Level 7

I suppose they are quite right to conceal the fact that this was suicide. Why depress people?

But why did he hang himself? I have been asking myself the question all day long. What was the trouble with him? He was rather a pleasant fellow before he became mentally unbalanced. I feel rather sorry for him.

When I saw P today it was all I could do to prevent myself telling her the true facts, particularly when she expressed her puzzlement at what the loudspeaker had said. While she had had X-117 under observation, she said, he had never given any sign of physical weakness.

I kept a check on my tongue, however, and we just discussed X-117 in a general way. She said I should not allow my fellow button-pusher’s death to depress me. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, she said, because he was quite the wrong person for life on Level 7. He must have been chosen by mistake.

While she was talking I heard again the words X-117 used yesterday, his last day alive. He had not accepted the inevitable. He had rebelled against it. He had not become adjusted to reality as it was. He was different. He was certainly not the right man for Level 7.

It is odd that I should feel sorrier for X-117 than for those thousands of millions killed in the war. I believe that if I had been told to push a button which would execute X-117, I could not have done it. Though without thinking twice about it I pushed the buttons which executed millions!

Executed? Am I a hangman? X-117 said we were hangmen. In a way, we were. Perhaps he was right and not P.

No, I still do not believe I could be a hangman. I do not enjoy contact with people who are going to die soon. I have no liking for the sight of life disappearing, bodies hanging. Like his.

But to push a button, to operate a ‘typewriter’—that is a very different thing. It is smooth, clean, mechanical.

That is where X-117 went wrong. For him it was the same thing. He could even talk about strangling P and me with his bare hands!

Maybe this inability to distinguish between killing with the bare hands and pushing a button was the source of his mental trouble.

JUNE 20

There is some alarming news from Level 2. A few days ago they broadcast that everyone was suffering from some sort of disease. The symptoms were nausea and vomiting, and severe diarrhoea. The fact the everybody had caught it at the same time seemed suspicious, but the symptoms must have disappeared because the matter was not mentioned again, the broadcasts reverting to their customary abuse of the government.

Today, though, they say the symptoms have come back and are even more distressing. People are emaciated and feverish. And similar reports are coming over the radio from the neutral countries. There too, the sickness appears to be general. In the middle of one broadcast the speaker himself broke off in mid-sentence, and we could hear him vomiting quite clearly. It was awful. Somebody else had to take over.

Radio reports from Level 2 started to come in again while I was writing that. I will try to jot down what the man says.

People are dying. “Like flies” (his very words!). He is shouting: “It’s your bloody radioactivity! You’ve poisoned us too!”

They are going over to a big hall, or something, in one of the shelters. Now I can distinctly hear groaning and vomiting. Nobody is saying anything—too weak, perhaps.

Broadcaster again. “Hundreds of people… lying on floor… no help at all… nobody capable of helping… some are vomiting… diarrhoea… horrible stench.”

He has stopped to cough and blow his nose.

He goes on: “Some seem to be dead already… many unconscious… perhaps dead too, nobody to check… makes no difference… everyone will die sooner or later… matter of hours… some perhaps a day or two… no difference…”

I missed something there, his voice suddenly grew very weak. He has turned away from the microphone to be sick or something. I can hear groans again, louder.

He says: “I can’t go on.”

That’s all.

No, he is trying to say something else. He has to speak very slowly.

“Our shelter is becoming a grave, a collective grave of human misery.” Louder now: “Politicians! Soldiers! From the bottom of our grave we curse you! May you follow in our…” His voice fails him.

“Steps,” I suppose he wanted to say. But there is nothing coming over except groans and the sound of people vomiting.

Now the station has been switched off.

JUNE 21

The news is the same as yesterday’s: neutrals and Level 2 are dying fast.

The probable reason for these deaths is polluted air. The filters used on Level 2 and in the neutral countries are apparently not a good enough protection against radioactivity —at least, against the strong dose they have just received. Nobody knows for certain, and nobody is going up to make sure. But there seems no doubt that millions of people have escaped death by blast or burning only to die of poisoned air.

This means that the world population is quickly being reduced to those living in the deeper levels, the ones fitted with self-sufficient air-supply systems. The enemy must have shelters with this equipment too, but I suppose none of the allies and neutrals could afford it. If nothing happens to halt the present death-rate, the population will drop in a matter of days—perhaps hours—to a mere one and a third millions. Maybe a few thousands more or less for the enemy’s deep shelters may differ in capacity from ours.

Nothing has been heard from the neutrals since about 14.00 hours, when the last of their messages was received. It gave facts and figures, in some detail, about the mass deaths. It did not end in the pathetic way yesterday’s Level 2 broadcast did. But the dry report, trying to give the up-to-date figures of death—as if life would go on there tomorrow—was, in a way, even more pathetic. There were no accusations, no curses in their broadcast: just the latest news about the victims of radioactivity in that country.

It went off the air quite suddenly. There have been no more neutral broadcasts since. There will be no more.

Of all the people who used to live on this earth, only we and our enemy remain. To be more precise: only that handful on each side which is deep underground.

JUNE 22

There is a strange feeling in the air—other people besides myself have noticed it, and perhaps it is not restricted to Level 7—a feeling that we are living in a new world.

The old world, on the surface of the globe and on the underground levels connected with or dependent on the surface—that world is dead. Life has been restricted to those who went deep enough and who are self- sufficient, even in the matter of their air-supply.

The surface of the earth is out of bounds, definitely and absolutely so. And will be for some time to come. How long, is a matter for debate. More and more people can be heard discussing the question. The neutrals asked it, and got no answer. Not that it would have made any difference to their fate, for death was already in their bodies.