The Cyberiad

by Stanisław Lem

  “You chuckleheaded bungler!” cried the indignant King. “How dare you?! What, villain, am I to be a mattress, and someone else’s mattress at that? You forget yourself, sirrah!”

  Subtillion, alarmed by the King’s fury, apologized profusely and begged him to try another dream, persuading and pleading until Zipperupus, finally appeased, took the plug and hooked himself into the dream, “Bliss in the Eightfold Embrace of Octopauline.” He was standing in a crowd of onlookers in a great square, and a procession was passing by with waving silks, muslins, mechanical elephants, litters in carved ebony; the one in the middle was like a golden shrine, and in it, behind eight veils, sat a feminine figure of miraculous beauty, an angel with a dazzling face and galactic gaze, high-frequency earrings too, and the King, all a-tremble, was about to ask who this heavenly vision was, when he heard a murmur of awe and adoration surge through the multitude: “Octopauline! It’s Octopauline!”

  For they were celebrating, with the utmost pomp and pageantry, the royal daughter’s betrothal to a foreign knight of the name Oneiromant.

  The King was a bit surprised that he wasn’t this knight, and when the procession had passed and disappeared behind the palace gates, he went with the others in the crowd to a nearby inn; there he saw Oneiromant, who, clad in nothing but galligaskins of damask studded with gold nails and holding a half-empty stein of fortified phosgene in his hand, came over to him, put an arm around him, gave him a hug and whispered in his ear with searing breath:

  “Look, I have a rendezvous with Princess Octopauline tonight at midnight, behind the palace, in the grove of barb-wire bushes next to the mercury fountain—but I don’t dare show up, not in this condition, I’ve had too much to drink, you see—but you, good stranger, why you’re the spit and image of me, so please, please go in my place, kiss the Princess’ hands for me and say that you’re Oneiromant, and gosh, I’ll be beholden to you forever and a day!”

  “Why not?” said the King after a little thought. “Yes, I think I can manage it. But when?”

  “Right now, there’s not a moment to lose, it’s almost midnight, just remember—the King knows nothing of this, no one does, only the Princess and the old gatekeeper, and when he bars your way, here, put this heavy bag of ducats in his hand, and he’ll let you pass!”

  The King nodded, took the bag of ducats and ran straight for the castle, since the clocks, like cast-iron hoot owls, were already beginning to strike the hour. He sped over the drawbridge, took a quick look into the gaping moat, shuddered, lowered his head and slipped under the spiked grating of the portcullis—then across the courtyard to the barbwire bushes and the fountain that bubbled mercury, and there in the pale moonlight he saw the divine figure of Princess Octopauline, beautiful beyond his wildest dreams and so bewitching, that he shook with desire.

  Observing these shakings and shudderings of the sleeping monarch in the palace vestibule, Subtillion chortled and rubbed his hands with glee, this time certain of the King’s demise, for he knew that when Octopauline enfolded the unfortunate lover in those powerful eightfold arms of hers and drew him deep into the fathomless dream with her tender tentacles of love, he would never, never make it back to the surface of reality! And in fact, Zipperupus, burning to be wrapped in the Princess’ embrace, was running along the wall in the shadow of the cloisters, running towards that radiant image of silvery pulchritude, when suddenly the old gatekeeper appeared and blocked the way with his halberd. The King lifted the bag of ducats but, feeling their pleasant weight in his hand, was loath to part with them—what a shame, really, to throw away a whole fortune on one embrace!

  “Here’s a ducat,” he said, opening the bag. “Now let me by!”

  “It’ll cost you ten,” said the gatekeeper.

  “What, ten ducats for a single hug?” jeered the King. “You’re out of your mind!”

  “Ten ducats,” said the gatekeeper. “That’s the price.”

  “Can’t you lower it a little?”

  “Ten ducats, not a ducat less.”

  “So that’s how it is!” yelled the King, flying off the handle in his usual way. “Very well then, dog, you don’t get a thing!” Whereupon the gatekeeper whopped him good with the halberd and everything went spinning around, the cloisters, the fountain, the drawbridge, and Zipperupus fell —not asleep, but awake, opening his eyes to see Subtillion at his side and in front of him, the Dream Cabinet. The Cybernerian was greatly confounded, for now he had failed twice: the first time, because of the King’s craven character, the second, because of his greed. But Subtillion, putting a good face on a bad business, invited the King to help himself to another dream.

  This time Zipperupus selected the “Wockle Weed” dream.

  He was Dodderont Debilitus, ruler of Epilepton and

  Maladyne, a rickety old codger and incurable lecher besides, with a soul that longed for evil deeds. But what evil could he do with these creaking joints, these palsied arms and gouty legs? “I need a pick-me-up,” he thought and ordered his degenerals, Tartaron and Torturus, to go out and put whatever they could to fire and sword, sacking, pillaging and carrying off. This they did and, returning, said:

  “Sire and Sovereign! We put what we could to fire and sword, we sacked, we pillaged, and here is what we carried off: the beauteous Adoradora, Virgin Queen of the Mynamoacans, with all her treasure!”

  “Eh? What’s that you say? With her treasure?” wheezed the quimsy King. “But where is she? And what’s all that sniveling and shivering over there?”

  “Here, upon yon royal couch, Your Highness!” barked the degenerals in chorus. “The sniveling comes from the prison-eress, the above-mentioned Queen Adoradora, recumbent on her antimacassar of pearls! And she shivers first, because she is clad in naught but this exquisite, gold-embroidered shift, and secondly, in anticipation of great indignities and degradation!”

  “What? Indignities, you say? Degradation? Good, good!” rasped the King. “Hand her over, I’ll ravish and outrage the poor thing at once!”

  “Impossible, Your Highness,” interposed the Royal Surgeon and Chirurgeon, “for reasons of national security.”

  “What? I can’t ravish? I can’t violate? I, the King? Have you gone mad? What else did I ever do throughout my reign?”

  “That’s just it, Your Highness!” urged the Surgeon. “Your Highness’ health has been seriously impaired by those excesses!”

  “Oh? Well, in that case… give me an ax, I’ll just lop off her, ah, head…”

  “With Your Highness’ permission, that too would be extremely unwise. The least exertion…”

  “Odsbodkins and thunderation! What blessed use is this kingship to me then?!” sputtered the King, growing desperate. “Cure me, blast it! Restore me! Make me young again, so I can-—you know—like it used to be… Otherwise, so help me, I’ll… I’ll…”

  In terror all the courtiers, degenerals and medical assistants rushed out to find some way to rejuvenate the royal person; at last they summoned the great Calculon himself, a sage of infinite wisdom. He came before the King and asked:

  “What is it that Your Royal Highness wishes?”

  “Eh? Wishes, is it? Hah!” croaked the King. “I’ll tell you what he wishes! He wishes to continue with his debaucheries, saturnalian carousals, incontinent wallowings and wild oats, and in particular to defile and properly deflower Queen Adoradora, who for the time being sits in the dungeon!”

  “There are two courses of action open to us,” said Calculon. “Either Your Highness deigns to choose a suitably competent individual, who will perform per procuram everything Your Highness, wired to that individual, commands, and in this way Your Highness can experience whatever that individual experiences, exactly as if he had experienced the experience himself. Or else you must summon the old cyberhag who lives in the forest outside the village, in a hut on three legs, for she is a geriatric witch and deals exclusively with the infirmities of advanced age!”

  “Oh? Well, let’s try the wires fi
rst!” said the King. And it was done in a trice; the royal electricians connected the Captain of the Guard to the King, and the King immediately commanded him to saw the sage in half, for this was precisely the kind of foul deed in which he took such delight. Calculon’s pleas and screams were to no avail. However, the insulation on one of the wires was torn during the sawing, and consequently the King received only the first half of the execution.

  “A paltry method. The charlatan deserved to be sawed in half,” wheezed His Highness. “Now let’s have that old cyberhag, the one with the hut on three legs!”

  His courtiers headed full speed for the forest, and before long the King heard a mournful singsong, which went something like this:

  “Ancient persons repaired here! I renovate, regenerate, I fix as good as new; corroded or scleroded, why, everyone pulls through! So if you quake, or creak, or shake, or have the rust, or feel the ache, yes I’m the one for you!”

  The old cyberhag listened patiently to the King’s complaints, bowed low and said:

  “Sire and Sovereign! Beyond the blue horizon, at the foot of Bald Mountain, there flows a spring, and from this spring there flows a stream, a stream of oil, of castor oil, and o’er it grows the wockle weed, a high-octane antisenescent re-juvenator—one tablespoon, and kiss forty-seven years goodbye! Though you have to be careful not to take too much: an overdose of wockle juice can youthen to the point of euthanasia and poof, you disappear! And now, Sire, I shall prepare this remedy tried and true!”

  “Wonderful!” cried the King. “And I’ll have them prepare the Queen Adoradora—let the poor thing know what awaits her, heh-heh!”

  And with trembling hands he tried to straighten his loose screws, muttering and clucking all the while, and even twitching in places, for he had grown most senile, though his passion for evil never abated.

  Meanwhile knights rode out beyond the blue horizon to the castor-oil stream, and later, over the old cyberhag’s cauldron vapors swirled, whirled and curled as concoctions were being concocted, till finally she hastened to the throne, fell on her knees and handed the King a goblet, full to the brim with a liquid that shone and shimmered like quicksilver, and she said in a great voice:

  “King Dodderont Debilitus! Lo, here is the rejuvenescent essence of the wockle weed! Invigorating, exhilarating, just the thing for dalliance and derring-do! Drain this cup, and for you the entire Galaxy will not hold cities enough to despoil, nor maidens enough to dishonor! Drink, and to your health!”

  The King raised the goblet, but spilled a few drops on his footstool, which instantly reared up, snorted and hurled itself at Degeneral Tartaron, with frenzied intent to humiliate and profane. In a twinkling of an eye, it had ripped off six fistfuls of medals.

  “Drink, Your Highness, drink!” prompted the cyberhag. “You see yourself what miracles it works!”

  “You first,” said the King in a barely audible whisper, as he was aging fast. The cyberhag turned pale, backed away, refused, but at a nod from the King three soldiers seized her and, using a funnel, forced several drops of the glittering brew down her throat. A flash, a thunderclap, smoke everywhere! The courtiers looked, the King looked—nothing, not a trace of the cyberhag, only a black hole gaping in the floor, and through it one could see another hole, a hole in the dream itself, clearly revealing somebody’s foot—elegantly shod, though the sock was singed and the silver buckle turning dark, as if eaten with acid. The foot of course, along with its sock and shoe, belonged to Subtillion, Lord High Thaumaturge and Apothecary to King Zipperupus. For so potent was that poison the cyberhag had called the wockle weed, that not only did it dissolve both her and the floor, but went clear through to reality, there spattering the shin of Subtillion, which gave him a nasty burn. The King, terrified, tried to wake, but (fortunately for Subtillion) De-general Torturus managed to bash him good over the head with his mace; thanks to this, Zipperupus, when he came to, was unable to recall a thing of what had happened when he was Dodderont Debilitus. Still, once again he had foiled the Cybernerian, slipping out of the third deadly dream, saved this time by his overly suspicious nature.

  “There was something… but I forget just what,” said the King, back in front of the Cabinet That Dreamed. “But why are you, Subtillion, hopping about on one leg like that and holding the other?”

  “It’s—it’s nothing, Your Highness… a touch of rhom-botism… must be a change in the weather,” stammered the crafty Thaumaturge, and then continued to tempt the King to sample yet another dream. Zipperupus thought awhile, read through the Table of Contents and chose, “The Wedding Night of Princess Ineffabelle.” And he dreamt he was sitting by the fire and reading an ancient volume, quaint and curious, in which it told, with well-turned words and crimson ink on gilded parchment, of the Princess Ineffabelle, who reigned five centuries ago in the land of Dandelia, and it told of her Icicle Forest, and her Helical Tower, and the Aviary That Neighed, and the Treasury with a Hundred Eyes, but especially of her beauty and abounding virtues. And Zipperupus longed for this vision of loveliness with a great longing, and a mighty desire was kindled within him and set his soul afire, that his eyeballs blazed like beacons, and he rushed out and searched every corner of the dream for Ineffabelle, but she was nowhere to be found; indeed, only the very oldest robots had ever heard of that princess. Weary from his long peregrinations, Zipperupus came at last to the center of the royal desert, where the dunes were gold-plated, and there espied a humble hut; when he approached it, he saw an individual of patriarchal appearance, in a robe as white as snow. The latter rose and spake thusly:

  “Thou seekest Ineffabelle, poor wretch! And yet thou knowest full well she doth not live these five hundred years, hence how vain and unavailing is thy passion! The only thing that I can do for thee is to let thee see her—not in the flesh, forsooth, but a fair informational facsimile, a model that is digital, not physical, stochastic, not plastic, ergodic and most assuredly erotic, and all in yon Black Box, which I constructed in my spare time out of odds and ends!”

  “Ah, show her to me, show her to me now!” exclaimed Zipperupus, quivering. The patriarch gave a nod, examined the ancient volume for the princess’ coordinates, put her and the entire Middle Ages on punch cards, wrote up the program, threw the switch, lifted the lid of the Black Box and said:

  “Behold!”

  The King leaned over, looked and saw, yes, the Middle Ages simulated to a T, all digital, binary and nonlinear, and there was the land of Dandelia, the Icicle Forest, the palace with the Helical Tower, the Aviary That Neighed, and the Treasury with a Hundred Eyes as well; and there was Ineffabelle herself, taking a slow, stochastic stroll through her simulated garden, and her circuits glowed red and gold as she picked simulated daisies and hummed a simulated song. Zipperupus, unable to restrain himself any longer, leaped upon the Black Box and in his madness tried to climb into that computerized world. The patriarch, however, quickly killed the current, hurled the King to the earth and said:

  “Madman! Wouldst attempt the impossible?! For no being made of matter can ever enter a system that is naught but the flux and swirl of alphanumerical elements, discontinuous integer configurations, the abstract stuff of digits!”

  “But I must, I must!!” bellowed Zipperupus, beside himself, and beat his head against the Black Box until the metal was dented. The old sage then said:

  “If such is thy inalterable desire, there is a way I can connect thee to the Princess Ineffabelle, but first thou must part with thy present form, for I shall take thy appurtenant coordinates and make a program of thee, atom by atom, and place thy simulation in that world medievally modeled, informational and representational, and there will it remain, enduring as long as electrons course through these wires and hop from cathode to anode. But thou, standing here before me now, thou wilt be annihilated, so that thy only existence may be in the form of given fields and potentials, statistical, heuristical, and wholly digital!”

  “That’s hard to believe,” said Zipperupus. �
�How will I know you’ve simulated me, and not someone else?”

  “Very well, we’ll make a trial run,” said the sage. And he took all the King’s measurements, as if for a suit of clothes, though with much greater precision, since every atom was carefully plotted and weighed, and then he fed the program into the Black Box and said:

  “Behold!”

  The King peered inside and saw himself sitting by the fire and reading in an ancient book about the Princess Ineffabelle, then rushing out to find her, asking here and there, until in the heart of the gold-plated desert he came upon a humble hut and a snow-white patriarch, who greeted him with the words, “Thou seekest Ineffabelle, poor wretch!” And so on.

  “Surely now thou art convinced,” said the patriarch, switching it off. “This time I shall program thee in the Middle Ages, at the side of the sweet Ineffabelle, that thou mayest dream with her an unending dream, simulated, nonlinear, binary…”

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” said the King. “But still, it’s only my likeness, not myself, since I am right here and not in any Box!”