We, Page 2

  I have read and heard many incredible things about those times when people still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized, savage condition. But most incredible of all, it seems to me, is that the state authority of that time—no matter how rudimentary —could allow men to live without anything like our Table, without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever they felt like it Some historians even say that in those times the street lights burned all night, and people walked and drove around in the streets at all hours of the night.

  Try as I may, I cannot understand it. After all, no matter how limited their intelligence, they should have understood that such a way of life was truly mass murder—even if slow murder. The state (humaneness) forbade the killing of a single individual, but not the partial killing of millions day by day. To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives by fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. Isn’t that absurd? Today, any ten-year-old will solve this mathematical-moral problem in half a minute. They, with all their Kants taken together, could not solve it (because it never occurred to any of the Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, i.e., ethics based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).

  And wasn’t it absurd that the state (it dared to call itself a state!) could leave sexual life without any semblance of control? As often and as much as anyone might wish… Totally unscientific, like animals. And blindly, like animals, they bore their young. Isn’t it ridiculous: to know agriculture, poultry-breeding, fish-breeding (we have exact information that they knew all this), yet fail to go on to the ultimate step of this logical ladder—is child-breeding; fail to establish such a thing as our Maternal and Paternal Norms.

  It is so absurd, so unbelievable, that I am afraid, as I write this, that you, my unknown readers, will think me a malicious joker. I am afraid you may decide that I am merely trying to mock you, telling you utter nonsense with a straight face.

  But, to begin with, I am incapable of jokes, for every joke contains a lie as an implicit function. Secondly, our One State Science asserts that this was how the ancients lived, and our State Science never errs. Besides, where would state logic have come from at a time when men were living in the condition of freedom—the condition of animals, apes, the herd? What could be expected of them, when even in our time the wild, apelike echo still occasionally rises from somewhere below, from some shaggy depth?

  Fortunately, only on rare occasions. Fortunately, they are only breakdowns of minor parts which can easily be repaired without halting the eternal, grandiose movement of the entire Machine. And to expel the warped bolt, we have the skilled, heavy hand of the Benefactor and the experienced eyes of the Guardians.

  And, by the way, I’ve just remembered. That number I saw yesterday, bent like an S—I think I’ve seen him coming out of the Office of the Guardians. Now I understand that instinctive feeling of respect I had for him, and the sense of awkwardness when the strange I-330 spoke before him---1 must confess that this I-330…

  The bell for bedtime: it is past twenty-two. Until tomorrow.

  Fourth Entry

  TOPICS:

  A Savage with a Barometer

  Epilepsy

  If

  Until now, everything in life was clear to me (no wonder I seem to have a predilection for the very word “clear”). Yet today… I cannot understand it.

  First: I was, indeed, assigned to auditorium 112, as she had told me. Although the probability was

  (1500 being the number of auditoriums; 10,000,000, the number of numbers).

  And, second… But let me tell it in order, as it happened.

  The auditorium—an enormous, sun-drenched hemisphere of massive glass. Circular rows of nobly spherical, smooth-shaven heads. With a slightly palpitating heart I looked around me. I think I was searching for the sight of a rosy crescent—O’s sweet lips—over the blue waves of unifs. A flash of someone’s extraordinarily white, sharp teeth, like… No, but it wasn’t that. O was to come to me at twenty-one that evening. It was entirely natural for me to wish to see her there.

  The bell rang. We stood up and sang the Hymn of the One State. And then, from the stage, the voice of the phono-lecturer, glittering with its golden loud-speakers and wit.

  “Respected numbers! Our archeologists have recently dug up a certain twentieth-century book in which the ironic author tells the story of a savage and a barometer. The savage noticed that every time the barometer indicated ‘rain’ it actually rained. And since he wanted it to rain, he picked out exactly enough mercury from the column to leave it at ‘rain.’ ” (On the screen—a savage, dressed in feathers, picking out the mercury. Laughter.) “You are laughing. But does it not seem to you that the European of that period was even more ridiculous? Like the savage, the European wanted ‘rain’—rain with a capital letter, algebraic rain. But all he did was stand before the barometer like a limp wet hen. The savage, at least, had more courage and energy and logic, if only primitive logic He had been able to discover that there was a connection between effect and cause. Picking out the mercury, he was able to take the first step on that great road along which…”

  At this point (I repeat, I write these notes without concealing anything)—at this point I became as though impermeable to the vitalizing stream that flowed from the loud-speakers. I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had come there for nothing (why “for nothing,” and how could I not have come, since I had been assigned there?). Everything seemed empty to me, nothing but mere husks. And when, by dint of a considerable effort, I managed to switch on my attention again, the phono-lecturer had already gone on to his main topic: our music, mathematical composition. (The mathematician as the cause, music as the effect.) He was describing the recently devised musicometer.

  “Simply by turning this handle, any of you can produce up to three sonatas an hour. Yet think how much effort this had cost your forebears! They were able to create only by whipping themselves up to fits of ‘inspiration’—an unknown form of epilepsy. And here you have a most amusing illustration of what they produced: Scriabin, the twentieth century. They called this black box” (a curtain parted on the stage, revealing their most ancient instrument) “a ‘grand,’ a ‘royal’ instrument, which only shows once more to what extent their entire music…”

  And then I lost the thread again, perhaps because… Yes, I will be frank, because she, I-330, came out to the “royal” box. I suppose I was simply startled by her sudden appearance on the stage.

  She wore the fantastic costume of the ancient epoch: a closely fitting black dress, which sharply emphasized the whiteness of her bare shoulders and breast, with that warm shadow, stirring with her breath, between… and the dazzling, almost angry teeth…

  A smile—a bite—to us, below. Then she sat down and began to play. Something savage, spasmodic, variegated, like their whole life at that time—not a trace of rational mechanical method. And, of course, all those around me were right, they all laughed.

  Except for a few… but why was it that I, too… I?

  Yes, epilepsy, a sickness of the spirit, pain… Slow, sweet pain—a bite—and you want it still deeper, still more painful. Then, slowly, the sun. Not ours, not that bluish, crystal, even glow through glass bricks, no—a wild, rushing, scorching sun—and off with all your clothing, tear everything to shreds.

  The number next to me glanced to the left, at me, and snorted. Somehow, a vivid memory remains: a tiny bubble of saliva blew out on his lips and burst. The bubble sobered me. I was myself again.

  Like all the others, I now heard only senseless, hurried clattering. I laughed. There was a feeling of relief; everything was simple. The clever phono-lecturer had given us too vivid a picture of that primitive age. That was all.

  With what enjoyment I listened afterward to our present music! (It was demonstrated at the end, for contrast.) The crystalline chromatic measures
of converging and diverging infinite series and the synthesizing chords of Taylor and McLauren formulas; the full-toned, square, heavy tempos of “Pythagoras’ Trousers”; the sad melodies of attenuating vibrations; vivid beats alternating with Frauenhofer lines of pauses—like the spectroscopic analysis of planets… What grandeur! What imperishable logic! And how pathetic the capricious music of the ancients, governed by nothing but wild fantasies…

  As usual, we walked out through the wide doors of the auditorium in orderly ranks, four abreast. The familiar, doubly bent figure flashed past; I bowed respectfully.

  O was to come in an hour. I felt pleasantly and beneficially excited. At home I stepped hurriedly into the office, handed in my pink coupon, and received the certificate permitting me to lower the shades. This right is granted only on sexual days. At all other times we live behind our transparent walls that seem woven of gleaming air—we are always visible, always washed in light We have nothing to conceal from one another. Besides, this makes much easier the difficult and noble task of the Guardians. For who knows what might happen otherwise? Perhaps it was precisely those strange, opaque dwellings of the ancients that gave rise to their paltry cage psychology. “My (sic!) home is my castle.” What an idea!

  At twenty-two I lowered the shades, and at the same moment O entered, slightly out of breath. She held up to me her pink lips and her pink coupon. I tore off the stub—and could not tear myself away from her pink mouth until the very last second—twenty-two-fifteen.

  Afterward I showed her my “notes” and spoke (I think I spoke very well) about the beauty of the square, the cube, the straight line. She listened with such enchanting pink attention, and suddenly a tear dropped from the blue eyes, then a second, a third, right on the open page (page 7). The ink ran. Now I shall have to copy the page.

  “Darling D, if only you—if…”

  “If” what? If… Her old song again about a child? Or, perhaps, something new—about… about the other one? But this would… No, really, it would be too absurd.

  Fifth Entry

  TOPICS:

  Square

  The Rulers of the World

  A Pleasantly Useful Function

  Again it’s all wrong. Again I speak to you, my unknown reader, as though you… As though, let us say, you were my old friend R-13, the poet, the one with the Negroid lips—everybody knows him. But you are—on the moon, on Venus, Mars, Mercury? Who knows where you are, or who you are.

  Now, think of a square, a living, beautiful square. And imagine that it must tell you about itself, about its life. You understand, a square would scarcely ever think of telling you that all its four angles are equal: this has become so natural, so ordinary to it that it’s simply no longer consciously aware of it. And so with me: I find myself continually in this square’s position. Take the pink coupons, for example, and all the rest that goes with them. To me, this is as natural as the equality of its four angles is to the square, but to you it may be more of a mystery than Newton’s binomial theorem.

  Well. One of the ancient sages said a clever thing—accidentally, of course—“Love and Hunger rule the world.” Ergo: to conquer the world, man must conquer its rulers. Our forebears succeeded, at heavy cost, in conquering Hunger; I am speaking of the Great Two Hundred Years’ War—the war between the city and the village. The primitive peasants, prompted perhaps by religious prejudice, stubbornly clung to their “bread.”[2] But in the year 85 before the founding of the One State, our present food, a petroleum product, was developed. True, only 0.2 of the earth’s population survived the war. But, cleansed of its millennial filth, how radiant the face of the earth has become! And those two tenths survived to taste the heights of bliss in the shining palace of the One State.

  Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness? And what sense would there be in the countless sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years’ War, if reasons for envy still remained in our life? Yet they did remain, for there were still “button” noses and “classical” ones (our conversation during the walk); there were still some whose love was sought by many, and those whose love was sought by none.

  Naturally, having conquered Hunger (algebraically, by the sum total of external welfare), the One State launched its attack against the other ruler of the world—Love. And finally this elemental force was also subjugated, i.e., organized and reduced to mathematical order. About three hundred years ago, our historic Lex Sexualis was proclaimed: “Each number has a right to any other number, as to a sexual commodity.”

  Since then it has been only a matter of technology. You are carefully examined in the laboratories of the Sexual Department; the exact content of sexual hormones in your blood is determined, and you are provided with an appropriate Table of sexual days. After that, you declare that on your sexual days you wish to use number so-and-so, and you receive your book of coupons (pink). And that is all.

  Clearly, this leaves no possible reasons for envy; the denominator of the happiness fraction is reduced to zero, and the fraction is transformed into a magnificent infinity. And so what to the ancients was the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been reduced to a harmonious, pleasant, and useful function of the organism, a function like sleep, physical labor, the consumption of food, defecation, and so on. Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it touches. Oh, if only you, my dear readers, would come to know this divine power, if you, too, would learn to follow it to the end!

  How strange… I have written today about the loftiest peaks of human history; I have breathed all this time the purest mountain air of thought Yet within me everything is somehow cloudly, cobwebby, shadowed by the cross of a strange, fourpawed X. Or is it my own shaggy paws? And all because they have been so long before my eyes? I dislike to talk about them, and I dislike them: they are a relic of a savage epoch. Can it be that somewhere within me there is really…

  I wanted to cross out all this, because it is outside the outlined topics for this entry. Then I decided I would leave it. Let my notes, like the most sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant vibrations of my brain: for it is precisely such vibrations that are sometimes the forewarning of…

  But this is entirely absurd. This really should be stricken out: we have channeled all elemental forces —there can be no catastrophes.

  And now all is entirely clear to me. The odd feeling within me is simply the result of that same square position I have described before. And the troubling X is not within me (it cannot be); it is simply my fear that some X may remain in you, my unknown readers. But I am confident you will not judge me too severely. I am confident you will understand that it is far more difficult for me to write than it has been for any other author in the history of mankind. Some wrote for their contemporaries; others for their descendants. But no one has ever written for ancestors, or for beings similar to his primitive, remote ancestors.

  Sixth Entry

  TOPICS:

  An Incident

  The Damned “It’s Clear”

  Twenty-four Hours

  I repeat: I have made it my duty to write without concealing anything. Therefore, sad as it is, I must note here that even among us the process of the hardening, the crystallization of life has evidently not yet been completed; there are still some steps to be ascended before we reach the ideal. The ideal (clearly) is the condition where nothing happens any more. But now… Well, today’s One State Gazette announces that the day after tomorrow there will be a celebration of Justice at the Plaza of the Cube. This means that once again some number has disturbed the operation of the great State Machine; again something has happened that was unforeseen, unforecalculated.

  Besides, something has happened to me as well. True, this was during the Personal Hour, that is, at a time especially set aside for unforeseen circumstances. Nevertheless…

  At about the hour of sixteen (or, to be exact, ten to sixteen) I was at home. Suddenl
y the telephone rang. A female voice: “D-503?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you free?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is 1, I-330.1 shall call for you in a moment —we’ll go to the Ancient House. Agreed?”

  I-330… She irritates and repels me, she almost frightens me. But this is exactly why I said, “Yes.”

  Five minutes later we were already in the aero. The blue majolica of the Maytime sky; the light sun in its own golden aero buzzing after us, neither falling behind nor overtaking us. And ahead of us— a cloud, white as a cataract, preposterous and puffed out like the cheeks of an ancient cupid, and somehow disturbing. Our front window is up. Wind, drying the lips. Involuntarily, you lick them all the time, and all the time you think of lips.

  Then, in the distance, blurred green spots—out there, behind the Wall. A slight, quick sinking of the heart—down, down, down—as from a steep mountain, and we are at the Ancient House.

  The whole strange, fragile, blind structure is completely enclosed in a glass shell. Otherwise, of course, it would have fallen apart a long time ago. At the glass door, an old woman, all wrinkled, especially her mouth—nothing but folds and pleats, the lips sunk inward, as if the mouth had grown together somehow. It seemed incredible that she would still be able to speak. And yet, she spoke.

  “Well, darlings, so you’ve come to see my little house?” And the wrinkles beamed (they must have arranged themselves radially, creating the impression of “beaming”).

  “Yes, Grandmother, I felt like seeing it again,” said I-330.

  The wrinkles beamed. “What sunshine, eh? Well, well, now? You little pixy! I know, I know! All right, go in by yourselves, I’ll stay here, in the sun…”