Level 7

JULY 2

No more broadcasts from the couple up there. They are probably dead by now. People have stopped talking about them. They pass into oblivion.

But I still think about them. They are alive for me. They have pushed the hidden button in my soul. The lost, forgotten, decayed button. It was a hard thing to do, but they did it.

What a wonderful button it is. It makes me realise that I am not alone in the world. It makes me feel that there are other beings like myself. Better than myself, some of them: X-117 was better. And the people who stayed outside—most of them were probably better than me.

Why is it so difficult to push that button of humanity, and so easy to push the ones which launch deadly rockets? And why did nobody discover my good button earlier, before it was all too late?

Not that it would have affected the results. If I had refused to push the buttons, and X-117 had refused, X-107 and X-137m would have done it. And if they had refused, anybody else could have done it—without even knowing what he was doing!

The same results could have been achieved without using the Operations Room at all. Our rockets could have been released automatically the moment the enemy rockets exploded, and vice versa. The retaliatory arrangement was almost automatic as it was. It could easily have been made completely automatic. It was an automatic error which started the war. From that point the chain reaction could have gone on with automatic perfection to destroy the world, without any of us button-pushers raising a finger to help it.

When all that has been said, at the bottom of this super-clever, super-stupid business there still remain some human beings in whose souls a button remains unpushed. As mine was, till now.

But what could be done about it? How could all those other buttons be pushed to release the humanity which everyone perhaps has somewhere inside him?

Still, why bother about it? It is too late anyhow.