Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald

  On the gadget are three rows of four buttons. The front row, nearest the operator, covers enemy Zone A; the middle row Zone B; and the third row Zone C, the most distant. Each set of buttons controls a different type of destructive weapon—all of them long-range atomic rockets, of course. Buttons 1 control batteries of rockets with warheads the equivalent of one to five megaton bombs, which explodeon touching the ground. This is an efficient means of destroying heavy and concentrated installations, military or industrial. The rocket-bombs controlled by the second set of buttons are much more powerful—ten to fifty megatons—and are designed to explode in the air, causing widespread destruction over big cities and heavily populated areas. Rockets of similar power, but constructed in such a way as to penetrate deep underground before exploding, are released by Buttons 3. The effect of these would be rather like that of an earthquake as far as destruction on the surface goes, and they would severely damage underground installations. Also they would produce a fair amount of lethal radiation, but this is more specially the task of the rockets controlled by the fourth set of buttons. These are ‘rigged’ atomic bombs; that is to say, bombs which are cased in a shell made of a potentially highly radioactive element. The bursting of the bombs would pulverise these shells into a fine, pervasive and strongly radioactive dust. This kind of weapon, which destroys life not only by heat, blast and shock, but by radiation, is in a way the most deadly of all. Its effects may last for a long time.

  Each of the twelve buttons would release several thousands of otherwise electronically controlled and guided missiles, every one of them aimed at a pre-determined target. They would hit the enemy within anything from fifteen minutes to an hour from when the button was pushed.

  All this may sound rather complicated, but it is really very simple. My ‘typewriter’ looks like this:

  As a matter of fact, it is not all that important to know exactly what the buttons do, because the orders would be quite explicit: ‘Push Button A1,’ or ‘Push Button B3’, or ‘Push Button C2’. It is not certain whether Buttons 4 would actually be used. Some people have said they might prove dangerous even to the country using them.

  All kinds of orders come through the loudspeaker; but to indicate that a push-button order is on the way there is in addition a visual warning system. First, a yellow lamp above the screen would light up to alert us. Then, a red lamp, if the yellow one was not a false alarm; and as soon as the red light came on we could expect our orders.

  As a precaution against any officer who might push a button by accident, or because he had taken leave of his senses, or for any other reason, the system will only work if two people push the same button at the same time. This is the reason for the second chair, table and identical control box in the Operations Room. The two controls are far enough apart to stop one man pushing both the buttons at once. In case of emergency a second officer will be summoned into the room, and the two men will together execute the orders which come from the loud-speaker, sanctioned by the red light.

  The two officers will be able to watch the results of their actions. As I said, the enemy targets are marked on the screen. If Button A1, say, is pressed, off go the one-to-five megaton rocket-bombs to Zone A in the enemy’s territory. Their release will be signalled by the appearance of red points in the little circles on the map which show the appropriate Zone A targets. When the rockets actually hit their targets the red marks will expand to cover the areas destroyed. If they should fail to reach the targets—because of interception by the enemy, or some accident—then the red points will disappear again.

  Buttons 2, 3 and 4 produce similar effects, in blue, yellow and black respectively.

  Obviously the idea is to use the less destructive rockets first, and to resort to those causing widespread damage and death later on if the more limited weapons prove ineffective. However, my colleagues and I do not decide when to push the button, or which one to push. Our job is just to keep watch and, if and when the time comes, to do what the loudspeaker tells us. Our potential productive work is limited to the pushing of twelve buttons, twelve keys in a peculiar sort of typewriter. When we have done this our country’s arsenal of offensive weapons will have been exhausted; but the other half of the world will have been completely destroyed.

  MARCH 23

  “Why the hell did they pick me for training as a pushbutton officer? Why couldn’t they choose somebody else? Our C.O. back in the camp, for example—he might have enjoyed it. Why pick on me?”

  Apparently I must have spoken these thoughts out loud earlier this evening, for I received an unexpected answer—from the loudspeaker. There must be a system of supervision which enables the command to hear what we say even in the ‘privacy’ of our rooms.

  The loudspeaker—it was a woman’s voice—spoke softly: “You were chosen because of your personal qualities. You must have proved to be a man of stable disposition, technically skilful, ambitious, intelligent and very healthy. Also you must have got a very high score in claustrophobia tests.”

  That was all. The loudspeaker went silent again. I was eager to continue the conversation and asked some question, but I got no answer. Either the woman was laconically inclined, or she had to speak to someone else.

  For a moment this event made me forget my meditations. Then I resumed them.

  The woman was right: I was ambitious, and that was what has made me accept the offer of training. I was only a private at the time. Suddenly, after I had undergone (without in the least knowing why) a long series of medical, psychological and psychotechnical tests, I was offered immediate promotion to the rank of lieutenant, with excellent ‘special’ pay and allowances and prospects of further advancement after training. The job sounded attractive—it seemed to have something to do with gadgets, which I had always liked—and moreover it was stressed as being of the utmost importance. I jumped at it.

  Perhaps if I were more sensitive I would have hesitated before signing a declaration which committed me to absolute secrecy about things which I was going to learn and whose nature was quite mysterious to me at the time. A more sensitive person might have been scared by the unknown; but I had scored very high in the test for emotional stability.

  I dare say a more sensitive person would go mad living down here without a hope of getting out. So that is why they chose me! All right, but I do not consider that that is any guarantee that I shall not go mad myself.

  I might be better off now if I had been just unstable enough to fail all those tests they gave me. Some people do not seem to mind the life down here, though. That woman on the loudspeaker sounds as if she takes it all in her stride.

  MARCH 24

  Today I had a nice talk with X-107, the comrade-in-buttons with whom I share my room. We had exchanged a few words before, of course; but I did not feel like entering into a lengthy conversation until today. I was too much preoccupied with my new situation. The idea that I was to stay on Level 7 for the rest of my days hammered in my head all the time, and other people—my neighbours at meals, my old fellow-trainee X-137, my new partner here in the room—seemed hardly to exist. I saw them as mere shades of the underworld, and made more contact—I might even say social contact—with the sheets of paper on which I was writing my diary. They were the intimate witnesses of my innermost feelings, the sharers of my new experiences. And because they seemed my only possible link with the outside world, I felt I was speaking through them to real creatures, men and women living under the sun.

  Apparently my friend X-107 must have had similar feelings, for he was not inclined to talk either. Strange though it may seem, I do not remember hearing anyone discuss our predicament seriously before today. It seems that our plight did not create any quick, warm comradeship—the kind of fraternity which is supposed to spring up when, say, people are shipwrecked together. Instead there was a curious lack of interest in other people; perhaps even some resentment, as if each thought the others were responsible for his present state.

  It goes without
saying that everybody was clearly aware of the situation, even if they did not speak a word about it. You could tell they all knew by the general air of resignation: the way they walked, ate their meals, and talked banalities if they talked at all.

  Today, however, I was looking through my pages of diary when X-107 suddenly spoke, in a voice revealing some warmth, some sunshine from above: “Are you writing something?”

  The direct, personal question and the friendly tone of his voice made me turn round from the desk and look him full in the face. For the first time I was really stirred to find out just what my room-mate looked like.

  X-107 has an open and rather kind face, suggesting a man of quiet disposition, well-balanced and firm. He is perhaps a year or two older than I, which may be why I had a pleasant sensation as if I were talking to an elder brother when I answered his question: “Yes, I’m writing a diary. I found some writing-paper in the drawer here, and that gave me the idea. It’s a sort of relief, you know!”

  That broke the ice completely, and at once we started talking freely, as if we had known each other for years.

  Oddly enough, he did not complain. He considered our service on Level 7 a necessity: unpleasant, true, but still an unavoidable development in view of the recent progress in military science. “To complain about our lot,” he said, “is as futile and senseless as to complain about death. What one cannot escape one must accept; and the less fuss, the better.”

  I said something about dungeons, prison and solitary confinement. He said he had felt that way about our life down here, too, at first; but now he was beginning to understand how even imprisonment is not an absolute condition. “Some people,” he said, “feel imprisoned when they can’t travel through space. Others can feel free in a small room, if they are able to think or write.” He smiled as he said this, and glanced at the sheets of paper lying on the desk, clearly implying that writing my diary might have this releasing effect.

  I had admitted this already, in a way, by calling it a relief. And now, listening to his incisive, firmly stated arguments, I was almost persuaded that I could come to feel about things in the same way that he did. It was comforting to hope that his way of thought might become mine.

  Now I am not so sure that it ever will. I want to be able to feel the way X-107 feels or thinks he feels, but this comes hard to me. Still, the knowledge that I am sharing a room with someone stronger than myself, someone who has found a way of adjusting himself to the new conditions, is in itself very comforting. I feel a little less lonely now, not so deep in despair. If a human being can get adjusted to the idea of spending his life on Level 7, then perhaps one day I shall get adjusted myself. If I cannot get out of here, at least let me have some sort of tolerable life as long as I live! If….

  No, maybe it is better not to ‘if’ too much. Let me look around, see what is happening, meet people, make friends, ‘get adjusted’.

  MARCH 25

  Today I asked X-107 the question which has been worrying me all the time since my arrival on Level 7. The question of why we had to lose our freedom. I already knew some of the answers—they had been implied or stated in that initial announcement of our fate which I had listened to on my bunk four days ago—but I still wanted to talk the thing over.

  “Why,” I asked X-107, “were we condemned to life imprisonment down here? Couldn’t we do our work on the surface of the earth? Hidden away in the middle of a desert, or something? Why here, so deep, so completely cut off?”

  “Now you’re talking like a child,” he replied. “PBX Command had to be secured—secured absolutely—against surprise attack, an attack which might have hit us in your secluded desert hide-out just as fatally as in the centre of a metropolitan area. If it had, our country would have been knocked out without being able to fire back a single shot. Down here on Level 7 we’re safe from surprises like that. Even if the enemy destroys our country in a surprise attack, we—you and I—can retaliate and destroy his country.”

  “Still,” I tried to argue, “even if PBX Command had to be located on Level 7, there was surely no need to imprison us here! Why can’t we be relieved by other crews and go on leave every now and then?”

  “That would be very dangerous,” X-107 answered. “If you were able to get out, you might come back with a destructive weapon, or a destructive idea, which could put PBX Command out of action. Contact with the outside world could mean contact with spies, with enemies, with pacifists. The government would be foolish to take such a risk.”

  “So we had to be imprisoned for life in order to safeguard our country’s powers of retaliation?”

  “Exactly,” he replied. “And to ensure its survival too: even if a surprise attack annihilates the population up above, down here we will go on living—after taking vengeance, of course.”

  I asked: “But what happens if there is no war?”

  “Well,” came the unperturbed answer of my room-mate, “our job is to be ready at all times to pull the trigger—to push the button. If no command to do so comes, we shall have served our country just the same; for if our enemy refrains from attacking us, it will only be because he knows how well prepared and unassailable we are down here on Level 7. So, on Level 7 we have to stay.”

  I could find no flaw in his argument. Our imprisonment on Level 7 is a necessity.

  MARCH 26

  My closer contact with X-107 is a help to me. We talk to each other about various things and this, sometimes, makes me forget my situation. Another thing that helps is the lounge which has been opened for everybody on Level 7.

  The announcement came over the loudspeaker—this is the only way announcements and orders are made known—yesterday at noon. As the lounge is very small, like most rooms here, and the demand is expected to be considerable, each person has been allotted certain hours when he may use it. I say ‘certain hours’, but that is misleading. Half an hour each day. That is my ration, anyway.

  The room is small for a lounge—about fifteen feet by twenty. It asserts its identity, though, by having its name painted bold and clear on the door, one of the many doors in the long wall of the dining-room. When I walked in, there were already some ten or fifteen people there, none of whom I remembered seeing before.

  Some of them were women. They all seemed quite nice and looked young, strong and healthy, though I found none of them specially attractive. I went up to one who was standing by herself at the time, and introduced myself. She was a nurse, N-527.

  What I liked about her was her calmness. I do not know how she managed it, but she seemed even more calm and relaxed than X-107. Perhaps women are more self-sufficient than men (provided they have men) and less affected by environment. If so I envy them—for the first time in my life.

  After a while another man approached us, introducing himself as E-647, ‘E’ standing for Electrical Engineer. He was behaving rather nervously, and soon had me on edge too. I decided to look for other company and leave him to the nurse. I had the impression he was grateful for that.

  For a moment I stood alone. Then another woman came up to me, possibly a little older than the nurse, though not older twenty-five. I learnt that she was a psychologist, P-867. She was another calm person, but her calmness seemed of a different kind—a bit artificial, as if she were proud of the achievement—rather than the calmness of a naturally serene disposition. As we talked this got on my nerves.

  The first thing she said was, how did I feel? I did not feel inclined to confide in a person I had only just met. I evaded the question: said I was very busy and had had no time to analyse my feelings. She brushed this aside and promptly suggested that I was either deliberately lying or else trying to escape from reality. In either case, she maintained, my attitude was not healthy: “Face reality and talk to other people about your feelings. That’s the best way to get adjusted.”

  Trying to escape her professional zeal, which made me feel like a laboratory guinea-pig, I asked her about her own feelings. “Oh,” she said, “I feel f
ine.” And she went on to explain why she felt so well. The experience of living on Level 7 was most interesting from the psychological point of view. She would have loved to undertake a piece of psychological research into the response of Level 7’s crew to their new surroundings. (So I was a guinea-pig!) It would make a fascinating article if only she could publish the results of her research, which she obviously could not do on Level 7.

  At that point I interrupted her: “So you too think in terms of ‘if’?” She did not understand. I explained that I had been thinking in terms of ‘if’: if I had not been chosen for Level 7, if it were possible to go back up on leave, if I had the disposition of a woman….

  “You mustn’t think in those terms,” she protested. “That’s escapism. You must find here and now what you can find here and now.” It sounded like some kind of slogan. “Don’t look backwards and don’t think hypothetically. There’s a lot of meaning in our life here. You have a job to do, a country to defend. You have human company here—even female company.” And she suddenly giggled. “What more can a man want, tell me that?”

  I answered, almost inaudibly: “Sunshine.”

  She remained quiet for a long while and then vigorously shook her head: “No. Sunshine can’t in itself be a real need. I’ve studied quite a few psychological systems, and not one of them ever regarded the quest for sunshine as a basic motivation of human beings, or as a possible foundation for neurosis. Definitely not. There must be some other reason for your state of mind. Sunshine is just a symbol. What lies behind that is the real cause.”

  At that moment the loudspeaker announced that our time in the lounge was up. As we parted outside the door she remarked: “You never know—one day you may need psychological treatment. I’ll be happy to help you.” At this she giggled again.