The Cyberiad

by Stanisław Lem

  Together we walked across a vast plain, knee-deep in ducats and doubloons, waving sticks to shoo off clouds of pesky blisserits, and we saw several Ninnican-Jubilators lying senseless, gasping softly, all sated, satiated, supersaturated with pleasure; the sight of such excessive surfeit, such reckless success, would have moved anyone to pity. Then there were the inhabitants of the automated palaces, who wildly threw themselves into cyberserking and other electroeccentricities, some setting machine against machine, some smashing priceless vases, for no longer could they endure the ubiquitous beatitude, and they opened fire on emeralds, guillotined earrings, ordered diadems broken on the wheel, or tried to hide from happiness in garrets and attics, or else ordered their appliances to whip themselves, or did all of these things at once, or in alternation. But absolutely nothing helped, and every last one of them perished, petted and attended to death. I advised Trizivian against simply shutting down the Fabrifactories, for having too little is as dangerous as having too much; but he, instead of studying up on the consequences of ontological complicositry, immediately began to dynamite the automates sky-high. A grievous mistake, for there followed a great depression, though indeed, he never lived to see it—it happened that a flock of flyrts swooped down upon him somewhere, and gallivamps and libidinators grabbed him, carried him to a cossetorium, there befuddled him with cuddlebutts, ogled, bussed and gnuzzled him to distraction, till he succumbed with a strangled cry of Rape!—and afterwards lay lifeless in the wasteland, buried in ducats, his shabby armor charred with the flames of mechanical lust… And that, Your Highness, was the end of one who was wise but could have been wiser!” concluded Trurl, adding, when he saw that these words still did not satisfy King Thumbscrew:

  “Just what does Your Most Royal Highness want?”

  “O constructor!” replied Thumbscrew. “You say that your tales are to improve the mind, but I do not find this to be so. They are, however, amusing, and therefore it is my wish that you tell me more and more of them, and do not stop.”

  “O King!” answered Trurl. “You would learn from me what is perfection and how it may be gained, yet prove unable to grasp the deep meanings and great truths with which my narratives abound. Truly, you seek amusement and not wisdom—yet, even as you listen, my words do slowly penetrate and act upon your brain, and later too will act, much as a time bomb. To this end, allow me to present an account that is intricate, unusual and true, or nearly true, from which your royal advisers may also derive some benefit.

  Hear then, noble sirs, the history of Zipperupus, king of the Partheginians, the Deutons, and the Profligoths, of whom concupiscence was the ruin!

  ----------------+--+---------------

  Now Zipperupus belonged to the great house of Tup, which was divided into two branches: the Dextrorotarory Tups, who were in power, and the Levorotarory Tups, also called the Left-handed or Counterclockwise Tups, who were not—and therefore consumed with hatred for their ruling cousins. His sire, Calcyon, had joined in morganatic marriage with a common machine, a manual water pump, and so Zipperupus inherited—from the distaff side—a tendency to fly off the handle, and—from the spear side—faint-heartedness coupled with a wanton nature. Seeing this, the enemies of the throne, the Sinistral Isomers, thought of how they might destroy him through his own lascivious proclivities. Accordingly, they sent him a Cybernerian named Subtillion, an adept in mental engineering; Zipperupus took an instant liking to him and made him Lord High Thaumaturge and Apothecary to the Throne. The wily Subtillion devised various means to gratify the unbridled lust of Zipperupus, secretly hoping so to enfeeble and debilitate the King, that he would altogether waste away. He built him an erotodrome and a debaucherorium, regaled him with endless automated orgies, but the iron constitution of the King withstood all these depravities. The Sinistral Isomers grew impatient and ordered their agent to bring all his cunning to bear and achieve the desired end without any further delay.

  “Would you like me,” he asked them at a secret meeting in the castle catacombs, “to short-circuit the King, or demagnetize his memory to render him mindless?”

  “Absolutely not!” they replied. “In no way must we be implicated in the King’s demise. Let Zipperupus perish through his own illicit desires, let his sinful passions be his undoing—and not us!”

  “Fine,” said Subtillion. “I’ll set a snare for him, I’ll weave it out of dreams, and bait it with a tempting lure, which he will seize and, in so seizing, of his own volition plunge into figments and mad fictions, sink into dreams lurking within dreams, and there I’ll give him such a thorough finagling and inveigling, that he’ll never get back to reality alive!”

  “Very well,” they said. “But do not boast, O Cybernerian, for it is not words we need, but deeds, that Zipperupus might become an autoregicide, that is, his own assassin!”

  And thus Subtillion the Cybernerian got down to work and spent an entire year on his dreadful scheme, requesting from the royal treasury more and more gold bullion, brass, platinum and no end of precious stones, telling Zipperupus, whenever the latter protested, that he was making something for him, something no other monarch had in all the world!

  When the year was up, three enormous cabinets were carried from the Cybernerian’s workshop and deposited with great ceremony outside the King’s privy chamber, for they wouldn’t fit through the door. Hearing the steps and the knocking of the porters, Zipperupus came out and saw the cabinets, there along the wall, stately and massive, four cubits high, two across, and covered with gems. The first cabinet, also called the White Box, was all in mother-of-pearl and blazing albite inlays, the second, black as night, was set with agates and morions, while the third glowed deep red, studded with rubies and ruby spinels. Each had legs ornamented with winged griffins, solid gold, and a polished pilastered frame, and inside, an electronic brain full of dreams, dreams that dreamed independently, needing no dreamer to dream them. King Zipperupus was much amazed at this explanation and exclaimed:

  “What’s this you say, Subtillion?! Dreaming cabinets? Whatever for? What use are they to me? And anyway, how can you tell they’re really dreaming?”

  Then Subtillion, with a humble bow, showed him the rows of little holes running down the cabinet frames; next to each hole was a little inscription on a little pearl plaque, and the astonished King read:

  “War Dream with Citadels and Damsels"—"Dream about the Wockle Weed"—"Dream about Alacritus the Knight and Fair Ramolda, Daughter of Heteronius"— “Dream about Nixies, Pixies and Witchblende"—"The Marvelous Mattress of Princess Bounce"—"The Old Soldier, or The Cannon That Couldn’t"—"Salto Erotale, or Amorous Gymnastics"—"Bliss in the Eightfold Embrace of Octopauline"—"Perpetuum Amorobile"—"Eating Lead Dumplings under the New Moon"—"Breakfast with Maidens and Music"—"Tucking in the Sun to Keep It Warm” —"The Wedding Night of Princess Ineffabelle"—"Dream about Cats"—"About Silks and Satins"—"About You-Know-What"—"Figs without Their Leaves, and Other Forbidden Fruit"—"Also Prurient Prunes"—"How the Lecher Got His Tots"—"Devilry and Divers Revelry before Reveille, with Croutons"—"Mona Lisa, or The Labyrinth of Sweet Infinity.”

  The King went on to the second cabinet and read: “Dreams and Diversions.” And under this heading: “Cybersynergy"—"Corpses and Corsets"—"Tops and Toggles” —"Klopstock and the Critics"—"Buffer the Leader"— “Fratcher My Pliss"—"Counterpane and Ventilator"—"Cybercroquet"—"Robot Crambo"—"Flowcharts and Go-carts"—"Bippety-flippety"—"Spin the Shepherdess"—"Pin the Murder on the Girder"—"Executioner, or Screaming Cutouts"—"Spin the Shepherdess One More Time"—"Cy-clodore and Shuttlebox"—"Cecily and the Cyanide Cyborg” —"Cybernation"—"Harem Racing"—and finally—"Kludge Poker.” Subtillion, the mental engineer, quickly explained that each dream dreamed itself, entirely on its own, until someone plugged into it, for as soon as his plug—hanging on this watch chain—was inserted in the given pair of holes, he would be instantly connected with the cabinet dream, and connected so completely, that the drea
m for him would be like real, so real you couldn’t tell the difference. Zipperupus, intrigued, took the chain and impulsively plugged himself into the White Box, right where the sign said, “Breakfast with Maidens and Music"—and felt spiny ridges growing down his back, and enormous wings unfolding, and his hands and feet distending into paws with wicked claws, and from his jaws, which had six rows of fangs, there belched forth fire and brimstone. Greatly taken aback, the King gasped, but instead of a gasp, a roar like thunder issued from his throat and shook the earth. This amazed him even more, his eyes grew wide, and in the darkness illumined by his fiery breath he saw that they were bringing him, high on their shoulders, virgins in serving bowls, four to each, garnished with greens and smelling so good, he started to drool. The table soon set—salt here, pepper over there—he licked his chops, made himself comfortable and, one by one, popped them into his mouth like peanuts, crunching and grunting with pleasure; the last virgin was so luscious, so succulent, that he smacked his lips, rubbed his tummy, and was about to ask for seconds, when everything flickered and he woke. He looked—he was standing, as before, in the vestibule outside his private quarters. At his side was Subtillion, Lord High Thaumaturge and Apothecary to the Throne, and before him, the dream cabinets, glittering with precious gems.

  “How were the maidens?” inquired Subtillion.

  “Not bad. But where was the music?”

  “The chimes got stuck,” the Cybernerian explained. “Would Your Royal Highness care to try another dream?”

  Of course he would, but this time from another cabinet. The King went up to the black one and plugged into the dream entitled “Alacritus the Knight and Fair Ramolda, Daughter of Heteronius.”

  He blinked—and saw that this was indeed the age of electrical errantry. He was standing, all clad in steel, in a wooded glen, a freshly vanquished dragon at his feet; the leaves rustled, a gentle zephyr blew, a brook gurgled nearby. He looked into the water and saw, from the reflection, that he was none other than Alacritus, a knight of the highest voltage and hero without peer. The whole history of his glorious career was recorded, in battle scars, upon his person, and he recalled it all, as if the memory were his own. Those dents in the visor of the helmet—made by the mailed fists of Morbidor, in his death throes, having been dispatched with customary alacrity; the broken hinges on the right greave—that was the work of the late Sir Basher de Bloo; and the rivets across his left pauldron—gnawed by Skivvian the Scurvy before giving up the ghost; and the tembrace grille had been crushed by Gourghbrast Buggeruckus ere he was felled. Similarly, the cuissfenders, crosshasps, beaver baffles, hauberk latches, front and rear jambguards and grommets—all bore the marks of battle. His shield was scored and notched by countless blows, but the backplate, that was as shiny and rust-free as a newborn’s, for never had he turned to flee an adversary! Though his glory, truth to tell, was a matter of complete indifference to him. But then he remembered the fair Ramolda, leaped upon his supercharger and began to search the length and breadth of the dream for her. In time he arrived at the castle of her father, the Autoduke Hetero-nius; the drawbridge planks thundered beneath horse and rider, and the Autoduke himself came out to greet him with open arms.

  The knight would fain see his Ramolda, but etiquette requires he curb his impatience; meanwhile the old Autoduke tells him that another knight is staying at the castle, one Mygrayn of the house of Polymera, master swordsman and redoubtable elastician, who dreams of nothing else but to enter the lists with Alacritus himself. And now here is Mygrayn, spry and supple, stepping forward with these words:

  “Know, O Knight, that I desire Ramolda the streamlined, Ramolda of the hydraulic thighs, whose bust no diamond drill can touch, whose limpid eyes are magnetized! She is thy betrothed, true, but lo, I herewith challenge thee to mortal combat, sith only one of us may win her hand in marriage!”

  And he throws his gage, white and polymerous.

  “We’ll hold the wedding right after the joust,” adds the Autoduke-father.

  “Very well!’ says Alacritus, but inside, Zipperupus thinks: “It doesn’t matter, I can have her after the wedding and then wake up. But who asked for this Mygrayn character?”

  “This very day, brave Knight,” says Heteronius, “thou wilt encounter Mygrayn of Polymera on beaten ground and contend with him by torchlight. But for now, retire thee to thy room and rest!”

  Inside Alacritus, Zipperupus is a little uneasy, but what can he do? So he goes to his room, and after a while hears a furtive knock-knock at the door, and an old cybercrone tiptoes in, gives a wrinkled wink and says:

  “Fear naught, O Knight, thou shalt have the fair Ramolda and forsooth, this very day she’ll clasp thee to her alabaster bosom! Of thee alone doth she dream, both day and night! Remember only to attack with might and main, for Mygrayn cannot harm thee and the victory is thine!”

  “That’s easy enough to say, my cybercrone,” replies the knight. “But anything can happen. What if I trip, for example, or fail to parry in time? No, it’s a risky business! But perhaps you have some charm that will be certain.”

  “Hee-hee!” cackles the cybercrone. “The things thou sayest, steel sir! There are no charms, surely, nor hast thou need of any, for I know what will be and guarantee thou winnest hands down!”

  “Still, a charm would be more sure,” says the knight, “particularly in a dream… but wait, did by any chance Subtillion send you, to give me confidence?”

  “I know of no Subtillion,” answers she, “nor of what dream ye speak. Nay, this is reality, my steely liege, as thou wilt learn ere long, when fair Ramolda gives thee her electric lips to kiss!”

  “Odd,” mutters Zipperupus, not noticing that the cybercrone has left the room as quietly as she came. “Is this a dream or not? I had the impression that it was. But she says this is reality. H’m. Well, in any event I’d best be doubly on my guard!” And now the trumpets sound, and one can hear the rattle of armor; the galleries are packed and everyone awaits the principals. Here comes Alacritus, a little weak in the knees; he enters the lists and sees Ramolda, daughter of Heteronius. She looks upon him sweetly—ah, but there’s no time for that now! Mygrayn is stepping into the ring, the torches blaze all around, and their swords cross with a mighty clang. Now Zipperupus is frightened in earnest and tries as hard as he can to wake up, he tries and tries, but it won’t work—the armor’s too heavy, the dream isn’t letting go, and the enemy’s attacking! Faster and faster rain the blows, and Zipperupus, weakening, can hardly lift his arm, when suddenly the foe cries out and shows a broken blade; Alacritus the knight is ready to leap upon him, but Mygrayn dashes from the ring and his squires hand him another sword. Just then Alacritus sees the cybercrone among the spectators; she approaches and whispers in his ear:

  “Sire of steel! When anon thou art near the open gate that leadeth to the bridge, Mygrayn will lower his guard. Strike bravely then, for ’tis a sign, certain and true, of thy victory!”

  Wherewith she vanishes, and his rival, rearmed, comes charging. They fight, Mygrayn hacking away like a threshing machine out of control, but by degrees he slackens, parries sluggishly, backs away, and now the time is ripe, the moment arrives, but the opponent’s blade gleams formidably still, so Zipperupus pulls himself together and thinks, “To hell with the fair Ramolda!"—turns tail and runs like mad, pounding back over the drawbridge and into the forest and the darkness of the night. Behind him he hears shouts of “Disgraceful!” and “For shame!", crashes headfirst into a tree, sees stars, blinks, and there he is, standing in the palace vestibule in front of the Black Cabinet of dreams that dream, and by his side, Subtillion the mental engineer, smiling a crooked smile. Crooked, as Subtillion was hiding his disappointment: the Alacritus-Ramolda dream had in reality been a trap set for the King, for had Zipperupus heeded the old cybercrone’s advice, Mygrayn, who was only pretending to weaken, would have run him through at the open gate. This the King avoided, thanks only to his extraordinary cowardice.

  “Di
d Milord enjoy the fair Ramolda?” inquired the sly Cybernerian.

  “She wasn’t fair enough,” said Zipperupus, “so I didn’t see fit to pursue the matter. And besides, there was some trouble, and fighting too. I like my dreams without fighting, do you understand?”

  “As Your Royal Highness wishes,” replied Subtillion. “Choose freely, for in all these cabinet dreams there is only delight in store, no fighting…”

  “We’ll see,” said the King and plugged into the dream entitled “The Marvelous Mattress of Princess Bounce.” He was in a room of unsurpassed loveliness, all in gold brocade. Through crystal windowpanes light streamed like water from the purest spring, and there by her pearly vanity the Princess stood, yawning, preparing herself for bed. Zipperupus was greatly amazed at this unexpected sight and tried to clear his throat to inform her of his presence, but not a sound came out—had he been gagged?—so he tried to touch his mouth, but couldn’t, tried to move his legs—no, he couldn’t—then desperately looked around for a place to sit down, feeling faint, but that too was impossible. Meanwhile the Princess stretched and gave a yawn, and another, and a third, and then, overcome with drowsiness, she fell upon the mattress so hard, that King Zipperupus was jolted from head to toe, for he himself was the mattress of Princess Bounce! Evidently the young damsel was having an unpleasant dream, seeing how she turned and tossed about, jabbing the King with her little elbows, digging him with her little heels, until his royal person (transformed into a mattress by this dream) was seized with a mighty rage. The King struggled with his dream, strained and strained, and finally the seams burst, the springs sprang, the slats gave way and the Princess came crashing down with a shriek, which woke him up and he found himself once again in the palace vestibule, and by his side, Subtillion the Cybernerian, bowing an obsequious bow.