Peace on earth

The arms race on Earth is becoming burdensome for all of its participants: weapons are becoming more expensive, and more and more people are refusing to participate in wars. This leads to the signing of the new Geneva Convention : all weapons developments are transferred to the moon and continued without human intervention. Each country has its own sector in which for some time artificial intelligence models weapons, and then produces and tests them. Thus, the use of weapons and the outbreak of hostilities becomes impossible without prior notice to the Lunar Agency. A global world is becoming a reality.

Soon there are doubts about the fidelity of this decision. There are rumors of a rebellion of the lunar system and of a possible invasion. The Lunar Agency decides to conduct a reconnaissance , which, however, fails: the sent distant ^[1] will not be returned. The only option left is to send the person. The choice falls on Iyon the Pacific .

Exploring the Moon with the help of distant, Iyon discovers traces of mass destruction, collides with local weapons, resulting in the loss of all the distant one by one. The last distant ship, built on the principle of automatic machines and capable of transforming into objects of any kind, allows it to penetrate inside one of the underground bases and make an important discovery: sectors of different countries, conceived as completely isolated, were able to overcome dividing barriers and started the war until they were completely destroyed. The last thing Iyon remembers is a strange-looking dust covering the surface of the moon. Subsequent events, including how he returned to the ship, become a mystery to him, since in an unknown way a callotomy is performed on him ^[2] .

Owing to callotomy, Iyon’s consciousness is divided into two parts: Iyon himself, on behalf of whom a narrative is being conducted that controls the left hemisphere of the brain , and Ion, which controls the right hemisphere (and the corresponding limbs - the left arm and leg). Because of this split, Iion is not able to provide a full account of the events on the Moon, since some of the memories of what happened are in the right hemisphere.

With the help of his friend, Professor Tarantoga , Iyon, after returning to Earth, constantly tries to establish contact with his alter ego, Ion, (first with the help of sign language , and then with the help of Morse code ). All this time, he was visited by representatives of various parties and intelligence services, trying to find out if he really does not remember what happened to him or hides any facts discovered on the moon. At the very end of the story, the two personalities of Iion finally manage to establish a connection between themselves and restore part of the events.

It is found that after interruption of contact with the last distant, Iyon, returning to his body on the ship, received a signal from the Moon from the independently turned on distant, as a result of which he did the unexpected - went down to the Moon in his own body and returned back, unintentionally bringing with him to the ship and delivering mysterious dust to Earth. The callotomy operation that happened to him on the moon led to the loss of memory of this event. As a result, lunar artificial intelligence won the time between the moment dust fell on Earth and the time when mankind became aware of this.

Subsequent events showed that the dust found on the moon is the final stage of the evolution of lunar weapons, which won the last military clash between the sectors. Being a “mechanical” analogue of terrestrial bacteria, it, after reaching the Earth, continues what it did on the Moon: it actively multiplies, fights against all other types of weapons, destroys software and high-tech industrial products. At the same time, since there were no living opponents on the moon, not a single living creature touched even on Earth. Humanity is thrown back to the very beginning of the mechanistic era.

Actually, the situation is unprecedented. As after a kind of unspoken nuclear war, during which all infrastructure flew. Industrial base, communications, banks, automation. Only simple mechanisms survived, but not a single person, not a single fly was hurt. However, no, surely there were a lot of accidents, only because of the lack of communication no one really knows anything. After all, newspapers have long been printed not according to Gutenberg’s method. The editors also hit enough. Not even all appliances in cars operate.

Original text (Polish)

Wlasciwie stan jest bez precedensu. Cos jak po takiej cichutkiej wojnie atomowej, w ktorej na rozkurz poszla cala infrastruktura. Baza przemyslowa, lacznosc, bankowosc, automatyzacja. Ocalaly tylko mechanizmy proste, ale zadnego czlowieka ani zadnej muchy nie ukrzywdzilo. Chociaz i tak nie jest. Musialo byc mnostwo wypadkow, tylko przez brak lacznosci nikt na razie nic o tym porzadnie nie wie. Przeciez i gazet od dawna nie drukuje sie podlug Gutenberga. Redakcje tez szlag trafil. Nawet nie wszystkie urzadzenia w autach dzialaja.

- S. Lem “Peace on Earth” (translation by E. Weissbrot)

In chapter 2, Iyon reads the book Dehumanization trend in weapon systems of the twenty first Century or upside-down evolution, the text is almost a repetition of a fragment works of Lem in 1983 from the series "Library of the XXI Century" ^{[3] [4]} .

The novel was first published in Swedish translation under the name "Fred på jorden" in 1985 by Brombergs, then in German under the name Frieden auf Erden by Insel. And only in 1987 was published by the Polish Krakow publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie. First published in Russian in the journal "Star of the East" No. 9 - No. 10 of 1988, translated by K. Dushenko and I. Levshin.

• Gray mucus
• Smart dust

• About the book "Peace on Earth" on the official website of the writer (English)
• Reviewing challengingdestiny.com
• science fiction information
• na Ziemi List of publications of the work “8036” at ISFDB (Russian)