We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Our gods are here, below. They are with us in the Bureau, in the kitchen, in the shops, in the rest- rooms. The gods have become like us, ergo we have become like gods. And we shall come to you, my unknown readers on another planet, we shall come to you to make your life as god-like, as rational and as correct as ours….

“I hate fog. I am afraid of fog.” “Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. For you cannot subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot conquer.”

But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don’t torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions.

some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus…. All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that minus, turn it upward and thus change its aspect.

If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the Integral, they—” “Whom do you mean by ‘they’?” “How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time.”

If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand?

Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts….

A thought awoke in me: “what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!” I waved my hand. The yellow eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. What a pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier than I he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.

the unknown is naturally the enemy of man. And Homo Sapiens only then becomes Man in the complete sense of the word, when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation points, commas and periods.

In the ancient days the Christians understood this feeling; they are our only (though very imperfect) direct forerunners. The greatness of the “Church of the United Flock” was known to them. They knew that resignation is virtue, and pride—a vice; that “We” is from God, “I” from the devil.

To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

Tomorrow is the day of the yearly election of the Well-Doer. Tomorrow we shall again hand over to our Well-Doer the keys to the impregnable fortress of our happiness. Certainly this in no way resembles the disorderly, unorganized election-days of the ancients, on which (it seems so funny!) they did not even know in advance the result of the election.

We have nothing to conceal or to be ashamed of; we celebrate our election openly, honestly, in daylight. I see them all vote for the Well-Doer and everybody sees me vote for the Well-Doer. How could it be otherwise, since “all” and “I” are one “we”? How ennobling, sincere, lofty, is this compared with the cowardly, thievish “secrecy” of the ancients! Moreover, how much more expedient! For even admitting for a moment the impossible, that is the outbreak of some dissonance in our customary unity, in that case our unseen Guardians are always right there among us, are they not, to register the Numbers who would fall into error and save them from any further false steps?

I jumped up. “It is inconceivable! It is absurd! Is it not clear to you that what you are contriving is a revolution?” “Yes, a revolution. Why is it absurd?” “Absurd? because a revolution is impossible! Because our (I speak for myself and for you), our revolution was the last one. No other revolutions may occur. Everybody knows that.”