Tralfamadore

TRALFAMADORE Zachary Zimmerman


 * Note that these quotes are kept in the same order as in the book, but they also happen to be in 'chronological' order**

“He told about having come unstuck in time. He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana Wildhack.” (25)

“He said he had been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughter's wedding. He hadn't been missed, he said, because the Tralfamadorians had taken him through a time warp, so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still be away from Earth for only a microsecond.” (26)

“The letter said that they were two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter.” (26)

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at the moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'" (26-27)

“The Tralfamadorians didn't have anything to do with his coming unstuck. They were simply able to give him insights into what was really going on.” (30)

“…and he fell asleep, and he traveled in time to 1967 again - to the night he was kidnapped by a flying saucer from Tralfamadore… He would not raise his eyes to the sky, though he knew there was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore up there. He would see it soon enough, inside and out, and he would see, too, where it came from soon enough-soon enough. Overhead he heard the call of what may have been a melodious owl but it was not a melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore, navigating in both time and space, therefore seeming to Billy Pilgrim to have come from nowhere all at once. Somewhere a big dog barked. The saucer was one hundred feet in diameter, with portholes around its rim. The light from the portholes was a pulsing purple. It came down to hover over Billy, and to enclose him in a cylinder of pulsing purple light. Now there was a seeming kiss as an airtight hatch in the bottom of the saucer that was opened. Down snaked a ladder that was outlined in pretty lights like a Ferris wheel. Billy's will was paralyzed by a zap gun aimed at him from one of the portholes. It became imperative that he take hold of the bottom rung of the sinous ladder, which he did. The rung was electrified, so that Billy's hands locked onto hit hard. He was hauled into the airlock, and the machinery closed the bottom door. Only then did the ladder, wound onto a reel in the airlock, let him go. Only then did Billy's brain start working again. There were two peepholes inside the airlock-with yellow eyes pressed to them. There was a speaker on the wall. The Tralfamdorians had no voice boxes. They communicated telepathically. They were able to talk to Billy by means of a computer and a sort of electric organ which made every Earthling speech sound. "Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loudspeaker. "Any questions?" Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?" That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why //you?// Why //us// for that matter? Why //any-thing?// Because this moment simply //is//. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" "Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no //why//." They introduced an anesthetic into Billy's atmosphere now, put him to sleep. They carried him to a cabin where he was strapped to a yellow Barca-Lounger which they had stolen from a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The hold of the saucer was crammed with other stolen merchandise, which would be used to furnish Billy's artificial habitat in a zoo on Tralfamadore. The terrific acceleration of the saucer as it left Earth twisted Billy's slumbering body, distorted his face, dislodged him in time, sent him back to the war.//” (71-77)//

//“//He was strapped to another yellow contour chair in a white chamber aboard a flying saucer, which was bound for Tralfamadore. “Where am I?” said Billy Pilgrim. “Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now – three hundred million miles from Earth, bound for a time warp which will get us to Tralfamadore in hours rather than centuries.” “How – how did I get here?” “It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply //is//. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” “You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will,” said Billy Pilgrim. “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”//” (85-86)//

//“//Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as just two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes-"with babies' legs on one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim. Billy asked for something to read on his trip to Tralfamadore. His captors had five million Earthling books on microfilm, but no way to project them in Billy's cabin. They had only one actual book in English, which would be placed in a Tralfamadorian museum. It was //Valley of the Dolls//, by Jacqueline Susann. Billy read it, thought it was pretty good in spots. The people in it certainly had their ups and downs, ups and downs. But Billy didn't want to read about the same ups and downs over and over again. He asked if there wasn't, please, some other reading material around. "Only Tralfamadorian novels, which I'm afraid you couldn't begin to understand," said the speaker on the wall. "Let me look at one anyway." So they sent him in several. They were little things. A dozen of them might have had the bulk of //Valley of the Dolls//-with all its ups and downs, up and downs. Billy couldn't read Tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books were laid out-in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams. "Exactly," said the voice. "They //are// telegrams?" "There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message- describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time." Moments after that, the saucer entered a time warp, and Billy was flung back into his childhood.//” (87-88)//

“And Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore. He was forty-four years old, on display under a geodesic dome. He was reclining on the lounge chair which had been his cradle during his trip through space. He was naked. The Tralfamadorians were interested in his body--all of it. There were thousands of them outside, holding up their little hands so that their eyes could see him. Billy had been on Tralfamadore for six Earthling months now. He was used to the crowd. Escape was out the we question. The atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and Earth was 446,120,000,000,000,000 miles away. Billy was displayed there in the zoo in a simulated Earhling habitat. Most of the furnishings had been stolen from the Sears Roebuck warehouse in Iowa City, Iowa.there was a color television set and a couch that could be converted into a bed. There were end tables with lamps and ashtrays on them by the couch. There was a home bar and two stools. There was a little pool table. There was wall-to-wall carpeting in federal gold, except in the kitchen and bathroom areas and zover the iron manhole cover in the center of the floor. There were magazines arranged in a fan on the coffee table in the front of the couch. There was a stereophonic phonograph. The phonograph worked. The television didn't. There was a picture of one cowboy killing another one pasted to the television tube. So it goes. There were no walls in the dome, no place for Billy to hide. The mint green bathroom fixtures were right out in the open. Billy got off his lounge chair now, went into the bathroom and took a leak. The crowd went wild. Billy brushed his teeth on Tralfamadore, put in his partial denture, and went into his kitchen. His bottled-gas range and his refrigerator and his dishwasher were mint green, too. There was a picture painted on the door of the refrigerator. The refrigerator had come that way. It was a picture of a Gay Nineties couple on a bicycle built for two. Billy looked at that picture now, tried to think something about the couple. Nothing came to him. There didn't seem to be //anything// to think about those two people. Billy ate a good breakfast from cans. He washed his cup and plate and knife and fork and spoon and saucepan, put them away. Then he did exercises he had learned in the Army--straddle jumps, deep knee bends, sit-ups and push-ups. Most Tralfamadorians had no way of knowing Billy's body and face were not beautiful. They supposed that he was a splendid specimen. This had a pleasant effect on Billy, who began to enjoy his body for the first time. He showered after his exercises and trimmed his toenails. He shaved, and sprayed deodorant under his arms, while a zoo guide on a raised platform outside explained what Billy was doing--and why. The guide was lecturing telepathically, simply standing there, sending out thought waves to the crowd. On the platform with him was the little keyboard instrument with which he would relay questions to Billy from the crowd. Now the first question came--from the speaker on the television set: "Are you happy here?" "About as happy as I was on Earth," said Billy Pilgrim, which was true. There were five sexes on Tralfamadore, each of them performing a step necessary in the creation of a new individual. They looked identical to Billy--because their sex differences were all in the fourth dimension. One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally, had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than //seven// sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again: Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension. The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals. There //could// be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old. There //could// be babies without men over sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth. And so on. It was gibberish to Billy. There was a lot that Billy said that was gibberish to the Tralfamadorians, too. They couldn't imagine what time looked like to him. Billy had given up on explaining that. The guide outside had to explain as best he could. "and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that //it// gets wiped out, too." "How- how //does// the Universe end?" said Billy. "We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears." So it goes. "If you know this," said Billy, "isn't there some way you can prevent it? Can't you keep the pilot from //pressing// the button?" "He has //always// pressed it, and he always //will//. We //always// let him and we always //will// let him. The moment is //structured// that way." "So--" said Billy gropingly, "I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too." "Of course." "But you //do// have a peaceful planet here." "Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don' t look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments - like today at the zoo. Isn't this a nice moment?" "Yes." "That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones." "Um," said Billy Pilgrim.” (111-117)

“Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore again. A mate had just been brought to him from Earth. She was Montana Wildhack, a motion picture star. Montana was under heavy sedation. Tralfamadorians wearing gas masks brought her in, put her on Billy’s yellow lounge chair; withdrew through his airlock. The vast crowd outside was delighted. All attendance records for the zoo were broken. Everybody on the planet wanted to see the Earthlings mate. Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who’ll get one. Now she fluttered her eyelids. Her lashes were like buggy whips. “Where //am// I?” she said. “Everything is all right,” said Billy gently. “Please don’t be afraid.” Montana had been unconscious during her trip from Earth. The Tralfamadorians hadn’t talked to her, hadn't shown themselves to her. The last thing she remembered was sunning herself by a swimming pool in Palm Springs, California. Montana was only twenty years old. Around her neck was a silver chain with a heart-shaped locket hanging from it- between her breasts. Now she turned her head to see the myriads of Tralfamadorians outside the dome. They were applauding her by opening and closing their little green hands quickly. Montana screamed and screamed. All the little green hands closed tight, because Montana's terror was so unpleasant to see. The head zoo keeper ordered a crane operator, who was standing by, to drop a navy blue canopy over the dome, thus simulating Earthling night inside. Real night came to the zoo for only one Earthling hour out of every sixty-two. Billy switched on a floor lamp. The light from the single source threw the baroque detailing of Montana's body into sharp relief. Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed. In time, Montana came to love and trust Billy Pilgrim. He did not touch her until she made it clear that she wanted him to. After she had been on Tralfamadore for what would have been an Earthling week, she asked him shyly if he wouldn't sleep with her. Which he did. It was heavenly.” (132-133)

“"Tell me a story," Montana Wildhack said to Billy Pilgrim in the Tralfamadorian zoo one time. They were in bed side by side. They had privacy. The canopy covered the dome. Montana was six months pregnant how, big and rosy, lazily demanding small favors from Billy from time to time. She couldn't send Billy out for ice cream or strawberries, since the atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and the nearest strawberries and ice cream were millions of light years away. She could send him to the refrigerator, which was decorated with the blank couple on the bicycle built for two-or, as now, she could wheedle, “Tell me a story, Billy boy.” “Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945,” Billy Pilgrim began. “We came out of our shelter the next day.” He told Montana about the four guards who, in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barbershop quartet. He told her about the stockyards with all the fenceposts gone, with roofs and windows gone-told her about seeing little logs lying around. There were people who had been caught in the fire storm. So it goes.” (178-179)

“He traveled in time back to Tralfamadore. “Time-traveling again?” said Montana. It was artificial evening in the dome. She was breast-feeding their child. “Hmm?” said Billy. “You’ve been time-traveling again. I can always tell.” “Um.” “Where did you go this time? It wasn’t the war. I can tell that, too.” “New York.” “The Big Apple.” “Hm?” “That’s what they used to call New York.” “Oh.” “You see any plays or movies?” “No—I walked around Times Square some, bought a book by Kilgore Trout.” “Lucky //you//.” She did not share his enthusiasm for Kilgore Trout. Billy mentioned casually that he had seen part of a blue movie she had made. Her response was no less casual. It was Tralfamadorian and guilt-free: “Yes—” she said, “and I’ve heard about you in the war, about what a clown you were. And I’ve heard about the high-school teacher who was shot. He made a blue movie with a firing squad.” She moved the baby from one breast to the other, because the moment was so structured that she //had// to do so. There was a silence. “They’re playing with the clocks again,” said Montana, rising, preparing to put the baby into its crib. She meant that their keepers were making the electric clocks in the dome go fast, then slow, then fast again, and watching the little Earthling family through peepholes. There was a silver chain around Montana Wildhack’s neck. Hanging from it, between her breasts, was a locket containing a photograph of her alcoholic mother—a grainy thing, soot and chalk. It could have been anybody. Engraved on the outside of the locket were these words: //God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.//” (207-208)