Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (22 page)

Tortoise: Gulp!

Achilles (
whispering to his friend
): Uh-oh-I think that this "Goodfortune" is not exactly what we'd anticipated. (To
Goodfortune)
Ah-if I may be so bold-where are you spiriting us off to?

Goodfortune: Ho ho! To my all-electric kitchen-in-the-sky, where I will prepare THIS

tasty morsel-(
leering at the Tortoise as he says this
)-in a delicious pie-in-the-sky!

And make no mistake-it's all just for my gobbling pleasure! Ho ho ho!

Achilles: All I can say is you've got a pretty fiendish laugh.

Goodfortune (
laughing fiendishly):
Ho ho ho! For that remark, my friend, you will pay dearly. Ho ho!

Achilles: Good grief-I wonder what he means by that!

Goodfortune: Very simple-I've got a Sinister Fate in store for both of you! Just you wait!

Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho!

Achilles: Yikes!

Goodfortune: Well, we have arrived. Disembark, my friends, into my fabulous all-electric kitchen-in-the-sky.

(They walk inside.)

Let me show you around, before I prepare your fates. Here is my bedroom. Here is my study. Please wait here for me for a moment. I've got to go sharpen my knives.

While you're waiting, help yourselves to some popcorn. Ho ho ho! Tortoise pie!

Tortoise pie! My favorite kind of pie! (Exit.)

Achilles: Oh, boy-popcorn! I'm going to munch my head off!

Tortoise: Achilles! You just stuffed yourself with cotton candy! Besides, how can you think about food at a time like this?

Achilles: Good gravy-oh, pardon me-I shouldn't use that turn of phrase, should I? I mean in these dire circumstances ... Tortoise: I'm afraid our goose is cooked.

Achilles: Say-take a gander at all these books old Goodfortune has in his study. Quite a collection of esoterica:
Birdbrains I Have Known; Chess and Umbrella-Twirling
Made Easy; Concerto for Tapdancer and Orchestra
... Hmmm.

Tortoise: What's that small volume lying open over there on the desk, next to the dodecahedron and the open drawing pad?

Achilles: This one? Why, its title is
Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise
Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe
. Tortoise: A moderately provocative title.

Achilles: Indeed-and the adventure it's opened to looks provocative. It's called "Djinn and Tonic".

Tortoise: Hmm ... I wonder why. Shall we try reading it? I could take the Tortoise's part, and you could take that of Achilles.

Achilles: I’m game. Here goes nothing . . .

(They begin reading "Djinn and Tonic".)

(Achilles has invited the Tortoise over to see his collection of prints by
his favorite artist, M. C. Escher.)

Tortoise: These are wonderful prints, Achilles.

Achilles: I knew you would enjoy seeing them. Do you have any particular favorite?

Tortoise: One of my favorites is Convex and Concave, where two internally consistent worlds, when juxtaposed, make a completely inconsistent composite world. Inconsistent worlds are always fun places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Achilles: What do you mean, "fun to visit"? Inconsistent worlds don't EXIST, so how can you visit one?

Tortoise: I beg your pardon, but weren't we just agreeing that in this Escher picture, an inconsistent world is portrayed?

Achilles: Yes, but that's just a two-dimensional world-a fictitious world-a picture. You can't visit that world.

Tortoise: I have my ways ...

Achilles: How could you propel yourself into a flat picture-universe?

Tortoise: By drinking a little glass of PUSHING-POTION. That does the trick.

Achilles: What on earth is pushing-potion?

Tortoise: It's a liquid that comes in small ceramic phials, and which, when drunk by someone looking at a picture, "pushes' him right into the world of that picture. People who aren't aware of the powers of pushing-potion often are pretty surprised by the situations they wind up in.

Achilles: Is there no antidote? Once pushed, is one irretrievably lost?

Tortoise: In certain cases, that's not so bad a fate. But there is, in fact, another potion-well, not a potion, actually, but an elixir-no, not an elixir, but a-a

Tortoise: He probably means "tonic".

Achilles: Tonic?

Tortoise: That's the word I was looking for! "POPPING-TONIC" iu what it's called, and if you remember to carry a bottle of it in your right hand as you swallow the pushing-potion, it too will be pushed into the picture; then, whenever you get a hanker ing to "pop" back out into real life, you need only take a swallow of popping-tonic, and presto! You're back in the rea. world, exactly where you were before you pushed yourself in.

Achilles: That sounds very interesting. What would happen it you took some popping-tonic without having previously pushed yourself into a picture?

Tortoise: I don’t precisely know, Achilles, but I would be rather wary of horsing around with these strange pushing and popping liquids. Once I had a friend, a Weasel, who did precisely what you suggested-and no one has heard from him since.

Achilles: That's unfortunate. Can you also carry along the bottle of pushing-potion with you?

Tortoise: Oh, certainly. Just hold it in your left hand, and it too will get pushed right along with you into the picture you're looking at.

Achilles: What happens if you then find a picture inside the picture which you have already entered, and take another swig of pushing-potion?

Tortoise: Just what you would expect: you wind up inside that picture-in-a-picture.

Achilles: I suppose that you have to pop twice, then, in order to extricate yourself from the nested pictures, and re-emerge back in real life.

Tortoise: That's right. You have to pop once for each push, since a push takes you down inside a picture, and a pop undoes that.

Achilles: You know, this all sounds pretty fishy to me . . . Are you sure you're not just testing the limits of my gullibility?

Tortoise: I swear! Look-here are two phials, right here in my pocket.

(
Reaches into his lapel pocket, and pulls out two rather large
unlabeled phials, in one of which one can hear a red liquid sloshing
around, and in the other of which one can hear a blue liquid sloshing
around
.) If you're willing, we can try them. What do you say?

Achilles: Well, I guess, ahm, maybe, ahm ...

Tortoise: Good! I knew you'd want to try it out. Shall we push ourselves into the world of Escher's
Convex and Concave
?

Achilles: Well, ah, .. .

Tortoise: Then it's decided. Now we've got to remember to take along this flask of tonic, so that we can pop back out. Do you want to take that heavy responsibility, Achilles?

Achilles: If it's all the same to you, I'm a little nervous, and I'd prefer letting you, with your experience, manage the operation.

Tortoise: Very well, then.

(So saying, the Tortoise pours two small portions of pushing-potion. Then
he picks up the flask of tonic and grasps it firmly in his right hand, and
both he and Achilles lift their glasses to their lips.)

Tortoise: Bottoms up!

(They swallow.)

FIGURE 23. Convex and Concave, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1955).

Achilles: That's an exceedingly strange taste.

Tortoise: One gets used to it.

Achilles: Does taking the tonic feel this strange? Tortoise: Oh, that's quite another sensation. Whenever you taste the tonic, you feel a deep sense of satisfaction, as if you'd been waiting to taste it all your life.

Achilles: Oh, I'm looking forward to that. Tortoise: Well, Achilles, where are we?

Achilles (
taking cognizance of his surroundings
): We're in a little gondola, gliding down a canal! I want to get out. Mr.Gondolier, please let us out here.

(The gondolier pays no attention to this request.)

Tortoise: He doesn't speak English. If we want to get out here, we'd better just clamber out quickly before he

Enters the sinister “Tunnel of Love”; just ahead of us.

(Achilles, his face a little pale scrambles out in a split second and then
pulls his slower friend out.)

Achilles: I didn't like the sound of that place, somehow. I'm glad we got out here. Say, how do you know so much about this place, anyway? Have you been here before?

Tortoise: Many times, although I always came in from other Escher pictures.

They're all connected behind the frames, you know. Once you're in one, you can get to any other one.

Achilles: Amazing! Were I not here, seeing these things with my own eyes, I'm not sure I'd believe you. (They wander out through a little arch.) Oh, look at those two cute lizards!

Tortoise: Cute? They aren't cute-it makes me shudder just to think of them!

They are the vicious guardians of that magic copper lamp hanging from the ceiling over there. A mere touch of their tongues, and any mortal turns to a pickle.

Achilles: Dill, or sweet?

Tortoise: Dill.

Achilles: Oh, what a sour fate! But if the lamp has magical powers, I would like to try for it.

Tortoise: It's a foolhardy venture, my friend. I wouldn't risk it.

Achilles: I'm going to try just once.

(He stealthily approaches the lamp, making sure not to awaken the
sleeping lad nearby. But suddenly, he slips on a strange shell-like
indentation in the floor, and lunges out into space. Lurching crazily, he
reaches for anything, and manages somehow to grab onto the lamp with
one hand. Swinging wildly, with both lizards hissing and thrusting their
tongues violently out at him, he is left dangling helplessly out in the middle
of space.)

Achilles: He-e-e-elp!

(His cry attracts the attention of a woman who rushes downstairs and
awakens the sleeping boy. He takes stock of the situation, and, with a
kindly smile on his face, gestures to Achilles that all will be well. He shouts
something in a strange guttural tongue to a pair of trumpeters high up in
windows, and immediately,

Weird tones begin ringing out and making beats each other. The sleepy
young lad points at the lizards, and Achilles sees that the music is having a
strong soporific effect on them. Soon, they are completely unconscious.

Then the helpful lad shouts to two companions climbing up ladders. They
both pull their ladders up and then extend them out into space just
underneath the stranded Achilles, forming a sort of bridge. Their gestures
make it clear that Achilles should hurry and climb on. But before he does
so, Achilles carefully unlinks the top link of the chain holding the lamp, and
detaches the lamp. Then he climbs onto the ladder-bridge and the three
young lads pull him in to safety. Achilles throws his arms around them and
hugs them gratefully.)

Achilles: Oh, Mr. T, how can I repay them?

Tortoise: I happen to know that these valiant lads just love coffee, and down in the town below, there's a place where they make an incomparable cup of espresso. Invite them for a cup of espresso! Achilles: That would hit the spot.

(And so, by a rather comical series of gestures, smiles, and words, Achilles
manages to convey his invitation to the young lads, and the party of five
walks out and down a steep staircase descending into the town. They reach
a charming small cafe, sit down outside, and order five espressos. As they
sip their drinks, Achilles remembers he has the lamp with him.)

Achilles: I forgot, Mr. Tortoise-I've got this ma; lamp with me! But-what's magic about it? Tortoise: Oh, you know, just the usual-a genie.

Achilles: What? You mean a genie comes out when you rub it, and grants you wishes?

Tortoise: Right. What did you expect? Pennies fry heaven?

Achilles: Well, this is fantastic! I can have any wish want, eh? I've always wished this would happen to me ...

(And so Achilles gently rubs the large letter `L' which is etched on the
lamp's copper surface ... Suddenly a huge puff of smoke appears, and in the
forms of the smoke the five friends can make out a weird, ghostly figure
towering above them.)

I

Genie: Hello, my friends – and thanks ever so much for rescuing my Lamp from the evil Lizard-Duo.