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.
The crew had means of communicating with the command as well. One had only to press one of the special red buttons (evidently connected to microphones) and one’s voice would be received by the communications centre and there, as at a telephone exchange, be connected to the appropriate authority, according to the nature of the message. But this system was to be used only in cases of real emergency: sickness, malfunctioning of installations, and things like that. (The speaker made no mention of hidden microphones operating without the button, such as the one X-107 and I detected in our room the other day. Perhaps they are only installed in PBX officers’ rooms.)
I had noticed the red buttons around before, of course, with their instructions: “In case of emergency press and speak.” But I have never used one so far. The only times I have felt like doing so were when I wanted to shout: “Let me out of here.”
The talk was restricted to Level 7’s internal communications. There was no mention of contact between Level 7 and the outside world, though this must exist or we should never know when to push the buttons or anything else. Information on that topic would have been fascinating, because it would have been a link with all we had left behind up there. Which is probably why it was not included in the talk: they do not want anything to remind us of life on the surface; we must get adjusted to life 4,400 feet down. So, no talk of any world outside our world.
This gives an ironical twist to ‘Know Thy Level’ “Don’t bother about other worlds,” the title seems to say. “Know about the only one you’ll ever live in.”
APRIL 7
An extraordinary thing happened in the lounge today. Usually people there form small groups of two or three, talking quietly with each other, and often hardly speaking at all. This time the picture was different. One man—I was told later that he was a philosopher, Ph-107—was standing and talking, vigorously and persuasively, while all the rest listened in silence, sitting or standing around.
The scene was most unusual. Not only had I never observed it on Level 7 before, but I do not remember coming across informal public speech-making like this up above either. It was like a return to the old oratory. In ancient city-states people must have talked, and listened, in that way.
Strange as it may seem, the subject of the man’s speech was Democracy—Democracy on Level 7, to be precise.
The topic seemed to fascinate his audience. Even P-867, who likes talking herself, was absorbed and hardly noticed me. Other people drifted into the room from time to time while the philosopher was speaking, and all their conversations died as they were drawn into the rapt circle of listeners.
Ph-107’s thesis went something like this.
Democracy, he said, is the rule of all over all. To make it practicable, however, men have always found it necessary to compromise: to follow the decisions of the majority. And as the actual ruling power must perforce be in the hands of a very few people chosen as the representatives of the majority, it has been possible for some cynics to maintain that real democracy can never work. It is always an élite which rules.
To forestall such objections, people have tried to limit the power of the élite by devising impersonal machinery of government such as laws, constitutions, principles. The rule of law, as opposed to the rule of people, has been the basis of democracy from time immemorial.
All right, the cynic will reply, but the rule of laws and constitutions and so forth remains, ultimately, the rule of some people—the people who devised them, in this or past ages. Principles cannot invent themselves. And when all the rules have been laid down they still have to be applied and interpreted by lawyers, judges, politicians—by people.
These objections, said Ph-107, cannot be disregarded. They have formed a valid criticism of every form of democracy which has existed—until today. Now, for the first time in the history of mankind, perfect, absolute democracy is coming into being: democracy on Level 7.