Narration: But when he took a closer look at the connections between the machines, he began to tremble:

Narration: and the chain of delegation would continue ad infinitum.

Narration: any digital device presented with a task beyond its capacity would, provided it had crossed a certain threshold known as the Wisdom Barrier, build another machine instead of agonizing over the problem itself,

Narration: These, after all, were intelligent machines, not digital dimwits to grind away blindly according to the dictates of some program! Trurl sat down on a stump of one of the trees cleared by this unexpected computer evolution and gave a hollow groan.