Jellyfish Laundromat

"‘I’m sorry,’ replied the stranger in a soft voice, ‘but in order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can’t even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day? And, indeed,’ here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ‘suppose you were to start controlling others and yourself, and just as you developed a taste for it, so to speak, you suddenly went and… well… got lung cancer…’—at which point the foreigner chucked merrily, as if the thought of lung cancer brought him pleasure. ‘Yes, cancer,’ he repeated, narrowing his eyes like a cat as he savored the sonorous word, ‘and there goes your control! No one’s fate is of any interest to you except your own. Your relatives start lying to you. You, sensing that something is wrong, run to learned physicians, then to quacks, and maybe even to fortune-tellers in the end. And going to any of them is pointless, as you well know. And it all ends tragically: that same fellow who not so long ago supposed that he was in control of something ends up lying stiff in a wooden box, and those present, realizing that he is no longer good for anything, cremate him in an oven.’"