Level 7

SEPTEMBER 25

Level 6 is still silent. Like the grave.

There must be something seriously wrong there. It cannot be just a matter of the transmitter. PBY Command, with its team of specialists trained to operate, check and repair the most complicated electronic gadgets, would be the last to be silenced by the breakdown of a radio transmitter.

More and more people down here are saying that Level 6 has perished. Probably so suddenly that they did not even have time to broadcast the news.

But what could have happened there? Perhaps their atomic reactor exploded—if this is possible. Perhaps the plants suddenly died and left people with no air to breathe. Perhaps….

Who can know what really happened? No one has lived long enough in the caves to know all the things that can go wrong. It is impossible to anticipate everything. Though we knew how aircraft worked, there were still crashes. Railways had been operated even longer, but that did not prevent the occasional accident.

So why should we be surprised if a shelter perishes, even one which looks completely safe? Look at what sometimes happened to submarines. And what are our levels but subterraneans?

Why should we consider ourselves so completely safe? Just because the surface is so fatally dangerous?