The Cyberiad

by Stanisław Lem

“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.”

For beyond a certain point militarism, a purely local phenomenon, becomes civil, and this is because the Cosmos Itself is by nature wholly civilian, and indeed, the minds of both armies had assumed truly cosmic proportions!

Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they’d all be when it was dead and gone.

Klapaucius too, I ween, Will turn the deepest green To hear such flawless verse from Trurl’s machine.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine! The product of our scalars is defined! Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

He was dressed in galligaskins of gold, mink-tufted buskins, sequined earmuffs, and a robe of most unusual cut—instead of pockets it had little shelves full of mints and marzipan. Tiny mechanical flies also buzzed about his person, and these he brushed away whenever they grew too bold.

Our perfection is our curse, for it draws down upon our every endeavor no end of unforeseeable consequences!”

“I don’t understand. It was only a model, after all. A process with a large number of parameters, a simulation, a mock-up for a monarch to practice on, with the necessary feedback, variables, multistats . . .” muttered Trurl, dumbfounded. “Yes. But you made, the unforgivable mistake of over-perfecting your replica. Not wanting to build a mere clock-like mechanism, you inadvertently—in your punctilious way—created that which was possible, logical and inevitable, that which became the very antithesis of a mechanism. . . . ”