Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

The Seventh Sally 288sallies of Trurl, which was undertaken without Klapaucius, whomcertain urgent duties kept at home at the time.In those days Trurl was exceedingly vain, receiving allmarks of veneration and honor paid to him as his due and aperfectly normal thing. He was heading north in his ship, as hewas the least familiar with that region, and had flown throughthe void for quite some time, passing spheres full of the clamorof war as well as spheres that had finally obtained the perfectpeace of desolation, when suddenly a little planet came intoview, really more of a stray. Fragment of matter than a planet.On the surface of this chunk of rock someone was runningback and forth, jumping and waving his arms in the strangestway. Astonished by a scene of such total loneliness andconcerned by those wild gestures of despair, and perhaps ofanger as well, Trurl quickly landed.He was approached by a personage of tremendous hauteur,iridium and vanadium all over and with a great deal of clangingand clanking, who introduced himself as Excelsius the Tartarian,ruler of Pancreon and Cyspenderora; the inhabitants of boththese kingdoms had, in a fit of regicidal madness, driven HisHighness from the throne and exiled him to this barren asteroid,eternally adrift among the dark swells and currents ofgravitation.Learning in turn the identity of his visitor, the deposedmonarch began to insist that Trurl-who after all was somethingof a professional when it came to good deeds-immediately restorehim to his former position. The thought of such a turn of eventsbrought the flame of vengeance to the monarch's eyes, and hisiron fingers clutched the air, as if already closing around thethroats of his beloved subjects.Now Trurl had no intention of complying with this requestof Excelsius, as doing so would bring about untold evil andsuffering, yet at the same time he wished somehow to comfort andconsole the humiliated king. Thinking a moment or two, he cameto the conclusion that, even in this case, not all was lost, forit would be possible to satisfy the king completely-withoutputting his former subjects in jeopardy, And so, rolling up hissleeves and summoning up all his mastery, Trurl built the kingan entirely new kingdom. There were plenty of towns, rivers,mountains, forests, and brooks, a sky with clouds, armies fullof derring-do, citadels, castles, and ladies' chambers; andthere were marketplaces, gaudy and gleaming in the sun, days ofback-breaking labor, nights full of dancing and song until dawn,and the gay clatter of swordplay. Trurl also carefully set intothis kingdom a fabulous capital, all in marble and alabaster,and assembled a council of hoary sages, and winter palaces andsummer villas, plots, conspirators, false witnesses falsewitnesses, nurses, informers, teams of magnificent weeds, andplumes waving crimson in the wind, and