Narration: In culture No. 2931 lived the Cascadians, a righteous people who cleaved to numerous ideals embodied in such Perfect Beings as Great Mother Cascader, the Immaculate Maid and the Blessed Fenestron.

Narration: To these they swore undying allegiance, prayed, sang praises, prostrated themselves, all with the utmost ceremony.

Narration: But just as Trurl was beginning to admire this unusually high concentration of Piety, Prayer and Prostration, they stood up, dusted off their clothes—

Narration: and proceeded to sack the temples, defenestrate the sacred statues, kick the Great Mother and defile the Maid, all with such abandon that the constructor blushed and looked away.

Narration: Yet it was precisely in this wanton destruction of what had been so revered that the Cascadians found, albeit momentarily, perfect happiness.

Narration: Trurl concluded that violating the inviolable can on occasion be viable, and in his lab book called the Cascadians Chronic Iconoclasts.