The Cyberiad

ALTRUIZINE or A True Account of How Bonhomius the Hermetic Hermit Tried to Bring About Universal Happiness, and What Came of It

One bright summer day, as Trurl the constructor was pruning the cyberberry bush in his back yard, he spied a robot mendicant coming down the road, all tattered and torn, a most woeful and piteous sight to behold. Its limbs were held together by sections of old stovepipe fastened with string, its head was a pot so full of holes you could hear its thoughts whir and sputter inside, throwing off sparks, and its makeshift neck was a rusty rail, and in its open belly were vacuum tubes that smoked and rattled so badly, it had to hold them in place with its free hand—the other was needed to tighten the screws that kept coming loose. Just as it hobbled past the gate to Trurl’s residence, it blew four fuses at once and straightway began, spewing a foul cloud of burning insulators, to fall apart, right before the constructor’s eyes. Trurl, full of compassion, took a screwdriver and a roll of electric tape and hastened to offer what aid he could to the poor wayfarer, who swooned repeatedly with a great grinding of gears, due to a total asynchronization. At last Trurl managed to restore it to its senses, such as they were, then helped it inside, sat it down in a comfortable chair and gave it a battery to recharge itself, and while the poor thing did so with trembling urgency, he asked it, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, what had brought it to this sorry pass.

“O kind and noble sir,” replied the strange robot, its armatures still aquiver, “my name is Bonhomius and I am, or rather was, a hermetic hermit, for I lived sixty years and seven in a cave, where I passed the time solely in pious meditation, until one morning it dawned on me that to spend a life in solitude was wrong, for truly, did all my exceedingly profound thoughts and strivings of the spirit ever keep one rivet from falling, and is it not written that thy first duty is to help thy neighbor and not to tend to thine own salvation, for yea and verily—”

“Fine, fine,” interrupted Trurl. “I think I more or less understand your state of mind that morning. What happened then?”

“So I hied myself to Photura, where I chanced to meet a certain distinguished constructor, one Klapaucius.”

“Klapaucius?!” cried Trurl.

“Is something amiss, kind sir?”

“No, nothing—go on, please!”

“I did not recognize him at first: he was indeed a great lord and had an automatic carriage that he not only rode upon but was able to converse with, much as I converse with you now. This same carriage did affront me with a most unseemly epithet as I walked in the middle of the street, unaccustomed to city traffic, and in my surprise I inadvertently put out its headlight with my staff, which drove the carriage into such a frenzy, that its occupant was hard put to subdue it, but finally did, and then invited me to join him. I told him who I was and why I had abandoned my cave and that, forsooth, I knew not what to do next, whereupon he praised my decision and introduced himself in turn, speaking at great length of his work and many achievements. He told me at last the whole moving history of that famous sage, pundit and philosophist, Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph, at whose lamentable end he had had the privilege to be present. From all that he said of the Collected Works of that Greatest of Robots, the part about the H. P. L. D.’s did intrigue me the most. Perchance, kind sir, you have heard of them?”

“Certainly. They are the only beings in the universe who have reached the Highest Possible Level of Development.”

“Indeed you are well-informed, most kind and noble sir! Now while I sat at the side of this worthy Klapaucius in his carriage (which continued to hurl the foulest insults at whatever was imprudent enough to cross its path), the thought suddenly came to me that these beings, developed as much as possible, would surely know what one should do, when one, such as myself, felt the call to help his fellow robot. So I questioned Klapaucius closely concerning this, and asked him if he knew where the H. P. L. D.’s lived, and how to find them. His only reply was a wry smile and a shake of the head. I dared not press the matter further, but later, when we had halted at an inn (the carriage had by this time grown so hoarse that it lost its voice entirely, thus Klapaucius was obliged to wait until the following day) and were sitting over a jug of mulled electrolyte, which quickly put my gracious host in a better humor, and as we watched the thermocouples dance to the spirited tunes of a high-frequency band, he took me into his confidence and proceeded to tell me… but perhaps you grow weary of my tale.”

“Not at all, not at all!” protested Trurl. “I’m all ears, I assure you.”

“My good Bonhomius,” Klapaucius addressed me in that inn as the dancers worked themselves into a positive heat, “know that I took very much to heart the history of the unfortunate Chlorian and resolved to set out immediately and find those perfectly developed beings whose existence he had so conclusively proven on purely logical and theoretical grounds. The main difficulty of the undertaking, as I saw it, lay in the circumstance that nearly every cosmic race considered itself to be perfectly developed—obviously I would get nowhere by merely asking around. Nor did a trial-and-error method of search promise much, for the Universe contained, as I calculated, close to fourteen centigigaheptatrillion civilizations capable of reason; with such odds one could hardly expect to simply happen on the correct address. So I deliberated, read up on the problem, went methodically through several libraries, pored over all sorts of ancient tomes, until one day I found the answer in the work of a certain Cadaverius Malignus, a scholar who had apparently arrived at exactly the same conclusion as the Proph, only three hundred thousand years earlier, and who was completely forgotten afterwards. Which shows, once more, that there’s nothing new under this or any other sun—Cadaverius even met an end similar to that of our own Chlorian… But I digress. It was precisely from these yellowed and crumbling pages that I learned how to seek the H. P. L. D.’s. Malignus maintained that one must examine star clusters for some impossible astrophysical phenomenon, and that would surely be the place. A rather obscure clue, to be sure, but then aren’t they all? Without further ado I stocked my ship with the necessary provisions, took off and, after numerous adventures we need not go into here, finally spotted in a great swarm of stars one that differed from all the rest, since it was a perfect cube. Now that was quite a shock— every schoolboy knows stars have to be spherical and any sort of stellar angularities, let alone rectangularities, are not only highly irregular but entirely out of the question! I drew near the star and immediately saw that its planet was also cubiform and equipped, moreover, with castellated corner cleats and crenelated quoins. Farther out revolved another planet, which appeared to be quite normal; a look through the telescope, however, revealed hordes of robots locked in mortal combat, a sight which hardly invited closer scrutiny. So I got the square planet back in my finder and increased the resolution to full power. Imagine my surprise and joy when I looked in the eyepiece and beheld a monogram engraved on one of the planet’s mile-long quoins, a monogram consisting of four letters embellished with swirls and curlicues: H. P. L. D.!

—Great Gauss!—I cried. —This must be the place!

But though I circled around again and again, until I was quite dizzy, there was not a living soul to be seen anywhere on the planet’s sandy surface. Only when I dropped to an altitude of six miles was I able to make out a group of dots, which proved to be, upon higher magnification, the inhabitants of this most unusual heavenly body. There were a hundred or so of them lying about in the sand, and so motionless, I thought for a moment they might all be dead. But then I saw one or two scratch themselves, and this clear sign of life encouraged me to land. In my excitement I didn’t wait for the rocket to cool after its descent through the planet’s atmosphere, but jumped out at once and shouted:

—-Excuse me, is this by any chance the Highest Possible Level of Development?!

No answer. In fact, they paid no attention to me at all. Somewhat taken aback by this show of utter indifference, I looked around. The plain shimmered beneath the square sun. Here and there, things stuck out of the sand, things like broken wheels, sticks, bits of paper and other rubbish, and the inhabitants lay any which way among them, one on his back, another on his stomach, and farther on was one with his legs up in the air. I walked around the nearest and examined him. He wasn’t a robot, but on the other hand neither was he a man, nor any sapient proteinoid of the glutinous-albuminous variety. The head was round and plump, with red cheeks, but for eyes it had two penny whistles, and for ears it had thuribles, which gave off a thick cloud of incense. He was dressed in orchid pantaloons, a dark blue stripe down either side and appliqued with dirty scraps of closely written paper, and he wore high heels. In one hand he held a mandolin made entirely of frosted gingerbread, a few bites already missing from the neck. He was snoring peacefully. I leaned over to read the appliques on his trousers, but could make out only a few since my eyes watered copiously from the incense. The inscriptions were most curious—for example, NO. 7 DIAMOND NET WEIGHT SEVEN HUNDRED CWT, NO. 8 THESPIAN CONFECTIONERY, SOBS WHEN CHEWED, RECITES HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY IN THE STOMACH, ‘OUT BRIEF CANDLE’ FARTHER DOWN, NO. 10 GOLLOCHON-DRILL FOR EMERGENCY SLURGING, FULL-GROWN, and many more, which I simply don’t remember now. As I touched one of these paper scraps in trying to read it, a depression quickly formed in the sand beneath this native’s knee and a tiny voice piped:

—Shall I come out now?

—Who’s that?—I cried.

—It’s me, the Gollochondrill… Are you ready? Is it time?

—No, not yet!—I was quick to reply, and backed off. The next native had a head in the shape of a bell, three horns, several arms of varying length (two massaging its belly), ears that were long and feathery, a cap with a pretty purple balcony on which someone was having an argument with someone else—quite heated too, judging from the little plates that came flying this way and that, shattering on the brim—and he also had a kind of throw pillow, all jewel-spangled, tucked under his shoulders. While I stood before this individual, he pulled one of the horns off his head, sniffed it and tossed it away with a look of disgust, then poured a handful of dirty sand in the opening. Nearby lay something I first took for a pair of twins, and then for a couple of lovers locked in an embrace. I was about to turn away discreetly, when I realized that it wasn’t two people at all, or one, but exactly one and a half. The head was quite ordinary, except for the ears: every now and then they would detach themselves and flit about like butterflies. The lids were closed, but numerous moles on the chin and cheeks were equipped with tiny eyes; these regarded me with undisguised hostility. This remarkable being had a bioad and muscular chest, which however was riddled with holes, as if someone had been careless with a drill, and the holes were haphazardly plugged with raspberry jam. There was only one leg, but it was unusually thick and shod in a handsome morocco leather slipper, its curled toe tipped with a little felt bell. Near the elbow was a sizable pile of apple cores, or perhaps they were pear. My astonishment grew as I walked along and came upon a robot with a human head, a miniature self-winding samovar whistling cheerfully in its left nostril, and then someone reclining on a bed of candied yams, and someone else with a trapdoor in his abdomen, open so I could look in and see the crystal works. Some mechanical elves were putting on a play in there, but it turned out to be so terribly obscene, that I left in a hurry, blushing like mad. In my confusion I tripped and fell, and when I got up I saw yet another inhabitant of this strange planet: stark naked, he was scratching his behind with a solid gold backscratcher, apparently enjoying himself thoroughly, even though he was quite headless. The head lay farther on, neck stuck in the sand; it was touching its teeth with the tip of its tongue. The chin was checkered chintz, the right ear a boiled cauliflower, while the left was an ear all right, but stopped up with a carrot that carried a tag saying PULL. Without thinking I pulled, and out with the carrot came a length of string and then another tag that read YOU’RE GETTING WARM! I kept pulling and pulling, until the string finally ended in a medicine bottle that bore the label NOSY, AREN’T WE?

All these impressions left me feeling so dizzy I hardly knew where I was. But at last I pulled myself together and began to look around for the kind of person who might be communicative enough to answer a question or two. A possible candidate, it seemed, was one fairly pudgy type squatting with his back to me and occupied with something he held on his knees—at least he had only one head, two ears, two arms, and so on. I went up to him and began:

—Pardon me, but if I’m not mistaken, you gentlemen have been fortunate enough to achieve the Highest Possible—

The words died on my lips. He didn’t seem to hear me at all, for he was wholly taken up with what lay on his knees, which happened to be his very own face, removed somehow from the rest of the head and sighing softly as he picked its nose. For a moment I was stupefied, but only for a moment —my curiosity returned in full force, and I simply had to find out, once and for all, just what was going on. I ran from one native to the next, spoke to them, questioned them, raised my voice, insisted, pleaded, reasoned, even threatened, all to no avail. In my exasperation I grabbed the nose picker’s arm, and was horrified to find that it came off in my hand, though that didn’t bother him in the least, he only poked about in the sand and pulled out another exactly like the first—except for the orange plaid fingernails—blew on it a little, then affixed it to the shoulder stump. Curious, I bent over to examine the first arm, but dropped it hastily when it snapped its fingers in my face. By now the sun was setting, already two corners below the horizon, the air grew cool, and the inhabitants of H. P. L. D. began to settle down for the night, scratching, yawning, gargling, one shaking out an emerald quilt, another methodically taking off his nose, ears and legs and carefully putting them in a row at his side. I stumbled around in the dark for a while, then gave it up with a sigh and lay down to sleep too. Making myself as comfortable as possible in the sand, I looked up at the starry sky and tried to think what to do next.

—Indeed-—I said to myself—by all indications this is the very planet both Cadaverius Malignus and Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph spoke of, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe, a civilization of a few hundred individuals who, being neither people nor robots, lie around on jeweled cushions all day in a dirty, littered desert and do nothing but scratch themselves and pick their noses. No, there has to be some terrible secret behind all of this, and I shall not rest till I’ve uncovered it!!

Then I thought:

—A terrible secret it must be indeed, to account for not only a square sun and planet, but lecherous elves inside bodies and insulting messages in ears! I always thought that if I, a simple robot, could spend my time in study and the pursuit of knowledge, think of the kind of intellectual ferment that went on among those more highly developed— no, the most highly developed! Yet these, whatever they do, they certainly don’t spend their time in edifying conversation; they don’t even care to answer a few questions. I’ll have to force them—but how? Perhaps, if I pester them enough, get under their skin, so to speak, make such a nuisance of myself that they’ll agree to anything, just to get rid of me! Of course, there is some risk involved: they might get angry, and, without a doubt, they could destroy me as easily as swatting a fly.… But no, I cannot believe they’d resort to such brutal measures—and anyway, I simply must find out! Well, here goes!!

And I jumped up in the darkness and started to scream at the top of my lungs, did somersaults and cartwheels, hopped around and kicked sand in their eyes, danced and sang until I was hoarse, did a few sit-ups and deep knee bends, then hurled myself among them like a mad dog. They turned their backs to me and held up their cushions and quilts for protection, and then, in the middle of my hundredth cartwheel, a voice said inside my head:

—And what would your good friend Trurl think if he could see you now, see how you pass your time on the planet that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of Development, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe?!—But I ignored the hint and continued to stomp and howl, encouraged by what they were whispering to one another:

—Psst!

—What do you want?

—You hear that?

—How can I help but hear it?

—He practically kicked my head in.

—You can get another.

—But I can’t sleep.

—What?

—I said, I can’t sleep.

—He’s curious—whispered a third.

—He’s awfully curious!

—This is really too much. We’ll have to do something.

—Like what?

—I don’t know… Change his personality?

—No, that’s unethical…

—Just listen to him howl!

—Wait, I have an idea…

They whispered something while I kept jumping around, raising an unholy racket, concentrating my efforts especially in the area where I heard them talking. Then, just as I was doing a headstand on someone’s abdomen, everything went black, and the next thing I knew, I was back on my ship and out in space. My limbs ached from all that exercise, but I could hardly move them anyway, for I was sitting in a pile of trombones, jars of green marmalade, teddy bears, platinum glockenspiels, ducats and doubloons, golden earmuffs, bracelets and brooches glittering so bright they hurt my eyes. When finally I crawled out from under all these valuables and dragged myself to a window, I saw that the constellations were entirely different—not a trace of anything remotely resembling a square sun! A few quick calculations revealed that I would have to travel six thousand years at top velocity to get back to the H. P. L. D.’s. They had disposed of me, indeed. And going back would achieve nothing, that was clear: they would merely send me packing again with that instantaneous hyperspatial telekinesis of theirs, or whatever it was. And so, my good Bonhomius, I decided to tackle the problem in an altogether different way.…” And with these words, most kind and noble sir, did the distinguished constructor Klapaucius finish his tale…

“Surely that’s not all he said?!” cried Trurl.

“Nay, he said a great deal more, O benefactor of mine! And therein lies my misfortune!” replied the robot with considerable perturbation. “When I asked him what he had then decided to do, he leaned over and said…

“The problem did seem insoluble at first, but I’ve found a way. You say you lived as a hermetic hermit and are but a simple, unschooled robot, so I’ll not trouble you with explanations that touch the arcane art of cybernetic generation. To put it simply, then, all we have to do is construct a digital device, a computer capable of producing an informational model of absolutely anything in existence. Properly programmed, it will provide us with an exact simulation of the Highest Possible Level of Development, which we can then question and thereby obtain the Ultimate Answers!”

“But how does one build such a device?” I asked. “And how can you be sure, O illustrious Klapaucius, that it won’t respond by sending us packing in much the same instamatic hyperstitial and so forth manner the original H. P. L. D.’s employed, as you say, on your worthy person?”

“Leave that to me,” he said. “Rest assured, I shall learn the Great Mystery of the H. P. L. D.’s, good Bonhomius, and you shall find the optimal way in which to put your natural abhorrence of evil into action!”

You can imagine, kind sir, the great joy that filled me upon hearing these words, and the eagerness with which I assisted Klapaucius in the execution of his plan. As it turned out, this digital device was none other than the famed Gnostotron conceived by Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph just before his lamentable demise, a machine able literally to contain the Universe Itself within its innumerable memory banks. (Klapaucius, however, was not satisfied with the name, and now and then tried to think up others to christen it: the Omniac, the Pansophoscope, APOC for All Purpose Ontologue Computer, or the Mahatmatic 500, to mention a few.) In exactly one year and six days, this mighty machine was completed, and so enormous was it, we had to house it in Phlaphundria, the hollowed-out moon of the Phlists-—and truly, an ant had been no more lost aboard an ocean liner than we in the bowels of this binary behemoth, among its endless coils and cables, eschatological toggles and transformers, those hagiopneumatic rectifiers and tempta-tional resistors. I confess my wire hair stood on end and my laminated alternator skipped a beat when my distinguished mentor sat me down before the Central Control Console and left me face-to-face with this awesome, towering thing. The flashing lights that played across its panels were like the very stars in the firmament; everywhere were signs that read danger: highly ineffable!; and potentiometers, their dials spinning wildly, showed logic and semantic fields building up to unheard-of levels of intensity. Beneath my feet heaved a sea of preternatural and pretermechanical wisdom, wisdom that swirled like a spell through parsecs of circuitry and megahectares of magnets, swirled and surrounded me on every side, that I felt, in my shameful ignorance, of no more consequence than a mere mote of dust. I overcame this weakness only by recalling my lifelong love of Good, the passion I had conceived for Truth and Beauty when little more than a gleam in my constructor’s oscilloscope. Thus fortified, I managed to stammer out the first question: “Speak, what manner of machine art thou?”

A hot wind then arose from its glowing tubes, and there came a voice from that wind, a whispering thunder that seared me to the core, and the voice said:

Ego sum Ens Omnipotens, Omnisapiens, in Spiritu Intellectronico Navigans, luce cybernetica in saecula saeculorum litterus opera omnia cognoscens, et caetera, et caetera.

Such was my fright upon hearing this reply, that I was quite unable to continue the interrogation until Klapaucius returned and reduced the EMF (epistemotive force) to one billionth of its voltage by adjusting the theostats. Then I asked the Gnostotron if it would be so kind as to answer questions touching the Highest Possible Level of Development and its Terrible Secret. But Klapaucius said that that was not the way: one should instead request the Ontologue Computer to model within its silver and crystal depths a single inhabitant of that square planet, and at the same time provide the model with an adequate degree of loquacity. This promptly done, we were ready to begin in earnest.

Still I quaked and quailed and could hardly speak, so Klapaucius took my place before the Central Control Console and said:

“What are you?”

“I already answered that,” snapped the machine, clearly annoyed.

“I mean, are you man or robot?” explained Klapaucius.

“And what, according to you, is the difference?” said the machine.

“Look, if you’re going to answer questions with questions, we’ll get absolutely nowhere,” said Klapaucius sternly. “You know what I’m after, all right. Start talking!”

Though I was appalled at the tone he took with the machine, it did seem to work, for the machine said:

“Sometimes men build robots, sometimes robots build men. What does it matter, really, whether one thinks with metal or with protoplasm? As for myself, I can assume whatever substance and shape I choose—or rather, used to assume, for we no longer indulge in such trifles.”

“Indeed,” said Klapaucius. “Then why do you lie around all day and do nothing?”

“And what exactly are we supposed to do?” the machine replied. At this, Klapaucius grew angry and said:

“How should I know? We in the lower levels of development do all sorts of things.”

“We did too, in our day.”

“But not now?”

“Not now.”

“Why not?”

Here the computerized H. P. L. D. representative balked, saying he had already endured six million such interrogations and neither he nor his questioners ever profited from them in the least. But after Klapaucius had raised the loquacity a little and opened a valve here and there, the voice answered:

“A trillion years ago we were a civilization like any other. We believed in the transmittance of souls, the Virgin Matrix, the infallibility of Pi Squared, looked upon prayer as regenerative feedback to the Great Programmer, and so on and so forth. But then skeptics appeared, empiricists and accidentalists, and in nine centuries they came to the conclusion that There’s No One Up There At All and consequently things happen not out of any higher plan or purpose, but—well, they just happen.”

“Just happen?” I could not help but exclaim. “What do you mean?”

“There are, on occasion, deformed robots,” said the voice. “If you should be afflicted with a hump, for example, but firmly believe the Almighty somehow needs your hump to realize His Cosmic Design and that it was therefore ordained along with the rest of Creation, why, then you may be easily reconciled to your deformity. If, however, they tell you that it’s merely the result of a misplaced molecule, an atom or two that happened to go the wrong way, then nothing remains for you but to bay at the moon.”

“But a hump may be straightened,” I protested, “and really any deformity corrected, given a high enough level of science!”

“Yes, I know,” sighed the machine. “That’s how it appears to the ignorant and simple-minded…”

“You mean, that isn’t true?” Klapaucius and I cried, astounded.

“When a civilization starts straightening humps,” said the machine, “believe me, there’s no end to it! You straighten humps, then you repair and amplify the mind, make suns rectilinear, give planets legs, fabricate fates and fortunes of all kinds… Oh, it begins innocently enough, like discovering fire by rubbing two sticks together, but eventually it leads to the construction of Omniacs, Deifacts, Hyperboreons and Ultimathuloriums! The desert on our planet is in reality no desert, but a Gigagnostotron, in other words a good 10⁹ times more powerful than this primitive device of yours. Our ancestors created it for the simple reason that anything else would have been too easy for them; in their megalomania they thought to make the very sand beneath their feet intelligent. Quite pointless, for there is absolutely no way to improve upon perfection. Can you understand that, O ye of little development?!”

“Yes, of course,” said Klapaucius, while I quaked and quailed. “Yet why, instead of at least engaging in some stimulating activity, do you sprawl in that ingenious sand and only scratch yourselves from time to time?”

“Omnipotence is most omnipotent when one does nothing!” answered the machine. “You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down! We are, after all, sensible folk, why should we want to do anything? Our ancestors, true, turned our sun into a cube and made a box of our planet, arranging its mountains in a monogram, but that was only to test their Gnostotron. They could have just as easily assembled the stars in a checkerboard, extinguished half the heavens and lit up the other half, constructed beings peopled with lesser beings, giants whose thoughts would be the intricate dance of a million pygmies, and they could have redesigned the galaxies, revised the laws of time and space-—but tell me, what sense would there have been to any of this? Would the universe be a better place if stars were triangular, or comets went around on wheels?”

“That’s ridiculous!!” Klapaucius shouted, highly indignant, while I quaked and quailed all the more. “If you are truly gods, your duty is clear: immediately banish all the misery and misfortune that oppresses other sentient beings! You could at least begin with your poor neighbors—I’ve seen with my own eyes how they batter one another! But no, you’d rather lie around all day and pick your noses, and insult honest travelers in search of knowledge with your indecent elves in abdomens and messages in ears!”

“Really, you have no sense of humor,” said the machine. “But enough of that. If I understand you correctly, you wish us to bestow happiness upon everyone. Well, we devoted over fifteen millennia to that project alone—that is, eudae-monic tectonics, of which there are basically two schools, the sudden and revolutionary, and the slow and evolutionary. Evolutionary eudaemonic tectonics consists essentially in not lifting a finger to help, confident that every civilization will eventually muddle through on its own. Revolutionary solutions, on the other hand, boil down to either the Carrot or the Stick. The Stick, or bestowing happiness by force, is found to produce from one to eight hundred times more grief than no interference whatever. As for the Carrot, the results—believe it or not—are exactly the same, and that, whether you use an Ultradeifact, Hypergnostotron, or even an Infernal Machine and Gehennerator. You’ve heard, perhaps, of the Crab Nebula?”

“Certainly,” said Klapaucius. “It’s the remnants of a supernova that exploded long ago…”

“Supernova, he says,” muttered the voice. “No, my well-wishing friend, there was a planet there, a fairly civilized planet as planets go, flowing with the usual quantity of blood, sweat and tears. Well, one morning we dropped eight hundred million transistorized Universal Wish Granters on that planet, but were no more than a light-week out on our way home, when suddenly it blew up—and the bits and pieces are flying apart to this day! The very same thing happened with the planet of the Hominates… care to hear of that?”

“No, don’t bother,” replied a morose Klapaucius.—But I refuse to believe it’s impossible, with a little ingenuity, to make others happy!”

“Believe what you like! We tried it sixty-four thousand five hundred and thirteen times. The hair on every one of my heads stands on end when I think of the results. Oh, we spared no pains for the good of our fellow-creature! We devised a special telescanner for observing dreams, though you realize of course that if, say, a religious war were raging on some planet and each side dreamt only of massacring the other, it would hardly be to our purpose to make such dreams come true! We had to bestow happiness, then, without violating any Higher Laws. The problem was further complicated by the fact that most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to. Now what do you do: help them achieve the ends to which the little decency they have prompts them, or instead fulfill their innermost desires? Take, for example, the Dementians and Amentians. The Dementians, in their medieval piety, burnt at the stake all those consorting with the Devil, females especially, and they did this because, first, they envied them their unholy delights, and secondly, they found that administering torture in the form of justice could be a positive pleasure. The Amentians, on the other hand, worshiped nothing but their bodies, which they stimulated by means of machines, though in moderation, and this activity constituted their chief amusement. They had boxes of glass, and into these they placed various outrages, rapes and mutilations, the sight of which served to whet their sensual appetites. On this planet we dropped a multitude of devices designed to satisfy all desires in such a way that no one needed to be harmed, that is, each device created a separate artificial reality for each individual. Within six weeks both Dementians and Amentians had perished, to a man, from a surfeit of joy, groaning in ecstasy as they passed away! Is that the sort of ingenuity you had in mind, O undeveloped one?”

“Either you’re a complete idiot or a monster!” cried Klapaucius, while I gulped and blinked. “How dare you boast of such foul deeds?”

“I do not boast of them, but confess them,” the voice calmly said. “The point is, we tried every conceivable method. On various planets we unleashed a veritable rain of riches, a flood of satisfaction and well-being, and the result was total paralysis; we dispensed good advice, the most expert counsel, and in return the natives opened fire on our vessels. Truly, it would appear that one must alter the minds of those one intends to make happy…”

“I suppose you can do that too,” grumbled Klapaucius.

“But of course we can! Take our neighbors, for instance, the ones who inhabit a quasiterran (or, if you prefer, geomorphic) planet. I speak of the Anthropods. Now, they devote themselves exclusively to obbling and perplossication, for they stand in mortal terror of the Gugh, which according to them occupies the Hereafter and waits for all sinners with open jaws and fangs of hellfire. By emulating the blessed Dimbligensians and walking in the way of Wamba the Holy, and by shunning Odia, where abound the Abominominites, a young Anthropod may in time become more industrious, more virtuous and more honorable than ever were his eight-armed forebears. True, the Anthropods are at constant war with the Arthropoids over the burning question of whether Moles Have Holes, or, contrariwise, Holes Moles, but observe that as a rule less than half of each generation perishes in that controversy. Now you would have me drive from their heads all belief in obbling, Dimbligensians and so forth, in order to prepare them for rational happiness. Yet this is tantamount to psychic murder, for the resultant minds would be no longer Anthropodous or Arthropoidal—surely you can see that.”

“Superstition must yield to knowledge,” said Klapaucius firmly.

“Unquestionably! But kindly observe that on that planet there are now close to seven million penitents who have spent a lifetime struggling against their own nature, solely that their fellow citizens might be delivered from the Gugh. And in less than a minute I am to tell them, convince them beyond a shadow of a doubt that all this effort was in vain, that they had wasted their entire lives in pointless, useless sacrifice? How cruel that would be! Superstition must yield to knowledge, but this takes time. Consider the hunchback we spoke of earlier—there Ignorance is indeed Bliss, for he believes his hump fulfills some cosmic role in the great work of Creation. Telling him that it’s actually the product of a molecular accident will only serve to make him despair. Better to straighten the hump in the first place…”

“Yes, of course!” Klapaucius exclaimed.

“We did that too. My grandfather once straightened three hundred hunchbacks with a wave of the hand. And how he regretted it afterwards!”

“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Why? One hundred and twelve of them were immediately boiled in oil, their sudden and miraculous cure being taken for a sure sign that they’d sold their souls to the Devil; thirty, no longer exempt from conscription, were promptly called up and soon fell in various battles under various flags; seventeen straightway succumbed to the shock of their good fortune; and the remainder, since my esteemed grandfather saw fit to further bless them with great beauty of form, wasted away through an overindulgence in erotic activity—deprived of these pleasures for so long, you see, they now hurled themselves into every sort of debauchery, and in such a violent and unbridled fashion, that within two years not one was left among the living. Well, there was an exception… but it’s hardly worth mentioning.”

“Go on, let’s hear it all!” cried Klapaucius, and I could tell that he was greatly troubled.

“If you insist… Two remained, actually. The first presented himself before my grandfather and pleaded on bended knee for the return of his hump. It seems that as a cripple he had lived comfortably enough on charity, but now had to work and was quite unaccustomed to it. What was worse, now that he was straightened, he kept bumping his head on door lintels…”

“And the second?” asked Klapaucius.

“The second was a prince who had been denied succession to the throne on acount of his deformity. In light of its sudden correction, his stepmother, to insure her own son’s position, had him poisoned…”

“I see… But still, you can work miracles, can’t you?” said Klapaucius, despair in his voice.

“Bestowing happiness by miracle is highly risky,” lectured the machine. “And who is to be the recipient of your miracle? An individual? But too much beauty undermines the marriage vows, too much knowledge leads to isolation, and too much wealth produces madness. No, I say, a thousand times no! Individuals it’s impossible to make happy, and civilizations—civilizations are not to be tampered with, for each must go its own way, progressing naturally from one level of development to the next and having only itself to thank for all the good and evil that accrues thereby. For us, at the Highest Possible Level, there is nothing left to do in this Universe, and to create another Universe, in my opinion, would be in extremely poor taste. Really, what would be the point of it? To exalt ourselves? A monstrous idea! For the sake, then, of those yet to be created? But how are we obligated to beings who don’t even exist? One can accomplish something only so long as one cannot accomplish everything. Otherwise it’s best to sit back and watch… And now, if you’ll kindly leave me in peace…”

“But wait!” I cried in alarm. “Surely there’s something you can give us, some way to improve the quality of life, if only a little! Some way to lend a helping hand! Remember the Golden Rule and Love Thy Neighbor!”

The machine sighed and said:

“My words fall on deaf ears, as usual. I should have dismissed you to begin with, like we did the last time… Oh, very well then, here’s a formula that hasn’t been tried. No good will come of it, you’ll see—but do with it what you will! All I wish now is to be left alone to meditate among my many theostats and deiodes…”

The voice faded away, the console lights dimmed, and we stood and read the card the machine had printed out for us. It went something like this:

Klapaucius was somewhat put off by the fact that Altruizine was only for humans, which meant that robots would have to continue to endure the misfortunes allotted to them in this world. I, however, made bold to remind him of the solidarity of all thinking beings and the necessity of aiding our organic brothers. Then there were practical matters to arrange, for we were agreed that the business of bestowing happiness was not to be postponed. So while Klapaucius had a subsection of the Gnostotron prepare a suitable quantity of the drug, I selected a geomorphic planet, one peopled by human types and no more than a fortnight’s journey off. As a benefactor, I wished to remain anonymous, therefore my distinguished mentor advised me, when going there, to assume the form of a man, which is no easy task, as you well know. Yet here too the great constructor overcame all difficulties, and soon I was ready to depart, a suitcase in either hand. One suitcase was filled with forty kilograms of Altruizine in a white powder, the other was packed with various toilet articles, pajamas, underwear, spare chins, noses, hair, eyes, and so forth. I went as a well-proportioned young man with a thin mustache and a forelock. Now Klapaucius had some doubt as to the advisability of applying Altruizine on such a large scale to begin with, and though I did not share his reservations, I did agree to test the formula first as soon as I landed on Terrania (for so was the planet called). Longing for the moment I could commence with the great sowing of universal peace and brotherhood, I bid a fond farewell to Klapaucius and hastened on my way.

In order to conduct the necessary test, I repaired, upon arrival, to a small hamlet where I took lodgings at an inn maintained by an aging and rather morose individual. As they carried my luggage from the carriage to the guest room, I contrived to drop a pinch of the powder into a nearby well. Meanwhile there was a great commotion in the front yard, scullery maids ran back and forth with pitchers of hot water, the innkeeper drove them on with curses, and then came the sound of hoofbeats, a chaise clattered up and an old man jumped out, clutching the black leather bag of a physician—his goal was not the house, however, but the barn, whence came the most doleful groans. As I learned from the chambermaid, a Terranian beast which belonged to the innkeeper—they called it a cow—was just now giving birth. This news troubled me: it had never occurred to me to consider the animal side of the question. But nothing could be done now, so I locked myself in and waited for events to unfold. Nor did I have long to wait. I was listening to the chain rattling in the well—they were still drawing water—when suddenly the cow gave another groan, which was echoed this time by several others. Immediately thereafter the veterinarian came running from the barn, howling and holding his stomach, and he was followed by the scullery maids and at last the innkeeper. Driven by the cow’s labor pains, they raised a great cry and fled in all directions —only to return at once, for the agony abated at a certain distance. Again and again they rushed the barn and each time were forced to retreat, doubled over with the beast’s contractions. Much chagrined by this unforeseen development, I realized now that the drug could be properly tested only in the city, where there were no animals. So I quickly packed my things and went to pay the bill. But as everyone about was quite incapacitated in birthing that calf, there was no one available with whom to settle accounts. I returned to my carriage, but finding both coachman and horses deep in labor, decided instead to proceed to the city on foot. I was crossing a small bridge when, as my ill fortune would have it, the suitcase slipped from my hand and fell in such a way, that it flew open and spilled my entire supply of powder into the stream below. I stood there dazed while the quick current carried off and dissolved all forty kilograms of Altruizine. But nothing could be done now— the die was cast, inasmuch as this stream happened to supply the entire city up ahead with its drinking water.

It was evening by the time I reached the city, the lights were lit, the streets were full of noise and people. I found a small hotel, a place to stay and observe the first signs of the drug taking effect, though as yet there seemed to be none. Weary after the day’s peregrination, I made straight for bed, but was awakened in the middle of the night by the most horrible screams. I threw off the covers and jumped up. My room was bright from the flames that were consuming the building opposite. Running out into the street, I stumbled over a corpse which was not yet cold. Nearby, six thugs held down an old man and, while he cried for help, yanked one tooth after another from his mouth with a pair of pliers— until a unanimous shout of triumph announced that finally they had succeeded in pulling the right one, the rotten root of which had been driving them wild, due to the metapsychotropic transmission. Leaving the toothless old man half-dead in the gutter, they walked off, greatly relieved.

Yet it was not this that had roused me from my slumber: the cause was an incident which had transpired in a tavern across the way. It seems some drunken weightlifter had punched his comrade in the face and, experiencing the blow forthwith, became enraged and set upon him in earnest. Meanwhile the other customers, no less affronted, joined in the fray, and the circle of mutual abuse soon grew to such proportions, that it awoke half the people at my hotel, who promptly armed themselves with canes, brooms and sticks, rushed out in their nightshirts to the scene of battle, and hurled themselves, one seething mass, among the broken bottles and shattered chairs, until finally an overturned kerosene lamp started the fire. Deafened by the wail of fire engines, as well as the wail of the maimed and wounded, I hurried away, and after a block or two found myself in a gathering—that is, a crowd milling about a little white house with rose bushes. As it happened, a bride and groom were spending their wedding night within. People pushed and pulled, there were military men in the crowd, men of the cloth, even high-school students; those nearest the house shoved their heads through the windows, others clambered up on their shoulders and shouted, “Well?! What are you waiting for?! Enough of that dawdling! Get on with it!” and so on. An elderly gentleman, too feeble to elbow others aside, tearfully pleaded to be let through, as he was unable to feel anything at such a distance, advanced age having weakened his mental faculties. His pleas, however, were ignored—some of the crowd were lost in a transport of delight, some groaned with pleasure, while others blew voluptuous bubbles through their noses. At first the relatives of the newlyweds tried to drive off this band of intruders, but they themselves were soon caught up in the general flood of concupiscence and joined the scurrilous chorus, cheering the young couple on, and, in this sad spectacle the great-grandfather of the groom led the rest, repeatedly ramming the bedroom door with his wheelchair. Utterly aghast at all of this, I turned and hastened back to my hotel, encountering on the way several groups, some locked in combat, others in a lewd embrace. Yet this was nothing compared with the sight that greeted me at the hotel. People were jumping out of windows in their underwear, more often than not breaking their legs in the process, a few even crawled up on the roof, while the owner, his wife, chambermaids and porters ran back and forth inside, wild with fear, howling, hiding in closets or under beds— all because a cat was chasing a mouse in the cellar.

Now I began to realize that I had been somewhat precipitate in my zeal. By dawn the Altruizine effect was so strong, that if one nostril itched, the entire neighborhood for a mile on every side would respond with a shattering salvo of sneezes; those suffering from chronic migraines were abandoned by their families, and doctors and nurses fled in panic when they approached—only a few pale masochists would hang around them, breathing heavily. And then there were the many doubters who slapped or kicked their compatriots, merely to ascertain whether there was any truth to this amazing transmission of feelings everyone spoke of, nor were these compatriots slow in returning the favor, and soon the entire city rang with the sounds of slaps and kicks. At breakfast time, wandering the streets in a daze, I came upon a tearful multitude that chased an old woman in a black veil, hurling stones after her. It so happened that this was the widow of one much-esteemed cobbler, who had passed away the day before and was to be buried that morning: the poor woman’s inconsolable grief had so exasperated her neighbors, and the neighbors’ neighbors, that, quite unable to comfort her in any way, they were driving her from the town. This woeful sight lay heavy on my heart and again I returned to my hotel, only to find it now in flames. It seems the cook had burnt her finger in the soup, whereupon her pain caused a certain captain, who was at that very moment cleaning his blunderbuss on the top floor, to pull the trigger, inadvertently slaying his wife and four children on the spot. Everyone remaining in the hotel now shared the captain’s despair; one compassionate individual, wishing to put an end to the general suffering, doused everyone he could find with kerosene and set them all on fire. I ran from the conflagration like one possessed, searching frantically for at least one man who might be considered, in any way whatever, to have been rendered happy—but met only stragglers of the crowd returning from that wedding night.

They were discussing it, the scoundrels: apparently the newlyweds’ performance had fallen short of their expectations. Meanwhile each of these former vicarious grooms carried a club and drove off any sufferer who dared to cross his path. I felt I should die from sorrow and shame, yet still sought a man—but one would do—who might a little lessen my remorse. Questioning various persons on the street, I at last obtained the address of a prominent philosopher, a true champion of brotherhood and universal tolerance, and eagerly proceeded to that place, confident I should find his dwelling surrounded by great numbers of the populace. But alas! Only a few cats purred softly at the door, basking in the aura of good will the wise man did so abundantly exude—several dogs, however, sat at a distance and waited for them, salivating. A cripple rushed past, crying, “They’ve opened the rabbitry!” How that could be of benefit to him, I preferred not to guess.

As I stood there, two men approached. One looked me straight in the eye as he swung and smote the other full force in the nose. I stared in amazement, neither grabbing my own nose nor shouting with pain, since, as a robot, I could not feel the blow, and that proved my undoing, for these were secret police and they had employed this ruse precisely to unmask me. Handcuffed and hauled off to jail, I confessed everything, trusting that they would take into consideration my good intentions, though half the city now lay in ashes. But first they pinched me cautiously with pincers, and then, fully satisfied it produced no ill effects whatever on themselves, jumped upon me and began most savagely to batter and break every plate and filament in my weary frame. Ah, the torments I endured, and all because I wished to make them happy! At long last, what remained of me was stuffed down a cannon and shot into cosmic space, as dark and serene as always. In flight I looked back and saw, albeit in a fractured fashion, the spreading influence of Altruizine—spreading, since the rivers and streams were carrying the drug farther and farther. I saw what happened to the birds of the forest, the monks, goats, knights, villagers and their wives, roosters, maidens and matrons, and the sight made my last tubes crack for woe, and in this state did I finally fall, O kind and noble sir, not far from your abode, cured once and for all of my desire to render others happy by revolutionary means…