Level 7

always had to lose some of their freedom, and had never fought in safer circumstances than those in which I found myself. The announcement had made it clear that Level 7 was the safest place on earth. If war happened, the chances of surviving outside would be nil. I knew quite well what atomic war implied. Even if we were victorious, the damage up on top would be so disastrous and the atomic pollution so widespread that no living creature could exist there. I was very lucky to be on Level 7.

But, my thoughts ran on, what if the war were postponed for five years, ten years, fifteen years? What if the war never happened? Should I have to spend the rest of my life in these dungeons, waiting for the command to press the buttons—a command that might never come?

“Till that day you will have to serve your country and humanity on Level 7.”

Till when? Why didn’t we start the war at once and get it over with. Why wait? I desperately wanted to get out, the sooner the better.

It was then, as I lay there with my eyes still fixed on the loudspeaker, that the full truth of my situation went home like a knife in my back: whatever happened, I was down there for life. Even if we declared war that instant and won it inside a day, I would never be able to go back. The radioactive pollution caused by a full-scale atomic war would be such that the surface of the earth would be uninhabitable for decades. Perhaps for centuries. I would never see it again.

I think I must have intuitively guessed this fact as soon as I heard the words of the announcement. Then I had felt puzzled because I had not worked out the logical steps that led from the words which came over the loudspeaker to the conclusion my mind jumped to. The jump had stunned me, so that I hardly felt anything.

But now I could feel. Now that I had worked out and checked the conclusion to which my guess had carried me, I could begin to appreciate what living down here would mean. I would never see towns again, or green fields. I would never walk down a street again, mixing with a crowd of people. And I would not see any more sunshine.

That was the thought that bothered me most. It made me nearly mad, the idea that I would never see sunshine again. Level 7 was worse than a jail, I thought, because even prisoners walked around a yard now and then, in the sunshine. I wanted to break out, to go up. At that moment I did not care how dangerous life on top might be. I wanted to live there and die there, under the sun, and not to decay slowly down in this miserable hole.

My mind was not coolly analysing the situation now, but boiling with hectic plans for escape. How could I get out? I had to get out. Then I remembered the escalator which moved only one way— down. At the head of it had been the revolving door which allowed no return. And beyond that was the lift-shaft, which must have been sealed off if what the loudspeaker had said was true. Even if I were able to race up those swiftly moving stairs and batter down the door, I would have no way of operating the lift. I could push a button to destroy the world, but there was no button I could push to summon that lift.

My frustration and despair had reached such a pitch that I was finding it impossible to lie still any longer. I had to get up and do something, anything to keep me busy. But what could I do? There were no books to read. I could not write a letter to anyone.

No, but I could write! I remembered the writing materials I had seen in the drawer. (A good psychological move on someone’s part, that was.) I could write just for myself—a sort of diary of thoughts, feelings, impressions, things I did. And one day—who knows?—my diary might be discovered and published on the surface of the earth, up there in the sunshine. Part of me, my spirit, might one day see daylight, might be warmed by the sun!

I knew I was cheating myself. I knew that the chances of my diary’s appearance up on the earth were remote. Even if the sun did shine on it one day, what good was that to me here and now? Still, I liked the illusion. It was comforting, even exciting. So I started writing this diary, and now whenever I sit down to report on another day, I have that same feeling of comfort and excitement.

I shall go on writing this diary as long as I live. For this is the only way in which I can feel the sun.

April 27.

X-127.

MARCH 21

Now I begin to understand the meaning of the problem ‘to be or not to be’. Till now I only thought of being somebody. Earlier today I enjoyed the thrill of becoming a major, of being somebody more exalted than I was yesterday. ‘To be or not to be’ seemed to me a vague, meaningless sort of question, good for philosophers or writers but of no interest to ordinary practical people. ‘I am’ was a simple fact, beyond any dispute just because it was a fact; whereas what I was might have been a problem, one of practical significance, because my rank, my social level, my health, any number of things about me were liable to change.

But the more I think about it, the more this idea of being, pure being, loses its simple form and collects around it other ideas. It begins to mean breathing fresh air, walking in the sunshine, and in the rain too—enjoying the sensation of existence.

Well then, is life down here being—or is it not-being? Is not Level 7 a sort of Hades or Sheol where being is dimmed to half-being, at the best? I can breathe, but is this fresh air? I can walk, but I cannot go for a walk. As for sunshine—I had better forget it. I feel that I feel, but I don’t really—not in the spontaneous way I used to up there.

Am I condemned to half-be for the rest of my life? To half-be a major, to be sure. But I would rather revert to private and be. I would prefer to be an absolute nobody than to half-be what I am.

It is very odd that I had to be brought down into the depths of the earth in order to discover the meaning of half a line of Shakespeare. There must have been a philosopher, a Hamlet lurking in me all the time, and I never suspected it. I did not once ponder about the meaning of being, as long as I was. Now, when my life can hardly qualify as being, I begin to understand….

Understand what? The meaning of being? Nonsense, nobody knows the meaning of that. But now at least I understand the meaninglessness of being somebody. And I realise the significance of being, without knowing what being is. My soul—what is left of it—cries: “To be, to be!”

But the loudspeaker sounds: “Attention please, attention.”

MARCH 22

Today I did my first spell of duty in the PB Operations Room. I shall have to be on duty for a total of six hours daily, as there are four of us and the room must be attended all round the clock. Nobody could call it hard work, certainly. It gets a bit boring, but you can have music there if you feel like listening. We have it in our rooms as well. Just push the right button, and out the music comes. There are only two programmes—one of light music and one of rather heavier stuff—but they seem inexhaustible. No tune has been played twice yet. It must all be recorded, of course—there is no room for live entertainers down here.

Still, I was about to describe the Operations Room. It is quite small really, though it is huge compared with our bed-living-room. There are only a few instruments in it, all of them familiar to me from my training.

On the wall is a big convex screen, a sort of flattened half-globe of the other side of the world, on which are mapped out the countries of our potential enemy and his satellites. It is lit in such a way that every part of it can be seen clearly by a person on duty in the room. On it are marked the enemy’s points of strategic importance— strategic, not tactical. If push-button war is declared we shall not waste our time attacking points of temporary or local importance. Our blows will go straight to the heart and sinews of enemy territory. No tactical operations could be conducted from Level 7, anyway, and I cannot see any point in having them in a future war at all, unless