The morose laboratory assistants laid out a tape recorder, a radio, a film projector, and a small portable library on the tables. The cadaver cast an indifferent eye over these instruments of culture and tried the magnetic tape to see how it tasted. It became clear that the model’s spiritual abilities would not manifest themselves spontaneously. Then Vybegallo gave the order to commence what he called the forcible inculcation of cultural skills. The tape recorder began crooning sweetly, “My darling and I parted, swearing eternal love…” The radio began whistling and hooting. The film projector began showing the cartoon The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats on the wall. Two laboratory assistants holding magazines stood on each side of the cadaver and began reading out loud across each other…
As was only to be expected, the gastric model remained absolutely indifferent to all this racket. Just as long as it wanted to gobble it couldn’t give a damn for its spiritual world, because its desire was to gobble and it could achieve that desire. But when it was sated, it totally ignored its spiritual world, because it was feeling drowsy and for the time being it didn’t want anything else. Even so, the sharp-eyed Vybegallo managed to spot an undeniable connection between the beating of a drum (on the radio) and a reflex twitching of the model’s lower extremities. This twitching threw him into raptures of delight.
“The leg!” he shouted, grabbing hold of B. Pitomnik’s sleeve. “Film the leg! In close-up! La vibration de son mollet gauche est un grand signe. That leg will sweep aside all their machinations and tear away all the labels that they hang on me! Oui, sans doute, a man who is not a specialist might perhaps be surprised by my reaction to that leg. But after all, comrades, all the great things are manifested in small things, and I must remind you that the model in question is a model with limited needs—to be specific, only one need, and to put it simply, our way, calling things by their own names, without any of these veiled hints: it is a model of gastric need. That is why it is so limited in its spiritual needs. Let me elucidate for the press, using a clear example. If, let us say, it were to have a strongly pronounced need for the given ‘Astra-7’ tape recorder for 140 rubles—which need must be understood by us as material—and if it were to acquire that tape recorder, then it would play the tape recorder in question, because, as you know yourselves, there is nothing else you can do with a tape recorder. And if it were to play it, then it would be with music, and if there is music, then you have to listen to it and perhaps dance… and what, comrades, is listening to music, either dancing or not dancing? It is the satisfaction of spiritual needs. Comprenez-vous?”
I had noticed quite a while before this that the cadaver’s behavior had changed significantly. Perhaps something inside it had stopped functioning properly, or perhaps it was the way things were supposed to happen, but its relaxation times were getting shorter and shorter, so that by the end of Vybegallo’s speech it was no longer leaving the conveyor even for a moment. Or perhaps it had simply begun to find it difficult to move.
“May I ask a question?” Edik said politely. “How do you account for the cessation of the acute fits of satisfaction?”
Vybegallo stopped speaking and looked at the cadaver. The cadaver was guzzling. Vybegallo looked at Edik.
“I’ll tell you how,” he said smugly. “That is a correct question, comrades. Yes, I would even call it an intelligent question, comrades. We have before us a concrete model of constantly expanding material needs. And only the superficial observer can believe that the acute fits of satisfaction have supposedly ceased. In actual fact they have made the dialectical transition from quantity to a new quality. They have extended, comrade, to the very process of the satisfaction of needs. Now it is not enough for it to be satisfied. Its needs have grown, so that now it has to eat all the time—now it has self-educated itself and it knows that chewing is also good. Is that clear, comrade Amperian?”
I looked at Edik. Edik was smiling politely. Standing beside him, hand in hand, were doubles of Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Joséevich. Their heads had wide-set ears and they were turning on their axes, like the radar antennae at airports.
“May I ask another question?” said Roman.
“By all means,” said Vybegallo with an expression of weary condescension.
“Ambrosius Ambroisovich,” said Roman, “what will happen when it has consumed everything?”
Vybegallo’s gaze became wrathful. “I ask everyone present to take note of this provocative question, which reeks a mile away of Malthusianism, neo-Malthusianism, pragmatism, existentio-…-oa-…-nalism, and disbelief, comrades, in the inexhaustible powers of humanity. What is it you are suggesting by asking this question, comrade Oira-Oira? That a moment can come in the activity of our scientific institution, a crisis, a retrogressive development, when there will not be enough consumer products for our consumers? Wrong, comrade Oira-Oira! You haven’t thought it through properly! We cannot permit labels to be hung on our work and aspersions cast upon it. And we shall not permit it, comrades.”
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his beard. G. Pronitsatelny asked the next question, screwing up his face with the intellectual effort: “Of course, I’m not a specialist. But what future has the model in question? I understand that the experiment is proceeding successfully. But it is consuming very energetically.”
Vybegallo laughed bitterly. “There, you see, comrade Oira-Oira, that’s the way unsavory sensations are started. You asked a question without thinking. And our rank-and-file comrade here is already disoriented. Facing toward the wrong ideal… You are facing toward the wrong ideal, comrade Pronitsatelny!” he said, addressing the journalist directly. “The model in question represents a stage that is already past! Here is the ideal toward which we must turn our faces!” He went across to the second autoclave and set his ginger-haired hand against its polished side. His beard jutted out. “This is our ideal!” he declared. “Or, to be more precise, this is the model of our ideal, yours and mine. Here we have the universal consumer who desires everything and can, accordingly, achieve everything he desires. All the needs that exist in the world are embodied in him. And he can satisfy all those needs. With the help of our science, naturally. Let me elucidate for the press. The model of the universal consumer contained in this autoclave—or, to use our term, self-sealing vessel—desires without any limitation. We are all of us, comrades, with all due respect to ourselves, simply nothing in comparison with it. Because it desires things that we have absolutely no concept of. And it will not wait for favors from nature. It will take from nature everything that it needs for its complete happiness—that is, for satisfaction. Material-magic forces will simply extract from surrounding nature everything that it needs. The happiness of this model will be indescribable. It will know neither hunger nor thirst, nor toothache, nor other unpleasantnesses. All of its needs will be instantly satisfied as they arise.”