We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Breakfast was over. The Hymn of the One State had been sung harmoniously. In fours, we went to the elevators, harmoniously. The rustling of the motors was almost audible—and rapidly down, down, down—with a slight sinking of the heart . . . And, just then, for no reason, that ridiculous dream surfaced again—or some sort of implicit function of the dream. Ah, of course, only yesterday I had that same sinking feeling in the aero— on our descent. But all that is over with: period. And it’s a very good thing, too, that I was so decisive and harsh with her. I rushed along in a wagon of the subterranean rail to the location of the Integral, where its elegant body stood on stocks, still immobile, not yet animated by fire, glistening under the sun. Closing my eyes, I fantasized in formulas: in my head I calculated again the escape velocity that would be needed to launch the Integral from the Earth. With each fraction of a second, the mass of the Integral would change (consuming combustion fuel). This equation turned out to be very complicated, with transcendental quantities.

I grabbed her lily of the valley angrily (I admit).

“Yes, lily of the valley! And there is nothing funny about it, nothing funny about it!”

It was long ago, in my school years, when √-1 happened to me. My memory of it is clearly carved: a bright spherical hall, hundreds of round, little-boy heads, and Pliapa, our mathematics teacher. We called him Pliapa—he was rather vintage and disheveled, and when the monitor inserted his plug from behind, the loudspeaker started up “Plya-plya-plya-tshhhhh,” and then the lesson began. One day, Pliapa explained “irrational numbers” and I remember I wept, I beat my fists upon the table and wailed: “I don’t want √-1 ! Take √-1 out of me!” This irrational root had sunk into me, like something foreign, alien, frightening, it devoured me—it couldn’t be comprehended or defused because it was beyond ratio. Now, once again it’s that √-1. I looked over these records once more and it was clear to me: I have been outwitting myself, lying to myself, all in order not to see √-1. It was all junk—that I was sick and all that—I could have made it there. A week ago I know I would have gone without a moment’s thought. Why is it that now I . . . Why?

“I serve and will continue to serve knowledge.” I clouded over: I don’t like or understand jokes, but R-13 has an idiotic habit of joking.

I was terrified of being left with myself—with this new stranger, I mean, who, by some strange coincidence, has my digits: D-503. And so I went with them to R-13’s. True, he is not precise or rhythmic and he has a kind of twisted, laughable logic, but we are friends all the same. It was not just an accident that he and I both chose sweet, pink O three years ago. This binds us together somehow even more strongly than our years together at school. Next, we were in R’s room. It was as if—well, everything was exactly like mine: the Table, the glass of the chairs, table, closet, and bed. But as soon as R walked in, he moved one of the chairs, then the other—and all perspectives became displaced, everything departed from the regulation dimensions, became non-Euclidean.

I brightened up: “So, you too are writing for the Integral? Well, tell me, what about it? What, at least, for example, did you write today?” “Today—about nothing. I was busy with other things . . .” The “b” sprayed straight at me. “What other things?” R grimaced: “Thing things! Well, if you want to know, there was a conviction. I was waxing poetic on the occasion of a conviction. One idiot, one of our own poets . . . he sat among us for two years as though everything was normal. And then suddenly—get this—‘I,’ he says, ‘I am a genius, a genius—above the law.’ And blathered on like that . . . so you see, that’s what . . . ugh!”

R turned his face. Just as before, his words sprayed me, gushed from him, but it seemed to me that the joyful lacquer in his eyes was long gone. “Yes, dear mathematician, happily, happily, happily! We are the happiest, arithmetical mean . . . what is it you people say: to integrate from zero to infinity, from the cretin to Shakespeare . . . that’s it!”

“Well, time for me to go . . .” I kissed O, shook hands with R, and went to the elevator. On the avenue, having already crossed to the other side, I looked around: there were gray-blue, opaque cages of lowered blinds in the light, sun-pervaded glass block of buildings—cages of rhythmical Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor, my eyes found R-13’s cage: he had already lowered the blinds.

We, in the language of our forebears (it may be that to you, my planetary readers, this language is more understandable), we are a family. And how good it is sometimes to relax for a short time in this simple strong triangle, to lock oneself away from all that . . .

. . . A blaze. Inside the iambs, buildings are rocking and liquid gold is bursting upward, then tumbling down. Green trees are twisting in convulsions, dripping sap—then only the black crosses of their skeletons remain. Then Prometheus appears (referring to us, of course): Suddenly, the fire in the machine, the steel, And the chaos, by the Law, were brought to heel. Everything was new and steeled: a steel sun, steel trees, steel people. Then suddenly some madman “the fire set free,” and again everyone perished . . .

According to old custom, a dozen women adorned the unif of the Benefactor—not yet dry from the spray—with flowers. With the majestic stride of a high priest, He slowly descended, crossing slowly among the stands—and, after Him, the soft white branches of female hands and a uni-million storm of cries arose. And then those same cries were raised in honor of the assembly of Guardians, invisibly present somewhere here, in our rows. Who knows: it may be that the Guardians were foreseen in the fantasy of the ancient person, which conceived of gentle-terrible “archangels,” assigned to each person at birth. Yes, there was something of the ancient religions, something as purifying as thunderstorms and gales, about the whole celebration. You, to whom it falls to read this—are you familiar with moments like these? If not, I am sorry for you.

‘Any cipher who does not declare themselves to the Bureau in the course of forty-eight hours is considered . . .’ ” My heart struck so hard that the twigs bent. Like a little boy— foolish, like a foolish little boy, I had been caught, and foolishly, I stayed silent. And I felt: I have been caught—by hand, by foot . . .

Not long ago I had to calculate the curvature of a new model of street diaphragm (now these elegantly decorated diaphragms are on every avenue, recording street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians).

I turned around. She was in a light, saffron-yellow, ancient-style dress. This was a thousand times meaner than if she had been wearing nothing. Two sharp dots were smoldering with pink through the fine fabric—two coals through ash. Two gently rounded knees . . . She sat on a low chair. On the four-sided little table in front of her was a flask with something poison-green in it and two tiny little glasses on stems. The corner of her mouth smoked from a slim paper tube: this was ancient smoking (I forget right now what it was called).

But she calmly smoked, calmly looking at me, and carelessly flicked her ash on my pink ticket.

Only then did I get it: alcohol. Yesterday’s lightning flashed: the stone hand of the Benefactor, the unbearable blades of the laser beams, but this time, instead, it was her in the Cube, with her head thrown back—body outstretched. I winced. “Listen,” I said, “you must know: anyone who poisons themselves with nicotine and alcohol, in particular, will be shown no mercy by the One State . . .”

“To destroy the few quickly is more reasonable than to give the many an opportunity to ruin themselves—degeneration and all that. This is obscenely correct.”

Mind you, I am trying to relay my (abnormal) feelings at the time. Now, as I write this, I realize perfectly well: all this was just as it ought to have been, and he, like every honest cipher, has an equal right to joy. And it would be unjust . . . well, yes, all that is clear.

Everything was in its place, so simple, normal, legitimate: glassy buildings, beaming with lights; a glassy, pale sky; a greenish, still night. But underneath all this quiet, chilly glass, the boiling, the crimson, the shagginess drifted inaudibly. And panting, I rushed, in order not to be late. Suddenly I felt: my hastily pinned badge was unfastening—it had unfastened and was jingling on the glass sidewalk. I stooped to pick it up and in that second of silence: someone’s tramping steps were behind me. I turned around: something small and curved turned the corner. So, at least, it had seemed to me. I bolted at full throttle, the air whistling in my ears.

No: period. All this is junk, and all these ridiculous sensations are delirium—the result of yesterday’s contamination . . . by the mouthful of green poison—or was it by her? It doesn’t matter. I am recording this only to show how strangely entangled and dislodged human reason—so precise and sharp—can become. Reason, which has even been able to make infinity (something so frightening to the Ancients) into a digestible concept, by . . .

He frowned and rubbed the back of his head—his little suitcase with its strange, inscrutable contents. A pause. Then he found something in his little suitcase, dragged it out, started unfolding it, and, having unfolded it, his eyes lacquered with laughter, he leapt up. “On the other hand, I am composing something for your Integral . . . and it is something! It is something!”

And then I (the real me) saw the jagged line of my eyebrows in the mirror, and I (the real me) heard a wild, repulsive cry: “What?! Also? No: what do you mean by ‘also’? No—I demand to know.” Stretched African lips. Goggle eyes . . . I (the real me) firmly grabbed this other self (the wild, shaggy, heavily breathing self) by the scruff of the neck.

Why is it—really, why is it that for three whole years, O and I have lived so amicably, and suddenly now, with just one word about that woman, about I-330 . . . Can it be that all that craziness (love, jealousy, etc.) isn’t only the stuff of idiotic ancient books? And to think that it involves me! Equations, formulas, figures, and . . . and then this—I don’t understand any of it! Any of it.

The truth is one, and the true path is one; and this truth is two-times-two, and this true path is four.

This was my thought path: from the parts to the whole. The part was R-13 and the majestic whole was our Institute of State Poets and Writers. I thought: how could it be that the utter silliness of their literature and poetry didn’t fling itself into the eyes of the Ancients?

It’s pure comedy: anyone wrote about whatever he took it in his head to write. It’s just as comic and ridiculous that the oceans of the Ancients beat stupidly against their shores, night and day, and that the millions of kilogram-meters contained in these waves were only expended as kindling for the feelings of lovers.

Ripened. And, inevitably, like the iron and the magnet with sweet obedience to their precise, immutable laws, I poured myself into her. There was no pink ticket, there were no calculations, there was no One State, there was no me. There were only gentle, sharp, clenched teeth and there were gold eyes thrown wide open to me—and through them I slowly went inside, deeper and deeper still. And silence—except in the corner, thousands of miles away, where drops were dripping into the sink. I was the universe, and eras and epochs passed as drop followed drop . . .

“Well, now, fallen angel. You, I’d say, are now lost. You’re not afraid, are you . . .? Well, then, goodbye! You will return alone. Right?” She opened the mirrored door that was set into one side of the closet; she waited, looking at me over her shoulder. I obediently left. But I had hardly stepped across the threshold when suddenly I needed her to press up against my shoulder again—only for a second, on my shoulder, not more.

after all, full of improbable incidents? Wasn’t all this just like the ancient sickness of dreaming? If so—does it really matter whether I describe one more absurdity, or one less? Besides that, I am sure, sooner or later, I will succeed in including each and every one of these absurdities in some sort of syllogism. This calms me and I hope it calms you, too . . . . . . How fulfilled I am! If only you knew how filled to the full I am!

O lifted her head from the pillow and, not opening her eyes, said: “Go away,” but through the tears it came out as “gowi” and for some reason this ridiculous trifle cut right into me.

In the Operation Room, our best and most experienced doctors work under the direct leadership of the Benefactor himself. There are various devices in the Operation Room including, most important, the famous Gas Bell Jar. This is used essentially as it was in that old-fashioned school experiment: a mouse is put under a bell jar; the air in the bell jar is more and more rarefied by an air pump . . . and, well, et cetera. But, of course, the Gas Bell Jar is a significantly more perfect apparatus—with its application of different gases—and then also, it is not merely a mockery of a small defense-less animal but has a higher purpose: the matter of the security of the One State, in other words, the happiness of millions.

You, the readers of these records, no matter who you are, the sun is still above you. And if you’ve ever been sick like I am now, then you know what the sun is like—what it can be like. You know that in the morning, the sun is rosy, transparent, warm gold. And the air itself is a little rosy, all steeped in the sun’s gentle blood. Everything is alive: stones are living and soft; iron is living and warm; people are alive and each and every one is smiling. It may happen that an hour later everything might disappear and an hour later, that rosy blood might drain away, but for now everything is alive. And I can see: something is pulsing and flowing through the glass essence of the Integral. I can see: the Integral is contemplating its great and terrifying future, its heavy cargo of inescapable happiness, which it will carry up there, up to you, the unknown, you, who eternally search and never find. You will find you will be happy—you are obliged to be happy—and you haven’t much longer to wait.

I clambered out of the hatch and onto the deck and stopped: I didn’t know where to go now, I didn’t know why I was here. I looked up. There, the worn-out midday sun was ascending dully. Below was the Integral, gray-glassed, inanimate. The rosy blood had drained away and it was clear to me that all this had only been my imagination, that everything was as it had always been, and yet it was also clear that . . . “Hey! 503? What’s wrong? Are you deaf now? I’ve been calling you and calling you . . . what’s wrong with you?” This was the Second Builder—right into my ear. He must have been shouting for a while. What’s wrong with me? I have lost my rudder. My motor is at full throttle, the aero is trembling and tearing along, but rudderless. I don’t know where I am racing to: downward to the ground, or now upward to the sun, to the fire . . .

“Follow me,” S said sternly. I obediently followed, swinging my extraneous arms, which seemed to belong to someone else. I couldn’t raise an eye and I walked, the whole time, in a wild, turned-on-its-head world: there were machines of some kind, their foundations on top of them, and there were people with feet glued antipodally to the ceiling, and below them, the sky was contained in the thick glass of the sidewalk. I remember: how very offensive it all was, that for the last time in my life I was having to see it all this way—overturned, unreal. But I couldn’t raise an eye.

With effort, a kind of spiral torque, I finally tore my eyes away from the glass below my feet—and suddenly the golden letters “MEDICINE” splashed in front of me . . . Why had he led me here and not to the Operation Room, and why had he spared me? But, at that moment, I wasn’t thinking of these things: with one leap over the steps, the door solidly banged behind me and I exhaled. Yes: it was as though I hadn’t breathed since dawn, as though my heart hadn’t struck a single beat—and it was only now that I exhaled for the first time, only now that the floodgates of my chest opened . . .

“Why? And why don’t we have feathers or wings but just scapulas, the foundation of wings? It’s because we don’t need wings anymore—we have the aero; wings would only be extraneous. Wings are for flying, but we don’t need to get anywhere: we have landed, we have found what we were seeking. Isn’t that so?”

“What’s the problem? What, a soul? A soul, you say? Damn it! We’ll soon get as far as cholera. I told you”—the skinny one was horn-tossed again—“I told you, we must, everyone’s imagination— everyone’s imagination must be . . . excised. The only answer is surgery, surgery alone . . .” He struggled to put on some enormous X-ray glasses, and walked around for a long time looking through my skull bone at my brain, and making notes in a notebook.

He punctured me again with his eyes and smiled thinly. And it seemed to me: I could clearly and distinctly see something wrapped up in the fine fabric of his smile—a word—a letter—a name, a particular name . . . Or is this again that same imagination? I was only barely able to wait while he wrote out my certification of illness for today and tomorrow, then I shook his hand once more and ran outside. My heart was light, quick, like an aero, and carrying, carrying me upward. I knew: tomorrow held some sort of joy. But what would it be?

Oh, the great, divinely bounding wisdom of walls and barriers! They may just be the greatest of all inventions. Mankind ceased to be wild beast when it built its first wall. Mankind ceased to be savage when we built the Green Wall, when we isolated our perfect, machined world, by means of the Wall, from the irrational, chaotic world of the trees, birds, animals . . .

Ha ha...um this is too much.

To every equation, to every formula in the surface world, there is a corresponding curve or mass. We don’t know the corresponding masses to irrational formulas, to my √-1—we haven’t ever seen them . . . But the very horror of it all is that these masses—invisible masses—do exist. They necessarily, inevitably must exist because mathematics is like a screen on which the whimsical, prickly shadows of irrational formulas cross before us. Mathematics and death: neither makes mistakes. And if these masses are not evident in our world, on the surface, then it’s inescapable: they must have their own entire, enormous world there, behind the surface . . .

Is this feeling familiar to you: you are tearing along in an aero, in a blue upward spiral, the window is open, a whirlwind is whistling in your face, and there is no Earth, you forget all about the Earth, the Earth is as distant as Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus? That is how I live these days, with a whirlwind in my face—I have forgotten about the Earth and I have forgotten about sweet, pink O. But the Earth still exists, and sooner or later I must land on it again.

Before the action began (= the blast), a dozen ciphers from our hangar were standing around and gaping under the barrel of the engine. Afterward, exactly nothing of them remained, except some crumbs and soot. I write this here with pride because the rhythm of our labor did not falter for even a second because of this—no one even flinched. We and our machines continued our straight-lined and circular movements with the same old precision, as if nothing had happened. A dozen ciphers are barely one hundred millionth part of the mass of the One State and, according to practical calculations, this is infinitely small of the third order. Arithmetically illiterate compassion was only something the Ancients knew; to us, it is amusing.

And she stayed hanging over the table. Downcast eyes, legs and arms. I-330’s crumpled pink ticket was still on the table. I quickly unfurled this manuscript—my “WE”—covering the ticket with its pages (it may be that I was hiding it from myself more than from O). “Look. I’m writing everything down. It’s already ninety-nine pages long . . . Something very surprising is emerging.”

And I can see clearly that these ideas about “rights” were merely a throwback from a ridiculous superstition of the Ancients.

So, take the idea of “rights” and drip some acid on it. Even the most adult of the Ancients knew: the source of a right is power, a right is a function of power. Take two trays of a weighing scale: put a gram on one, and on the other, put a ton. On one side is the “I,” on the other is the “WE,” the One State. Isn’t it clear? Assuming that “I” has the same “rights” compared to the State is exactly the same thing as assuming that a gram can counterbalance a ton. Here is the distribution: a ton has rights, a gram has duties. And this is the natural path from insignificance to greatness: forget that you are a gram, and feel as though you are a millionth part of the ton . . .

Tomorrow I will see all the same sights that repeat themselves from year to year and are newly exciting every time: the mighty chalice of unanimity, the reverentially raised hands. Tomorrow is the day of the annual election of the Benefactor. Tomorrow, once again, we will offer the Benefactor the keys to the unshakable stronghold of our happiness. It goes without saying that this does not resemble the disordered, disorganized elections of the Ancients, when—it seems funny to say it—the result of an election was not known beforehand. Building a government on totally unaccounted-for happenstance, blindly—what could be more senseless? And yet still, it turns out, it took centuries to understand this.

Ha!

It is hardly necessary to say it but in this, as in everything else, there is no place for chance and unexpected events are not possible. And the election itself is more symbolic in nature: to remind us that we are a unified, mighty, million-celled organism, that we—using the words of the “Evangelists” of the Ancients—are one Church. Because the history of the One State does not know a single instance in which, on this day of rejoicing, even one voice dared to disturb the magnificent unison.

Haha!

They say that the Ancients conducted elections in some kind of secrecy, hiding like thieves; several of our historians even confirm that they appeared at the election festivities completely masked. (I imagine this fantastic, gloomy spectacle: nighttime, a square, figures in dark cloaks stealing along a wall; the crimson flame of torches cowering in the wind . . .)

This is amazing. This book is wonderful.

For us, there is nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of: we celebrate election day in the daytime, openly and honestly. I see everyone vote for the Benefactor; everyone sees me vote for the Benefactor—and it couldn’t be any different, since “I” and “everyone” are the unified “WE.” As ennobling, sincere, lofty, and furthermore expedient as this is, so the Ancients’ thievish “mystery” was cowardly. And if you even suggest the impossible, that is, that there could be some dissonance in the usual homophony, then the invisible Guardians are here, among our ranks: at any moment, they can stop ciphers who are falling into error and save them from their next false step—and save the One State from them.

There were elections in the past few years with 70+% turnout with a 90+% return for the incumbant. This is the end-state of a dead democratic effort.