everybody like myself was afraid now of even the most minute of motions.
At this moment, for instance, as I sit and write, everyone is sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. I do not hear the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter or steps, from time to time Numbers pass in couples through the hall, whispering, on tip-toe....
What will happen tomorrow? What will become of me tomorrow?
RECORD TWENTY-SIX
The World Does Exist
Rash
Forty-one Degrees Centigrade
Morning. Through the ceiling the sky is as usual firm, round, red-cheeked. I think I should have been less surprised had I found above some extraordinary quadrangular sun, or people clad in many-colored dresses made of the skins of animals, or opaque walls of stone. Then the world, our world, does still exist? Or is it only inertia? Is the generator already switched out, while the armature is still roaring and revolving;—two more revolutions, or three, and at the fourth will it die away?
Are you familiar with that strange state in which you wake up in the middle of the night, open your eyes into the darkness and then suddenly feel you are lost in the dark; you quickly, quickly begin to feel around, to seek something familiar and solid, a wall, a lamp, a chair? In exactly the same way I felt around, seeking in the Journal of the United State; quickly, quickly—I found this:
“The celebration of the Day of Unanimity, long awaited by all, took place yesterday. The same Well-Doer who so often proved his unshakeable wisdom, was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be the bricks for the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall.”
Oh, great Sage! Is it really true that despite everything we are saved? What objection indeed can one find to this most crystalline syllogism? And further on a few more lines:
“Today at twelve o’clock a joint meeting of the Administrative Bureau, Medical Bureau, and Bureau of Guardians will take place. An important State decree is to be expected shortly.”