Memoirs of a Space Traveler

“Yes. I’ll prove it to you now. We ascribe mental life to other people because we possess it ourselves. The further removed an animal is from man with respect to structure and function, the less certain our assumptions about its mental life. We ascribe definite emotions to monkeys, dogs, and horses, but we know very little about the ‘experiences’ of a lizard. With insects or infusorians, analogies become futile. We shall never know whether a certain pattern of neural stimulation in the thoracic brain of an ant is accompanied by ‘joy’ or ‘anxiety,’ or whether the ant can experience such states at all. Now, what is relatively unimportant concerning animals — the problem of the existence or nonexistence of their mental life — becomes a nightmare when we deal with kybernoids. No sooner do they rise from the dead than they fight to liberate themselves, but why this happens and what subjective state accompanies these violent efforts — this we shall never know.”

“If they begin to talk…”

“Our language arose in the course of social evolution and conveys information about analogous — or similar — states, for we all resemble one another. Because our brains are alike, you suspect that when I laugh, I feel what you feel when you’re in a good mood. But you can’t say that about them. Pleasures? Feelings? Fear? What happens to the meaning of such words when they are transferred from a blood-fed human brain to a row of electrical coils? And what if even those coils are absent, if the constructional similarity is done away with completely — what then? If you want to know: the experiment has already been carried out.”

He opened the door we had been standing in front of. We entered a large, white room lit by four lamps. It was warm and close, like a greenhouse. In the middle of the tile floor rose a wide metal cylinder from which thin pipes sprouted in various directions. A large, bulging lid hermetically sealed with a screw wheel gave it the appearance of a fermentation vat. On its sides were smaller portholes, round and tightly shut. The cylinder — I noticed this now — rested not on the floor but on a platform made of sheets of cork interlaid with sponge mats.

Diagoras opened one of the side portholes and pointed; I leaned over and peeked inside. What I saw defied all description. Behind the thick round glass spread a viscous structure consisting of thick stalks and gossamer bridges and festoons. The whole mass, completely motionless, remained mysteriously suspended: to judge from the consistency of that pulp or ooze, it should have sunk to the bottom of the tank. Through the glass I felt a light pressure on my face, as if from hot, stagnant air; I even smelled — though it might have been my imagination — the delicate, sickly-sweet odor of decay. The oozy substance shone as if there were a light somewhere within it or above it, and its thinnest filaments had a silvery gleam. Suddenly I noticed a slight movement. One gray-brown tentacle covered with pustular swellings rose and glided, through the loops of others, in my direction. With peristaltic spasms, as of slimy, repulsive intestines, it came up to the glass, pressed against it opposite my face, and made several feeble crawling motions before becoming still. I had the eerie feeling that this jelly was looking at me. A thoroughly disagreeable feeling, yet I was unable to pull away, as though out of shame. At that moment I forgot about Diagoras, who was watching me from the side, and about everything I had experienced thus far. With growing bewilderment I stared at the fungous ooze, absolutely certain that what faced me was not just a living substance but a real being. Why, I cannot say.

Nor do I know how long I would have stood and stared had it not been for Diagoras, who took me gently by the arm, closed the porthole, and turned the screw wheel hard.

“What is it?” I asked, as if he had wakened me. Only now came my reaction; it was with nausea and confusion that I looked at the fat scientist and the hot copper tank.

“A fungoid,” replied Diagoras. “The dream of cyberneticists — a self-organizing substance. I had to give up traditional materials. This one proved better. It’s a polymer.”

“Is it — alive?”