We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

As always the big Musical Tower was playing with all its pipes, the March of the United State. The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs (probably a derivative of the ancient uniform) with golden badges on the chest⁠—the State number of each one, male or female⁠—the Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping the step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent. To my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would probably call her by that funny word, mine), to my right, two unknown Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.

Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays.⁠ ⁠… Do you picture it? Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam.⁠ ⁠… Tra-ta-ta-tam⁠ ⁠… stamping on the brassy steps which sparkle in the sun; with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights.⁠ ⁠… Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelopipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces.

Then without warning⁠—a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, billboards, trees, colors, and birds.⁠ ⁠… They say all this once actually existed!

It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar female face.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering.”

All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect⁠—(she may know that I am the builder of the Integral). In her eyes nevertheless, in her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to motivate my laughter.

“It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago⁠—”

“But why impassable?” (What bright, sharp teeth!) “One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows⁠—all this existed before and consequently⁠—”

“Oh, yes, it is clear,” I exclaimed.

It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike⁠—

“Are you sure?” I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an acute angle⁠—like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right⁠—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, O-, totally different, made all of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another.⁠ ⁠…

The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught my confused eye, for she said with a sigh, “Yes, alas!”

I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice.⁠ ⁠…

With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, “Why ‘alas’? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years⁠—”

“Even the noses will⁠—”

“Yes, noses!” This time I almost shouted, “Since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy.⁠ ⁠… Since my nose is button-like and someone else’s is⁠—”

“Well your nose is rather classic, as they would say in the ancient days, although your hands⁠—No, no, show me your hands!”

I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair⁠—a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as I could, “Apelike.”

She glanced at my hand, then at my face.

“No, a very curious harmony.”

She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. The little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows.

“He is registered in my name,” exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile.

I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear O-, how shall I say it? the speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts⁠—at any rate not the reverse.

At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was leaving us with that S-like he-Number. He has such a respectable, and I noticed then, such a familiar face. I must have met him somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330 said with the same X-like smile:

“Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112.”

I shrugged my shoulders: “If I am assigned to the auditorium you just named⁠—”

She, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: “You will.”

The woman had upon me