Level 7

I was swimming in a beautiful blue pool in a mountain region, enjoying myself immensely. I was floating on my back, looking at the sky and at the surrounding mountains with their high peaks. Then I wanted to get out, and suddenly discovered that the pool had sunk deeper and that I could not climb the slippery rocks around it. I swam from one side to another, trying to find a place where I might crawl out, but with no success. Then, imperceptibly, concrete walls replaced the mountains about me, and instead of the high blue sky I saw a grey ceiling suspended low over the pool. The clear water became dark and oily, and began to give off a disgusting stench. I swam around the pool again, looking desperately for some means of escape from the foul fluid, and found myself opposite a scale on the concrete wall. The scale was vertical, with red marks and numerals to indicate the depth of the water. As I looked at it the level of the water touched mark 127. I trod water, fixing my eyes on this number in fascination. But I could not watch it for long, because it soon disappeared beneath the water and higher numbers appeared: 137, 147, 157…. I realised that the water was not sinking any more, but rapidly rising. All around me were the enclosing walls, and above my head the ceiling was coming closer and closer. I could read the numbers on the scale as the water carried me relentlessly up: 327, 337, 347. And now I could see that at the very top of the scale, at the point where the wall met the ceiling, there was a sign in much bigger print: 500 YEARS. And I knew that when the water reached that point I would drown. But would it be any worse to be drowned than to be suffocated by that smell? The numbers were still rising: 457, 467, 477…. Then I woke up.

That nightmare has depressed me again. The smell, the pit, the 500 years—I cannot get them out of my head. It looks as if all my efforts to get adjusted down here have failed. I have met people, talked about things, tried to find interest in my surroundings; and all for nothing. I am back in the pit of my own depression. Just as I was during my first days here. Perhaps even worse.

It would be easier to bear all this if only I could get rid of that smell. I know it is pure imagination, because I have asked X-107 and several other people if they can smell anything, and none of them can. But still I meet it everywhere I go. I never knew one could imagine a smell so vividly. People talk about ‘seeing things’ and ‘hearing things’, but I have never come across anyone who suffered from hallucinations which made him ‘smell things’. Not until now. I would gladly cut off my nose to get rid of that stench!

MARCH 31

X-107 is doing his best to get me out of my depression. He uses a peculiar method: discussing various arrangements on Level 7 and trying to find a rational explanation and a justification for each. This intellectual game sometimes becomes absorbing. Every now and then, when I am concentrating on some such riddle, I forget about the smell.

After these discussions we usually arrive at the conclusion that arrangements on Level 7 have been made in the best of all possible ways. Any alternative arrangements which we think up turn out, on examination, to be less perfect. The logical conclusion would seem to be that Level 7 is the best of all possible levels, the best of all possible worlds.

Take, for example, a simple thing such as entering the PBX Operations Room. If there were nothing to stop anybody going in there, the risk of having a pair of madmen playing with the ‘typewriters’ would be serious. If, instead, we four PBX officers had special keys to the room, that too might cause trouble: somebody could steal a key, or—equally disastrous—an officer might lose it and so be prevented from entering the room quickly in case of an emergency.

To prevent all these complications, the door is opened for us when we approach it in the course of our duties, and closed to everybody else. It is quite simple: anybody walking up to the door appears on the screen of an anonymous watcher, who decides whether the person should enter the room or not and presses a button if he wants the door to open.

“But suppose,” I said to X-107 today, “we conspired to push buttons at the moment when one of us was relieving the other from duty and we were both in the room. We might push them because the suspense of waiting for an order was sending us both crazy. What then? Who could prevent the two of us starting a war all on our own?”

Before X-107 could answer, the sweet voice of the loudspeaker said: “Don’t worry about that! There is a supervisor on Level 7 who has to push his buttons, in his room, before PBX Operations Room is linked with the external rocket bases. So there is a safeguard against the possibility you mentioned, Officer X-127.”

“You see,” said X-107, “there’s your answer. It’s the best of all possible systems.”