Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald

  I am trying to escape from P-867 by talking to other people when I visit the lounge—the only alternative is to give up going there, which would be a pity. Yesterday I discovered a quiet girl there, R-747. Eventually, when some children have been born and grown past the kindergarten stage, she will become a teacher—T-747. (The reason TN-237m has already had her title changed is that her job is likely to start in less than a year.) R-747 will instruct children from the age of six or seven onwards. In the meantime, she is preparing instructional material and developing methods of education for use on Level 7. Occasionally, as a reserve officer, she is given odd duties which do not require special training, but she says that the task of preparing for the education of the coming generation is enough by itself to keep her pretty busy.

  I said I did not see how this could occupy all her working life for the next six or seven years, so she explained some of the problems to me. “Look,” she said, “when you were six years old I expect your grandmother sat you on her knee and told you stories about a good Lord in heaven who rewarded good children, about angels who watched over you when you were asleep, and so on. If you were a naughty boy, then you may have been frightened of going to hell, which was supposed to be a place deep, deep down inside the earth. Now, stories like these—”

  Here she was interrupted by P-867, who had been listening to the last part of our conversation. “Stories like those are nonsense anyhow,” she objected, “and they interfere with the normal development of the child. I hope you’re not going to teach that kind of rubbish to the children down here.”

  “That’s just what I was going to say,” replied R-747 quietly. “We can’t tell the children that the way to hell is downwards, and to heaven upwards. We’ll have to reverse the story: hell will be somewhere up there, and paradise deep inside the earth—deeper than Level 7, even. Or perhaps Level 7 itself will be the new heaven.”

  P-867 wanted to interrupt again, but I broke in before she did—on purpose, because her constant company was becoming increasingly irksome to me, while the problems raised by R-747 were interesting and provided new food for thought. Addressing R-747, I said: “So what you’re trying to do is to create a new mythology, one adapted to fit the facts and supply the needs of Level 7.”

  P-867 snorted: “But why do we need mythology at all? To hell with all this nonsense!”

  “Don’t you mean ‘to heaven’ with it?” I asked; but my little quip reverberated in a sinister way in my mind, so I added crossly: “What do psychologists understand about mythology, anyway?”

  This made her angry and she found some excuse to leave us. I cheered up at that, for the creation of myths seemed a fascinating pastime to me, and it was obvious I would not have been able to go on discussing the subject with P-867 around.

  Unfortunately our time in the lounge was up a minute later, so I had to break off my talk with R-747.

  APRIL 25

  I was indeed lucky yesterday. A few minutes after finishing that entry in my diary I walked around to the lounge and had R-747 all to myself for the whole half hour. P-867 did not put in an appearance, so we were able to carry on our discussion of mythology quite undisturbed.

  Today it was not so good. P-867 reappeared and tried to keep me at her side by giving me a detailed progress report on X-117, who seems to be getting better. But as we were leaving the lounge R-747 was able to hand me a sheet of paper, asking me to let her have it back the next time we met.

  I have just finished reading what is written on it: a story for the children of the future generations. I find it a very interesting story, and here it is, copied word for word:

  Gamma, Alpha and Little Ch-777

  Once upon a time, many years ago, there lived on Level 7 a little called Ch-777 (Ch for Child). He was a nice little boy and a good pupil, but he had one strange weakness; he was curious to know what went on above him, above our good Level 7.

  “Tell me,” he used to say, “please tell me what goes on up there.” And when his parents heard him ask that they were frightened, for they did not want even to speak of the hell up there. But the little boy kept on asking: “Tell me, please tell me what goes on up there.” So one day they told him.

  The higher you went up from Level 7, they said, the closer you came to Him whose name must not be mentioned. He could not be seen, and He could not be heard, and He could not be touched, and He could not be smelled, but up there His power was infinite. If anybody went near His kingdom, said the parents, he would be killed at once by His invisible servants.

  At this Ch-777 became very frightened, and many days went by without his asking a single silly question. But after a while his curiosity got the better of him again, and this time he asked his teacher: “Tell me what goes on up there.”

  The teacher, who knew more about the world outside Level 7 than little Ch-777’s parents did, told him that He who ruled up there was called—and even she was afraid to pronounce His name aloud—St 90. She called Him ‘Saint 90’, for she did not want to say His real name which was (she said in a whisper) Strontium 90.

  Saint 90 was the omnipotent master of death and destruction. He was the supreme ruler of the upper world, and to carry out His evil designs He had servants who obeyed His every command—wicked little devils whose touch was deadly too.

  Such were the two small devils called Alpha and Gamma. Their job was to wander around in the upper world, trying to find somebody to kill. They got very bored doing this, because the upper world had long before been conquered by St 90 and his servants, and now there was no living creature left to kill.

  “Would they kill me too,” asked Ch-777, “if I went to the upper world?”

  “Of course they would, you silly boy,” the teacher said. “And probably they would catch you before you even got there.”

  After this Ch-777 did not ask any more questions. But he could not forget the story about the upper world. Every night he dreamt about little Alpha and Gamma, who appeared as two lovely sisters of his own age who wanted him to play with them. Before long he really believed that these two devils were just two friendly little girls.

  Now he stopped paying attention to what was going on around him on good Level 7. He became bored with all the interesting things that were happening, he became a bad pupil, and one day… he disappeared.

  How he managed to get out, nobody knew. But he left a letter saying that he was going up to join the little girls Alpha and Gamma.

  Nobody ever saw him again. No doubt he was killed by Alpha or Gamma, or by some other devil, on his way up.

  And this, children, is the moral of the story: Do not think of the world above you. Be happy here. If you are curious to know what happens above Level 7, think of poor Ch-777 who paid for his curiosity with his life.

  I think this story is quite good in its way, though it has room for improvement. For instance, why blame Ch-777’s sense of curiosity for his tragic end? It could be suggested that the devils Alpha and Gamma, on the orders of St 90, entered his head and made him mad enough to want to go up where their master would be able to devour him.

  I think this version is more frightening. I shall suggest it to R-747. It could be used to make children obey adults’ commands: if they don’t, they can be warned, Alpha and Gamma will enter their heads and make them go up to be killed by St 90.

  APRIL 26

  I gave R-747 her story back today and suggested my alternative version. She agreed that mine probably was more frightening and better as a mythological story, but still preferred her original because it kept closer to the facts and so was of greater educational value. P-867, who was listening (rather quietly, for a change), remarked maliciously: “I think Alpha and Gamma have entered your heads already! The whole idea’s insane.”

  I could not deny that her remark was sharp, but I did not let her see that I had enjoyed it.

  An atomic energy officer, AE-327, had been listening to our conversation too. He asked to see R-747’s manuscript, and after glancing through
it made a few technical comments. First, he said, she was wrong about the chemical symbol of Strontium, which was Sr and not St. “So there’s nothing saintly about Strontium,” he said. Then he added that, unfortunately for the nice story, Strontium 90’s half-life (the time which elapsed before its radioactivity fell to half of its original value) was only twenty-five years. “So your saint would be a very short-lived one,” he said with a laugh. “Why not take Plutonium 239, an isotope with a half-life of 24,100 years? Better still, choose Thorium 232: that has a half-life of 13,900 million years!”

  “That would be splendid,” remarked P-867 mischievously. “With the symbol ‘Th’ it’s really theological.”

  AE-327 smiled and went on to object to R-747’s devils too. “Gamma rays and alpha particles aren’t really as alike as the sisters of the story,” he said. “What’s more, Strontium 90 emits beta particles, not alpha. If you’ve got to have alpha particles, you’ll have to make Plutonium 239 or Thorium 232 the villain of the piece. As for gamma rays—”

  Here I, rather impolitely, interrupted my learned colleague. I could not stand his pedantic objections, which seemed to pour even colder water on the idea of a new mythology than P-867’s cynical remarks. I said that stories for children need not be scientifically accurate. If they were, they would not be stories!

  It was time for us to leave the lounge, but before we parted I promised to give R-747 a story of my own next time we met.

  I have now written and revised my story. Here it is.

  The Story of the Mushroom

  Here is a story from the Sacred Tape which can be heard by any child who pushes the ST button.

  Once upon a time, many years ago, people did not live on Level 7, but far above, on the crust of the earth. They had no natural roof over their heads, and they used to be made wet by water falling on them, or burned by a huge fiery ball which was suspended over them for about twelve hours each day. This made their life very hard.

  For a long time the people were very miserable because of the falling water and the fiery ball, not to mention the violent air currents which blew with the strength of a million electric fans. Little by little, however, they learned to erect roofs over their heads, and even to build small boxes to live in.

  They taught these skills to their children, and the children taught them to their children, and so on for many generations. And as time went by the people grew better and better at making their boxes. Before long the little boxes gave place to huge, high ones—some as high as our dining-room is long, and some even higher than that.

  But this did not satisfy them. They no longer wanted just to be protected from the wet and the burning ball and the air currents: they wanted to go higher and higher. So they invented gadgets which made them able to walk around in the air, and they thought that the higher they went the better they were. After some time they had gadgets which went up so high in the air that people standing on the earth could no longer see them.

  But even this was not enough for them. They had shown that they could build big things and could go high in the air. Now they wanted to take a very small thing and make it change itself into a giant, so that it would grow high into the air all by itself.

  So they found a small and fragile thing that grew out of the earth, something called a mushroom. It was so small and weak that a child’s foot was enough to crush it to pieces. But unless they could transform this tiny mushroom into the biggest and strongest thing on earth, the people would not consider themselves happy.

  So the most learned ones put their heads together, and thought and worked, and worked and thought, until one day they succeeded. The mushroom began to grow!

  There was a big celebration, and the people who had discovered how to make the mushroom grow became very important.

  And the mushroom grew and grew and grew. Before long it was higher than the highest boxes. And still it went on growing. Now it reached the flying gadgets. And still it grew.

  But something was happening which the people had not intended: as the mushroom grew it emitted a strong smell. Few people noticed it to start with, but as the mushroom got bigger the odour became stronger, and more and more people began to smell it. Some could not endure it and became ill and died. In spite of that the others put up with the bad smell, happy that their mushroom was growing so large.

  As time went by, the mushroom grew so big, and its smell grew so strong, that some people began to be afraid of it. So they looked for a place to hide. There was no place they could find on earth where they could not smell the mushroom, so they started to dig down.

  Down they dug, down, down, down… until they arrived at Level 7. And when they got to Level 7 they could not smell the mushroom any more.

  But the thing they had escaped from was still growing and growing, swelling and covering the whole earth with shadow and stink, until one day—it burst!

  In a split second the mushroom exploded into millions of little pieces, and the air carried the particles into the people’s boxes, into their flying gadgets, everywhere. And everyone who was touched by a particle, or who smelled the bad odour, died. And it was not long before there was not a single person left alive on the surface of the earth. Only the few who had dug into the earth survived. And you, children, are their offspring.

  And this is the moral…

  No, I do not feel like adding a moral. I wonder what R-747 will think of my story.

  APRIL 28

  I spent much of yesterday writing an introduction to my diary. Why did the idea of writing it occur to me yesterday? I think my mythological ‘Story of the Mushroom’ must have stirred me to think again about the significance of my situation.

  The little story seems to justify the descent all right, but the introduction speaks of ‘dungeons’ in a way far from favourable to Level 7.

  How do I really feel about it? Am I adjusted to Level 7, or do I still feel imprisoned? Do I know how I feel? Can a man know how he feels?

  My feelings do not seem at all clear: one day I make up a story suggesting that those who descend into the earth are the lucky few, and the next day this story makes me reflect on the shattering experience of being locked in the dungeons of Level 7. I wonder what comes next!

  No, it seems that feeling and knowing are two different things, and that one cannot know how, or even what, one feels.

  R-747 liked my story. She thinks she will be able to use it when the children who will be born get old enough.

  The Sacred Tape, ST, seems to her an excellent idea. She thinks it will be a useful means of education: “We can’t use books to teach people on Level 7,” she said. “They would take up so much space, and anyway they’re an outdated method of imparting information: only one person can read a book at a time, whereas there’s no limit to the number of people who can listen to a loudspeaker. It’ll be most convenient to have a Sacred Tape instead of a Sacred Book—especially since the stories in the conventional sacred books don’t fit the conditions of Level 7.”

  P-867, set on finding snags in anything R-747 and I are mutually concerned with, remarked that there was a danger of confusion in the similarity of ‘ST’ for Sacred Tape and ‘St’ for Saint, alias (and she dropped her voice to a whisper, glancing round her in mock apprehension) Strontium.

  We had to admit her point, but I minimised it by pointing out that although the children might hear references to ‘ST’ they would not hear people talking about ‘St’—it would be pronounced ‘Saint’ or ‘Strontium’ as the case might be. And if most teaching was to be done by loudspeaker they would get the spoken words clear in their heads before meeting them in their abbreviated, and possibly confusing, written form.

  People are getting married down here at an increasingly fast rate. The marriages are always announced on the loudspeaker, but I have stopped counting them. They go on taking place, that’s all I know.

  P-867 comes out most days with some new story about proposals made to her, either directly or through the mediation servi
ce. This does not interest me and I no longer go through the motions of asking her who her suitors are or whether she will say yes to one of them. I know it is myself she has designs on.

  MAY 1

  Last night I had a horrible dream. And it was so vivid, I can remember its details just as if it were a real experience.

  I dreamed that I was walking along a street in a city—a large place of several million inhabitants. Suddenly the sky began to darken and I had the sensation, which one often gets in dreams, that something terrible was going to happen. People were running past me, pointing up at the sky and dodging into doorways for shelter. I took cover in a big, solid-looking building, and found myself in a large hall with tall windows—some sort of place for public assemblies—together with many other people. Just as I entered the hall there was a dazzling, sustained glare of light from outside, and I had several drawn-out seconds to see the frightened faces of the people round me before the sound of the explosion came and darkness closed in on us again.

  Now it was lighter. I was standing at one of the windows, looking out towards the centre of the city. To my horror, where I expected to see a mass of huge buildings there was nothing: what had been there was erased from the surface of the earth. I remember wondering how all that concrete, steel and glass could possibly have disappeared. The buildings in the centre of the city had been considerably taller than those farther out and had dominated the skyline. But now I was shocked to find that I could see right across the city to smaller buildings which should have been hidden from view. Between me and them lay two or three square miles of flat, dead ground.

  Everybody in the room seemed as horrified as myself. Nobody said anything. We just stood there looking at each other and occasionally turning to stare out of the windows.