Level 7

“But what about your job?” I asked. “Doesn’t your comfort make any difference?”

“Not as much,” she answered. “Take this washing business: a psychologist would get rid of that compulsion in himself—if he ever had it—long before he finished his training. I find our overcrowded bathroom a nuisance, of course, but it wouldn’t make me neurotic even if I couldn’t wash for a month.” And she giggled.

That remark struck me as most unpleasant, and for a moment I could not help feeling physically repelled by her. It occurred to me that if she were a perfect mistress of her science she would have been more wary of telling me about her disregard for hygiene—if she cared what I thought of her, as she seemed to.

APRIL 6

Earlier today the loudspeaker announced that a new programme will be inaugurated on Level 7: a series of live talks entitled ‘Know Thy Level’. The half-hour talks, to be given daily, will cover various aspects of life on Level 7.

This announcement has aroused a fair amount of interest. People down here have begun to look around them and learn about their environment, if only in a despairing attempt to adjust themselves to something they instinctively dislike. The new talks will be instructive, besides relieving the monotony.

People are especially curious about the fact that these will be live talks and not tape-recorded ones. There is such a lot of automation down here that one comes to assume that anything like a series of talks will have been canned long in advance, to be served up when and as often as required. That this is not the case is some consolation for the twelve-day limit of the music tapes, if one can judge by the fact that some of the people who took that business hardest have been discussing the new programme most enthusiastically. X-107 thinks the talks will be very interesting: “We’ve got to know the world we live in, haven’t we?” he remarked just now.

I wonder if this programme may not have been specially arranged to counteract the disappointment felt over the music tapes. It is in their interest not to let us get too depressed.

Perhaps not. It could equally as well be that the programme was planned from the start, but not put out until we had had time to get adjusted to the new conditions. In the first few days down here most people would have been brooding too much to pay any attention to a series of lectures; but now that the initial shock has passed the talks may consolidate whatever adjustment we have been able to make.

It must be X-107’s influence which makes me puzzle about it like this. Through my discussions with him I seem to have acquired his habit of analysing every event and arrangement and weighing various arguments and alternatives. To begin with I took one side and X-107 took another, but these days it seems that I can do without him: I carry on the dialogues with myself, inventing arguments both for and against any given theory. I suppose this must mean that I am becoming more self-sufficient. A self-sufficient citizen of the self-sufficient world of Level 7.

Anyway, we shall soon learn all about the arrangements on Level 7. We shall understand the instructions which at present we just blindly carry out. So far we have been given commands—dehydrated mental food; now we shall be given the reasons for the commands—a real juicy meal. At least, I hope so.

The first programme is due any time now, and I shall have to break off writing this to listen to it. Here comes the announcement: the first talk in the new ‘Know Thy Level’ series, ‘Communications on Level 7’.

The talk is over. It was delivered in a clear and lively manner—by a woman, but not one of those who usually make announcements through the loudspeaker. A rather deep contralto voice. I would like to hear her sing.

The talk itself contained little that I did not know before. It explained the elaborate communications system on Level 7.

There was first the ‘general’ loudspeaker system whose announcements were heard everywhere—in working-rooms, in private rooms, in the lounge, in bathrooms and so on. Then there was the ‘functional’ system which transmitted instructions to a specific branch of the crew—the psychologists, say, or the PBX officers. Lastly there was the ‘private’ system which occasionally reacted to the problems of individual men and women. The three systems worked interdependently over the same set of speakers, and if it happened that two or more systems were competing for the use of the loudspeaker at the same time, the one which had priority would automatically cut out the others. In order of priority the functional system always came first, the general second and the private last.