Authors: The Cyberiad [v1.0] [htm]
perfectionistic principle. The Ninnicans had long ago assumed another
name, that of Hedophagoi or Jubileaters, or just plain Jubilators. My
arrival occurred during their Era of Plenty. Each and every Ninnican,
or rather Jubilator, sat in his palace, which was built for him by
his automate (for so they called their triboluminescent slaves), each
with essences anointed, each with precious gems appointed,
electrically caressed, impeccably dressed, pomaded, braided,
gold-brocaded, lapped and laved in ducats gleaming, wrapped and
wreathed in incense streaming, showered with treasures, plied with
pleasures, marble halls, fanfares, balls, but for all that, strangely
discontent and even a little depressed. And yet there was everything
you could ask for! On this planet no one lifted a finger: instead of
taking a walk, a drink, a nap, a trip or a wife, there was a Walker
to walk one, a Napper to nap one, a Wiver to wive one, and so on, and
it was even impossible for one to take a break, since there was a
special apparatus for that as well. And thus, served and serviced by
machines in every conceivable way, all medaled and maidened by
appropriate automatic Decorators and Panderizers five to fifteen
times per minute, covered with a seething, silvery swarm of
mechanicules and machinerettes to coddle him, fondle him, wink, wave
and whisper sweet nothings in his ear, back-rub, chin-chuck,
cheek-pat and foot-grovel him, tirelessly kissing whatever he might
present to be kissed—thus did the Jubilator
vel
Hedophage
vel
Ninnican wallow and carouse the livelong day,
alone, while in the distance, all across the horizon, chugged the
mighty Fabrifactories, churning out thrones of gold, dandle chains,
pearl slippers and bibs, orbs, scepters, epaulets, spinels, spinets,
cymbals, surreys, and a million other instruments and gratifacts to
delight in. As I walked along, I constantly had to drive away
machines that offered me their services; the more brazen ones,
greedily seeking to be of use, had to be beaten over the head.
Finally, fleeing the whole crowd of them, I found myself in the
mountains —and saw a host of golden machines clamoring around
the mouth of a cave walled up with stones, and through a narrow
opening there I saw the watchful eyes of a Ninnican, who was
apparently making a last stand against Universal Happiness. Seeing
me, the machines immediately began to fan and fawn upon my person,
read me fairy tales, stroke me, kiss my hands, promise me kingdoms,
and I was saved thanks only to the one in the cave, who mercifully
moved aside a stone and let me enter. He was half rusted through, yet
glad of it, and said that he was the last philosopher of Ninnica.
There was no need, of course, for him to tell me that plenitude, when
too plenitudinous, was worse than destitution, for—obviously—what
could one do, if there was nothing one could not? Truly, how could a
mind, besieged by a sea of paradises, benumbed by a plethora of
possibilities, thoroughly stunned by the instant fulfillment of
its every wish and whim—decide on anything? I conversed with
this wise individual, who called himself Trizivian Huncus, and we
concluded that without enormous shields and an Ontological
Complicositor-Imperfector, doom was unavoidable. Trizivian had
for some time regarded complicositry as the ultimate existential
solution; I, however, showed him the error of this approach, since it
consisted simply in the removal of machines with the aid of
other machines, namely gnawpers, thwockets, tenterwrenches,
fracturacks, hobblers and winch-shrieks. Which obviously would only
make matters worse—it wouldn't be complicositry at all,
but just the opposite. As everyone knows, History is irreversible,
and there is no way back to the halcyon past other than through
dreams and reveries.
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 dream 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