Level 7

But I wish I could pity X-117 more than I do.

APRIL 11

Am I capable, or am I not capable, of pitying other people? Am I, or am I not able to develop a genuine friendship, to love somebody, to care for another person with all my heart?

This business has been plaguing me since yesterday. I do not want to be a monster, and a man without emotions is a monster. What is the difference between me and an electronic brain? It can calculate far better, work more efficiently; it makes no mistakes. It cannot get fond of anybody. Neither can I.

But I can pity myself and torment myself, and an electronic gadget cannot do that. There’s the difference.

Level 7. The unsocial society. Community of self-pitying gadgets, hive of monsters.

Are we really monsters, or merely miserable creatures who deserve pity? There I go—self-pity again! But I did say ‘are we’, which may be evidence of sociability in me after all.

How deep does it go? Oh, I wish I could stop fretting about it. If I were a real machine I should be much happier.

A happy gadget! I had better stop writing for today and listen to some music, if all I can produce is such absolute nonsense. Perhaps I am heading for a nervous breakdown myself.

Something for the psychologists to think about: Can a man become neurotic through worrying about his inability to be neurotic?

APRIL 13

I am not finding the ‘Know Thy Level’ talks as interesting as I thought I would. Today they tried to explain the system of personal identification on Level 7. Everybody’s ‘name’ ends with the digit 7, because we live on Level 7. The letters at the beginning refer to functions, which everybody knew anyway; and the other two figures have some more complicated explanation which I did not try to understand. No doubt there is a system behind it, as with everything else down here.

When the talk was over X-107 tried to discuss with me the reason for calling each other by letters and numbers instead of personal or family names—a practice which we were persuaded to adopt back at the training camp, so it comes quite naturally on Level 7. The reason behind it, he thought, was that the old names would have nostalgic associations with life on the surface and so would make it harder for us to get adjusted to our new existence.

It may well be so, but I was not interested in discussing it. What did interest me was X-107’s efforts to make me talk in spite of my evident lack of enthusiasm, because he realised I was upset about something; as he had done on previous occasions. Which must mean that he felt some concern about me. And if he is not entirely unsociable, then perhaps my own case is not so hopeless either.

My speculations engaged me so, I hardly listened to what he was saying. Suppose we were not entirely unsociable, I thought, only less sociable than most people—people up there. Suppose the difference were of this sort—one of degree, not of kind—well, the implications would be enormous. I might at least be capable of liking somebody.

As the saying goes: ‘If the fire doesn’t boil the kettle, it may stop it freezing.’ Perhaps X-117 is not the only sociable fish to slip through the psychologists’ net.

APRIL 14

I see that my last entry ended with a slightly envious reference to X-117. But it seems that his sociable tendencies are bringing him nothing but more trouble. P-867 is now participating in his therapy, and she told me today that his condition is getting more serious. He cannot move his fingers of his right hand.

She says there is nothing physically wrong with the hand: the paralysis is a clear symptom of hysteria. And she has a theory to explain it. At least, she has the modesty to call it a theory. Knowing her, I am sure she thinks it is the only possible explanation.

My fellow-officer, she says, must as a child have used his right hand in quest of pleasures which were strictly forbidden by his parents. Those urges became repressed, but they remained a powerful factor in his unconscious mind. The repressive control will not let them out even now, so the urges express themselves through the symptoms of paralysis. X-117 really enjoys his paralysis, according to P-867’s strange explanation, because it is unconsciously associated with the repressed urges. But these symptoms are so remote from their true origin that the repressive control cannot recognise them and so lets them be.

In fact, X-117 has his own, seemingly ‘rational’ explanation for his sickness. What he says is that his paralysis is a punishment from ‘above’ for his readiness to push buttons and destroy the world. He keeps talking about this punishment, which he considers just. “Obviously,” said P-867 today, “he doesn’t want to be cured. His job on Level 7, pushing buttons, is too strongly associated in his mind with the activities which his parents told him were wicked.”