"Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 02 - Memoirs of a Space Traveler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

continued to mull over the problem. Then, one afternoon, as I rubbed oil on my legs, which were swollen
with mosquito bites, my mind wandered back to the old days, when, while flying through the spherical
cluster of Canes Venatici, I had read theoretical physics for lack of anything better to do. I had been
particularly engrossed in a volume devoted to elementary particles, and I recalled Feynman's hypothesis
that there are particles that move "upstream" against the flow of time. When an electron moves in this
manner, we perceive it then as an electron with a positive charge (a positron). I asked myself, with my
feet in a washbasin: What if we took one electron and accelerated it, accelerated it so much that it would
begin moving backward in time, faster and faster? Couldn't we give it such a tremendous impulse that it
would fly back beyond the beginning of cosmic time to that point when there was still nothing? Couldn't
the Universe arise from this accelerated positron?!
 I ran to the professor as I was, my bare feet dripping wet. He immediately realized the magnitude
of my idea and without a word began to calculate. It turned out that the project was feasible: his
calculations showed that the electron, as it moved against the flow of time, would gain greater and greater
energy, so that when it reached beyond the beginning of the Universe, the force accumulated within it
would split it apart, and the exploding particle would release the energy required to cancel the debt. The
Universe then would be saved from collapse, since it would no longer exist on credit!
Now we had only to think about the practical side of the undertaking that was to legitimize the
World or, in short, to create it! As a man of integrity, Razglaz repeatedly said to Professor Tarantoga and
to all his assistants and colleagues that it was I who had originated the concept of the Creation; that
therefore it was I, and not he, who deserved the double title of Creator and Saviour of the World. I
mention this not to boast but to humble myself. Because the endless praise and appreciation that I
received at that time in Bombay, well, I'm afraid it turned my head a little and caused me to neglect my
work. I rested on my laurels, thinking that the most important part had been done -- the intellectual part
-- and that what followed now would be the purely technical details, which others could take care of.
A fatal mistake! Throughout the summer and most of the fall, Razglaz and I determined the
parameters, the characteristics and properties that were to be carried by the electron -- the cosmic seed,
or, perhaps more correctly, the constructional quantum. As for the mechanical aspect of Project Genesis,
we took a huge university synchrophasotron and rebuilt it into a cannon aimed at the beginning of time.
All its power, concentrated and focused in a single particle -- the constructional quantum -- was to be
released on October 20. Professor Razglaz insisted that I, the author of the idea, fire the world-forming
shot from the Chronocannon. Because, you see, this was a unique historical opportunity. Our machine,
our mortar, was to shoot not just any random electron, but a particle suitably remade, reshaped, and
remodeled to bring forth a much more orderly and solid Universe than the one that existed at present.
And we paid particular attention to the intermediate and late stages of Cosmocreation -- the human race!
Of course, to program and pack such an ungodly wealth of information into one electron was no
easy task. I must confess that I did not do everything myself. Razglaz and I shared the work; I thought up
the improvements and corrections, and he translated these into the precise language of the parameters of
physics, the theory of vacuums, the theory of electrons, positrons, and sundry other trons. We also set up
a kind of incubator where we kept test particles in strict isolation. We would choose from among them
the most successful particle, which, as I said, was to give birth to the Universe on October 20.
What good, what wonderful things I planned during those hectic days! How often did I work late
into the night poring over books on physics, ethics, and zoology in order to gather, combine, and
concentrate the most valuable information, which the professor, starting at dawn, fashioned into the
electron, the cosmic nucleus! We wanted, among other things, to have the Universe develop
harmoniously, not as before; to prevent supernovas from jolting it too much; to eliminate the senseless
waste of quasar and pulsar energy; to keep stars from sparking and smoking like damp candlewicks; and
to shorten interstellar distances, which would facilitate space travel and thus bring together and unify
sentient races. It would take volumes to tell of all the corrections I managed to plan in a relatively short
time. But these were not the most important thing. I need not explain why I concentrated on the human
race; to improve it, I changed the principle of natural evolution.