Level 7

SEPTEMBER 27

We have concluded a peace treaty with the enemy. The voting was almost unanimously in favour of it. Why not? We may as well enjoy some live company before we join the other levels.

I wrote that paragraph this morning. Since then I have been thinking what a strange peace this is which we have made. A peace of death.

We are at peace not because the world is united, physically or in spirit, but because the warring camps are separated by an insurmountable barrier of death.

We, our former enemy and ourselves, wanted to be masters of mankind. Each of us wanted to rule the whole world, or to save it (both formulas amount to the same thing now). And the result: both sides have been diminished to a few hundred cave-dwellers.

Never in all human history was there anything so grotesque. Two vast countries, the two greatest world powers, reduced in a matter of hours to the status of a few moles, hiding below ground in the constant fear that the next hour will be their last.