The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

by Stanisław Lem

  "The people that do this, they see, they know!"

  "Nonsense. Your reasoning is archaic. The people think they are going to a beautiful glass greenhouse-orangery; upon entering they are given vigilax and become aware of the bare concrete walls and the workbenches."

  "And they want to work?"

  "With the utmost enthusiasm, for they've also been given a good dose of selfsacrifine. Work is thus a consecration, a lofty act. And when they've finished, a spoonful of amnesol, perhaps nepethanol, is sufficient to erase everything that was seen!"

  "And all along I was afraid I might be living in a dream. Lord, what a fool I was! If only, if only I could get back! What I wouldn't give to get back!"

  "Get back where?"

  "Back to the sewer underneath the Hilton."

  "Tichy, this attitude of yours is most irresponsible, if not downright stupid. You ought to be doing what everyone does, eating and drinking like the rest of us. Then you would get the necessary amounts of optimistizine and seraphinil in your bloodstream—the minimum daily requirements—and be in the best possible humor."

  "Then you too are the devil's advocate?"

  "Come now, is it so satanical if, in some extreme case, a doctor chooses to hide the truth from his patient? I say that if this is the way we must live, eat, exist, at least let us have it in fancy wrappings. The mascons work perfectly—with one single exception—so what is the harm in them?"

  "At the moment I'm in no condition to debate the issue with you," I said, regaining my composure somewhat. "Just answer me two questions, please, for old time's sake. What was that exception you mentioned in the mascons' effect? And how did universal disarmament come about? Or is that an illusion too?"

  "No, fortunately it's quite real. But to explain it to you I'd have to give a lecture, and it's time for me to be off."

  We agreed to meet on the following day. As we parted, I repeated my question about the defect in the mascons.

  "Go to the Amusement Park," said the Professor. "If you like unpleasant revelations, take a seat on the largest merry-go-round, and when it builds up speed, cut a hole in the canvas cover of your cabin with a pair of scissors. The cover is there because, during gyration, the phantasma which the mascons create to substitute reality undergo displacement … as if the centrifugal force pulled aside one's blinders… Do this, and you shall see what then emerges from behind the painted lie."

  It's three in the morning as I write these words, full of despair. What more is there to say? I'm seriously considering running away, fleeing this civilization, losing myself in the wilderness. Even the stars no longer beckon. A journey is a dismal thing when there can be no homecoming.

  5 X 2039. Spent a few free hours this morning in the city. Could hardly control my horror as I looked at all the displays of wealth and prosperity. An art gallery in Manhattan practically giving away original Rembrandts and Matisses. And next door they have fabulous furniture, Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, marble mantelpieces, thrones, mirrors, Saracen armor. Auctions everywhere—houses selling like hotcakes. And I thought this was a paradise, where every man could bepalacize himself! The Self-nominating Nobel Prize Candidate Registration Center on Fifth Avenue is no less a fraud: anyone can have a Nobel Prize, just as anyone can grace his compartment walls with priceless works of art—when both are nothing but a pinch of powder that stimulates the brain! The fiendishness of it all is that part of this mass deception is open and voluntary, letting people think they can draw the line between fiction and fact. And since no one any longer responds to things spontaneously—you take drugs to study, drugs to love, drugs to rise up in revolt, drugs to forget—the distinction between manipulated and natural feelings has ceased to exist.

  I walked the streets, fists clenched in my pockets. Oh, I had no need of amokoline or furiol to feel enraged! Like a bloodhound hot on the trail my mind sought out all the hollow, empty places in this monumental masquerade, this tinseled cheat that sprawled across the horizon. Yes, they give the children throttlepops, then develop their character with opinionates, uncompromil, rebellium, allaying their passions with sordidan and practicol; no police, and who needs them when you have constabuline and criminal tendencies are rendered harmless through the services of Procrustics, Inc.? A good thing I steered clear of the theoapotheterias, with their faith-giving, grace-bestowing, sin-absolving compounds, where with a gram of sacrosanctimonium you can be canonized on the spot. And while you're at it, why not a little dietary deitine, lo-cal allah-all, polyunsaturated brahmanox? Our nazarine anointium, with apocryphyll, puts you at the head of the line in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and a drop of sugar-free decaffeinated kingdom-come does the rest. Glory hallelucinujah! Paradisiacs for the pious, mephistol and ereban for the masochists, valhalla and valhella … it was all I could do to keep from storming into a pharmacopium on the corner, where the congregation was kneeling devoutly, popping paternostrums and taking orisol like snuff. But I restrained myself—they would only pacify me with obliterine. Anything but that! I took a scuttle to the Amusement Park, grasping a pair of scissors in my sweaty hand. Nothing came of it, however; the canvas cover turned out to be incredibly tough—like tempered steel.

  Trottelreiner was staying in a rented room off Fifth Avenue. He wasn't at home when I arrived at the designated time, but he had told me that he might be late, and taught me the necessary whistle for the sesame door. So I entered and sat at his professorial desk, all cluttered with scientific publications and scribbled bits of paper. Out of boredom—or perhaps, too, to calm the turmoil in my soul—I began to leaf through Trottelreiner's notebook. "Macrotrashmic," "microtroshm," "cosmical," "propheteer." Of course, he was jotting down terms for that crazy futurology of his! "Oraculum," "resurrecreation hall," "howlitzer." "Obstetronics," "obstetron bomb." Well yes, with the population explosion. Every second eighty thousand babies were born. Or was it eight hundred thousand? And did it really matter? "Braindrop." From water on the brain? The result of a brainstorm? Part of a brainwave? Or a brainwash? "Braindrip." Down the braindrain? "Brainfall." In inches or IQ? Was this then how he spent his time? Oh Professor—I felt like shouting—here you sit, and out there the world is coming to an end! Suddenly there was a glint of something among the papers—that flask, up'n'at'm! A moment of hesitation, and then, my mind made up, I took a cautious whiff and looked about the room.

  Most odd, there was hardly any change! The bookshelves, the pill directories, the files, everything remained the same, only the Dutch tile stove in the corner, adorning the room with the gleam of its enamel, had turned into an old black potbelly with a charred pipe stuck in the wall and the floor around it covered with cinders. I put the flask down quickly—as though caught in the act—for just then Trottelreiner whistled and walked in.

  I told him about the Amusement Park. He was surprised. He asked me to show him the scissors, nodded, then picked up the flask, took a sniff himself and passed it to me. Instead of scissors I was holding a rotten twig. I looked up at the Professor: he seemed troubled, not as sure of himself as he'd been the previous day. He put his briefcase, full of conference gumdrops, down on the desk and sighed.

  "Tichy," he said, "you have to understand that there is nothing particularly sinister about this inflation in the mascons…"

  "Inflation?"

  "A number of things that were real a month or year ago, well, it's been necessary to replace them with illusions—inasmuch as the authentic articles are becoming scarce if not completely unobtainable," he explained. And yet I had the feeling that something else was preying on his mind.

  "I took a ride on that merry-go-round last quarter," he went on, "but couldn't guarantee that it's still there. In fact it's quite possible that, when you bought your ticket of admission, the diffusor gave you a squirt of carnival or carrousel, which would—after all—be a lot more economical. Yes, Tichy, the realm of mankind's real possessions is dwindling at an alarming rate. Before I moved in here I had a suite at the new Hilton, but couldn't stay ther
e, not after I foolishly took some vigilan and found myself in a cubicle no larger than a chest of drawers, with my nose in a trough and a spigot sticking in my ribs, and my feet resting on the headboard of a bed in the next chest, I mean suite—mine was on the eighth floor, at ninety dollars a day. There just isn't enough room, and we're running out of the little there is! Research is now being done on the so-called spatial expanders or claustrolytics, but without much progress, for if the presence of a heavy crowd—say, on a street or square—is masked in such a way that you see only a few isolated individuals, you will begin bumping into those who have been psychemically—but not physically—removed, and this is the difficulty our experts, so far, have been unable to overcome!"

  "Professor, I was looking at your notebook. Excuse me, but what is this?" I pointed to the page with the words "multischizol" and "selfthrong proliferox."

  "Oh, that… Well you see, there's this plan, the Hinternalization Project, named after its author. Egbert Hinter—perhaps you've heard of him?—to compensate for the growing lack of external space by means of a psychem-induced augmentation of the internal space, that is the soul, whose dimensions are not subject to any physical limitations. You are undoubtedly aware that thanks to zooformalin one can temporarily become—or rather, feel oneself to be—a turtle, ant, ladybug, or even a jasmine blossom, with the help of a little botanil inflorescine—subjectively of course. It is also possible to undergo dissociation into two, three, four parts. When the number of personality splits reaches a two-place figure, you obtain a thronging effect. At which point we are no longer dealing with an ego, but a wego. A plurality of minds in a single body. And there are amplifiers to intensify the inner life and give it precedence over the objective, outside world. Yes, such are the times we live in, my boy! Omnis est Pillula! The pharmacopoeia has become our Book of Life, our almanac, encyclopedia, the alpha and omega of our existence, with not a coup or overthrow in sight, for we have insurrectal suppositories, mutinine and dissidone, and that Dr. Hopkins of yours does a whopping business with his sodomil and gomorrephine—you can personally visit death and destruction upon as many cities as you like. Promotion to God Almighty is also possible, for a dollar seventy-five."

  "The latest art form is tingling," I remarked. "I've heard, or rather felt, Kitschekov's Scherzo, but can't say it had any esthetic effect on me. I laughed in all the wrong places."

  "Yes, that's not for the likes of us, grandfather stiffs from another century, castaways in time." Trottelreiner grew pensive. But then he shrugged it off, cleared his throat, looked me in the eye and said:

  "Tichy, the Futurological Congress is convening now—to consider the hencity of the human race. This is their 76th World Assembly. Today I sat in on the first organizational meeting—preliminaries to the preliminaries—and would like to share my impressions with you…"

  "Strange," I said. "I've been reading the papers fairly carefully and haven't seen any mention of this congress."

  "It's a secret congress. Surely you understand—among other things to be discussed are problems concerning masconation!"

  "Problems? Is something going wrong?"

  "Terribly wrong!" exclaimed the Professor. "It couldn't be worse!"

  "Yesterday you were singing a somewhat different tune," I said.

  "That's true. But look at my situation—only now am I becoming acquainted with the actual state of affairs. And what I heard today, ach, I tell you—but here, you can swallow it for yourself."

  Out of his briefcase he pulled a thick bundle of candy cane up-to-the-minute reports, tied together with multicolored ribbons, and handed it to me across the desk.

  "Before you tackle these, a few words of explanation are in order. Pharmacocracy is psychemocracy founded upon absolute lubricracy—that is the motto of our new age. The reign of hallucinogens goes hand in glove with political corruption, to put it more plainly. And it is to this that we owe our universal disarmament."

  "So at last I'm to learn just how that came about!" I cried.

  "It's quite simple, really. Bribery serves one of two ends: either to dispose of a defective or otherwise undesirable commodity, or else to acquire a commodity of which there is a shortage. Services may of course be included under the heading of commodity. For a manufacturer, the ideal situation obviously is to receive payment without giving anything in return. I suppose the actualysis was started by the scandals of the malculators and mendacitors. You must have heard of them."

  "Yes, but what is actualysis?"

  "The breaking down, the eroding of reality. When the first bombshell broke about the graft, embrozzlement and cover-ups, all the blame was put on the computers. Though in fact powerful syndicates and secret cartels were involved. At stake was the terraforming, the making habitable of the planets—a vital undertaking for an overcrowded world! Enormous fleets of rockets had to be built, the climates and atmospheres of Saturn and Uranus had to be changed. How much simpler, then, to do all this on paper only!"

  "But surely that sort of thing would be quickly exposed," I protested.

  "Not at all. Unforeseen difficulties arise, unanticipated obstacles, snags, and new expenditures are required, supplementary allocations, additional funding. The Uranus Project, for example—980 billion dollars poured into it, and no indication that so much as a single stone was touched."

  "Supervisory commissions?"

  "Supervisory commissions don't have astronauts on them, and without the necessary preparation and training you can't very well go investigating other planets. So representatives were sent, plenipotentiaries, envoys, and these in turn relied entirely on the materials given them—receipts, photographs, statistics—and yet documents may be falsified, forged, or, what is easiest of all, fabricated by mascons."

  "Ah!"

  "Precisely. It was in much the same way, I imagine, that the simulation of weaponry began. After all, the private firms that received government contracts were out to make a profit too. They took billions and did nothing. That is, they produced the laser cannons all right, the launchers, anti-anti-anti-antiballistic missiles with sixth-generation multiple warheads, flying tanks and boring torpedoes, but it was all troped."

  "Come again?"

  "Psychotroped, hallucinated. Why run nuclear tests if you have fungol gum?"

  "What's that?"

  "You chew it and see mushroom clouds. Anyway, the whole thing snowballed. What need is there to train soldiers? In case of mobilization give them boot-camp capsules. And what's the point of cultivating officers in expensive military academies—don't we have strategine, tacticol, maneuvrium, commanderil? 'Studying Clausewitz all day is rough, Become a general with just one puff.' Ever hear that saying?"

  "Never."

  "No, because these drugs are classified, or at least unavailable to the general public. It's no longer necessary to call out the national guard—all you have to do is sprinkle the right mascon over the troubled area and the populace will see paratrooper units landing, marines charging, tanks—a real tank now costs about a million dollars, while a hallucinated one amounts to less than one-hundredth of a cent per person, or centispecter per spectator. A destroyer costs a dime. Today you could fit the whole arsenal of the United States inside a single truck. Caissons, cadaverous, bombons—in solids, liquids, gases. I understand they even have an entire Martian invasion—it's a specially prepared scenario powder."

  "Everything in mascons?"

  "Just about! By degrees the real army became superfluous. Only a few planes are left—I think. And who needs them? The process went like a chain reaction, there was no way to stop it. And that, my lad, is the whole secret behind disarmament. But disarmament is only part of it. Have you seen the new cadillacs, dodges, chevrolets?"

  "Of course. They're not bad."

  The Professor gave me the flask.

  "Here, go to the window and take a look at your pretty cars with this."

  I leaned out over the window sill. Seen from the forty-first floor, the street was a
ravine, and at the bottom of it ran a glittering river of automobiles, windshields and polished tops flashing in the sun. I lifted the open bottle to my nose, blinked, wiped the tears from my eyes, and beheld a most unusual sight. Holding their hands out chest-high and gripping the air like children pretending to be drivers, businessmen were trotting single file down the middle of the street. Now and then between the close columns and rows of these gallopers, who were furiously pumping their legs and leaning back from the waist up, as if reclining in deep seats, a solitary car would appear, puffing and chugging along. Then the vapor wore off, the picture gave a shudder, straightened out, and once again I was looking down on a gleaming procession of car tops, white, yellow, emerald, moving majestically across Manhattan.

  "A nightmare!" I said with disgust. "But even so, pax orbi et urbi has been established, so perhaps it's worth it."

  "Yes, there are certain benefits. The number of coronaries has fallen dramatically, for these long-distance sprints are excellent exercise. On the other hand there's an increase in the number of people suffering from fallen arches, varicose veins, emphysema and enlargement of the heart. Not everyone is fit to run in a marathon."

  "And that's why you don't have a car!" I exclaimed.

  The Professor only smiled wryly.

  "An economy model nowadays sells for around 450 dollars," he said. "But when you consider that the production costs come to, roughly, an eighth of a cent, that price is pretty steep. The people who make something real—they're a vanishing breed. Composers accept their fees, pay their patrons kickbacks, and to the public that comes to the philharmonium to hear the commissioned work performed they slip a little polysymphonicol contrapuntaline."

  "Morally that's indefensible," I said, "but surely not harmful on the social level."

  "So far, no. Though in the final analysis it all depends upon your point of view. With metamorphine, for example, you can have an affair with a goat, thinking it's Venus de Milo herself. Instead of scientific papers and conventions—congressil and decongressol, and yet there must exist some biological minimum—the bare necessities of life—which no fiction can ever replace. One has to live somewhere, after all, eat something, breathe something. Meanwhile actualysis robs us of one sphere of genuine activity after another. Besides which we are getting a frightening accumulation of side effects. And these require the use of dehallucinides, supermascons and fixators—with dubious success."