Memoirs of a Space Traveler by Stanislaw Lem Read Free Book Online Page A

the only one for you, so the content that flows to their brains from my drum is authentic and the only real thing for them. The drum holds their world, Tichy, and their bodies—their bodies do not exist in our reality except as certain configurations of holes in perforated tapes. The box at the very end of the row considers itself a woman of unusual beauty. I can tell you exactly what she sees when she looks at herself naked in the mirror. What jewels she loves. The wiles she uses to trap men. I know all that, for it was I who created her and her form—a form imaginary to us but real to her—having a face, teeth, the smell of sweat, a stiletto scar on the shoulder blade, and hair into which she can stick orchids. A form no less real than your arms, legs, belly, neck, and head are real to you! You do not doubt your own existence?”
    “No,” I answered calmly. No one had ever raised his voice to me like that, but I was too stunned by the words of the professor—whom I believed, seeing no reason to distrust him—to take offense at his lack of manners.
    “Tichy,” Corcoran continued, somewhat more quietly, “I said that I had here, among others, a scientist. The box opposite you. He studies his world, but will never guess, never, that his world is unreal; that he is wasting his time and energy to fathom what is, in fact, a drum with wound-up tapes; that his hands, legs, and eyes, his own failing eyes, are merely an illusion induced by the discharge of suitably chosen impulses. To grasp that, he would need to get outside his iron box—that is, outside himself—and think without his electronic brain, which is as impossible as it is impossible for you to know the existence of that cold, heavy box other than by touch and sight.”
    “But I know from physics that I’m made of atoms,” I shot back. Corcoran raised his hand in a peremptory gesture.
    “He knows physics, too, Tichy. He has his own laboratory with all the equipment his world can provide… He looks at the stars through a telescope, studies their movements, and feels the cold weight of the glasses on his face. No, not now. Now, in keeping with his custom, he is in the garden that surrounds his laboratory, strolling in the sunlight—for the sun is just rising in his world.”
    “But where are the other people—the ones he lives among?” I asked.
    “The other people? Obviously, each of the boxes, each of the beings, moves among people … they’re in the drum, all of them. You still don’t understand! Perhaps an example, though a remote one, will make it clear to you. You encounter various people in your dreams—often people that you have never seen or known—and carry on conversations with them while you sleep. Isn’t that so?”
    “Yes.”
    “Those people are the products of your brain. But while you dream, you are not aware of that. Please note—that was only an example. It’s different with them”—he stretched out his arm—“they themselves do not create their families, friends, and strangers; these are in the drum, whole hosts of them, and when, let’s say, my scientist gets a sudden hankering to leave his garden and speak to the first passer-by, you could see what makes that happen by lifting the lid of the drum: his sensory reader, affected by an impulse, deviates imperceptibly from its previous course, moves onto another tape, and picks up what is recorded there. I say ‘reader,’ but actually it is hundreds of microscopic electrical collectors, because just as you perceive the world with your sight, smell, touch, hearing, and organ of balance, so he comes to know his world by means of separate sensory inputs and separate channels, and only his electronic brain unites all these impressions into one whole. But these are technical details, Tichy, of little consequence. Once the mechanism has been set in motion, I can assure you, it is only a question of patience, nothing more. Read the philosophers, Tichy, and you’ll see how