"Lem - Automathew's Friend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

ear that housed his friend. "Oh, if only I had here, in my hand, a
stick of some sort, a piece of a twig, which I could use to pry you
out, I'd do it and grind you beneath my heel in no time!"
"You dream of destroying me?" said Alfred, saddened. "Truly, you do
not deserve an electrofriend, nor any other sympathizing fellow
creature!"
Automatthew flared up anew at this and so they quarreled, argued and
disputed till the day was almost over, and the poor robot, exhausted
from all his screaming, jumping and fist-waving, and suddenly
feeling very weak, sat down on a stone where, heaving sighs of
hopelessness every now and then, he stared out at the empty ocean. A
couple of times he took the edge of a small cloud peering out over
the horizon for the smoke of a steamship, but these illusions Alfred
quickly dispelled, reminding him of the one-in-four-hundred-thousand
probability, which again drove Automatthew to paroxysms of despair
and rage, all the more in that each time, as it turned out, Alfred
was right. Finally a long silence fell between them. The castaway
now gazed at the lengthening shadows of the rocks, which stretched
across the white sand of the beach, when Alfred spoke:
"Why do you say nothing? Can it be that those circles I mentioned
are even now swimming before your eyes?"
Automatthew did not bother to reply.
"Aha!" Alfred went on, in monologue. "So it's not only the circles
but, in all likelihood, also that mindless torpor which I so
accurately predicted. Remarkable, really, the lack of sense
displayed by an intelligent being, particularly when beset by
circumstances. You trap it on a desert island, where it must perish,
you prove as two and two are four that this is inescapable, you show
it a way out of the situation, in the taking of which, it will be
making the only use it can of its will and reason--and is it
thankful? Oh no, it wants hope, and if there is none and can be
none, it clings to false hope and would rather sink into madness
than into the water which..."
"Stop talking about the water!!" croaked Automatthew.
"I was only demonstrating the irrationality of your motives,"
answered Alfred. "I no longer urge anything upon you. That is, any
action, for if you wish to die slowly, or rather, by wishing to do
nothing in general, you undertake that type of dying, then one must
think this through properly. Consider how erroneous and unwise it is
to fear death, a state that deserves, rather, vindication! For what
can equal the perfection of nonexistence? True, the agony leading up
to it does not, in itself, present an especially attractive
phenomenon, on the other hand there has never yet been one so feeble
in mind or body that he could not endure it and proved unable to die
his death completely, all the way and to the very end. It is not,
then, a thing of much significance, if any dolt, weakling and
good-for-nothing can do it. And if absolutely everyone can handle it
(and you must admit that this is so, I at least have never heard of
anyone unequal to the task), it is better to think with delight on
the all-merciful nothingness that lies just beyond its threshold.