“But I-330, you must understand – this was exactly what our forebears did during the Two Hundred Years’ War…”
“Oh, and they were right – a thousand times right But they made one mistake. They later came to believe that they had the final number – which does not, does not exist in nature. Their mistake was the mistake of Galileo: he was right that the earth revolves around the sun, but he did not know that the whole solar system also revolves – around some other center; he did not know that the real, not the relative, orbit of the earth is not some naive circle…”
“And you?”
“We? We know for the time being that there is no final number. We may forget it. No, we are even sure to forget it when we get old – as everything inevitably gets old. And then we, too, shall drop – like leaves in autumn from the tree – like you, the day after tomorrow… No, no, my dear, not you. For you are with us, you are with us!”
Fiery, stormy, flashing – I have never yet seen her like that – she embraced me with all of herself. I disappeared…
At the last, looking firmly, steadily into my eyes, “Remember, then: at twelve.”
And I said, “Yes, I remember.”
She left. I was alone – among the riotous, many-voiced tumult of blue, red, green, bronze-yellow, orange colors…
Yes, at twelve… And suddenly an absurd sensation of something alien settled on my face – impossible to brush off. Suddenly – yesterday morning, U – and what she had shouted into I-330’s face… Why? What nonsense.
I hurried outside – and home, home…
Somewhere behind me I heard the piercing cries of birds over the Wall. And before me, in the setting sun – the spheres of cupolas, the huge, flaming cubes of houses, the spire of the Accumulator Tower like lightning frozen in the sky. And all this, all this perfect, geometric beauty will have to be… by me, by my own hands… Is there no way out, no other road?
Past one of the auditoriums (I forget the number). Inside it, benches piled up in a heap; in the middle, tables covered with sheets of pure white glass cloth; on the white, a stain of the sun’s pink blood. And concealed in all of this – some unknown, and therefore frightening tomorrow. It is unnatural for a thinking, seeing being to live amidst irregulars, unknowns, X’s… As if you were blindfolded and forced to walk, feeling your way, stumbling, and knowing that somewhere – just nearby – is the edge; a single step, and all that will remain of you will be a flattened, mangled piece of flesh. Am I not like this now?
And what if – without waiting – I plunge myself, head down? Would it not be the only, the correct way – disentangling everything at once?
Thirty-first Entry
Saved! At the very last moment, when it seemed there was no longer anything to grasp at, when it seemed that everything was finished…
It is as though you have already ascended the stairs to the Benefactor’s dread Machine, and the glass Bell has come down over you with a heavy clank, and for the last time in your life – quick, quick – you drink the blue sky with your eyes…
And suddenly – it was only a “dream.” The sun is pink and gay, and the wall is there – what joy to stroke the cold wall with your hand; and the pillow – what an endless delight to watch and watch the hollow left by your head on the white pillow…
This was approximately what I felt when I read the One State Gazette this morning. It had been a terrible dream, and now it was over. And I, fainthearted nonbeliever, I had already thought of willful death. I am ashamed to read the last lines I had written yesterday. But it is all the same now: let them stay as a reminder of the incredible thing that might have happened – and now will not happen… no, it will not happen!
The front page of the One State Gazette glowed with a proclamation:
REJOICE!
For henceforth you shall be perfect! Until this day, your own creations – machines – were more perfect than you.
How?
Every spark of a dynamo is a spark of the purest reason; each movement of a piston is a flawless syllogism. But are you not possessors of the same unerring reason?
The philosophy of cranes, presses, and pumps, is as perfect and clear as a compass-drawn circle. Is your philosophy less compass-drawn?
The beauty of a mechanism is in its rhythm – as steady and precise as that of a pendulum. But you, nurtured from earliest infancy on the Taylor system-have you not become pendulum-precise?
Except for one thing:
Machines have no imagination.
Have you ever seen the face of a pump cylinder break into a distant, foolish, dreamy smile while it works?
Have you ever heard of cranes restlessly turning from side to side and sighing at night, during the hours designated for rest?
No!
And you? Blush with shame! The Guardians have noticed more and more such smiles and sighs of late. And – hide your eyes – historians of the One State ask for retirement so that they need not record disgraceful events.
But this is not your fault – you are sick. The name of this sickness is
IMAGINATION.
It is a worm that gnaws out black lines on the forehead. It is a fever that drives you to escape ever farther, even if this “farther” begins where happiness ends. This is the last barricade on our way to happiness.
Rejoice, then: this barricade has already been blown up.
The road is open.
The latest discovery of State Science is the location of the center of imagination – a miserable little nodule in the brain in the area of the pans Varolii. Triple-X-ray cautery of this nodule – and you are cured of imagination —
FOREVER.
You are perfect. You are machinelike. The road to one hundred per cent happiness is free. Hurry, then, everyone – old and young – hurry to submit to the Great Operation. Hurry to the auditoriums, where the Great Operation is being performed. Long live the Great Operation! Long live the One State! Long live the Benefactor!
You… If you were reading all this not in my notes, resembling some fanciful ancient novel, if this newspaper, still smelling of printers’ ink, were trembling in your hands as it does in mine; if you knew, as I know, that this is the most actual reality, if not today’s, then tomorrow’s – would you not feel as I do? Wouldn’t your head reel, as mine does? Wouldn’t these eerie, sweet, icy needle pricks run down your back, your arms? Would it not seem to you that you’re a giant, Atlas – and if you straighten up, you will inevitably strike the glass ceiling with your head?
I seized the telephone receiver. “I-330… Yes, yes, 330.” And then I cried out breathlessly, “You’re home, yes? Have you read it? You’re reading it? But this is, this is… It’s remarkable!”
“Yes…” A long, dark silence. The receiver hummed faintly, pondered something… “I must see you today. Yes, at my place, after sixteen. Without fail.”
Dearest! Dear, such a dear! “Without fail…” I felt myself smiling and could not stop. And now I would carry this smile along the street – high, like a light.
Outside, the wind swept at me. It whirled, howled, whipped, but I felt all the more exultant: whistle, scream – it doesn’t matter now – you can no longer topple walls. And if cast-iron, flying clouds tumble overhead – let them tumble: they cannot blot out the sun. We have forever chained it to the zenith – we, Joshuas, sons of Nun.
At the corner a dense group of Joshuas stood with their foreheads glued to the glass wall. Inside, a man already lay stretched out on the dazzling white table. From under the white the bare soles of his feet formed a yellow angle; white doctors were bent over his head; a white hand stretched to another hand a hypodermic syringe filled with something.