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

Because, when one has passed away, it is impossible to think,
inasmuch as death and thought are mutually exclusive, and therefore
when else, if not while still in life, is it fitting to
contemplate--sensibly and particularly--all those privileges,
conveniences and pleasures which death will bestow so generously
upon you?!
"Picture if you will: no struggles, no anxieties or apprehensions,
no suffering of the body or the soul, no unhappy accidents, and this
on what a scale! Why, even if all the world's evil forces were to
join and conspire against you, they would not reach you! Truly,
nothing can compare with the sweet security of one who is no more!
And if furthermore you consider that this security is not something
transient, fleeting, impermanent, that nothing may repeal or intrude
upon it, then with what boundless joy..."
"Drop dead," came the weak voice of Automatthew and, accompanying
those laconic words, a short but pungent oath.
"How I regret that I cannot!" Alfred instantly replied. "Not only
feelings of egoistic envy (for there is nothing to compare with
death, as I've just said), but the purest altruism inclines me to
accompany you into oblivion. But alas, this is not possible, since
my inventor made me indestructible, no doubt to serve his
constructor's pride. Truly, when I think of how I will remain inside
your brine-encrusted, desiccated corpse, whose disintegration will
go slowly, I am sure, and how I will sit there and converse with
myself--it fills me with sorrow. And all the waiting there will be,
afterwards, before at last that one-in four-hundred-thousandth
vessel, in keeping with the laws of probability, chances upon this
little island..." "What?! You will not waste away here?!" exclaimed
Automatthew, roused from his lethargy by these words of Alfred.
"Then you will go on living, while I, while I... Oh no! Not a
chance! Never! Never!! Never!!!"
And with a dreadful roar he leaped to his feet and began to hop,
jerk his head, dig in his ear with all his might, performing
throughout the most amazing twists and tosses with his body--in
vain, however. While all this went on, Alfred piped at the top of
its voice:
"Now really, stop! What, have you lost your mind already? It's too
soon for that! Careful, you'll hurt yourself! You could break or
maybe sprain something! Watch out for the neck! Come, this makes no
sense! It would be a different thing if you could, well, get it over
with all at once... but this way you'll only injure yourself! I told
you I'm indestructible and that's that, it's useless for you to go
to all this trouble! Even if you were to shake me out, you still
couldn't do me any harm, that is, any good--I meant to say--since in
accordance with what I have already expounded at such length, death
is a thing to be envied. Ow! Stop, please! How can you jump about
like that?"
Automatthew however continued to hurl himself, heedless of
everything, and finally took to ramming his head against the rock on
which he had been sitting before. And he rammed and rammed, with