Level 7

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.