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 “They would take up so much space, and anyway they’re an outdated method of imparting information: only one person can read a book at a time, whereas there’s no limit to the number of people who can listen to a loudspeaker.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.
We had to admit her point, but I minimised it by pointing out that although the children might hear references to ‘ST’ they would not hear people talking about ‘St’—it would be pronounced ‘Saint’ or ‘Strontium’ as the case might be. And if most teaching was to be done by loudspeaker they would get the spoken words clear in their heads before meeting them in their abbreviated, and possibly confusing, written form.
People are getting married down here at an increasingly fast rate. The marriages are always announced on the loudspeaker, but I have stopped counting them. They go on taking place, that’s all I know.
P-867 comes out most days with some new story about proposals made to her, either directly or through the mediation service. This does not interest me and I no longer go through the motions of asking her who her suitors are or whether she will say yes to one of them. I know it is myself she has designs on.
MAY 1
Last night I had a horrible dream. And it was so vivid, I can remember its details just as if it were a real experience.
I dreamed that I was walking along a street in a city—a large place of several million inhabitants. Suddenly the sky began to darken and I had the sensation, which one often gets in dreams, that something terrible was going to happen. People were running past me, pointing up at the sky and dodging into doorways for shelter. I took cover in a big, solid-looking building, and found myself in a large hall with tall windows—some sort of place for public assemblies—together with many other people. Just as I entered the hall there was a dazzling, sustained glare of light from outside, and I had several drawn-out seconds to see the frightened faces of the people round me before the sound of the explosion came and darkness closed in on us again.
Now it was lighter. I was standing at one of the windows, looking out towards the centre of the city. To my horror, where I expected to see a mass of huge buildings there was nothing: what had been there was erased from the surface of the earth. I remember wondering how all that concrete, steel and glass could possibly have disappeared. The buildings in the centre of the city had been considerably taller than those farther out and had dominated the skyline. But now I was shocked to find that I could see right across the city to smaller buildings which should have been hidden from view. Between me and them lay two or three square miles of flat, dead ground.
Everybody in the room seemed as horrified as myself. Nobody said anything. We just stood there looking at each other and occasionally turning to stare out of the windows.
Then, without any visible transition (as frequently happens in dreams), a change came over the people. I suddenly noticed that their faces and hands were a yellowish colour. The yellow turned to brown, and now they were sinking down on the floor, their flesh changing into lifeless rubber. They lay all around me, still moving their limbs; but gradually their movements became slower and slower… were hardly perceptible… looked like the last movements of crushed worms. Then they stopped! Now I was surrounded by grotesque brown rubber dummies.
I raised my hands to cover my eyes, and my heart stood still as I saw that they were yellow. Slowly their colour darkened to brown….
I woke up at this point and was spared the rest.
Or was I? Was this nightmare just a dream? Had it not an element of real premonition in it? Was it not a prophecy?
I know it is absurd to explain dreams in such a way.
But this one seems so closely connected with our times and situation that it weighs heavily on my mind.
That empty hole where the huge buildings used to be, those bodies that looked like rubber, their last worm-like movements, my hands turning brown….
If only I had a God to cry to!
MAY 2
The dream has had a bad effect on me. I am upset again and my spirits are as low as ever. I told P-867 so today and described the dream to her. She is a psychologist, after all.
She said I was showing quasi-hysterical symptoms. She thought that those mythological stories of R-747’s and mine were upsetting my emotional stability. There was a connection, she suggested, between the mushroom in my story and my nightmare. I had to admit she might be right. “But the roots lie deeper,” she added. “There’s some more fundamental anxiety in you somewhere. It may be due, partly at least, to the fact that you don’t lead a normal life for a healthy man of your age.”
Does she want to scare me into marriage? If I could be sure that marriage would help me over my ups and downs, or rather my downs and downs, I would marry right away. I would even marry P-867, if a psychologist mate is the best sort to have.