Level 7

APRIL 24

I am playing cat and mouse with P-867. She, of course, is the cat.

She wants to marry me. I do not want to marry at all, and if I had felt like marrying at any time I would have chosen N-527. But I have missed my chance there, I admit. Her marriage to E-647 was announced yesterday.

I am trying to escape from P-867 by talking to other people when I visit the lounge—the only alternative is to give up going there, which would be a pity. Yesterday I discovered a quiet girl there, R-747. Eventually, when some children have been born and grown past the kindergarten stage, she will become a teacher—T-747. (The reason TN-237m has already had her title changed is that her job is likely to start in less than a year.) R-747 will instruct children from the age of six or seven onwards. In the meantime, she is preparing instructional material and developing methods of education for use on Level 7. Occasionally, as a reserve officer, she is given odd duties which do not require special training, but she says that the task of preparing for the education of the coming generation is enough by itself to keep her pretty busy.

I said I did not see how this could occupy all her working life for the next six or seven years, so she explained some of the problems to me. “Look,” she said, “when you were six years old I expect your grandmother sat you on her knee and told you stories about a good Lord in heaven who rewarded good children, about angels who watched over you when you were asleep, and so on. If you were a naughty boy, then you may have been frightened of going to hell, which was supposed to be a place deep, deep down inside the earth. Now, stories like these—”

Here she was interrupted by P-867, who had been listening to the last part of our conversation. “Stories like those are nonsense anyhow,” she objected, “and they interfere with the normal development of the child. I hope you’re not going to teach that kind of rubbish to the children down here.”

“That’s just what I was going to say,” replied R-747 quietly. “We can’t tell the children that the way to hell is downwards, and to heaven upwards. We’ll have to reverse the story: hell will be somewhere up there, and paradise deep inside the earth—deeper than Level 7, even. Or perhaps Level 7 itself will be the new heaven.”

P-867 wanted to interrupt again, but I broke in before she did—on purpose, because her constant company was becoming increasingly irksome to me, while the problems raised by R-747 were interesting and provided new food for thought. Addressing R-747, I said: “So what you’re trying to do is to create a new mythology, one adapted to fit the facts and supply the needs of Level 7.”

P-867 snorted: “But why do we need mythology at all? To hell with all this nonsense!”

“Don’t you mean ‘to heaven’ with it?” I asked; but my little quip reverberated in a sinister way in my mind, so I added crossly: “What do psychologists understand about mythology, anyway?”

This made her angry and she found some excuse to leave us. I cheered up at that, for the creation of myths seemed a fascinating pastime to me, and it was obvious I would not have been able to go on discussing the subject with P-867 around.

Unfortunately our time in the lounge was up a minute later, so I had to break off my talk with R-747.