OCTOBER 10
Level 7 is emptying fast. I went out for lunch again just now, and the place looked like a battlefield. Corpses scattered around everywhere. But not a wound to be seen.
The loudspeaker has been silent today. Presumably nobody is left to operate it any more.
X-107m died just a few minutes ago. He is lying in his bed. He will have to stay there, for there is nobody to take him away and I have not the strength to do it.
He was not talkative during his delirium. But sometime late this afternoon he called me over and pointed to his jacket. When I carried it across to him he groped in a pocket for a piece of paper, which he gave me, just managing to say: “Into the diary.”
On the sheet of paper I found what appears to be some sort of poetry, though it is very irregular and has no rhymes. I shall copy it into my diary now, since he asked me to, not that anybody will ever read it. Or the diary.
This is what he wrote:
I never suspected X-107m of writing strange stuff like that. What did he want to say? Just to explain the psychology of his push-button career? Or to indict himself? Did he feel any remorse? He didn’t show it ever.
Who knows? I almost added “Who cares?” But I care! He was a fine fellow, and a good comrade too.
OCTOBER 11
I have grown terribly thin and weak. I managed to crawl as far as the dining-room at lunch time today, but by the time I had got there the sight and smell of the dead bodies (some have been lying around for three days now) quite took away my feeble appetite. I rested for a few minutes, hoping I should meet someone there to talk to. But nobody came. Nobody!
I did not see a living person today. For all I know I may now be the last man alive on earth. And I shall be the last to die. A distinction in the midst of extinction!
It is strangely ironical that we, PBX Command, should be killed by a gadget making a peaceful use of atomic energy. It does not seem fair. Divine justice, I always thought, was eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It should be bomb for bomb. Instead we are being killed by a piece of faulty machinery. Not really a warrior’s death.
Perhaps God intends it as a sort of joke. “You killed with bombs,” He says. “You will be killed by peaceful radiation.”
Or maybe He is a Christian God, and Christian charity inspires his acts: “You killed with atomic missiles,” He says, “but I shall help you over to the other side with a reactor.”
What am I talking about? God? Reactor? I feel hot, hot and cold. I think I had better get into bed, if I can still climb up to that top bunk. I cannot move X-107.
OCTOBER 12
I feel I am dying. I am glad I brought my diary up here when I got into bed last night. I am so very weak. I hardly feel a thing, except pains. Must rest for a while.
I am dying, and the world is dying with me. I am the last man on earth, the sole surviving specimen of homo sapiens. Sapiens indeed!
It is lonely here. I wish I had someone to talk to. Even a dying soldier deserted on the battlefield cannot have felt as lonely as I feel. He had his comrades to think of, his family—people he was dying for, or thought he was dying for. But I have nobody to die for. Nobody to think of. They are all dead. No one outside, no one in the ex-enemy shelter, no one on Level 7.
Does everybody feel as lonely as this when he dies? I wonder if it makes any difference to have family and friends around you. I wish I had.
I would give anything to have some people around me! The only face I can see belongs to the clock on the wall.
But I can listen to some music—I can just reach the switch if I stretch my arm far enough.
Done! Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’. It sounds wonderful. Even now. Is it human or divine? It will last longer than I shall, longer than humanity. If that reactor does not break down again the tape will go on playing for years. In twelve days’ time, when I am dead, the ‘Eroica’ will sound in this room again. In twenty-four days’ time too, in thirty-six, in forty-eight…. And outside the sun will rise and set with no one there to watch it.
I am dying, and humanity dies with me. I am the dying humanity. But let the tape revolve, let the music last. I do not know why, but I want something to last.
I have been sick again. It has left me very weak. I can hardly keep the pen from slipping out of my fingers.
I must stay conscious. Like in that nightmare. I have to. For my sake. For humanity’s sake. I am the last creature alive. I must go on living. Let the music go on, and let me listen. But I feel faint.
I think I must have passed out. The clock seems to have moved very fast. It is now 16.00 hours. Four o’clock in the afternoon. The music still goes on. It will go on for ever.
It makes me feel worse, thinking about it. I am going to die. Why should anything go on when I am dead? That music—why should that outlive me? What is the point of music that nobody can hear? I shall turn it off.
It is no good. I tried, and I could not reach the switch.
So it will go on playing. It is a funny thought, that. All right, let the tape revolve.
I do not think I can write any more. But I must try hard. This is my contact with—with what was.
Sunshine was. Does the sun still shine?
I cannot read the clock across the room. But it is still light.
No. Dark.
I cannot see Oh friends people mother sun I I{1}