When A got back home one day, he looked for the largest pair of scissors he could find and laid them ready for the morrow.
And when B got home, he too set aside the biggest pair of scissors he possessed.
Next day, when the two friends met, they brandished their scissors and flew at each other’s heads, paying no attention to their girl friends’ protesting cries. Before you could say snip, there they were, standing horrified at the sight of each other’s bald head, and gingerly feeling the place where their own hair had been.
While the two girl friends said: “I could never love a man with a bald head”—and ran off down the road as fast as they could go.
OCTOBER 1
My story was broadcast this morning. People liked it. It went down well with the other side too, and they broadcast a humorous retort: “Buy yourself a wig, bald fellow!”
My reply was: “There are no wigs to be had underground. We shall have to stay bald.”
No, not everything that is gone can be replaced. A bald head is bald—even with a wig. A destroyed world is destroyed.
OCTOBER 2
Now our ex-enemy’s broadcasts have stopped. Maybe it is just a technical hitch. But maybe—no, it is better not to think about it. Let us wait and see.
X-107m and P seem to get along well. I do not see P often, as I prefer not to go to the lounge, while she seldom visits her husband in our room. But X-107m appears very satisfied with his lot.
He does not keep me company in quite the way he did before. I listen to music more now, even though the tape has repeated itself many times since our arrival here. The same thing every twelve days. But, even so, there is something about a piece of quality which enables you to listen to it again and again.
OCTOBER 3
They are silent. They must have died. Suddenly, like Level 6. Perhaps from the same cause—the unknown one. We shall never know it, unless we perish the same way. And if we do, we shall not know it for long.
People on Level 7 are distressed, deeply distressed. I see around me the same long faces that marked the first days of our seclusion in these dungeons. People look quite as unhappy as they did before they became adjusted.
They feel lonely again. Not because of the seclusion, but because they are alone in the world. There is no longer even an ex-enemy to communicate with.
Also they are afraid. They fear gamma rays and neutrons, alpha particles and beta particles. They are afraid to eat and to drink and to breathe. But perhaps most of all they are afraid of the unknown. The fact that they do not know how and when they may be struck down makes them nervous. They are afraid to sleep, for they may never wake.
Spiritually, radiation is already active on Level 7. It spreads panic without even being here. This might be the most powerful form of psychological warfare. And the most effortless: nobody does anything, and the fear is universal. The idea of radiation enters the mind imperceptibly, just as the real radiation invisibly penetrates the body.
OCTOBER 4
The ex-enemy has been given up for dead. We are alone now, literally and absolutely alone.
How long shall we last? Shall we survive down here?
Raise families? Keep humanity alive until one day man creeps out of these miserable holes?
Or shall we perish as the other levels did? And will we know what has hit us or not? Shall we be hit suddenly and unawares, or shall we have to watch death spreading all around us? Who knows?
The atomic reactor which supplies our energy has to undergo some repair work, so everything will come to a halt for an hour. I intend to stop writing and go to bed before they switch off the lighting. It will not inconvenience many people to be without light at this time of night. I expect most of them are asleep anyway. The others can discover what it is like to be as blind as real moles, which should be quite interesting.
OCTOBER 5
I was asleep last night long before the reactor was repaired. This morning I was told that the job took not one hour but three, and that there was an accident: one of the atomic energy officers working on it, AE-307m, suffered a very strong overdose of radiation and died before morning.
Like X-117, AE-307m was given a short obituary over the general loudspeaker system. “He gave his life to ensure our survival,” the speaker said, and his praise of the dead man seemed to me quite fair. With no reactor we should last a very short time indeed!
It is a sad business, this. Everybody feels sorry for AE-307m. And for his widow.
OCTOBER 6
The two AE officers who helped AE-307m repair the reactor have died too.
Moreover, I saw somebody vomiting today at lunch. Quite a few others left the dining-room hurriedly during the meal.
Has it started?
OCTOBER 7
It has finally reached us. We shall not get away with it.
Sickness and death are all around. Some people die with hardly a struggle. Others only vomit to start with, and manage to keep going. Slight nausea is all I have felt so far.
And the funny part about it is that it is the reactor—our own atomic reactor—which is killing us. The source of life down here, our man-made sun, now sends its death-dealing rays through Level 7.
Before long we shall all be gone. This is the beginning of the end.
OCTOBER 8
This morning the loudspeaker gave some official information about the source of trouble.
Something went wrong with the reactor. If it had happened on the surface the reactor could have been stopped, isolated and repaired at leisure. If necessary, people could have been moved to a safe distance. But here on Level 7 there was no choice. The reactor had to be repaired where it was, and quickly, even with the danger of lethal radiation. Without light, the plants would have stopped supplying oxygen; and we would soon have died.
So the AE officers risked their lives and partly succeeded: the energy supply will continue. Unfortunately, so will the lethal radiation. The reactor will go on working simultaneously as a source of life and a source of death.
Precisely how and why, I do not know. And I do not care. There are some ‘technical reasons’. That is enough explanation for me. It seems to be enough for others too.
OCTOBER 9
This death is quick. We must be getting powerful doses of those rays or particles—whatever is killing us.
People are dying all round like flies. Yesterday some attempt was still being made to remove the corpses, but today nobody seems to be bothering, and the bodies lie where they fall. Perhaps there is no one from the medical department left to take them away, or nobody strong enough. Most people do not come out of their rooms even for meals. I only went out for lunch today, and the sight of half a dozen corpses in the dining-room very nearly stopped me eating. Quite two thirds of the meals on the moving band were left untouched.
Although I do not feel as bad as the others, I know it cannot last. Death is in me.
X-107m has just come into the room. He looks very pale, and has flopped down on his bed.
He has just told me that P died about half an hour ago. He was with her at the end, and he says she mentioned me. He is not sure whether she was conscious or delirious.
“She was a fine woman,” he says.
OCTOBER 10
Level 7 is emptying fast. I went out for lunch again just now, and the place looked like a battlefield. Corpses scattered around everywhere. But not a wound to be seen.
The loudspeaker has been silent today. Presumably nobody is left to operate it any more.
X-107m died just a few minutes ago. He is lying in his bed. He will have to stay there, for there is nobody to take him away and I have not the strength to do it.
He was not talkative during his delirium. But sometime late this afternoon he called me over and pointed to his jacket. When I carried it across to him he groped in a pocket for a piece of paper, which he gave me, just managing to say: “Into the diary.”
On the sheet of paper I found what appears to be some sort of
poetry, though it is very irregular and has no rhymes. I shall copy it into my diary now, since he asked me to, not that anybody will ever read it. Or the diary.
This is what he wrote:
When I was a boy I used to watch my sister build a house of cards.
One on another balanced in delicate equilibrium
(Quiet now, don’t knock the table)
Until there the house stood, tall and fine.
But I was mischievous,
I liked to blow the house down,
To watch the cards slip, the house crumble and fall.
To destroy what had been built was my pleasure.
Just one puff, and all that labour of careful construction—
Nothing!
When I grew up I found that houses were not made of cards.
Plaster, concrete, wood, steel.
I could blow my lungs out
And not shift those in a thousand thousand years.
But something could.
Progress had seen to it. Puff!—
And the plaster, the concrete, the wood and the steel
Blown by the bomb’s breath
Tumble like cards.
In this game atoms are trumps.
And it’s easy, so easy.
Just push the button with your finger, lightly,
And down go the office blocks, down go the factories,
Houses, churches, all monuments of man’s endeavour,
Down like a pack of cards!
I never suspected X-107m of writing strange stuff like that. What did he want to say? Just to explain the psychology of his push-button career? Or to indict himself? Did he feel any remorse? He didn’t show it ever.
Who knows? I almost added “Who cares?” But I care! He was a fine fellow, and a good comrade too.
OCTOBER 11
I have grown terribly thin and weak. I managed to crawl as far as the dining-room at lunch time today, but by the time I had got there the sight and smell of the dead bodies (some have been lying around for three days now) quite took away my feeble appetite. I rested for a few minutes, hoping I should meet someone there to talk to. But nobody came. Nobody!
I did not see a living person today. For all I know I may now be the last man alive on earth. And I shall be the last to die. A distinction in the midst of extinction!
It is strangely ironical that we, PBX Command, should be killed by a gadget making a peaceful use of atomic energy. It does not seem fair. Divine justice, I always thought, was eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It should be bomb for bomb. Instead we are being killed by a piece of faulty machinery. Not really a warrior’s death.
Perhaps God intends it as a sort of joke. “You killed with bombs,” He says. “You will be killed by peaceful radiation.”
Or maybe He is a Christian God, and Christian charity inspires his acts: “You killed with atomic missiles,” He says, “but I shall help you over to the other side with a reactor.”
What am I talking about? God? Reactor? I feel hot, hot and cold. I think I had better get into bed, if I can still climb up to that top bunk. I cannot move X-107.
OCTOBER 12
I feel I am dying. I am glad I brought my diary up here when I got into bed last night. I am so very weak. I hardly feel a thing, except pains. Must rest for a while.
I am dying, and the world is dying with me. I am the last man on earth, the sole surviving specimen of homo sapiens. Sapiens indeed!
It is lonely here. I wish I had someone to talk to. Even a dying soldier deserted on the battlefield cannot have felt as lonely as I feel. He had his comrades to think of, his family—people he was dying for, or thought he was dying for. But I have nobody to die for. Nobody to think of. They are all dead. No one outside, no one in the ex-enemy shelter, no one on Level 7.
Does everybody feel as lonely as this when he dies? I wonder if it makes any difference to have family and friends around you. I wish I had.
I would give anything to have some people around me! The only face I can see belongs to the clock on the wall.
But I can listen to some music—I can just reach the switch if I stretch my arm far enough.
Done! Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’. It sounds wonderful. Even now. Is it human or divine? It will last longer than I shall, longer than humanity. If that reactor does not break down again the tape will go on playing for years. In twelve days’ time, when I am dead, the ‘Eroica’ will sound in this room again. In twenty-four days’ time too, in thirty-six, in forty-eight…. And outside the sun will rise and set with no one there to watch it.
I am dying, and humanity dies with me. I am the dying humanity. But let the tape revolve, let the music last. I do not know why, but I want something to last.
I have been sick again. It has left me very weak. I can hardly keep the pen from slipping out of my fingers.
I must stay conscious. Like in that nightmare. I have to. For my sake. For humanity’s sake. I am the last creature alive. I must go on living. Let the music go on, and let me listen. But I feel faint.
I think I must have passed out. The clock seems to have moved very fast. It is now 16.00 hours. Four o’clock in the afternoon. The music still goes on. It will go on for ever.
It makes me feel worse, thinking about it. I am going to die. Why should anything go on when I am dead? That music—why should that outlive me? What is the point of music that nobody can hear? I shall turn it off.
It is no good. I tried, and I could not reach the switch.
So it will go on playing. It is a funny thought, that. All right, let the tape revolve.
I do not think I can write any more. But I must try hard. This is my contact with—with what was.
Sunshine was. Does the sun still shine?
I cannot read the clock across the room. But it is still light.
No. Dark.
I cannot see Oh friends people mother sun I I{1}
Comments
1
Removed Postscript
This book is neutral—in the sense that it does not defend either the East or the West. It is not neutral in the sense that it accuses both. It is submitted for the benefit of the West and the East, as well as anybody caught in between.
The Diary of Push-Button Officer X-127 is intended as a preventative anti-radioactive medicine, good for consumption in any place in the world. It is especially offered to button-pushers, rocket constructors, nuclear physicists, megaton bomb manufacturers, “small” atomic bomb producers, and last but not least, statesmen and politicians. It is ‘not’ (!) effective against buttons, robots, rockets, and the bombs themselves.
(<< back)
FB2 document info
Document ID: a5e6a184-40d6-44c9-91a4-a7018c70342f
Document version: 1.1
Document creation date: 15 July 2011
Created using: FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Namenlos
Document history:
1.0 - initial version converted from Wargamer's HTML file.
1.1 - proofreading (Namenlos).
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
book with friends
Level 7 Page 18
