Level 7

MAY 14

P seems to be almost in love with me. I wonder if she would feel jealous about me. I told her about my discussion with X-107 and she said she had credited him with more sense. I tried to defend him, and in the end she agreed to give him the benefit of the doubt. She ended by saying that he himself should get married. Then he would talk less nonsense.

Marriages go on taking place at a steady rate. One sees more and more people at meal-times with the ‘m’ attached to their badges, and every day there are fresh announcements over the loudspeaker: engineers, doctors, nurses, food-supply officers, wastage officers, air-supply men, atomic energy officers, loudspeaker officers, psychologists, quite a number of reserve officers and many others have paired up. X-117’s room-mate, X-137, has married too. That leaves only two bachelors out of the four of us.

The ‘Know Thy Level’ talks finished today. In the summing up of the series great stress was laid on the significance of our position on Level 7, the deepest and safest place of all.

The reason for that privileged position is the function of Level 7. At the centre of everything is PBX Command, which is the offensive branch of our military power. “Attack,” the speaker explained, “is the best form of defence.” That is the reason why Level 7 is so deep in the earth: it can hit the enemy and devastate his country while all the time remaining out of his reach.

What he said made me think afresh about my personal position on Level 7. It really is a pretty significant one. I push the buttons, and most of the others are down here to supply the necessities of life for me: to provide me with air, food, energy and so on, and to look after my physical and mental health.

Of course, everybody down here is necessary. Without their services we push-button officers could not do a thing. And X-117’s illness has proved the importance of people like P, who provide nothing in the material sense but stand by in case anything goes wrong with our minds. Still, the knowledge that Level 7 centres round the push-button function, that it houses the Push-Button X Command, in fact, gives me a feeling of importance.

There must still be the Command itself, naturally, whatever it may be. I have never noticed anybody wearing a badge with ‘C’ on it, nor have any ‘C’ marriages been announced. I wonder who and how many the commanders are.

At the end of today’s talk the speaker announced a new series which is to start tomorrow: ‘Know Other Levels’. This may prove more interesting, for the ‘Know Thy Level’ series mostly confirmed and explained things we knew about already from daily experience, while the new talks may introduce us to worlds unknown.