Level 7

APRIL 15

Our resident philosopher, Ph-107, held forth in the lounge again today. His subject was ‘Freedom on Level 7’.

This time his audience was less attentive, and one or two people broke away to talk quietly among themselves in a corner. The rest listened with half an ear. Perhaps they could not think of anything better to do.

Ph-107 was saying that on Level 7 we enjoyed not only perfect democracy but also absolute freedom. When we were not on duty we could do whatever we liked. Most important, we could discuss quite freely the arrangements on Level 7. There was no secrecy, everything having been planned for the good of all and nothing needing to be hidden from our understanding.

“It is this, really, which gives our life down here the perfection which it could not achieve up above,” he said. “Back there precautions had to be taken against subversion, against enemy spies, against misunderstanding. All that meant curtailing the freedom of the individual for the benefit of society. Here, on Level 7, there are no such dangers. We are hermetically cut off from enemy and ally alike, from spies and from over-inquisitive friends, from strangers and from the ignorant masses. Here everybody is known and everybody is knowing. Everybody can enjoy the individuality which his personal number symbolises. Nobody has contact with the spiritually inferior, though materially superior, outer world—indeed, it is because we are materially cut off from the world that we are able to develop the spiritual side of our natures to this extent. This is true freedom, a freedom which only Level 7 can give.”

He went on in this style, trying to show that liberty could not be misused here, for people chosen to live on Level 7 were reasonable, had little individual power (being dependent on all their fellows), and so on and so forth.

I had some questions I felt like asking—notably, whether a man condemned to solitary confinement but allowed to hammer his head against the wall of his cell could be called free—but I decided to say nothing. What was the use? Let him hammer his speech against us and imagine that he is free. If he believes in what he says, that is.

I was too bored to listen to his speech right to the end, and left the lounge before our time was up. I thought I would rather lie down here on my bunk and listen to some music.