Authors: Stanislaw Lem
Exceptionally beautiful are the successive risings and settings of both suns; their eclipses, too, provide unusual sights. For half a day the red sun shines and then all objects look as if steeped in blood, in the other half the blue sun comes out, and is so powerful, you have to walk around with your eyes shut all the time; in spite of this, though, you can see quite tolerably. Having no knowledge of the darkness, the Whds call the blue time day, and the red they call night. There is, it’s true, incredibly little room on the planet, but the Whds, beings of much intelligence and possessing great knowledge, particularly in the area of physics, have overcome this difficulty in a most ingenious though, admittedly, singular fashion. To wit; in a special government office and with the aid of a high-precision x-ray apparatus they take of each inhabitant of the planet what they call an “atomic profile,” which is an exact blueprint showing absolutely every shred of matter, every protein molecule and chemical bond of which his body is composed. Then, when it comes time to turn in for the night, the Whd enters through a tiny door to a special mechanism and inside is reduced to individual atoms. Taking up very little space in this form, he spends the night, then in the morning at the designated time an alarm turns on the mechanism, which following the atomic profile puts back together all the molecules in the proper order and sequence, the door opens and the Whd, thus restored to life, gives a few yawns and hurries off to work.
The Whds pointed out to me the advantages of this way of life, observing that with it there was never any question of insomnia, bad dreams, apparitions or nightmares, for the machine, in reducing the body to atoms, thereby deprived it of life and consciousness. They apply this expedient also in a variety of other situations, as for example: in doctors’ waiting rooms and government offices, where instead of chairs you have little boxes, painted pink and blue, of those machines, and at certain meetings and conferences—in short, wherever a man is condemned to boredom and inactivity and, doing nothing of any use, merely takes up space by the fact of his existence. In this same resourceful way the Whds are accustomed to travel: if you want to go anywhere, you write the address on a card, paste it on a small cassette, which is then placed beneath the machine, you step inside and, atomized, go into the cassette. There is a special institution, something like our postal service, which expedites such parcels to their respective addresses. If someone happens to be in a particular hurry, his atomic profile is sent by telegraph to the place designated, and there they re-create him by machine. The original Whd meanwhile undergoes pulverization and is filed away in the archives. This mode of telegraphic travel, being extremely swift and simple, holds considerable attraction, however it also carries with it certain risks. Right as I arrived, the papers told of an awful accident that had only just taken place. It seems a certain young Whd by the name of Thermopheles was supposed to go to some town situated in the other hemisphere of the planet, in order to be married. Being in love, he was naturally impatient and, wishing to stand at the side of his intended as soon as possible, he went to the post office and had himself telegraphed. At that very moment the telegraph official was called away on some urgent business and his replacement, unaware that Thermopheles had already been sent, wired his profile a second time, and lo and behold, there before the anxiously waiting bride-to-be stood two Thermopheleses, as alike as two peas in a pod. It is hard to describe the shock, confusion and distress of the poor girl, not to mention the entire wedding party. The attempt was made to convince one of the Thermopheleses to submit to atomization and thereby end the whole unpleasant incident, but that failed completely, for each of them stubbornly maintained that
he
was the real and only Thermopheles. The matter was taken to court and dragged on through several appeals. It was after my departure that the highest court reached its verdict, therefore I cannot say how the matter was finally resolved.
5
The Whds urged me to sample for myself their method of repose and travel, assuring me that errors such as the above were extremely rare and that the process itself had nothing mysterious or supernatural about it, for as everyone knows living organisms are fashioned from the same material as all the objects that surround us, planets and stars included; the only difference lies in the interconnection and arrangement of the constituent parts. These arguments I understood perfectly, but nevertheless refused to be talked into it.
One evening a curious thing happened to me. I dropped in on a Whd I knew, forgetting to phone him in advance. No one seemed at home when I entered. Looking around for my host, I opened various doors one by one (the quarters, as all Whd quarters, being incredibly cramped), till finally, setting ajar a door smaller than the rest, I saw what looked like the inside of a refrigerator, completely empty except for a shelf on which stood a small chest full of grayish powder. Without thinking I took a handful of this powder, then jumped at the sound of a door opening and dropped it on the floor.
“What are you doing, honorable alien!” cried the son of that Whd, for it was he who had entered. “Look out, you’re spilling my daddy!”
Hearing these words, I was filled with horror and mortification, but the young lad said:
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, don’t worry!” And he ran out and in a few minutes returned carrying a sizable lump of coal, a sack of sugar, a pinch of sulfur, a small nail and a fistful of ordinary sand; he dumped all this into the chest, closed the little door and threw the switch. I heard something not unlike a deep sigh or swallow, the door opened and there was my friend, laughing at my dismay, safe and sound. I asked him later, during our conversation, whether I hadn’t caused him any harm by scattering part of his bodily material like that and, also, just how had his son been able so easily to rectify my clumsy act.
“Come, don’t even mention it,” he said, “you didn’t harm me in the least, what nonsense! Surely you are cognizant, my dear alien friend, of the findings of modern physiology, which say that all the atoms of our body are constantly being replaced with new; some bonds break, others form; the loss is made up thanks to the assimilation of foods and liquids, and thanks also to the respiratory process—all of which, taken together, we call metabolism. So then, the atoms that composed your body a year ago have long since left it and now are wending their way through regions far removed; it is only the general structure of the organism that remains unchanged, the interlocking system of its material pieces. There is nothing strange in the way my son replenished the supply of matter necessary for my re-creation; our bodies after all are made of carbon, sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and traces of metal, and the substances he brought contained those very elements. Please, step into the mechanism yourself, you will see how harmless the procedure is…”
I declined my gracious host’s offer and for some time afterwards was still reluctant to avail myself of similar invitations, in the end however, after a long inner struggle, I made up my mind. At the x-ray office they took my picture and produced an atomic profile, after which I paid a visit to my friend. Squeezing myself inside the thing wasn’t particularly easy, for I am on the heavy side, therefore my gracious host had to help me; the little door could be closed only when the entire family pitched in. The lock clicked and everything grew dark.
What happened then I don’t recall. I only felt that I was highly uncomfortable and the edge of the shelf was digging into my ear, before however I could change my position the little door opened and I climbed out of the mechanism. My first question was why they hadn’t gone through with the experiment, but my host informed me with a pleasant smile that I was quite mistaken. And to be sure, a look at the wall clock confirmed that I had indeed spent twelve hours inside the mechanism without the least sensation. The only slight inconvenience lay in the fact that my pocket watch indicated the time that I had entered the machine; being reduced to atoms exactly as I was, it could hardly keep running.
The Whds, with whom I felt—more and more—bonds of the warmest friendship, told me yet of other applications of this method: they have this custom, that an outstanding scholar, should he be tormented by some problem which he cannot solve, will remain inside a mechanism for several decades, then—when resurrected—stick his head out into the world and ask if the problem has been answered yet, and if it hasn’t, submit once more to atomization, and so on till the goal is reached.
After this first successful experiment I grew so bold, developed such a taste for that novel way of resting, that it was not only nights, but every free minute I spent in the atomized state; one could do this in the park, on the street, for everywhere stood the mechanisms, looking like mailboxes with little doors. All you had to remember was to set the alarm to the right time; absent-minded persons do omit to do this on occasion and could rest inside the mechanism for all eternity, but fortunately there exists a special corps of inspectors, who every month check all the mechanisms.
Towards the end of my stay on the planet I became an out-and-out enthusiast of the Whdian custom and used it, as I said before, every chance I got. For this rashness, alas, I was to pay dearly. It happened, one time, that the mechanism I was occupying jammed a little and when that morning the alarm switched on the current, the thing reconstructed me not in my usual shape but as Napoleon Bonaparte in imperial uniform, wearing the tricolor sash of the Legion of Honor, a saber at my side, a gold-studded cocked hat on my head and an orb and scepter in my hands—that was how I appeared before my astonished Whds. They advised me immediately to get redone in the nearest unbroken mechanism, which would not have presented any difficulty, inasmuch as my true atomic profile was on record and available, all the same I wouldn’t hear of the idea, and contented myself with having the cocked hat changed into a cap with ear flaps, the saber into a set of tableware, and the orb and scepter into an umbrella. When I was already sitting at the controls of my rocket and with the planet far behind me in the darkness of eternal night, suddenly it struck me that I had been too hasty ridding myself of those tangible proofs, which would have lent credence to my words. But it was too late now.
O
ne of the main space lanes in the constellation of the Great Bear connects the planets of Mufta and Taffetum. On the way it passes Tairia, a rocky sphere that enjoys the worst sort of reputation among travelers, and this on account of the swarms of boulders that surround it. That whole region presents a picture of primordial chaos and danger, the disk of the planet barely shows from behind those clouds of stone, in which you have incessant lightning and thunder from colliding chunks of rock.
A few years ago the pilots running flights between Taffetum and Mufta began to tell of certain dire monsters, which would emerge suddenly from the whirling debris above Tairia and attack rockets, wrapping their long tentacles about them, attempting to pull them down into their murky lairs. Some passengers had been badly frightened, but so far that was all. Then the news spread that monsters had attacked a traveler while he was taking an after-dinner stroll around his rocket in a spacesuit. This was greatly exaggerated, since the traveler in question (a good friend of mine) had spilled coffee on his spacesuit and hung it out the hatch to dry, when strange, writhing creatures flew up and made off with it.
Finally feelings ran so high on the neighboring planets, that a special expedition was sent to comb the area around Tairia. Some of its members claimed that deep inside the clouds of Tairia they had spotted snakelike things resembling octopuses, this however was never verified and after a month the expedition, not daring to venture into the dark regions of Tairia’s flint clouds, returned to Taffetum empty-handed. Other expeditions were undertaken later, but with no results.
At last a famous stellar adventurer, the intrepid Zow Gorbras, set out for Tairia, two hounds in spacesuits at his side, to hunt the enigmatic creatures. After five days he returned alone, haggard and drawn. As he told it, not far from Tairia a number of monsters had all at once come charging out from behind a nebula and wound him and his hounds in their tentacles; the brave hunter pulled out a knife and, hacking away blindly, succeeded in freeing himself from the deadly coils, to which—alas—his hounds succumbed. The spacesuit of Gorbras bore, both inside and out, the signs of battle, and in several places green strands of some kind, almost like fibrous stems, were found clinging to it. The college of sciences, having examined these vestiges minutely, announced that they were fragments of a multicellular organism well known on Earth, namely the
Solarium tuberosum,
a bulbaceous, gametopetalous, multiseminiferous species with individual pinnatipartite segmentations, brought by the Spaniards from America to Europe in the 16th century. That news alone excited the imagination, but it is difficult to describe what took place after someone translated the scholarly explanation into everyday language and it turned out that Gorbras had brought back on his spacesuit bits of potato leaves.
The intrepid stellar adventurer, stung to the quick by the insinuation that for four straight hours he had been fighting potatoes, demanded an immediate retraction of this vile calumny, the scientists however replied that they could not retract a single word. There was a great furor. Two factions arose, the Potatoists and the anti-Potatoists, which spread first to the Big and later to the Little Dipper; the antagonists hurled dreadful epithets at one another. But this was nothing compared to what happened when the philosophers entered the fray. From England, France, Australia, Canada and the United States they came, the most illustrious theoreticians of knowledge and expounders of pure reason, and the result of their efforts was astounding.