that the order was carried out and I am an efficient and capable machine? And if no one could say it to no one, in what way then could I, who also would not be, be vindicated?”
“Yes, fine, let’s drop the subject,” said Klapaucius. “I have nothing more to ask of you, only please, dear machine, please return the zits, for without them life loses all its charm…”
“But I can’t, they’re in z,” said the machine. “Of course, I can restore nonsense, narrowmindedness, nausea, necrophilia, neuralgia, nefariousness and noxiousness. As for the other letters, however, I can’t help you.”
“I want my zits!” bellowed Klapaucius.
“Sorry, no zits,” said the machine. “Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it…”
“Perhaps… they won’t find out, perhaps they won’t notice,” groaned the pale Klapaucius, gazing up incredulously at the black emptiness of space and not daring to look his colleague, Trurl, in the eye. Leaving him beside the machine that could do everything in n, Klapaucius skulked home—and to this day the world has remained honeycombed with nothingness, exactly as it was when halted in the course of its liquidation. And as all subsequent attempts to build a machine on any other letter met with failure, it is to be feared that never again will we have such marvelous phenomena as the worches and the zits—no, never again.
TRURL’S MACHINE
Once upon a time Trurl the constructor built an eight-story thinking machine. When it was finished, he gave it a coat of white paint, trimmed the edges in lavender, stepped back, squinted, then added a little curlicue on the front and, where one might imagine the forehead to be, a few pale orange polkadots. Extremely pleased with himself, he whistled an air and, as is always done on such occasions, asked it the ritual question of how much is two plus two.
The machine stirred. Its tubes began to glow, its coils warmed up, current coursed through all its circuits like a waterfall, transformers hummed and throbbed, there was a clanging, and a chugging, and such an ungodly racket that Trurl began to think of adding a special mentation muffler. Meanwhile the machine labored on, as if it had been given the most difficult problem in the Universe to solve; the ground shook, the sand slid underfoot from the vibration, valves popped like champagne corks, the relays nearly gave way under the strain. At last, when Trurl had grown extremely impatient, the machine ground to a halt and said in a voice like thunder: SEVEN!
“Nonsense, my dear,” said Trurl. “The answer’s four. Now be a good machine and adjust yourself! What’s two and two?”
“SEVEN!” snapped the machine. Trurl sighed and put his coveralls back on, rolled up his sleeves, opened the bottom trapdoor and crawled in. For the longest time he hammered away inside, tightened, soldered, ran clattering up and down the metal stairs, now on the sixth floor, now on the eighth, then pounded back down to the bottom and threw a switch, but something sizzled in the middle, and the spark plugs grew blue whiskers. After two hours of this he came out, covered with soot but satisfied, put all his tools away, took off his coveralls, wiped his face and hands. As he was leaving, he turned and asked, just so there would be no doubt about it:
“And now what’s two and two?”
“SEVEN!” replied the machine.
Trurl uttered a terrible oath, but there was no help for it—again he had to poke around inside the machine, disconnecting, correcting, checking, resetting, and when he learned for the third time that two and two was seven, he collapsed in despair at the foot of the machine, and sat there until Klapaucius found him. Klapaucius inquired what was wrong, for Trurl looked as if he had just returned from a funeral. Trurl explained the problem. Klapaucius crawled into the machine himself a couple of times, tried to fix this and that, then asked it for the sum of one plus two, which turned out to be six. One plus one, according to the machine, equaled zero. Klapaucius scratched his head, cleared his throat and said:
“My friend, you’ll just have to face it. That isn’t the machine you wished to make. However, there’s a good side to everything, including this.”
“What good side?” muttered Trurl, and kicked the base on which he was sitting.
“Stop that,” said the machine.
“H’m, it’s sensitive too. But where was I? Oh yes… there’s no question but that we have here a stupid machine, and not merely stupid in the usual, normal way, oh no! This is, as far as I can determine—and you know I am something of an expert—this is the stupidest thinking machine in the entire world, and that’s nothing to sneeze at! To construct deliberately such a machine would be far from easy; in fact, I would say that no one could manage it. For the thing is not only stupid, but stubborn as a mule, that is, it has a personality common to idiots, for idiots are uncommonly stubborn.”
“What earthly use do I have for such a machine?!” said Trurl, and kicked it again.
“I’m warning you, you better stop!” said the machine.
“A warning, if you please,” observed Klapaucius dryly. “Not only is it sensitive, dense and stubborn, but quick to take offense, and believe me, with such an abundance of qualities there are all sorts of things you might do!”
“What, for example?” asked Trurl.
“Well, it’s hard to say offhand. You might put it on exhibit and charge admission; people would flock to see the stupidest thinking machine that ever was—what does it have, eight stories? Really, could anyone imagine a bigger dunce? And the exhibition would not only cover your costs, but—”
“Enough, I’m not holding any exhibition!” Trurl said, stood up and, unable to restrain himself, kicked the machine once more.
“This is your third warning,” said the machine.
“What?” cried Trurl, infuriated by its imperious manner. “You… you…” And he kicked it several times, shouting: “You’re only good for kicking, you know that?”
“You have insulted me for the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth times,” said the machine. “Therefore I refuse to answer all further questions of a mathematical nature.”
“It refuses! Do you hear that?” fumed Trurl, thoroughly exasperated. “After six comes eight—did you notice, Klapaucius?—not seven, but eight! And that’s the kind of mathematics Her Highness refuses to perform! Take that! And that! And that! Or perhaps you’d like some more?”
The machine shuddered, shook, and without another word started to lift itself from its foundations. They were very deep, and the girders began to bend, but at last it scrambled out, leaving behind broken concrete blocks with steel spokes protruding—and it bore down on Trurl and Klapaucius like a moving fortress. Trurl was so dumb-founded that he didn’t even try to hide from the machine, which to all appearances intended to crush him to a pulp. But Klapaucius grabbed his arm and yanked him away, and the two of them took to their heels. When finally they looked back, they saw the machine swaying like a high tower, advancing slowly, at every step sinking to its second floor, but stubbornly, doggedly pulling itself out of the sand and heading straight for them.
“Whoever heard of such a thing?” Trurl gasped in amazement. “Why, this is mutiny! What do we do now?”
“Wait and watch,” replied the prudent Klapaucius. “We may learn something.”
But there was nothing to be learned just then. The machine had reached
firmer ground and was picking up speed. Inside, it whistled, hissed and sputtered.
“Any minute now the signal box will knock loose,” said Trurl under his breath. “That’ll jam the program and stop it…”
“No,” said Klapaucius, “this is a special case. The thing is so stupid, that even if the whole transmission goes, it won’t matter. But—look out!!”
The machine was gathering momentum, clearly bent on running them down, so they fled just as fast as they could, the fearful rhythm of crunching steps in their ears. They ran and ran—what else could they do? They tried to make it back to their native district, but the machine outflanked them, cut them off, forced them deeper and deeper into a wild, uninhabited region. Mountains, dismal and craggy, slowly rose out of the mist. Trurl, panting heavily, shouted to Klapaucius:
“Listen! Let’s turn into some narrow canyon… where it won’t be able to follow us… the cursed thing… what do you say?”
“No… better go straight,” wheezed Klapaucius. “There’s a town up ahead… can’t remember the name… anyway, we can find—oof!—find shelter there…”
So they ran straight and soon saw houses before them. The streets were practically deserted at this time of day, and the constructors had gone a good distance without meeting a living soul, when suddenly an awful crash, like an avalanche at the edge of the town, indicated that the machine was coming after them.
Trurl looked back and groaned.
“Good heavens! It’s tearing down the houses, Klapaucius!!” For the machine, in stubborn pursuit, was plowing through the walls of the buildings like a mountain of steel, and in its wake lay piles of rubble and white clouds of plaster dust. There were dreadful screams, confusion in the streets, and Trurl and Klapaucius, their hearts in their mouths, ran on till they came to a large town hall, darted inside and raced down endless stairs to a deep cellar.
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