Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald

  MARCH 27

  I am trying to divert myself by learning what I can about the technical arrangements on Level 7. In their way they are pretty remarkable. This is a very small world, but it seems to be quite self-sufficient. Although it lies so deep underground it has its own supply of energy, food and all the other essential commodities needed by its crew. We might be on a ship, equipped for an endless voyage.

  For one thing, we shall never run out of fuel. Everything here works by electricity from dynamos powered by an atomic reactor which can supply all the energy we want for a thousand years. There is nothing new in this principle, but when you think of all the gadgets which are using up electricity twenty-four hours a day down here you appreciate how impossible life would be without an atomic reactor.

  The problem of storing nourishment must have been more complicated; but at dinner today somebody provided some interesting information about that. (People have started to be more talkative lately.) He said—and he appeared to know what he was talking about—that dehydrated food in enormous quantities is stored in a huge deep-freeze. At each meal the necessary amount is automatically taken out of the freeze, warmed, mixed with water and served on our plates. Being dehydrated, it takes up very little space. Even so, the storage of enough to feed 500 people for 500 years is no simple matter.

  The man’s mention of 500 years made everybody fall silent for a few moments. I expect the others were thinking the same as I was. I sometimes feel as if I have been down here months already, not just days; and to think of Level 7 in terms of centuries is beyond my imagination.

  One of the women made it her task to break the silence by asking how enough water could be stored underground. “There is no dehydrated water,” she added, and was rewarded by a few bleak smiles from the rest of us.

  However, we gathered from the expert that there is no need to store water, and that the supply is unlimited. In fact it is the only commodity which can never run short. It reaches us from deep underground sources, inexhaustible because of precipitation.

  “At first,” the expert said, “it was feared that the water might become contaminated in the event of an atomic war. Then it was found that the thick layers of earth through which the water has to pass on its way down act as excellent filters. We stand no risk of drinking impure water.”

  Our meal was nearly over, when somebody raised the question of refuse. The disposal of sewage and other rubbish on Level 7 was surely as big a problem as the storage of food.

  But this problem too has been solved with great ingenuity. All the refuse is led through an ordinary drainage system into a special machine which separates off the fluids. These are pumped out of Level 7 to an earth level where they are absorbed, and the dehydrated solids are compressed and transferred to a special storage space. Logically enough—though the idea struck me with a rather chilly surprise when I heard it—this space is the space left by the food we have consumed. The planners of Level 7 could not afford to waste an inch; so the deep-freeze which contains the food also holds, on the other side of a sealed but moving wall, the sewage. As the stock of food decreases and the bulk of refuse increases, so the moving wall is pushed along by the difference in pressure and one substance takes up the space left by the other. This is a very slow process; but in 500 years what is now a filled food-storage room will have become a large sewage pit.

  All this is quite interesting, but I find the idea that it will take 500 years to fill that pit rather oppressive.

  MARCH 28

  When I walked into the lounge today I found a trio of officers squatting on their heels in one corner of the room playing some kind of gambling game. One of them spun a coin in the air and the others were betting on whether it would fall heads or tails. They must have had quite a bit of cash in their pockets when they were brought down here, for the little piles of notes and coins in front of them were sizeable.

  One of the three seemed to be enjoying the game enormously. When I first went across to watch over their shoulders he was losing, but then he had a lucky break, backing tails every time, and grew very excited. Then his luck changed once more. He started doubling up, trying to regain his losses, but in a few more spins of the coin he was cleaned out.

  Anxious to stay in the game, he asked one of the other players to lend him some money. The other man asked what would happen if he lost that money too: how could he pay it back? The excited one answered that he would not lose. The other two grinned at each other and shrugged.

  “Look,” said the excited one, “my luck is bound to change soon. I’ve just had a bad run—all right. But it can’t go on for ever. In fact it means I’ll have a good run now. The law of averages, remember?”

  This argument did not impress the others, and the unlucky one was still moneyless. But he could not keep quiet and withdraw. Nettled by their indifference to his persuasion, he tried abuse. “You’re a fool,” he shouted at the man he had tried to borrow from. “Why are you so keen to hold on to your lousy money? What do you want money for down here? Can you spend it on anything? Can you buy yourself a drink? Idiot!”

  This was too much for the other officer, who, being less eloquent, was on the point of assaulting the would-be borrower when the loudspeaker ordered the latter to leave the lounge immediately and await further orders in his own room. After he had left the other two players were told to do the same.

  This evening an announcement came over the general loudspeaker. The incident in the lounge was mentioned, and we were told that gambling on Level 7 was strictly forbidden. It was described as an upper-earthly vice which could not be tolerated down here. It was an ‘un-Level 7 activity’, as the speaker put it. And she added: “There is no point in gambling here, as money has no value on Level 7.” She concluded: “Money is the root of all evil! The best things in life are free!”

  I was reminded of the rise in salary which my promotion had brought, and of how pleased I had been, only a week ago. Now, of course, the money meant nothing. Everything was free on Level 7. Besides, there was no room for a bank, or for a boxing ring for quarrelling gamblers. Food and sewage were infinitely more important!

  MARCH 29

  The idea of the sewage pit, slowly getting bigger for the next 500 years, has been on my mind for the last couple of days. I have been imagining that wall being pushed along, a fraction of an inch at a time, by accumulated foulness.

  Yesterday I had the odd impression that I could smell the odours of that place. It worried me all the time, but most of all during meals. Though our food has hardly any taste at all, I thought yesterday that I had detected a distinct flavour, a nasty one. I thought to myself: ‘What if the wall leaks?’

  Last night the pit was with me even in my sleep. Here is what I dreamt.

  I was swimming in a beautiful blue pool in a mountain region, enjoying myself immensely. I was floating on my back, looking at the sky and at the surrounding mountains with their high peaks. Then I wanted to get out, and suddenly discovered that the pool had sunk deeper and that I could not climb the slippery rocks around it. I swam from one side to another, trying to find a place where I might crawl out, but with no success. Then, imperceptibly, concrete walls replaced the mountains about me, and instead of the high blue sky I saw a grey ceiling suspended low over the pool. The clear water became dark and oily, and began to give off a disgusting stench. I swam around the pool again, looking desperately for some means of escape from the foul fluid, and found myself opposite a scale on the concrete wall. The scale was vertical, with red marks and numerals to indicate the depth of the water. As I looked at it the level of the water touched mark 127. I trod water, fixing my eyes on this number in fascination. But I could not watch it for long, because it soon disappeared beneath the water and higher numbers appeared: 137, 147, 157…. I realised that the water was not sinking any more, but rapidly rising. All around me were the enclosing walls, and above my head the ceiling was coming closer and closer. I could read the numbers on the scale as the water carrie
d me relentlessly up: 327, 337, 347. And now I could see that at the very top of the scale, at the point where the wall met the ceiling, there was a sign in much bigger print: 500 YEARS. And I knew that when the water reached that point I would drown. But would it be any worse to be drowned than to be suffocated by that smell? The numbers were still rising: 457, 467, 477…. Then I woke up.

  That nightmare has depressed me again. The smell, the pit, the 500 years—I cannot get them out of my head. It looks as if all my efforts to get adjusted down here have failed. I have met people, talked about things, tried to find interest in my surroundings; and all for nothing. I am back in the pit of my own depression. Just as I was during my first days here. Perhaps even worse.

  It would be easier to bear all this if only I could get rid of that smell. I know it is pure imagination, because I have asked X-107 and several other people if they can smell anything, and none of them can. But still I meet it everywhere I go. I never knew one could imagine a smell so vividly. People talk about ‘seeing things’ and ‘hearing things’, but I have never come across anyone who suffered from hallucinations which made him ‘smell things’. Not until now. I would gladly cut off my nose to get rid of that stench!

  MARCH 31

  X-107 is doing his best to get me out of my depression. He uses a peculiar method: discussing various arrangements on Level 7 and trying to find a rational explanation and a justification for each. This intellectual game sometimes becomes absorbing. Every now and then, when I am concentrating on some such riddle, I forget about the smell.

  After these discussions we usually arrive at the conclusion that arrangements on Level 7 have been made in the best of all possible ways. Any alternative arrangements which we think up turn out, on examination, to be less perfect. The logical conclusion would seem to be that Level 7 is the best of all possible levels, the best of all possible worlds.

  Take, for example, a simple thing such as entering the PBX Operations Room. If there were nothing to stop anybody going in there, the risk of having a pair of madmen playing with the ‘typewriters’ would be serious. If, instead, we four PBX officers had special keys to the room, that too might cause trouble: somebody could steal a key, or—equally disastrous—an officer might lose it and so be prevented from entering the room quickly in case of an emergency.

  To prevent all these complications, the door is opened for us when we approach it in the course of our duties, and closed to everybody else. It is quite simple: anybody walking up to the door appears on the screen of an anonymous watcher, who decides whether the person should enter the room or not and presses a button if he wants the door to open.

  “But suppose,” I said to X-107 today, “we conspired to push buttons at the moment when one of us was relieving the other from duty and we were both in the room. We might push them because the suspense of waiting for an order was sending us both crazy. What then? Who could prevent the two of us starting a war all on our own?”

  Before X-107 could answer, the sweet voice of the loudspeaker said: “Don’t worry about that! There is a supervisor on Level 7 who has to push his buttons, in his room, before PBX Operations Room is linked with the external rocket bases. So there is a safeguard against the possibility you mentioned, Officer X-127.”

  “You see,” said X-107, “there’s your answer. It’s the best of all possible systems.”

  “And apparently,” I added, “we are watched so closely that there is no chance of our going mad without the loudspeaker noticing it. Isn’t that so, Miss Loudspeaker?”

  The loudspeaker remained silent, and X-107 and myself promptly set about deciding what this silence meant. How should one explain it? Did it mean that the lady was no longer listening to our talk? Or was she listening but not bothering to join in?

  He thought she did not listen, and I that she did not care to answer. He pointed out that she very rarely reacted to anything we said, even when she was quite capable of supplying the answer to one of our questions; which must mean that she did not listen much. I argued that when she did answer it was in response to significant questions only; so she listened a lot, but said little. Neither could prove his case. Then I remembered that I had recorded in my diary a previous instance of an answer from the loudspeaker. It might prove evidence to decide the question one way or the other. For the first time my diary might serve some practical purpose; I do not know why, but this idea pleased me immensely.

  I soon found the entry—the one for March 23. I had been wondering aloud why I had been chosen for training as a push-button officer. I started reading the passage out to X-107, and I had only gone a short way, as far as the phrase ‘push-button’, when it seemed to me that the loudspeaker gave a little click. I stopped reading and glanced up at X-107, who grinned and nodded and pointed up at the loudspeaker to show that he had heard the sound too.

  We waited in silence, but the loudspeaker said nothing.

  Suddenly X-107 called out: “Push-button.” There was the hardly audible click again. We waited a few moments to see if the loudspeaker would make any comment this time, and when it remained silent X-107 went on: “There you are! Behind that grille in the ceiling there must be a microphone as well as a loudspeaker. And the microphone is sensitive to a certain word—the one I said just now. The moment it’s mentioned, the microphone starts working and everything we say is transmitted to the good lady, who answers if she thinks it’s necessary and switches the microphone off again if she isn’t interested.”

  “Do you think she’s interested in the fact that we know how her system works now?” I said, forced to admit that X-107’s hypothesis seemed correct. But I had to test it once more: “Push-button!”

  No answering click was forthcoming, and I waited for X-107 to explain that one.

  He chuckled. “Of course she’s interested,” he said. “She hasn’t switched the microphone off yet, and that’s why it didn’t click that time. It only clicks when it switches itself on.”

  “All right,” I said, “you win. But if the microphone system was intended as some sort of security measure, to check that we weren’t planning to push a few buttons—well, it’s not much use now, is it? We can conspire away as much as we like as long as we don’t mention the key phrase.”

  “Well,” X-107 replied, “the same was true before we knew how the system worked, and they must have known quite well that a device sensitive to only one phrase couldn’t possibly act as a guarantee against conspiracy. Personally, I don’t think their intention is to spy on us in that way at all, otherwise they’d have a much more fool-proof system. They simply chose a phrase which we’d use naturally in discussing our work down here, to enable them to give a piece of advice or answer a question now and then. It’s designed to help us, to see that we’re not worrying about our duties.”

  The lady behind the system—if she was still listening—neither confirmed nor denied this, but I was convinced by X-107’s argument. Certainly we PBX officers are taken very good care of down here.

  And yet, the best of all possible…. How can one speak of best things in this pit of misery? While X-107 and I were arguing about the microphone today I was almost happy. But now, even while I finish writing this entry, it is coming back, that stench.

  APRIL 1

  Yesterday evening, and then several times this morning, we had a general warning through the loudspeaker not to play any of the tricks customary on the First of April. Level 7 cannot afford the spreading of false rumours. No April fools on Level 7.

  The warning was, of course, a very sensible one. The arrangements in the Operations Room are so fool-proof that no one could be misled into starting an actual war; but April fooling could have very dangerous results in other ways.

  Suppose somebody spread the rumour that we were going back up to the surface. Not everybody would swallow it whole; but even if they only half-believed it, it would give rise to hopes which would die a very hard death. Getting reconciled to life down here is difficult enough even if one is convi
nced that the chances of escape are nil.

  The mere idea of getting out makes my heart beat faster. It even makes me forget the smell. One image expels the other one, just as though a fresh, earth-scented breeze from up there had really found its way down and blown away the persecuting stench.

  That is all very pleasant, but thinking about that sort of thing will not do any good in the long run. The drug is too powerful. I might get to the stage where I could not prevent thoughts of escaping from entering my head. I might start to believe in the possibility of getting out, and go quite mad.

  No, no fooling on Level 7. This is a serious place. No tricks, no jokes, no April fools. We are all wise down here, even on April 1.

  Or are we? Perhaps we are April fools all round the year. We are deceiving each other. We are doing it all the time. X-107 is deceiving me and I am deceiving him. And the soft-voiced lady on the loudspeaker is deceiving both of us. We all pretend not to feel what we do feel—and know that we feel. We are doing it all the time.

  We do not deceive just other people; we deceive ourselves. Each of us is making a perpetual April fool of himself, the biggest one imaginable. Each tells himself lies which he pretends to believe, though he knows they are lies.

  Quite right: no April fools on Level 7. Level 7 is the place for all-the-year-round fools.

  APRIL 2

  Today I am in a better mood. I wonder why. I cannot find anything to explain it, but the fact remains that the depression I suffered yesterday and before that has lifted. I am not worried by that awful smell today. It has completely disappeared.