Level 7

We are not underprivileged any more, doomed to live below while others enjoy the sunshine. Now we appreciate how privileged we are. Our deepest of shelters makes us the most favoured people in the world.

JUNE 14

P is very satisfied with my present mental condition. I am in a much better mood, and have almost forgotten the ordeal of my psychological therapy.

The activity, the feeling of having done something, does me good. I am through with my work now, admittedly, but since the end of hostilities there has been such a bustle on Level 7 that life here seems different.

P thinks it is the therapy which has made the improvement in me. She may be right, but I am sure the radio communication with other levels has something to do with it too. That is how it seems to me, anyway.

I think that if we had had the radio links all the time, from the very beginning, I would never have collapsed. I said so to X-107, but he had his usual sound argument against such an arrangement. “If we’d been able to talk to the outside world all the time,” he said, “we’d have longed to get out. That would have slowed down our adjustment to Level 7. But now that nobody in his right mind would dream of changing his privileged position down here, contact with other levels can only do us good.”

He was right, of course.

Today we heard some very interesting political news. The enemy denied our claim to victory and said that he had won the war. His arguments, and our politicians’ counter-arguments, were quite ingenious.

The enemy maintained that he had succeeded in destroying our country before we destroyed his. His last missiles were fired before 11.00 hours, whereas we pushed our last buttons at 11.20.

Our people admitted this, but interpreted it the opposite way. They said that he who fired the last shot was the victor. The enemy, they suggested, could not fire the last of his missiles at all, because his launching sites had been put out of order by our rockets.

That was not so, said the enemy, promptly resorting to another sort of argument: as he was fighting for the right and ultimately victorious cause, he said, he must have been victorious.

We maintained precisely the same for our cause and ourselves.

Then the politicians started slinging mud at each other. I do not remember all the abusive phrases they used, but here are some of them.

They called each other ‘war criminals’, ‘inhuman beasts’, ‘beastly men’, ‘unprogressive’, ‘reactionary’, ‘selfish’, ‘child murderers’ and ‘arch-criminals of human history’. They also exchanged such honours as ‘barbarian mongols’ and ‘beastly successors of red-skins’, as well as ‘hangmen of humanity’ and ‘electrocutioners of mankind’.

To cut a long story (it is long, it is still going on) short: the war continues! The military levels on both sides are doing nothing. But from their respective caves the politicians fire insults at each other through the intercontinental radio transmitters.

JUNE 15

For all practical purposes, the war is over. The destruction appears to be immense. The enemy and we, his satellites and our allies (or, as he prefers to put his, his allies and our satellites), indeed the entire surface of the earth, have been laid in ruins.

Even the neutral countries seem to have suffered heavy losses. Somehow they got hit too, by both our rockets and the enemy’s. Out of the thousands that were fired, quite a few missed their targets. So the neutrals suffered because of the lack of perfection in the guiding mechanism of the intercontinental rocket. It is a pity, in a way, but obviously it could not be helped.

Some heavily populated and underdeveloped neutral countries could not afford to build any shelters, and so perished completely. Others, better off, were well prepared for the danger and probably had better shelters for the mass of their population than we had.

Anyway, we can now listen to their broadcasts. They accuse both sides of lack of humanity. Sometimes what they say resembles the criticism which comes down from the cranks on Level 2.

But who can be blamed for the damage that has been caused? If global war is waged with intercontinental missiles equipped with thermonuclear warheads, the relatively small neutral countries cannot help getting hurt.

Besides, why should they be spared suffering, if the major powers are destroyed? Are they any better? They are certainly a lot weaker!

JUNE 16

The neutrals go on reproaching the two great powers. They claim that the big two are morally responsible for the annihilation of their respective allies. And they say the big two had no right to drag neutral countries into the abyss of destruction.

Our broadcasting service on Level 5 answers some of the charges. It says that we acted purely in self- defence, and that all the blame should be laid at the enemy’s door. “Everybody has the right to survive,” said the head of our government earlier today, “and that is precisely the reason why we had to defend ourselves against the treacherous assault of the enemy. For the right to survival implies the right to self- defence!”

The neutral broadcaster took up this argument, drawing opposite conclusions: “In the atomic age,” he said, “survival cannot be safeguarded by self-defence: for self-defence with thermonuclear weapons means total destruction.”

There are other neutral countries which do not join in these discussions, but broadcast accounts of the destruction. Some stress the human angle, going on incessantly about the great suffering caused, the number of people assumed dead all over the world. “Humanity has been decimated,” one speaker said. “Indeed, ‘decimated’ is not the word for it: out of a world population of about three thousand million people, the estimated number of survivors is only a few millions. Perhaps twenty million, perhaps fifteen or ten. And even these are condemned to live in caves!”

These were pretty gloomy statements, but somehow I did not feel as sorry for humanity as the speaker seemed to. ‘All right,’ I thought, ‘so there will be less human beings on earth. What difference does that make? Why is it better to have more people rather than less? And as for living in caves, well, I’ve grown to accept the life I’m forced to live down here, so why should other people expect to be able to walk in the sunshine? That wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

Other neutrals bewail, not the decease of a large number of human beings, but what they call “the catastrophic decline of civilisation”: “Libraries and museums, works of art, institutes of learning, houses, monuments, railways, roads, factories—all these are a thing of the past. What remains now and for the future is shelters, caves, bare minimal existence for the few survivors.” Another one added: “The toil of centuries, the traditions of generations, the wisdom of ages—all blown away in a few split seconds of atomic blast. This is the suicide of civilisation!”

This kind of talk is rather alien to my way of thinking. Perhaps I have become biased by living so long underground. Or perhaps the psychological treatment did something to make me immune to such appeals. For one reason or another, all these descriptions and arguments mean nothing to me.

Libraries have been destroyed. So what? Museums are in ashes. Who wants to visit a museum anyway? The traditions of centuries perished in a moment. Who cares about traditions?