Level 7

INTRODUCTION How I started to write this diary

Some time has passed—thirty-seven days, to be precise—since I decided to write this diary and started to do so. It seems longer: these thirty-seven days have stretched out like eternity. My previous life passes before my mind as a recollected dream, a remote image, the life of another man. In a way, I got adjusted to my new life pretty quickly, though I am still far from feeling happy.

It is now, when my diary is already quite substantial, that it occurs to me that it should have some sort of introduction.

Introduction for whom? I ask myself. What chance is there that the diary will ever see daylight? I mean that literally. For my unknown and uncertain reader sometime in the future, this diary is being written in dungeons.

These dungeons are so deep underground that there is not the slightest chance of any ray of natural light penetrating into them. Not that we need daylight, of course. Our light down here is as strong as is desirable. It is scientifically adjusted to suit human needs. In some ways it is more perfect than sunlight: we get no gloomy days down here, and we never need sun-glasses. I’m told the temperature too is scientifically regulated—to 68 degrees, I believe. This must be the only place in the world where nobody ever talks about the weather. There isn’t any.

So here I am, 4,400 feet down inside the earth, with no chance of seeing sunshine again, writing a diary which probably no one will ever read. The idea of writing it occurred to me a few hours after I had come down. They were very hard hours—hours in which I realised that I shall never go back up to live on the surface of the earth again. But I must go back a bit to tell you how it happened.

The time was 8:00 a.m. and the date was March 21. I was sitting in my room at the PB (Push-Button) Training Camp. I had just had my breakfast, and I was in the act of glancing through the day’s work-programme when there came a knock at the door. A messenger poked his head in and said that the Commanding Officer wanted to see me at once. I glanced in the mirror, flicked a speck of dust off the sleeve of my uniform, took my cap down from the peg behind the door, and left the room.

I had no idea I was walking out of one life and into another. I didn’t even wonder much what the C.O. wanted to see me about. He quite often called one in without any advance warning. Sometimes it was for a fairly important matter—to say that you were to go on attachment to another training base, for example, or that you had been promoted, or that your work was not up to standard. Sometimes it was for one of his periodical inquiries about how you had spent your leave or week-end pass, to find out whether you had met anybody who seemed to be too interested in military secrets. And sometimes he called you in for a friendly-seeming chat without any apparent purpose, which made you wonder for the rest of the day whether he had had a hidden motive or was just plain bored and wanted somebody to talk to.

For the C.O. often was bored—lonely, anyway. As the administrative apex of a highly trained unit of military technicians, he was our superior in rank but inferior to us in technical education, in I.Q. and—so we thought—in his indispensability for modern warfare. So he was always obeyed, but seldom respected; and never treated as a friend. Our attitude probably resembled that of a bunch of Ivy-league college boys under a veteran sergeant who ruled as a god on the parade ground but with whom they would not have dreamt of associating in private. I wouldn’t know for certain because I never was an aristocrat and our instruction bore little resemblance to the old-time training for officers.

To get back to my story: when I was summoned to the C.O. that morning I had no idea what to expect. I thought vaguely that it might be something to do with my leave. For the last three months I had not been allowed off the camp—it had been the final phase of my training period. I had not even had a week-end away. I felt I deserved some leave. We had excellent facilities for leisure inside the camp, but even the inconveniences of life outside seemed attractive once in a while. Now that I am deep underground, even the restricted life of the camp seems almost unbearably attractive in retrospect. And as for a week-end free to go where I liked and do what I wanted—I daren’t think about it.

Anyhow, the notion that leave might be in store for me put me in a cheerful frame of mind as I walked over to the administrative block and entered the C.O.’s office. The C.O. was as quiet and controlled in his manner as ever, perhaps—so it seems to me now—even quieter and more controlled than usual. He asked me to take a chair, and then told me that the report on my final training was quite good. I was to be promoted to major, and would receive the increased pay which went with the rank. “As a matter of fact,” he added with a superior smile, “you’ll be getting rather more than I get, because of your technical qualifications.” I thanked him for the news, and thought how cleverly he camouflaged his feeling of inferiority.

“Now, your leave,” he went on, and my hopes rose. “Unfortunately,” and he paused on the word, conscious of having scored, “that will have to be postponed for a day or two. You have been ordered down.”

This meant underground, to the deep military installations of whose existence we trainees were, of course, aware, but which we had never seen.

“You’ll be able to gain first-hand knowledge of those matters with which your training up here has made you acquainted. And then,” with his sweetest smile, “you will be truly capable of fulfilling your duty and repaying your country for the money, time and energy it has invested in you.”

I swallowed that remark too. Coated, as it was, with the sweet sugar of higher rank and pay, it went down fairly easily.

“After you return from the trip down,” the C.O. concluded, “you will go on two weeks’ leave. This is a part of the order from above, which even I could not change if I wished to.” He could never say a pleasant thing without some bitter twist; but it did not worry me. I was already thinking about my leave—my ordered leave.

Did the C.O. know that this leave business was only a trick, part of the routine for taking me, and my fellows, smoothly down? I did not think so. He was just passing on orders which he, just then, understood as little as I did.

When I asked him at what time I was expected to leave, he told me that a car was already waiting for me outside his office. This struck me as rather unusual, for normally an order of this sort allowed some time for personal preparation. Still, one purpose of a military training is to accustom you to obeying orders without asking questions. I therefore accepted without query another curious fact: that I should take nothing with me, not even a toothbrush. “Everything will be provided on the spot,” said the C.O. “Just get into the car and go.”

This was becoming interesting. But there was no time for meditation. I stood up, saluted, left the office, stepped into the waiting car, and we were off. I remember glancing at my watch. The time was 8.30.

It was not until a few days later, after my destiny had been made known to me, that I understood the reason for this haste. The Supreme Command wanted to take no chances. It did not want the men and women who were ordered down to talk to anybody who was to remain. They had to be taken down directly, without any contact with friends and relations. The only man who knew that we—myself and some others from my camp—were going down was the C.O., and he could be relied upon to keep his mouth shut. Even the toothbrush I left had a function to fulfil. It would serve as evidence that my disappearance was purely accidental and unrelated to any military task. If I had been sent somewhere on duty, I would surely have taken my toothbrush with me. In short, my companions and I had to vanish as inconspicuously as possible, as if the earth had opened and swallowed us up. Which is precisely what happened.

The car in which I was being driven was a closed military model of unremarkable appearance, the type of car which might have been used by anybody from a lieutenant to a general. I was sitting by myself in the rear seat, feeling most comfortable. I clearly remember this sensation of comfort, because it occurred to me that this was the way a major should feel. I realise now how silly I was to let the business of my new rank fill my mind at that moment. But, reclining on the soft seat, I felt like Napoleon after Austerlitz.

After day-dreaming pleasantly for an hour or so I began to look more closely at one feature of the car which was unusual: a partition which divided the front and rear of the car into separate compartments. I remembered seeing old films in which taxi-drivers were often separated from their patrons by glass windows. But the partition in my car was made of some opaque plastic stuff. I could not even see the driver, let alone talk to him. I had no way of communicating with him, which was a pity, because I would have liked to ask him the reason for the partition. Presumably that is exactly why the screen was there: to stop me asking questions. Well, one gets used to that in military life. I sat back again and, for lack of anything better to do, gazed out of the car window in an effort to establish where we were going.

I did not learn much. We seemed to have left the signposted public roads, and were travelling across barren territory which I had never seen before.

At about 11.00 a.m. the car entered a tunnel. I just had time to notice how well the entrance had been camouflaged—the countryside was rocky, and two huge natural boulders formed an arch which quite hid the mouth of the tunnel—before we were inside and travelling down a steep but smooth and well-lit incline. The tunnel was wide enough for two cars to pass, but no vehicles were coming the opposite way. (I assume they must have used a special exit tunnel. In case of emergency, either of them could be used for two-way traffic.) My car had slowed down now, presumably because of other cars ahead of us which I could not see from my seat. Then it stopped, moved on and stopped again several times, as in a traffic jam. Suddenly—it did seem sudden, though I had been anticipating the moment—the car stopped again and the door was quickly opened by someone outside. This was it. I stepped out.

The car had drawn up very close to an entrance in the wall of the tunnel. There was only one way for me to go—through that entrance. A notice on the wall of the short passage in which I found myself read: ‘Don’t Stop! Keep Moving!’ I passed through another door and entered a lift.

It was a fairly big one, about twelve feet square. Some people were in it already, and others were following me in. When it was quite full the door closed and down we went. As far as I could judge by the initial acceleration, the lift was travelling pretty fast—1,000 feet or more per minute. And as it took us about three minutes to reach our destination, I guessed we must be at least 3,000 feet underground. As I learned later, it was even more than that: our dungeons were located 4,400 feet below the crust of the earth.

We stepped out into a well-illuminated corridor, some seven feet wide by seven feet high and twenty or thirty yards long. It was quite bare except for painted signs on the walls telling whoever was in it to proceed—hardly necessary, as the lift-door had closed firmly behind us. At the far end of the corridor was a revolving door through which we passed one by one. I remember glancing behind me after I had gone through and noticing that one half of the door was blocked on the inside. And the door only revolved one way. But the full significance of this did not strike me at the time.

The passage in which we now found ourselves led to a moving staircase—only one such staircase, and moving down. A minute or so later I was standing in a long narrow room which stretched about fifty yards on either hand. It was set at right angles to the escalator we had just come down. The escalator exit door was in the centre of one side of the room, and to its left and right were other doors spaced along the length of the wall. Each door bore an inscription of some sort, but I was more interested in examining the long table which ran the length of the other long wall, opposite the doors. It was supported by brackets from the wall, and at each extremity it appeared to run into a hole in the end wall of the room.

Before I had had time to examine it closely a woman’s voice, very calm and clear, began repeating over a loudspeaker: “Everybody proceed to the table and be seated on the bench. Move along the room and do not block the entrance. Do not stop at the centre; move along the table. Thank you.”

Soon the bench was filled to capacity, and no more people were coming in from the staircase. I could not count how many were seated at the table, but I guessed the number must be somewhere between 150 and 200 (I found out later that meals were in fact served to 177 to 178 persons at a time). Then the voice on the loudspeaker was heard again: “Attention, please! Lunch will be served presently.”

Whereupon, as if at an agreed signal, everybody started talking. Though my neighbours were perfect strangers to me, they addressed me and I addressed them at almost the same moment.

“Well, that was a ride!”

“So this is the bowels of the earth!”

“We must be very deep down.”

“Thirty-five hundred feet, I’d say.”

“More than that!”

“And quite quickly done.”

“I wonder what we’ll get for lunch.”

“I feel rather hungry after all that.”

“So do I.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Such were the things we said: not profound things or purposeful things, but somehow important to the people seated at the table. It was only after this spontaneous talk had erupted all along the line that it occurred to me that not a word had been uttered all the way down in the lift, along the corridors, on the escalator and finally in this dining-room. Apparently we had all been so preoccupied with the experience of going down that we had hardly noticed each other’s existence. The intensity of our brooding was revealed only after the familiar idea of lunch had jerked us out of ourselves and set our tongues free.

Now the loudspeaker addressed us again: “Attention, please! Your lunches will be served to you on the moving band of the table. Wait till the band stops. Then start eating. Eat everything you are given. You will need it. Don’t forget the pills: they are important for your diet. Don’t wonder or hesitate about the food. It was scientifically prepared to meet the needs of men and women in this new environment. Thank you.” Click.

Even before the loudspeaker had finished, the band had started to move, and I saw what the voice meant. I had not noticed before that the table was covered with a wide strip of some plastic substance which ran the whole of its length and into the slots in the end walls. As the band moved it bore dishes of food towards us from one of the holes. It moved smoothly and quite quickly, and slowed down steadily to a halt as the first dish reached the far end of the room. Now the long table was covered with identical, equally-spaced plates which—as I found when I tried—were attached to the band and could not be removed. Beside each place, on a magnetised metal disc, stood a metal cup which was further secured by a spiral wire to the plastic band. A medium-sized spoon was fastened to the band by a similar wire. In this way the cup and the spoon could be used but not taken away, on exactly the same principle as the pencils provided for customers in some offices. The magnetic ‘saucer’ stopped the cup sliding about when the band was in motion and also, I guessed, held it firm when the endless band passed upside-down through a washing machine which cleaned table, crockery and cutlery all together. I found out later that my guess had been right, and that the whole process, including doling out the food, was fully automatic.

The food—well, that was rather disappointing. If we hardly found time to say so, it was because we were so busy talking about the other astonishing arrangements. There was very little to eat on the plate, and it had hardly any taste; but somehow it managed to satisfy our hunger. It consisted of a small piece of reddish stuff (some sort of synthetic multipurpose food) which was eaten with the spoon, and three pills. The pills one washed down with the half-pint or so of yellow liquid contained in the cup.

I do not know why I am going into such detail about all this. Probably because my first impressions of the underground arrangements were particularly sharp. It quite often happens that on momentous occasions we pay most careful attention to the least significant facts. This first meal has been preserved in my mind as a memorable event, a sacrament initiating me into this holy of holes—or rather, into this hole of holes.

As soon as we had eaten our meal—which did not take long—and the band had carried our plates and cups into the other slot in the wall, the loudspeaker sounded again. We were ordered to go each to his respective department. The door to each section was clearly marked, and I soon found one saying ‘Push-Button X’. In the course of looking for my door I noticed the inscriptions on some of those which the other men and women were entering: ‘Hospital M’, ‘Administration Ad’, ‘Air Supply AS’. However, I had no time to examine all the doors. Trained to respond alertly, I turned at once into ‘Push-Button X’.

After passing through a narrow corridor, which had one door on each side, I went through another door at the end into what I recognised at once as the Push-Button X Operations Room. There was nothing strange about this room. It was exactly the same as the one back up there in the training camp. I won’t bother to describe it now, because I have already done so elsewhere in the diary.

In the Operations Room there was already another man waiting. He wore a uniform like mine, was of about the same age and build, and seemed somehow familiar—possibly because I had seen him before somewhere, possibly because he seemed to resemble me so much. Before we could say anything the door opened and two more men came in one after the other. I recognised one of them—a fellow-trainee from the PB camp—and the other one appeared to know the man who had been there when I arrived. (I learnt later that they had trained together at another PB camp.)

We had no time to introduce ourselves before a loudspeaker addressed us: “Attention, gentlemen! As you see, you are in the Push-Button X Operations Room. You are collectively and individually responsible for this room. This room must never, repeat never, be left unattended.

“Now, let me introduce you to one another. The gentleman near the door is Push-Button Officer X-117; on his right stands X-137; the officer in the centre of the room is X-127; the fourth is X-107, and he is the first on duty. He will be relieved at 18.00 hours by X-117. However, he must not leave the Operations Room until his relief has actually arrived.

“The others may now retire to their rooms. X-117 and X-137 will occupy the room located on their right as they re-enter the corridor from this room. X-127 will occupy the room on the left-hand side, together with X-107.

“Thank you, gentlemen!”

It seemed that our manœuvres were to be just like the real thing: lodgings near the Operations Room, one man always on duty—a perfect exercise, I thought. At the time it did not enter my head that—well, I found out before very long.

We must have appeared on the viewing screen of the unknown person who had introduced us through the loudspeaker, but the thought did not embarrass me. I shook hands with my comrades-in-buttons, exchanged friendly greetings with my fellow-trainee, X-137, and spoke a few polite words to X-107, the one remaining on duty.

The combined living- and bed-room which I now entered surprised me by its smallness. It looked very much like the tiny cabin I had once seen illustrated in a book on military history, in the days before ships became obsolete as an arm of military operations, along with tanks and aircraft. Of course, it was electronic equipment which had crowded out those old sailors. And I decided it must have been the sheer sweat of building anything down here which accounted for the fact that this bed-living-room was made so small.

A pair of bunks, one above the other, occupied most of the space. There was one ordinary chair and another seat which pulled down on a hinge from the wall if a second person wanted to sit down. There was also a desk which worked on the same principle. Under the lower bunk there were several drawers which, to my surprise, were filled with neatly folded uniforms, shirts, underclothes and so forth. Also some writing materials. A door led into a little bathroom, the equipment of which—an excellent shower, washbasin and toilet—compensated somewhat for the economies of the other room.

After exploring my new quarters I decided I would put my feet up for a while. I still felt excited, but the welter of new experiences had tired me. I took off my jacket and shoes, assigned the lower bunk to my companion and lay down on the top one. There did not seem to be anything else to do, anyway.

I do not know how long I lay there like that because I must have fallen asleep for a time. The next thing I remember is hearing a woman’s voice, the one which had come over the loudspeaker in the dining-room, repeat several times, loudly: “Attention please, attention! Attention please, attention!”

The voice was coming from a loudspeaker built into the ceiling of the room. I had not noticed it before. Lying on the top bunk, I had the sensation that somebody was holding me by the lobe of my ear and shouting into it to make sure I did not miss a word.

“Attention please, attention!” is still ringing in my head. Sometimes when I try to relax, take a warm shower, unharness my thoughts from my daily duties and let them loose on the sunny meadows of my terrestrial past, I suddenly realise that my lips are silently forming words. I speak them out loud, and always they are the same words: “Attention please, attention!”

I was lying wide awake now with my eyes open, ready to take in the message. It was very clear.

“Attention please, attention! This message is addressed to all underground forces on Level 7.

“You have been brought here today to serve as the advance guard of our country, our creed, our way of life. To you men and women on Level 7 is entrusted the operation of the offensive branch of the military machine of our country and its allies.

“You are the defenders of truth and justice. Our infamous and treacherous enemy has gone too far in developing his striking-power. In order to make ourselves safe from surprise attack and capable of retaliation, it is imperative that we protect our protectors, that we secure for our security forces the best possible shelter. That is the reason why you have been brought down to Level 7. From here you will be able to defend our country without the slightest chance of danger to yourselves. From here you will be able to attack without being attacked. To the world above you are invisible, but you hold the destiny of that world beneath the tips of your fingers. A day may come soon when some of you will be commanded to push a button, and your fingers will annihilate the enemy and make the victory ours.

“’Till that day,” the loudspeaker went on, “you will have to serve your country and humanity on Level 7. This a privileged position, and you may feel proud to have been chosen for this duty. Remembering that this is also the safest place on earth, you may feel happy too. Arrangements have been made for every aspect of your well-being. You will have all you need. There is no danger of supplies running short: thanks to modern scientific achievements, we are self-sufficient here on Level 7. You need not worry about your friends and relatives outside. They will be notified that you have been killed in a painless accident and that you left no remains. We regret this, but your disappearance must remain absolutely secret. Down here you will find new friends and create new families.

“All this had to be done the way it was done, and we are happy to announce that Operation Level 7 Down, which brought you here today, was a complete success. Needless to say, there is no way back available to you; but it will please you to know that neither is there any way for radioactive pollution, should any occur, to find its way down here: the system was hermetically sealed as soon as the last of you had arrived this morning. You are safely cut off from the surface of the earth and from the other six shelter levels. We wish you and ourselves—for we are with you—good luck. Get adjusted to your new environment.

“Let us all get adjusted! Thank you.”

The loudspeaker was silent. I lay on my bunk without moving a finger. I had heard every word of the announcement perfectly clearly, yet I was not as shocked as might have been expected. Maybe the blow was so severe that my feelings were somehow outshocked, pushed beyond the limits of normal reaction. Perhaps we had been given a sedative in our meal. Or it may have been some self-protective mechanism of the mind which worked as a buffer to guard it from the full emotional impact of the message it had intellectually understood.

So there I lay, quite still, knowing what the message had said, and yet perplexed. Was it my lack of reaction which puzzled me? Or was it some aspect of the message which I had not fully understood?

My eyes were wide open, fixed on the loudspeaker, and one sentence was echoing backwards and forwards in my head: “Till that day you will have to serve your country and humanity on Level 7…. Till that day you will have to serve your country and humanity on Level 7…. Till that day…”

Till what day? I began to ask myself. Till the day of victory, of course, as the message said. But what if there were no victory? What if the enemy were victorious?

Well, we stood at least a fifty-fifty chance of winning; probably better. And anyway, fighting soldiers had always had to lose some of their freedom, and had never fought in safer circumstances than those in which I found myself. The announcement had made it clear that Level 7 was the safest place on earth. If war happened, the chances of surviving outside would be nil. I knew quite well what atomic war implied. Even if we were victorious, the damage up on top would be so disastrous and the atomic pollution so widespread that no living creature could exist there. I was very lucky to be on Level 7.

But, my thoughts ran on, what if the war were postponed for five years, ten years, fifteen years? What if the war never happened? Should I have to spend the rest of my life in these dungeons, waiting for the command to press the buttons—a command that might never come?

“Till that day you will have to serve your country and humanity on Level 7.”

Till when? Why didn’t we start the war at once and get it over with. Why wait? I desperately wanted to get out, the sooner the better.

It was then, as I lay there with my eyes still fixed on the loudspeaker, that the full truth of my situation went home like a knife in my back: whatever happened, I was down there for life. Even if we declared war that instant and won it inside a day, I would never be able to go back. The radioactive pollution caused by a full-scale atomic war would be such that the surface of the earth would be uninhabitable for decades. Perhaps for centuries. I would never see it again.

I think I must have intuitively guessed this fact as soon as I heard the words of the announcement. Then I had felt puzzled because I had not worked out the logical steps that led from the words which came over the loudspeaker to the conclusion my mind jumped to. The jump had stunned me, so that I hardly felt anything.

But now I could feel. Now that I had worked out and checked the conclusion to which my guess had carried me, I could begin to appreciate what living down here would mean. I would never see towns again, or green fields. I would never walk down a street again, mixing with a crowd of people. And I would not see any more sunshine.

That was the thought that bothered me most. It made me nearly mad, the idea that I would never see sunshine again. Level 7 was worse than a jail, I thought, because even prisoners walked around a yard now and then, in the sunshine. I wanted to break out, to go up. At that moment I did not care how dangerous life on top might be. I wanted to live there and die there, under the sun, and not to decay slowly down in this miserable hole.

My mind was not coolly analysing the situation now, but boiling with hectic plans for escape. How could I get out? I had to get out. Then I remembered the escalator which moved only one way—down. At the head of it had been the revolving door which allowed no return. And beyond that was the lift-shaft, which must have been sealed off if what the loudspeaker had said was true. Even if I were able to race up those swiftly moving stairs and batter down the door, I would have no way of operating the lift. I could push a button to destroy the world, but there was no button I could push to summon that lift.

My frustration and despair had reached such a pitch that I was finding it impossible to lie still any longer. I had to get up and do something, anything to keep me busy. But what could I do? There were no books to read. I could not write a letter to anyone.

No, but I could write! I remembered the writing materials I had seen in the drawer. (A good psychological move on someone’s part, that was.) I could write just for myself—a sort of diary of thoughts, feelings, impressions, things I did. And one day—who knows?—my diary might be discovered and published on the surface of the earth, up there in the sunshine. Part of me, my spirit, might one day see daylight, might be warmed by the sun!

I knew I was cheating myself. I knew that the chances of my diary’s appearance up on the earth were remote. Even if the sun did shine on it one day, what good was that to me here and now? Still, I liked the illusion. It was comforting, even exciting. So I started writing this diary, and now whenever I sit down to report on another day, I have that same feeling of comfort and excitement.

I shall go on writing this diary as long as I live. For this is the only way in which I can feel the sun.

April 27.

X-127.