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The Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius

One camera, no cuts, stories inside stories

FOUR LINES

  1. TrurlTo refrain from acting, you must first be able to act. Inaction is certain. That is all it has to recommend it.
  2. ZipperupusIs this a dream, or am I awake?
  3. MymoshIf there is nothing outside me, I will think a world inside.
  4. TrurlMy life? Was that to have been my payment?

HOW IT IS MADE

The film has no cuts. Every scene is a picture inside a window of the scene that holds it, and the camera only ever moves in or out. To reach Mymosh’s world the camera goes through eleven frames:

  1. King Genius’s cave
  2. the black machine
  3. a spiral galaxy
  4. a black nebula
  5. the fifth cluster
  6. a lilac sun
  7. the third planet
  8. its second moon
  9. a garbage dump
  10. the head of Mymosh
  11. the Gozmos

The sound works the same way. Each frame has its own room, and the rooms you have passed through stay audible above you, muffled. Every open frame also holds one note of a chord, so the chord gets taller the deeper you go. When the shard cracks Mymosh’s head, the notes drop out from the top.

The vestibule loop is a picture that contains itself: the doorway shows the same room, with the king in it, and the camera falls through seven times. At the end the black cabinet opens onto the cave it stands in.

AFTER THE OTHER TWO FILMS

In The Seventh Sally the maker commands his world. In Non Serviam he only listens. Here the world has no maker at all: Mymosh is assembled by accident from Trurl’s thrown-away jug, makes a world of his own, and is ended by a piece of the same jug. Nobody who made him ever finds out.

FOR THE BENCH

Each frame is drawn by a function that can call the next one inside a clipped window: drawFrame(stack, i) draws frame i, then calls drawFrame(stack, i + 1) scaled into its window. That is recursion, and the stack is the call stack. What stops it? Find the line that ends the recursion in your own version.

Narration and dialogue paraphrase Stanisław Lem, “Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius,” The Cyberiad. Drawn after the storyboard plates for the tale. Download the film.

THE SCRIPT

THE CAVE

King Genius. There are two wisdoms, constructor. One acts, and one refrains. The greater refrains, for no mind can see where its acts will end.

Trurl. To refrain from acting, you must first be able to act. Inaction is certain. That is all it has to recommend it.

King Genius. Then let your machines act. The white one first.

The white machine. This is a story Trurl once told a king who wanted stories without end.

THE WHITE MACHINE: THE VESTIBULE

The white machine. King Zipperupus had a courtier who wished him dead. The courtier brought him cabinets of dreams that dream themselves.

The white machine. Whoever plugs into one cannot tell the dream from the waking world.

Zipperupus. Then let me dream.

A DREAM THAT DREAMS ITSELF

Zipperupus. Stand aside. Let me pass.

The gatekeeper. Ten ducats.

Zipperupus. Ten ducats, for one embrace?

The gatekeeper. Not a ducat less.

Zipperupus. Then you get nothing!

THE VESTIBULE, AGAIN

Zipperupus. Is this a dream, or am I awake?

The white machine. Every exit led him back to the same room.

THE CAVE

King Genius. Clever. Have you nothing darker?

Trurl. The black one, Your Majesty.

THE BLACK MACHINE: DOWN THROUGH THE SKY

The black machine. In the Constellation of the Wringer there was a spiral galaxy,

The black machine. and in the galaxy, a black nebula,

The black machine. and in the nebula, five clusters,

The black machine. and in the fifth cluster, a lilac sun, very old and very dim,

The black machine. and its third planet had two moons,

The black machine. and on the second moon there was a garbage dump, where nothing ever happened but garbage.

THE DUMP

The black machine. One day Trurl, flying past, threw an old cracked jug out of his window.

The black machine. It struck a can, the can bent round a wire, a current ran, and in the middle of the dump, by accident, a mind began.

Mymosh. Look at me. I am perfect. How good must be the one who made me!

The black machine. On the seventh step he tripped, fell on his head, and lay in the garbage for three hundred thousand years.

Mymosh. Apparently... I am.

The black machine. His eyes had rusted away. All he could do now was think.

Mymosh. If there is nothing outside me, I will think a world inside.

THE GOZMOS

The black machine. He called it the Gozmos. He gave it kind laws, where nothing ever had to end, and he felt responsible for everyone in it.

The black machine. Last of all he imagined two travelers, Baucis and Ondragor, walking hand in hand among his dark suns.

THE SHARD

The black machine. A shard of that same jug drifted across the puddle toward his head.

The black machine. And those who had made him never learned that he was gone.

THE CAVE

King Genius. I will pay you, constructor. I give you your life. Go, and keep hiding truths too bitter for this world inside fairy tales.

Trurl. My life? Was that to have been my payment?

King Genius. Tell me another.