Maybe I was not so unfeeling when I still lived on the surface, though I was picked for my job because I was pretty unsociable. Up there I might have felt differently. But down here—who cares?
It could be that this is one of the reasons why PBX Command was placed underground. I think that even if it had been possible to construct a safe shelter outside—a round dome of thick glass, say, which would allow us to see the world—it would have been a very unwise thing to do. For psychological reasons, as well as for physical security, we had to be sent below if our performance was to be reliable.
Who knows?—if I had been able to see the world and the destruction I was causing, I might have recoiled from pushing the buttons, just as X-117 did when it came to A4, B4 and C4.
No news of him, incidentally.
JUNE 17
The neutral countries have been asking us and the enemy to tell them what metals were used for the casings of the rigged bombs. They want to know so that they can estimate the time they will have to spend in their shelters. Radioactivity can last anything from a few seconds to milleniums, depending on the material; so the knowledge of what metals were used may certainly be of practical significance. What they are anxious to find out is whether they will be able to go up fairly soon, or have to stay underground indefinitely.
Both we and the enemy have refused to tell them what we used. The reason given was that this was a military secret which might benefit the other side.
The neutrals tried to bargain with both sides, stressing the shortage of their underground supplies. We both declared ourselves ready to make the secret known, provided the other side did so too.
But I do not see how this can work out in practice. There is the problem of who will disclose the information first. And even if both sides agree to disclose it simultaneously, as a statesman from one neutral country has suggested, it is still doubtful whether the enemy will tell the truth.
The enemy suspects our honesty too. He says we may give false information in order to make people leave their caves and be killed by radioactivity.
So on this issue there is complete deadlock.
JUNE 18
There is news about X-117. They have had trouble with him. After that collapse on duty, he somehow relapsed into his neurotic state and the psychologists have given up trying to cure him. Perhaps because his services are no longer needed.
He has developed a guilt complex. He thinks he is responsible for the destruction of the world. As if he could not have been replaced by anybody else! He actually was replaced. But there is no arguing with a neurotic.
Today P and I visited him in his room—out of politeness. He lives opposite me and we worked together, after all. And P treated him when he was ill the first time.
X-117 was lying on his bed, half dressed, unshaven, doing nothing. When we came in, he hardly seemed to notice it.
P asked him how he felt. For some reason this enraged him. He suddenly sat up in the bed and shouted at us: “Thank you! I feel fine! I feel wonderful! I’ve succeeded in killing hundreds of millions of people, so I feel on top of the world. I’m the greatest hangman in history! Why shouldn’t I feel well?”
Then he burst into tears. I had never seen anything like it before. He cried like a little boy whose plaything had been snatched away. He just sat there racked by loud sobs.
P tried to calm him. “You shouldn’t feel that way,” she said. “You just did your duty. Are you a soldier or aren’t you?”
X-117 answered, tears rolling down his face: “Duty? Can there be a duty to kill humanity? To be mankind’s hangman?”
“But you’re not responsible for the killing,” I told him. “Why call yourself a hangman? You just obeyed orders.”
“So does the hangman,” was his answer. “But at least he obeys an order given by a judge. I did what a robot told me to do!” At this he started laughing, as hysterically as he had wept before.
“But look,” said P, “my husband did just what you did—in fact he went on obeying orders after you had left. And he doesn’t feel the least bit guilty.”
“As a matter of fact,” I added, “I feel better now than I did before. Not that I enjoyed pushing those buttons particularly, but doing it made me feel rather important.”
“Oh, you poor fool!” he retorted. “How dare you even think about yourself after the crime you’ve committed?
I thought he was going to hit me, but he did not. Somehow I did not mind his antagonistic attitude. I dare say that if one is not sociable, one neither loves nor hates. And perhaps the psychological treatment has left me with even fewer emotions than I had before.
But what he said reminded me of the chilly feeling 1 had had when 1 saw the black screen in the Operations Room. The feeling had passed and had not recurred, even when I heard the details of the destruction, but I remembered it clearly. And I had not been back to that room since. So perhaps X-117’s reaction made some sense, even though I could not share it.
I was preoccupied with these thoughts when X-117 started shouting and wailing again: “Why? Why did I do it? Why did I push those buttons and kill them all? So many!…”
P motioned to me that we should go now. X-117 saw her sign and turned on her, shouting: “So you’ve had enough of this visit, you psychologist, you soul-killer! You managed to cure me of my conscience so that I’d be able to kill humanity. And you did the same to your husband. He might have had some conscience before! Now I’ve done my duty, you don’t need me any more. Soul-killer!” He stood up and waved his arms at us. “Get out of this room! Both of you! Go on, get out—before I strangle you! Not kill you with a button, no! With my bare hands! …”
We left before he finished his ravings.
JUNE 19
X-117 was found dead this morning.
His room-mate had woken to find X-117 missing from his bed. But his uniform was still there, so X-137m had got up and opened the door to see where he had gone. He found him just down the corridor, hanging by a belt from a pipe which runs across the top of the Operations Room doorway. X-107 and I were woken up by X- 137m’s tapping on our door.
I saw his body dangling there, the unshaven face and the glazed half-mad eyes.
I saw him for a split second only, for I turned my head away quickly and walked back into my room, closing the door behind me. Again I had that chilly feeling, and I shivered as I had done when I saw the black screen.
The other two must have pushed the red button, for a minute later I heard footsteps outside the door and the murmur of voices. Then X-107 came back and quietly lay down on his bed. Another two minutes passed, and then the private loudspeaker sounded. We were instructed not to tell anybody what we had seen.
An hour later the general loudspeaker system announced that Push-Button Officer X-117 had died in the night. The speaker said something about ‘loyal service’ and the ‘strain’ which had been placed on his constitution by the ‘vital task’ he had performed during the recent offensive.
