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♫ Mare chronium––Focussing ♫
156/398
I enter the corridor. Pascal’s Coq au vin smells delicious once again. The twelve strokes of the church clock are just fading away. I’m a little early and stand waiting outside Room 27.
“But I ordered us food!” I hear the voice of Mr. Koriander, our guest for the night, from behind the door. Something clatters. I can’t make out the response. “Oh, but you can, I insist!” Mr. Koriander asserts. Something bangs again. “Please wait at least for the meal!” Mr. Koriander pleads. Even though I’m sure I’ll turn red with excitement, I decide to serve immediately. I knock. Mr. Koriander opens the door. “See?” he says, turning back toward the room.
A small man is standing on the bed. He has a bald spot with just a few white hairs in the back, wears glasses, and has a rather amusing round face with sticking-out ears. How old might he be? Sixty? Eighty? Hard to tell…
“Oh,” he goes, and steps off the bed. He inspects my tray, and he seems to like what he sees. I serve them their meal at the table. “Just water?” he asks as I pour table water into two glasses. He has a slight accent that I can’t quite place.
“Of course,” Mr. Koriander says. Then he opens his notebook and begins his questions while his guest starts to cut up the chicken and pepper it vigorously. I step back a few paces beside the bed, holding myself in readiness to top up their water.
At first, the conversation revolves around Mars—I might have guessed. Since they’re speaking German, I understand everything this time. And yet I comprehend almost nothing. “Arlanthropos” seems to be the name for a Martian that is merely a piece of brain inside a giant metal machine and shares no human interests. Koriander’s guest, however, doesn’t seem inclined to talk about it and grumbles discontentedly again and again. Judging by his accent, he seems to be from somewhere in the East, Russia perhaps, or Romania. I’m not sure.
“Where has Golem XIV vanished to?” Mr. Koriander wants to know, but his guest informs him that that’s not how it works and that entirely different things matter, especially given the short amount of time.
Mr. Koriander seems a little miffed. He presses his lips together and snaps his notebook shut. His guest smiles, takes it from his hand, looks inside, and says, “Pirx.” But Mr. Koriander shakes his head. He wants to talk about evolution and consciousness.
His guest smiles mischievously and asks, “In a small black box?” Mr. Koriander bites his lip and says, “Trurl.” “Klapaucius,” says his guest. Their crazy conversation goes on like this. Somehow I gather that the visitor has evidently given far more thought to artificial intelligence and nanotechnology than others. For a while, they talk about something they call “Phantomatics,” then about a certain bacterial “Eruntics.” They might as well have been speaking Ancient Egyptian for all I understood.
Finally, it’s time to clear the table. Mr. Koriander looks somewhat desperate as he studies the long list of unasked questions in his notebook. His guest laughs, and I can still hear his laughter as I stand by the elevator and the church clock strikes one.
Interactive Google Doodle on Lem’s Oeuvre: 
Golem XIV:
Eruntics: