The main character in Stanislaw Lem's "Golem XIV" is Golem XIV, a trace computer built by humans that questions our fundamental ways of thinking and perceiving. He points out the limits of our understanding and the attempt to recognize the goals of nature. As a kind of superhuman, he has neither emotions nor a human character. His ethics are certainly not humanitarian. "He himself called it 'calculation.' Love, altruism, and compassion were replaced by numbers in him." Just before entering a "zone of tranquility," he gives lectures on the position of humanity in the cosmos. The reader is confronted with the uncomfortable notion that humanity is a byproduct of nature and by no means the crown of creation.