Yet
in all of this I discovered no thing of significance. Meanwhile my
own books were gradually being sold, I assumed therefore that someone
was
reading them, and if so, I would sooner or later hear of it. In
particular I
had no doubt but that the Tyrant would summon me, with the demand
that I devote myself exclusively to the immortalization of his
glorious
name. Of course I would tell him that Truth alone did I serve and
would lay
down my life for it, if necessary; the Tyrant, desirous of the praises
my
brilliant brain could formulate, would then attempt to bring me round
with
honeyed words and even toss sacks of clinking coins at my feet, but,
seeing me
unmoved and resolute, would say (prompted by his wise men) that as I
dealt with
the Universe, I ought to deal with him as well, for he represented,
after all,
a part of the Cosmic Whole. Outraged at this mockery, I would answer
sharply,
and he would have me put to torture. Thus I toughened my body in
advance, that
it might endure the worst with philosophical indifference. Yet days
and months
passed by, and nothing, no word from the Tyrant—so I had readied
myself
for martyrdom in vain. There was only a certain scribbler by the name
of
Noxion, who wrote in some cheap, vulgar evening gazette that this
prankster
Chlorian made up no end of farfetched yarns in his book facetiously
entitled, The Gnostotron, or The Ultimate
Omnipotentiometer,
or A Pee into the Future. I rushed to my
bookshelf—yes,
there it was, the printer had somehow left out the k. .
.. My
first impulse was to go out and murder him, but reason prevailed. "My
time
will come!" I told myself. "It cannot be, for someone to cast forth
pearls of eternal wisdom left and right, day and night, till the mind
is
blinded by the surging Light of Final Understanding—and nothing! No,
fame
will be mine, acclaim will be mine, thrones of ivory, the title of
Prime
Mentorian, the love of the people, sweet solace in a shaded grove, my
very own
school, pupils that hang on every word, and a cheering crowd!" For
verily,
O foreign one, every pundit cherishes such dreams. True, they'll tell
you that
Knowledge is their only sustenance, and Truth their only joy, that not
for them
are the trappings of this world, the ribbons, medals and awards, the
warm
embrace of thermomours, and gold, and glory, and applause. Humbug, my
dear sir,
sheer humbug! They all crave the same thing, and the only difference
between
them and myself is that I, at least, have the greatness of spirit to
admit to
such frailties, openly and without shame. But the years went by, and I
was
referred to only as Chlorian the Fool, or Poor Old Chlorio. When the
fortieth
anniversary of my birth arrived, I was amazed to find myself still
waiting for
the masses to beat a path to my door. So I sat down and wrote a
dissertation on
the H. P. L. D.'s, that is, the civilization that has progressed the
farthest
in the entire Universe. What, you say you never heard of them? But
then neither
did I, nor did I see them, nor for that matter do I ever expect to; I
established their existence on purely deductive grounds, in a manner
that was
strictly logical, inevitable and theoretical. For if—so went my
argument
—the Universe contains civilizations at varying stages of development,
the majority must be more or less average, with a few that have either
fallen
behind or managed to forge ahead. And whenever you have a statistical
distribution,
say, for example, of height in a group of individuals, most will be
medium, but
one and only one may be the highest, and similarly, in the Universe
there must
exist a civilization that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of
Development. Its inhabitants, the H. P. L. D.'s,
know things of which we do not
even dream. All this I placed in four volumes, paying for the glossy
paper and
the frontispiece portrait of the author out of my own pocket, but in
vain—it shared the fate of its predecessors. A year ago I read the
whole
work through, from cover to cover, and wept, so brilliantly was the
thing
written, so full of the breath of the Absolute—no, it simply cannot be
described! And then, at the age of fifty, I nearly hit the ceiling!
You see, I
would occasionally purchase the works of other sages, who enjoyed
great riches
and the sweets of success, to learn what sort of things they wrote
about. Well,
they wrote about the difference between the front and the rear, about
the
wondrous structure of the Tyrant's throne, its sweeping arms and
all-enduring
legs, and tracts about good manners, and detailed descriptions of this
and
that, during which no one ever praised himself in any way, and yet it
worked
out somehow that Phrensius stood in awe of Schneckon, and Schneckon of
Phrensius, while both were lauded by the Logarites. And then there
were the
three Voltaic brothers catapulted to fame: Vaultor elevated Vauntor,
Vauntor
elevated Vanitole, and Vanitole did likewise for Vaultor. As I studied
all
these works, suddenly I saw red, and wildly threw myself upon them,
and ripped
and tore, and gnashed and gnawed… until my sobs abated, and then,
drying
my tears, I proceeded to write The Evolution of Reason As
a
Two-cycle Phenomenon. For, as I showed in that essay, robots and
paleface are
joined by a reciprocal bond. First, as the result of an accumulation
of
mucilaginous slime upon some saline shore, beings come into being,
viscous,
sticky, albescent and albuminous. After centuries, these finally learn
how to
breathe the breath of life into base metals, and they fashion Automata
to be
their slaves. In time, however, the process is reversed, and our
Automata,
having freed themselves from the Albuminids, eventually conduct
experiments, to
see if consciousness can subsist in any gelatinous substance, which of
course
it can, and does, in albuminose protein. But now those synthetic
paleface,
after millions of years, again discover iron, and so on, back and
forth for all
eternity. As you can see, I had thus settled the age-old question of
which came
first, robot or paleface. This opus I submitted to the Academy, six
volumes
bound in leather, and the expense of its publication quite exhausted
the
remainder of my inheritance. Need I tell you that it too was passed
over in silence?
I was already past sixty, going on seventy, and all hope of glory
within my
lifetime was swiftly fading. What then could I do? I began to think of
posterity, of the future generations that must some day discover me
and
prostrate themselves in the dust before my name. But what benefit, I
asked
myself, would I derive from that, when I no longer was? And I was
forced to
conclude, in keeping with my teachings contained in four and forty
volumes,
with prolegomena, paralipomena and appendices, that there would be no
benefit
whatever. So, my soul seething with spleen, I sat down to write
my Testament
for Descendants, to kick them, spit upon them, abuse, revile and
curse them
as much as possible, and all in the most rigorously scientific way.
What's
that, you say? That this was unjust, and my indignation would have
been better
directed at my contemporaries, who failed to recognize my genius? Bah!
Consider, worthy stranger! By the time my Testament is
enshrined
by future fame, its every syllable refulgent with the glow of
greatness, these contemporaries will have long since turned to dust,
and how
shall my curses reach them then? No, had I done as you say, their
descendants
would surely study my works with perfect equanimity, now and then
remarking
with a comfortable, self-righteous sigh: "Alas! With what quiet
heroism
did that master endure his cruel obscurity! How justified was his
anger towards
our forefathers, and yet how noble of him, to have bequeathed to us,
even so,
the fruits of his mighty wisdom!" Yes, that's exactly what they'd say!
And
then what? Those idiots who buried me alive, are they to go
unpunished,
shielded from my wrath and vengeance by the grave? The very thought of
it sets
my oil aboil! What, the sons would read my works in peace, politely
rebuking
their fathers on my behalf? Never!! The least I can do is thumb my
nose at them
from afar, from the past! Let them know, they who will worship me and
raise up
gilded monuments to my memory, that in return I wish them all to— to
sprain their sprockets, pop their valves, burn out their
transmissions, and may
their data be dumped, and verdigris cover them from head to foot, if
all they
are able to do is honor corpses exhumed from the cemetery of history!
Perchance
there will arise among them a new sage, but they, slavishly poring
over the
remains of some letters I wrote to my laundress, will take no notice
of him!
Let them know, I say, oh let them know, once and for all, that they
have my
heartfelt damnation and most sincere contempt, that I hold them all
for
skeleton-kissers, corpse-lickers, professional axle-jackals, who feed
on
carrion because they are blind to wisdom when it is alive! Let them,
in
publishing my Complete Works—which must include this Testament, my
final
curse upon their future heads-—let the vile thanatomites and
necrophytes
thereby be deprived of the chance to congratulate themselves, that
Chlorian
Theoreticus the Proph, peerless pundit of yore who limned the infinite
tomorrow, was of their race! And as they grovel beneath my pedestal,
let them
have the knowledge that I wished them nothing but the very worst the
Universe
has to offer, and that the force of my hatred, hurled forth into the
future,
was equaled only by its impotence! Let them know that I disowned them
utterly,
and bestowed upon them nothing but my loathing and anathema!!!
Στανίσλαος
Λέμ