Level 7

on: “There you are! Behind that grille in the ceiling there must be a microphone as well as a loudspeaker. And the microphone is sensitive to a certain word—the one I said just now. The moment it’s mentioned, the microphone starts working and everything we say is transmitted to the good lady, who answers if she thinks it’s necessary and switches the microphone off again if she isn’t interested.”

“Do you think she’s interested in the fact that we know how her system works now?” I said, forced to admit that X-107’s hypothesis seemed correct. But I had to test it once more: “Push-button!”

No answering click was forthcoming, and I waited for X-107 to explain that one.

He chuckled. “Of course she’s interested,” he said. “She hasn’t switched the microphone off yet, and that’s why it didn’t click that time. It only clicks when it switches itself on.”

“All right,” I said, “you win. But if the microphone system was intended as some sort of security measure, to check that we weren’t planning to push a few buttons—well, it’s not much use now, is it? We can conspire away as much as we like as long as we don’t mention the key phrase.”

“Well,” X-107 replied, “the same was true before we knew how the system worked, and they must have known quite well that a device sensitive to only one phrase couldn’t possibly act as a guarantee against conspiracy. Personally, I don’t think their intention is to spy on us in that way at all, otherwise they’d have a much more fool-proof system. They simply chose a phrase which we’d use naturally in discussing our work down here, to enable them to give a piece of advice or answer a question now and then. It’s designed to help us, to see that we’re not worrying about our duties.”

The lady behind the system—if she was still listening—neither confirmed nor denied this, but I was convinced by X-107’s argument. Certainly we PBX officers are taken very good care of down here.

And yet, the best of all possible…. How can one speak of best things in this pit of misery? While X-107 and I were arguing about the microphone today I was almost happy. But now, even while I finish writing this entry, it is coming back, that stench.

APRIL 1

Yesterday evening, and then several times this morning, we had a general warning through the loudspeaker not to play any of the tricks customary on the First of April. Level 7 cannot afford the spreading of false rumours. No April fools on Level 7.

The warning was, of course, a very sensible one. The arrangements in the Operations Room are so fool- proof that no one could be misled into starting an actual war; but April fooling could have very dangerous results in other ways.

Suppose somebody spread the rumour that we were going back up to the surface. Not everybody would swallow it whole; but even if they only half-believed it, it would give rise to hopes which would die a very hard death. Getting reconciled to life down here is difficult enough even if one is convinced that the chances of escape are nil.

The mere idea of getting out makes my heart beat faster. It even makes me forget the smell. One image expels the other one, just as though a fresh, earth-scented breeze from up there had really found its way down and blown away the persecuting stench.

That is all very pleasant, but thinking about that sort of thing will not do any good in the long run. The drug is too powerful. I might get to the stage where I could not prevent thoughts of escaping from entering my head. I might start to believe in the possibility of getting out, and go quite mad.

No, no fooling on Level 7. This is a serious place. No tricks, no jokes, no April fools. We are all wise down here, even on April 1.

Or are we? Perhaps we are April fools all round the year. We are deceiving each other. We are doing it all the time. X-107 is deceiving me and I am deceiving him. And the soft-voiced lady on the loudspeaker is deceiving both of us. We all pretend not to feel what we do feel—and know that we feel. We are doing it all the time.

We do not deceive just other people; we deceive ourselves. Each of us is making a perpetual April fool of himself, the biggest one imaginable. Each tells himself lies which he pretends to believe, though he knows they are lies.

Quite right: no April fools on Level 7. Level 7 is the place for all-the-year-round fools.

APRIL 2

Today I am in a better mood. I wonder why. I cannot find anything to explain it, but the fact remains that the depression I suffered yesterday and before that has lifted. I am not worried by that awful smell today. It has completely disappeared.

Perhaps the explanation is simply that I had reached the lowest point of my depression, the point where one either starts to recover or else goes completely to pieces. In my case it was recovery: I started back up from a sort of mental Level 7, and now my (still strictly mental) sky is clearing.

That reminds me: yesterday somebody explained to me how our supply of fresh air works, and that may have helped to blow the stench out of my thoughts.

I met this man, AS-127 (‘AS’ for Air Supply), in the lounge yesterday evening. As soon as I learnt that it was his job to provide the fresh air down here I button-holed him and got him to tell me all about it. I do not know why it seemed so important at that moment, unless I had at the back of my mind the notion that his explanation might clear my head of its imaginary bad air.

He made the whole business sound deceptively simple—though I suppose the basic principle is simple enough really. The problem which faced the scientists was this: how to provide a supply of clean air which was not drawn from the surface of the earth. To pump air down from above would have been easy, but most dangerous: it would have meant using filters to clean the air of radioactivity—unreliable things even if a bomb did not drop close enough to damage them by blast or heat.

Happily, they found a way to make us independent of air from above by imitating nature on a small scale. During the day plants on the earth turn the carbon dioxide exhaled by human beings and other creatures back into oxygen. The scientists have arranged for this to happen down here too.

“It was that part,” said AS-127, “the application of the principle, which was so difficult. Think of the conditions which plants normally experience: seasons, day and night, sunshine, rain, soil rich in the chemicals they need for growth—all of which simply don’t exist on Level 7. So the scientists had to grow them in water with the necessary ingredients added and the temperature carefully controlled, and—most important—to provide them with artificial sunlight. Extremely complicated, but they managed it. They also found a way of growing a large number of plants in very limited space.”

“But I’ve never seen a plant down here,” I said, which made AS-127 laugh.

“I’m not surprised,” he replied. “You don’t suppose we grow them all round the place, do you? They’re much too precious. All the plants are concentrated in one special place, and as carefully tended as the eternal flame of an old temple. Nobody may go in there except myself and the other AS officers; but you share the benefit of it through the ventilation pipes.”

I could not blame him for sounding rather self-satisfied. As one of the priests in charge of the sacred air- supplying plants he had something to be proud of. His work was of vital importance all the time, and I must admit I felt a twinge of envy. He did not have to sit waiting, day after day, for the order which would justify his existence. But I also felt curiously reassured by what he had told me. I think it was because the system seemed, for all its technical complications, so close to nature. It is good to know that the air we breathe is not stored in jars or cleaned with chemicals.

Another thing has a soothing effect on me: music. I discovered this last night. I had turned on one of the two continuous programmes before from time to time, but only in an attack of nervous fidgets, and usually I switched if off after a few moments. Last night, however, X-107 spent a long time listening to the classical tape,