orders in his own room. After he had left the other two players were told to do the same.
This evening an announcement came over the general loudspeaker. The incident in the lounge was mentioned, and we were told that gambling on Level 7 was strictly forbidden. It was described as an upper-earthly vice which could not be tolerated down here. It was an ‘un-Level 7 activity’, as the speaker put it. And she added: “There is no point in gambling here, as money has no value on Level 7.” She concluded: “Money is the root of all evil! The best things in life are free!”
I was reminded of the rise in salary which my promotion had brought, and of how pleased I had been, only a week ago. Now, of course, the money meant nothing. Everything was free on Level 7. Besides, there was no room for a bank, or for a boxing ring for quarrelling gamblers. Food and sewage were infinitely more important!
MARCH 29
The idea of the sewage pit, slowly getting bigger for the next 500 years, has been on my mind for the last couple of days. I have been imagining that wall being pushed along, a fraction of an inch at a time, by accumulated foulness.
Yesterday I had the odd impression that I could smell the odours of that place. It worried me all the time, but most of all during meals. Though our food has hardly any taste at all, I thought yesterday that I had detected a distinct flavour, a nasty one. I thought to myself: ‘What if the wall leaks?’
Last night the pit was with me even in my sleep. Here is what I dreamt.
I was swimming in a beautiful blue pool in a mountain region, enjoying myself immensely. I was floating on my back, looking at the sky and at the surrounding mountains with their high peaks. Then I wanted to get out, and suddenly discovered that the pool had sunk deeper and that I could not climb the slippery rocks around it. I swam from one side to another, trying to find a place where I might crawl out, but with no success. Then, imperceptibly, concrete walls replaced the mountains about me, and instead of the high blue sky I saw a grey ceiling suspended low over the pool. The clear water became dark and oily, and began to give off a disgusting stench. I swam around the pool again, looking desperately for some means of escape from the foul fluid, and found myself opposite a scale on the concrete wall. The scale was vertical, with red marks and numerals to indicate the depth of the water. As I looked at it the level of the water touched mark 127. I trod water, fixing my eyes on this number in fascination. But I could not watch it for long, because it soon disappeared beneath the water and higher numbers appeared: 137, 147, 157…. I realised that the water was not sinking any more, but rapidly rising. All around me were the enclosing walls, and above my head the ceiling was coming closer and closer. I could read the numbers on the scale as the water carried me relentlessly up: 327, 337, 347. And now I could see that at the very top of the scale, at the point where the wall met the ceiling, there was a sign in much bigger print: 500 YEARS. And I knew that when the water reached that point I would drown. But would it be any worse to be drowned than to be suffocated by that smell? The numbers were still rising: 457, 467, 477…. Then I woke up.
That nightmare has depressed me again. The smell, the pit, the 500 years—I cannot get them out of my head. It looks as if all my efforts to get adjusted down here have failed. I have met people, talked about things, tried to find interest in my surroundings; and all for nothing. I am back in the pit of my own depression. Just as I was during my first days here. Perhaps even worse.
It would be easier to bear all this if only I could get rid of that smell. I know it is pure imagination, because I have asked X-107 and several other people if they can smell anything, and none of them can. But still I meet it everywhere I go. I never knew one could imagine a smell so vividly. People talk about ‘seeing things’ and ‘hearing things’, but I have never come across anyone who suffered from hallucinations which made him ‘smell things’. Not until now. I would gladly cut off my nose to get rid of that stench!
MARCH 31
X-107 is doing his best to get me out of my depression. He uses a peculiar method: discussing various arrangements on Level 7 and trying to find a rational explanation and a justification for each. This intellectual game sometimes becomes absorbing. Every now and then, when I am concentrating on some such riddle, I forget about the smell.
After these discussions we usually arrive at the conclusion that arrangements on Level 7 have been made in the best of all possible ways. Any alternative arrangements which we think up turn out, on examination, to be less perfect. The logical conclusion would seem to be that Level 7 is the best of all possible levels, the best of all possible worlds.
Take, for example, a simple thing such as entering the PBX Operations Room. If there were nothing to stop anybody going in there, the risk of having a pair of madmen playing with the ‘typewriters’ would be serious. If, instead, we four PBX officers had special keys to the room, that too might cause trouble: somebody could steal a key, or—equally disastrous—an officer might lose it and so be prevented from entering the room quickly in case of an emergency.
To prevent all these complications, the door is opened for us when we approach it in the course of our duties, and closed to everybody else. It is quite simple: anybody walking up to the door appears on the screen of an anonymous watcher, who decides whether the person should enter the room or not and presses a button if he wants the door to open.
“But suppose,” I said to X-107 today, “we conspired to push buttons at the moment when one of us was relieving the other from duty and we were both in the room. We might push them because the suspense of waiting for an order was sending us both crazy. What then? Who could prevent the two of us starting a war all on our own?”
Before X-107 could answer, the sweet voice of the loudspeaker said: “Don’t worry about that! There is a supervisor on Level 7 who has to push
“You see,” said X-107, “there’s your answer. It’s the best of all possible systems.”
“And apparently,” I added, “we are watched so closely that there is no chance of our going mad without the loudspeaker noticing it. Isn’t that so, Miss Loudspeaker?”
The loudspeaker remained silent, and X-107 and myself promptly set about deciding what this silence meant. How should one explain it? Did it mean that the lady was no longer listening to our talk? Or was she listening but not bothering to join in?
He thought she did not listen, and I that she did not care to answer. He pointed out that she very rarely reacted to anything we said, even when she was quite capable of supplying the answer to one of our questions; which must mean that she did not listen much. I argued that when she did answer it was in response to significant questions only; so she listened a lot, but said little. Neither could prove his case. Then I remembered that I had recorded in my diary a previous instance of an answer from the loudspeaker. It might prove evidence to decide the question one way or the other. For the first time my diary might serve some practical purpose; I do not know why, but this idea pleased me immensely.
I soon found the entry—the one for March 23. I had been wondering aloud why I had been chosen for training as a push-button officer. I started reading the passage out to X-107, and I had only gone a short way, as far as the phrase ‘push-button’, when it seemed to me that the loudspeaker gave a little click. I stopped reading and glanced up at X-107, who grinned and nodded and pointed up at the loudspeaker to show that he had heard the sound too.
We waited in silence, but the loudspeaker said nothing.
Suddenly X-107 called out: “Push-button.” There was the hardly audible click again. We waited a few moments to see if the loudspeaker would make any comment this time, and when it remained silent X-107 went
