We. Yevgeny Zamyatin

      LOG 3

      BRIEF:

      Jacket. Wall. The Table of Hours.

      I looked over everything I wrote yesterday and realised: I am not writing clearly enough. I mean, all of it is perfectly clear to any one of us. But who knows: you, unknown reader, to whom the INTEGRAL carries my words, might only be on the same page of the great book of civilisation our ancestors reached 900 years ago. You might not know about even the most basic things like: the Table of Hours, the Personal Hour, the Maternal Norm, the Green Wall and the Benefactor. For me, it feels both silly and tedious to have to describe them all. Like someone writing a novel in, say, the twentieth century, having to also explain what a jacket is, or an apartment, or a wife. But what if that novel had to be translated for savages? Would it be possible to get away without including a note on the concept of ‘jacket’?

      I’m sure that a savage seeing a jacket would wonder, ‘What is this even for? It just gets in the way.’ I also predict that you will react the same way when I tell you that since the end of the Two Hundred Years’ War, none of us have ever been on the other side of the Green Wall.

      But, my dear friends, you must take the time to consider things – it’s very helpful. Isn’t it clear: for all of human history, insofar as we know it, humanity has moved away from nomadic existence, evolving towards ever greater degrees of settlement. Doesn’t it follow that the most settled way of life (ours) is also the most perfect (as ours is)? Yes, people once roamed the Earth, roving from pole to pole, but that was in prehistoric times, when there were still nations, wars, trade, discoveries of various Americas. Why would we ever need any of that?

      Given: getting used to being this settled took time and effort. During the Two Hundred Years’ War, when all the roads crumbled and grew over with grasses, it must have at first seemed quite inconvenient to live in cities cut off from each other by dense, green wildernesses. But what can you do? When man lost his tail, it must have also taken him some time to learn how to swat away flies without it. He must have at first been quite sad about losing that tail. But today: could you imagine still having a tail? Or see yourself walking down the street naked, without your ‘jacket’ (if you are still wearing ‘jackets’)? It’s the same thing: I can’t imagine a city unclothed by a Green Wall or a life unadorned by the digital shroud of the Table of Hours.

      The Table . . . at this very moment, its violet digits are gazing into my eyes, brimming with tenderness and severity, from the gold screen on my wall. I am involuntarily reminded of what the Ancients called an icon and moved to write poems or prayers (the same thing) devoted to it. Why couldn’t I have been a poet so I could truly sing of thee, O Table, the pulse and heart of the One State!

      All of us (and perhaps, even you) have read the greatest surviving classic of ancient literature as schoolchildren: The Train Schedule. But even this, when compared to the Table, seems like a hunk of graphite next to a diamond: they’re made of the same thing, C, carbon, but the diamond is immortal, sparkling and clear. Whose heart doesn’t race as it chugs, thundering through the Schedule? But the Table of Hours turns each of us into the real, six-wheeled, steel heroes of epics. Each morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the very same hour, the very same minute, we, millions of us, rise as one. We millions start working all at the same moment and, at the same moment, we stop – as millions. Then, pouring into a single, million-armed body, at the same Table-appointed second, we raise the spoons to our mouths, go for a walk, go to the auditoriums, the Taylor Exercise Halls, sleep . . .

      To be perfectly honest: even we have yet to come up with an absolute solution to the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from 16 to 17 and 21 to 22, our single, powerful organism dissolves into individual cells: these are the Table’s Personal Hours. During them, you might notice some numbers have lowered their blinds for modesty; others are filling the avenues, rhythmically walking up the brass steps of the March; some, like me now, sit at their desks. But – call me an idealist and a dreamer – but I firmly believe: sooner or later, we will find the true general formula for these hours as well, and all 86,400 seconds of every day will finally be accounted for by the Table.

      I have heard and read many unbelievable things about the times when people still lived in a free, i.e. unorganised, savage state. But to me, the most inconceivable thing is the fact that the old state – granted, it was in its embryonic form – allowed its citizens to live without anything even approaching our Table: no compulsory walks or precisely regulated mealtimes; people got up and went to bed as they pleased, whenever it occurred to them; some historians have even said that in those days, streetlights were kept on all night and people would walk and ride on the streets at all hours.

      This I simply cannot comprehend. No matter how limited their capacity for reason may have been, still – how could they fail to see that that way of life was a form of mass murder, only committed slowly, day in and day out? Their state (out of ‘humaneness’) forbade the killing of individuals and yet it allowed the half-killing of millions of people at once. Killing one person, that is, decreasing the length of one human life by fifty years, was considered a crime but decreasing the length of all human lives by 50 million years was not. Isn’t that funny? Today, any ten-year-old number can solve this ethical maths problem in thirty seconds, while they couldn’t manage to solve it at all with all of their Kants put together (because not one of their Kants thought to create a truly scientific system of ethics, i.e. based on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).

      And isn’t it just as absurd that the state (while daring to call itself a state!) took no control over people’s sex lives? With them, it was whoever, whenever and however much they wanted – like wild animals, wholly unscientific. Then, just like animals, they would proceed to blindly birth children. Isn’t it completely ridiculous that even when they were capable of breeding crops, poultry and fish (we have clear data indicating they knew how to do all this), they still failed to reach the final rung on the logical ladder: i.e. breeding children? How could they fail to arrive at our Maternal and Paternal Norms?!

      It’s all so ridiculous, so difficult to believe, that I’ve written this down and now I’m afraid: what if you, unknown readers, take me for some mean-spirited joker? What if you think that I’m just making fun of you, pulling your leg with a straight face?

      But, first of all: I am incapable of joking. For the implicit function of every joke is a lie. Second of all, this really is how the Ancients lived according to One State Science, and One State Science cannot make mistakes. Besides, how could the state have been logical while people still lived in a state of freedom i.e. wild animals, monkeys and herds? What can you expect from people back then when even today, in our era, somewhere deep inside, in the furry depths, you can still hear the wild echo of apes?

      Luckily, only rarely. Luckily, these are just tiny breakdowns of minor parts: easy to fix without stalling the great, perpetual progress of the entire Machine. We have the nimble, heavy hand of the Benefactor and the experienced eyes of the Guardians to scrap any bolts that get bent out of shape . . .

      Speaking of which, I just remembered: that number from yesterday, bent like an S – I think I have actually seen him coming out of the Bureau of Guardians. Now it makes sense why I instinctively felt respectful of him and embarrassed when that strange woman I-330 started . . . I must confess – that I-330 . . .

      The bell is ringing for sleep: it’s 22:30. Until tomorrow.