Trurl says: “Then it is possible?”

Master says: Yes. Of course, two Trurls loose in the world will constitute a very real and serious danger.

Master says: But even that is preferable to having the traces of your great crime covered up forever.

Trurl says: But—forgive me, Master and Maestro—if the other Trurl doesn’t exist, which in fact he ceased to do the second I pulled the plug, then . . . well,

Trurl says: why would it be necessary now to bring him back? . . .

Master says: By all that’s thermonuclear!

Master says: And I gave this monster his diploma cum laude!

Master says: Oh, I am well punished for having put off my eternal retirement!

Master says: What, then you consider that if your duplicate is presently nonexistent, there can be no necessity for his reconstitution?!

Master says: But you confuse physics and ethics, confuse them utterly! As far as physics is concerned, it makes no difference whether you live or he lives, or both live, or none, or whether I hop on one foot or lie in my grave properly, for in physics there are no good or evil, proper or improper states—only what is, what exists, and nothing else. However, O most hopeless of my pupils, as far as nonmaterial considerations—which is ethics—are concerned, the matter appears in an altogether different light!

Master says: For if you had pulled the plug in order that your digital double might sleep uninterrupted through the night, in other words fully intending, when you pulled it from the socket, to reinsert it in the morning—

Master says: Only now do I understand how abysmal is your ignorance!

Master says: if I offered to have you put in a strait jacket of Eternal Happiness, for example lock you up in an Ecstasotron, in order that you could bask in unadulterated bliss for the next twenty-one billion years and not have to skulk about cemeteries, robbing graves of their information and aggravating your late professor, if I offered you freedom from all these perplexities and humiliations, these errors and dilemmas that beset and trouble our daily existence—would you agree?

Trurl says: “No! Of course not!”, exclaimed Trurl.