The story is set in quasi-feudal world, which is unusually technologically advanced, reminiscent of that of the Fables for Robots and The Cyberiad. It is a story from the point of view of a complicated "hound machine", an insectoidrobot disguised as a beautiful girl. Her target is a high-ranked dissidentwise man Arrhodes. She is programmed both to love and to kill Arrhodes. When they see each other at a ball, they both immediately fall in love. When Arrhodes decides to visit her, she transforms from a girl into a mantis-like steel monster. Arrhodes recognizes the "hound machine" and flees, and the pursuit begins. The robot gradually gains the ability of introspection, becomes aware of her predicament, and struggles to overcome it. Along her path she meets a priest and confesses. The priest asks what she would do when she sees Arrhodes, and she answers she does not know. To that the priest comments that she and he are "equal before the Divine Providence". In other words, the ability to have doubt is a humanizing trait. The priest tells her that Arrhodes was kidnapped by some villains, and she starts hunting the kidnappers in order to free Arrhodes, still not knowing what she will do to him. When she finally finds him, he is already dying, and she will never know what she would have done.
Discussion
In the foreword to a 1977 Russian translation of the story Lem wrote that the story has three aspects. First, illustrates the classical philosophical problem of free will simulated within the framework of cybernetics: can a machine programmed to do something recognize this programming as something enforced onto it and whether it can rebel against it? This is a practical issue of "robot rebellion". Lem writes that in scientific terms it may be stated as "the problem of autodescription of a finite automaton". Second, it was an attempt to model the above science-fictional situation within the framework not typical for science fiction, hence he framed it as a classic love story in the form of a gothic novel. At the same time he attempted to interpret its elements: "fatal love", "love at first sight", jealousy, etc., based on the current knowledge incybernetics. For example, love at first sight may be interpreted as the phenomenon of imprinting, only not of biological origin, but as a result of external programming of a robot. Finally, Lem wrote he wanted to introduce a motif from the genre of fantasy: that of horrible transformation of the heroine. And again, this transformation was to have a rational explanation: it was caused not by a spell, but by a program. In his comments elsewhere Lem draws a parallel with Solaris: both deal with a non-human entity which has human impulses and behavior. In the foreword to Mortal Engines, the translator Michael Kandel also draws a parallel with Solaris in that the two are both love story and horror story, with quite a few twists. The observation on the humanizing ability of being "equal before the divine providence" is similar to that found in Lem's short story The Inquest, where a human defeats a robot due to his ability to have doubts and hesitate.
Film adaptation
In 2010 an animated short filmMaska was shot directed by the Brothers Quay, based on Lem's short story. the production was financed in part by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. In this rendering the robot is beautiful in its both forms: the girl and the machine, while the surrounding human world looks rotten, which fits the mood of the story.
