Algemeen Oudheid en Middeleeuwen 1501-1600 1601-1700 1701-1800 1801-1900 1901-2000 2001-nu Stalinisme Maoïsme Neoliberalisme Socialisme Neomarxisme en Kritische theorie Algemeen Complottheorieën Irrationaliteit Irrationaliteit (Bijgeloof en religie) Leugens, desinformatie, propaganda Klokkenluiders"Yes: to unbend the wild curve, to straighten it tangentially, asymptotically, to flatten it to an undeviating line. Because the line of OneState is a straight line. The great, divine, precise, wise straight line—the wisest of all lines ..." Yevgeni ZAMYATIN - We, p.34
Yevgeni ZAMYATIN"YEVGENY IVANOVICH ZAMYATIN (1884-1937) was a naval architect by profession and a writer by nature. His favorite idea was the absolute freedom of the human personality to create, to imagine, to love, to make mistakes, and to change the world. This made him a highly inconvenient citizen of two despotisms, the tsarist and the Communist, both of which exiled him, the first for a year, the latter forever." [mijn nadruk] (2)
"It is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-utopia; a great prose poem on the fate that might befall all of us if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom." [mijn nadruk]
[Het is zo gemakkelijk om te zeggen dat je dingen niet wilt uit naam van de vrijheid. Maar wat ga je dan met die vrijheid doen? Ik wantrouw ook al die mensen die dat soort dystopieën omarmen om kritiek te leveren op de vroegere USSR, China en ga zo maar door en denken dat ze zo vrij zijn en kunnen doen wat ze willen. Alsof we in het Westen niet in een collectieve droom leven.]
[Lees ik pas na de roman.]
Een mededeling door de Staat over het lanceren van de Integral.
"It is for you to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets—still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy. But before taking up arms, we shall try what words can do." [mijn nadruk] (33)
D-503 — de maker van de Integral — vertelt.
"Yes: to unbend the wild curve, to straighten it tangentially, asymptotically, to flatten it to an undeviating line. Because the line of OneState is a straight line. The great, divine, precise, wise straight line—the wisest of all lines ..."(34)
"I love—and I am sure that I am right in saying we love—only such a sky as this one today: sterile and immaculate. On days like this the whole world seems to have been cast of the same immovable and everlasting glass as the Green Wall, as all of our structures."(35)
"Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is nonfree movement, because all the fundamental significance of the dance lies precisely in its aesthetic subjection, its ideal nonfreedom."(36)
O-90 komt hem halen om te wandelen.
"The avenue was jammed. When the weather’s like this, we usually take an extra walk during the Personal Hour after lunch." [mijn nadruk] (37)
Hij ontmoet tijdens de wandeling een andere erg aparte vrouw, 1-330.
"She was to my right—slender, sharp, tough, and springy as a whip: 1-330 (now I saw her number). To my left was O, completely different, everything about her round, with the babyish crease on her arm.(...) “He’s assigned to me,” said O-90, her mouth smiling rosily."(41-42)
"In parting, 1-330 smiled at me in the same X-like way and said, “Drop by to see me day after tomorrow in auditorium 112.”
I shrugged and said, “If I get the order. For the auditorium you mention ... ”
Why she was so sure of herself, I couldn’t see, but she said, “You’ll get it.”
This woman was just as irritating to me as an irrational term that accidentally creeps into your equation and can’t be factored out. And I was glad to be alone with my dear O, even if not for long.
We went hand in hand across four lines of avenues. At the corner she was to go right, I left.
“I’d like so much to come to your place today and let the blinds down. Today—right this minute,” said O, and shyly looked up at me with her round crystal-blue eyes.
She’s a funny one. But what could I say? She was with me only yesterday, and she knows as well as I do that our next Sex Day is the day after tomorrow. It’s just more of her thought getting ahead of itself, like a spark that fires too early in the ignition, which can do some harm at times."(42-43)
[Hij houdt duidelijk niet van onvoorspelbare zaken en houdt zich het liefst aan de regels, bijvoorbeeld voor wanneer je seks mag hebben en wanneer niet.]
Dat alles wordt geregeld via de 'Table of Hours'
"Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the very same hour and the very same minute, we get up, millions of us, as though we were one. At the very same hour, millions of us as one, we start work. Later, millions as one, we stop. And then, like one body with a million hands, at one and the same second according to the Table, we lift the spoon to our lips. And at one and the same second we leave for a stroll and go to the auditorium, to the hall for the Taylor exercises, and then to bed.br> I’ll be completely honest with you: Even we haven’t yet solved the problem of happiness with 100 percent accuracy. Twice a day—from 16:00 to 17:00 and again from 21:00 to 22:00—the single mighty organism breaks down into its individual cells. These are the Personal Hours, as established by the Table."(46-47)
"I’ve read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom—that is, in disorganized wildness. But of all things the very hardest for me to believe was how the governmental power of that time, even if it was still embryonic, could have permitted people to live without even a semblance of our Table, without obligatory walks, without precisely established mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever it pleased them. Some historians even claim that in those days lights burned on the streets all night, people were out walking and driving on the streets all night long. Now, that’s something I simply cannot get through my head."(47)
"And then—isn’t it absurd that a government (it had the nerve to call itself a government) could let sexual life proceed without the slightest control? Who, when, however much you wanted... Completely unscientific, like animals. And blindly, like animals, they produced young. Isn’t it funny—to know horticulture, poultry keeping, fish farming (we have very precise records of their knowing all this) and not to be able to reach the last rung of this logical ladder: child production. Not to come up with something like our Maternal and Paternal Norms."(48)
Hij krijgt inderdaad de opdracht om naar het auditorium te gaan. I-330 speelt daar klassieke piano als demonstratie van de wilde jaren van vroeger. Het maakt hem alleen maar meer in de war. Daarna heeft hij seks met O-90
"At 22:00 hours I lowered the blinds—and at that precise moment O came in, a little out of breath. She gave me her pink lips—and her pink ticket. I tore off the stub, but I couldn’t tear myself away from her rosy lips until the very last second: 22:15."(57)
[Slechts een kwartier voor seks.]
Over jaloezie.
"And what sense would there be in all the numberless victims of the 200-Years War if there still remained in our life some cause for envy? But some cause did remain, because noses remained, the button noses and classical noses mentioned in that conversation on our walk, and because there are some whose love many people want, and others whose love nobody wants." [mijn nadruk] (58)
[Dat laatste is prachtig geformuleerd. Mensen zijn niet gelijk op dat punt. Maar ook daar werd iets aan gedaan: ]
"It’s natural that once Hunger had been vanquished (which is algebraically the equivalent of attaining the summit of material well-being), OneState mounted an attack on that other ruler of the world, Love. Finally, this element was also conquered, i.e., organized, mathematicized, and our Lex sexualis was promulgated about 300 years ago: “Any Number has the right of access to any other Number as sexual product.”
The rest is a purely technical matter. They give you a careful going-over in the Sexual Bureau labs and determine the exact content of the sexual hormones in your blood and work out your correct Table of Sex Days. Then you fill out a declaration that on your days you’d like to make use of Number (or Numbers) so-and-so and they hand you the corresponding book of tickets (pink). And that’s it." [mijn nadruk] (60)
[Toch is dat niet helemaal duidelijk en waarom zou dat jaloezie voorkomen? Wat als veel mensen inderdaad seks willen met de aantrekkelijke X en niet met de onaantrekkelijke Y? X kan of wil waarschijnlijk niet met 1000 verschillende mensen seks hebben. En wat als Y iemand wil die haar of hem vanwege de onaantrekkelijkheid niet wil? En mensen worden immers 'toegewezen' schrijft hij.]
"So, sad as it may be, I have to record here that apparently even we haven’t yet finished the process of hardening and crystallizing life. The ideal is still a long way off. The ideal (this is clear) is that state of affairs where nothing ever happens anymore, but with us ..."(61)
Hij is door 1-330 namelijk nogal onzeker geworden. Ze belt hem en wil naar Het Oude Huis uit de oude tijd met hem.
"1-330. That woman annoys me, repels me—almost scares me. But for that very reason I said: “Yes.”"(62)
"We walked through a room containing small beds for children (children were also private property in that era). And there were more rooms, flashing mirrors, gloomy chests, sofas covered in unbearably clashing fabrics, huge “fireplaces,” an immense mahogany bed."(66)
Ze is duidelijk op de verleidingstoer en wil daarmee allerlei regels breken. Hij schrikt er voor terug. Dan belt ze maar iemand anders. D-503 wil haar binnenkort rapporteren aan het Bureau of Guardians.
"The cheerful little crystal bell in my headboard dings 7:00 A.M.: time to get up. To the right and left through the glass walls I see something like my own self, my own room, my own clothes, my own movements, and all repeated a thousand times. It cheers you up: You see yourself as part of an immense, powerful, single thing. And such a precise beauty it is: not a wasted gesture, bend, turn."(72)
Op zijn werk komt hij even in contact met iemand die een 'guardian', hij vertelt het verhaal over 1-330, maar de bewaker lacht het bijna weg. Hij leest in de krant over een beweging die onder het juk van de OneState uit wil.
"Freedom and criminality are just as indissolubly linked as ... well, as the movement of an aero and its velocity. When the velocity of an aero is reduced to 0, it is not in motion; when a man’s freedom is reduced to zero, he commits no crimes. That’s clear. The only means to rid man of crime is to rid him of freedom."(76)
"O gently took me by the arm: “What’s got into you today? Are you sick?”
Dream—yellow—Buddha ... It suddenly became clear to me that I ought to go to the Medical Bureau.
“You know you’re right? I am sick. ” I said this very happily (which is an inexplicable contradiction—there was nothing to be happy about).
“So you should go to the doctor at once. You know very well it’s your duty to be healthy—it’s ridiculous even talking about it.”
“O, darling, of course you’re right. Absolutely right!”
I did not go to the Bureau of Guardians. I couldn’t help it. I had to go to the Medical Bureau, where they kept me until 17:00."(78)
Hij vraagt zich af waarom hij I-330 niet aangeeft bij de bewakers en zich verschuilt achter ziek zijn.
"These were people who had come to perform a heroic duty: They had come to lay on the altar of OneState their loved ones, their friends, even themselves. And as for me, I was dying to go to them, to be with them. And I couldn’t. My feet were sunk deep in the glass pavement. I stood there looking stupid, unable to budge from the spot."(80)
Hij komt vriend R-13 tegen die met O is.
"It’s true that he is not a precise person, not rhythmical, and his logic is ridiculous, inside out, but still ... we’re friends. It wasn’t by accident that he and I both chose that dear pink O three years ago. That somehow brought us even closer together than all our school years."(83)
[Maar van een triootje is blijkbaar geen sprake.]
Over de viering van OneState waarmee D-503 zo blij is.
"Judging by the descriptions that have come down to us, this is something like what the ancients felt during their “divine service. ” But they served their irrational, unknown God, whereas we serve something rational and very precisely known. Their God gave them nothing but eternal tormented searching. Their God couldn’t come up with any smarter idea than sacrificing yourself, never mind why. But we, when we sacrifice to our God, OneState, we make a calm, rational, carefully considered sacrifice. Yes, this was the triumphant liturgy in celebration of OneState, a remembrance of the days and years that went into the crusade of the 200- Years War, the magnificent victory of all over one, of the whole over the part...."(87)
En er is een terechtgestelde en de Weldoener is aanwezig, wauw, en de Staatsdichters. Dan de terechtstelling, de dader wordt opgelost door de Machine.
"Up above, lined up in front of Him, were ten female Numbers with Hushed faces, their lips partly open with excitement, their bouquets of flowers blowing in the wind."(92)
[Om de sfeer weer te geven.]
De portier houdt bij of je binnenkomt / weggaat, ze leest je post, net als de bewakers. Ze kondigt een brief voor hem aan.
"I knew that the letter, which she’d already read, still had to go through the Bureau of Guardians (I don’t suppose there’s any need to explain this natural procedure), and I’d get it by 12:00. But that little smile worried me. The drop of ink in it made my pure solution all cloudy. It got so bad that later on, at the building site of the INTEGRAL, I couldn’t concentrate and even made a computational error, something that never happens with me."(93)
"It was an official notification that I-330 had been assigned to me and that today at 21:00 hours I was to report to her at ... and the address was given. No. After all that had happened, after I’d gone out of my way to make it perfectly clear to her how I felt. What’s more, she didn’t even know if I’d been to the Bureau of Guardians or not. She had no way of knowing I’d been sick."(94)
Maar precies daarmee kan ze hem chanteren. Hij had haar binnen 48 uur moeten aangeven en deed dat niet. Ze kleedt zich om in iets gemakkelijks, ze rookt en drinkt alcohol — wat streng verboden is — en verleidt hem. Hij raakt compleet in de war.
"The only reason I’m writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human reason, can get crazily confused and thrown off the track. This same reason, which has managed to make even infinity, the terror of the ancients, easily digestible by using ..."(106)
Zijn vriend R-13 komt op bezoek. Dan blijkt dat ook hij contact heeft met I-330 en van de alcohol geproefd heeft.
"Why, why, for three whole years, were 0 and I such good friends, only to have one word about her, 1-330, spoil ... ? Maybe that nonsense about love and jealousy is not just in stupid old books. And me, of all people! Equations, formulas, figures, and now ... I don’t get it. None of it. Tomorrow I’ll see R and tell him that I ... That’s a lie. I won’t. Not tomorrow, not the day after—never. I can’t. I don’t want to see him. Finished! End of our triangle."(111)
Over de moderne gedichten.
Hij gaat door de mist naar zijn werk. I-330 staat hem op te wachten en doet stoute dingen met hem.
"“You know very well that I’m going to work right now.”
“You know very well that you’re going to do as I tell you. Good-bye. See you in two minutes.”
Two minutes later I was standing on the corner. I had to show her that she was not in charge of me-OneState was. “Do as I tell you.” And she was sure I would-you could hear it in her voice. Well, now I was going to have it out with her for sure."(118)
"Closer—she leaned against me with her shoulder, and we made one, she blended into me—and I knew: This is how it has to be. I knew this with every nerve, every hair, with the sweet pain of every heartbeat. And what a joy it was to give in to this has to be."(119)
"“That means you love it. You’re afraid of it because it’s stronger than you, you hate it because you’re afraid of it, you love it because you can’t master it. You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.”"(120)
[Psychologie van de koude grond.]
Ze halen een ziektebriefje bij een arts die ook minnaar is van I-330. Ze gaan naar het Oude Huis en bedrijven de liefde. En dan verdwijnt I-330 via een klerenkast. Hij snapt er niets van.
Dit is zijn avond met O. Zij voelt dat er iets veranderd is. Hij wil niet echt meer.
Op zijn werk is iemand betrapt zonder nummer en naar de afdeling Operations gesleept.
"Our best and most experienced physicians work in Operations, under the direct supervision of the Benefactor himself. They have all sorts of apparatus, the main instrument being the famous Gas Bell."(129)
Hij ziet haar met haar andere minnaars, maar niet zelf. Hij mist haar en is jaloers. Opbellen lukt niet. Hij gaat naar haar toe, wordt dan naar dokters gebracht. De ene zegt dat hij een ziel ontwikkeld heeft, de ander vindt dat juist een probleem en dat de verbeelding chirurgisch verwijderd moet worden. Zijn status als bouwer van de Integral redt hem en de eerste dokter — de vriend van I-330 — helpt hem.
"Man ceased to be a wild man only when we built the Green Wall, only when, by means of that Wall, we isolated our perfect machine world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds, and animals...."(145)
Hij is op weg naar het Oude Huis. Er gebeurt iets en hij snelt de klerenkast binnen, en glijdt vervolgens weg naar een totaal andere wereld, waar ook I-330 aanwezig is. Ze hebben seks en dan brengt zij hem weer terug naar de normale wereld.
[Ook hier wordt seks altijd beschreven als "I became one", als neuken dus. Nogal fantasieloos. ]
"And now I don’t know dream from waking. Irrational magnitudes are growing up through everything that is stable, customary, three-dimensional, and all around me something rough and shaggy is replacing the firm, polished surfaces...."(156)
"From a distance a metronome is ticking through the fog, and I mechanically chew to the familiar caress of its music, counting, along with everyone else, up to fifty: fifty statutory chews for each mouthful."(158)
[Verwarrend gebazel over O die een kind van hem wil.]
[Nog meer gebazel over dat alleen de Staat rechten heeft en een individu niet. Tenminste: dat denk ik.]
D moet van I-330 doen alsof zij zijn minnaar is, maar ze verschijnt nooit. En ze is er niet, als hij haar wil opzoeken in het Oude Huis. Het valt hem wel op dat de Bewakers erg actief zijn. S. waarschuwt hem duidelijk.
"Not there! That lower exit from the corridors I could not locate anywhere—it didn’t exist. But maybe it was better that way. It made it even more likely that all this was one of my stupid “dreams.”"(181)
De vrouwelijke portier U van zijn wooncomplex heeft interesse voor hem.
"Amazing. Is it really impossible to think up some means of curing this dream sickness, or at least to make it rational, maybe even useful?"(185)
D is er getuige van dat iemand door de bewakers wordt weggevoerd. Maar dan gebeurt er iets: een vrouw bemoeit zich daarmee en hij denkt dat het I-330 is. Hij springt er op af om te helpen.
"For one second I stared at her like all the others as something that had dropped out of nowhere: She was no longer a Number, she was simply a person; she existed as nothing more than the metaphysical substance of the insult committed against OneState. But then some one of her movements—turning, she twisted her hips to the left—and all at once I knew: I know her, I know that body resilient as a whip—my eyes, my lips, my hands know it—in one moment I was absolutely sure of it."(188)
"I could feel a thousand eyes popping with horror on me, but that only added more desperate giddy strength to the hairy-handed savage that had leapt out of me, and he ran all the faster. Two steps more, and she turned around....
What I saw was a trembling face with lots of freckles and reddish eyebrows. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t 1-330."(189)
Uiteraard wordt hij door de bewakers meegenomen. Maar O roept dat hij ziek is en S geeft hem met een briefje zijn vrijheid terug.
"The rectangle containing the freckled face and the temple with the geographical map of blue veins disappeared round the corner, forever. We march on, one million-headed body, and each one of us harbors that humble happiness that also, probably, sustains the life of molecules, atoms, and phagocytes. In the ancient world, this was understood by the Christians, our only (if very imperfect) predecessors: Humility is a virtue, pride a vice; We comes from God, I from the Devil."(191)
"This thing that happened today was really not so important, but just suppose it were only the beginning, only the first meteor of a whole shower of thundering hot rocks poured down by infinity onto our glass paradise?"(191)
Hij heeft een seksafspraak met I-330 en deze keer is ze er. Hij is dolgelukkig. Maar ze heeft nog steeds geheimen voor hem. Ze vraagt hoe het met de INTEGRAL staat.
Over de Day of Unanimity.
"Tomorrow I’ll see the same sight that’s repeated from one year to the next, bringing new excitement each time: the mighty chalice of harmony, the people’s arms reverently uplifted. Tomorrow is the day for the annual election of the Benefactor. Tomorrow we once more place the keys to the unshakable fortress of our happiness into the hands of the Benefactor.
It goes without saying that this has no resemblance to the disorderly, unorganized elections in ancient times, when—it’s hard to say this with a straight face—they couldn’t even tell before the election how it would come out. To establish a state on the basis of absolutely unpredictable randomness, blindly—could there be anything more idiotic? Still, it looks like centuries had to pass before this was understood.
I don’t suppose it’s necessary to say that here, as in everything else, we have no place for randomness; there can’t be any surprises. And even the elections amount to little more than symbolism, to remind us that we are one, powerful, million-celled organism, that we are, in the words of the ancient “Gospel,” one Church. Because the history of OneState does not know of a single instance when so much as one voice dared to violate the majestic unison of that glorious day." [mijn nadruk] (200-201)
De Day of Unanimity, de Dag van de Harmonieuze Eenheid.
"All eyes were lifted upward into the blue immaculate morning still damp with the tears of night and focused on a barely visible dot that was dark at times and at others clad in the rays of the sun. It was He. He was descending from the heavens in His aero to be among us, the new Jehovah, as wise and as cruel in his love as the Jehovah of the ancients. Closer and closer He comes with every minute, while higher and higher reach millions of hearts to greet Him, and at last He sees us. In my thoughts I am up there with Him looking down: The concentric circles of the stands are traced by light blue rows of dots, like the circles of a spiderweb besprinkled with microscopic suns (our shining badges), a spiderweb in whose center the wise white Spider will now alight, the Benefactor, in white raiment, binding us hand and foot in His wisdom with the beneficial snares of contentment."(205)
[Zo is het voor gelovigen, maakt niet uit wat het geloof is.]
I-330 is er met R-13 en S. Bij het stemmen is iedereen voor, behalve I-330 die 'Opposed' stemt. Een gekkenhuis breekt uit.
"R-13 had suddenly jumped up on a bench that was above me, to the left; he was red, spitting, in a rage. He was carrying 1-330 in his arms. She was pale, her yuny ripped open from her shoulders to her breast, blood showing on the white part. She had her arms round his neck and he was jumping from bench to bench in huge leaps, repulsive and agile as a gorilla, and carrying her toward the top."(210)
Jaloers springt hij op en weet I-30 aan R-13 te ontfutselen. Hij neemt haar mee.
"“And tomorrow ... ” She was hungry to breathe through her shining white teeth, clenched tightly. “And tomorrow ... what? Nobody knows. You understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows. It’s unknown. You understand it’s come to an end, everything that was known? Now it’ll be new, never before seen, or imagined.”"(213)
"I don’t want to budge.... I’m afraid. What’ll I turn into? And it seems to me that everyone is like me—they’re all afraid of the slightest movement. Take right now, while I’m writing this. Everyone’s sitting all closed up in his own glass cage waiting for something. Out in the hallway there’s no noise from the elevator that you usually hear at this hour, no laughter, no footsteps. From time to time I see a couple walking down the hall on tiptoe, looking over their shoulders and whispering....What will happen tomorrow? What will I turn into tomorrow?"(214)
In de krant wordt het voorval natuurlijk gebagatelliseerd. Mar overal hangen pampletten met het woord 'mephi'.
D is weer op zoek naar I-330 en deze keer is ze er uiteindelijk. Ze neemt hem mee naar een omgeving aan de andere kant van de muur zoals hij niet meer kent, naar waar alle opstandelingen bijeenkomen waarvan I-330 de leider is. Ze willen de INTEGRAL inpikken zodat alle andere volkeren in het universum niet overspoeld worden door de propaganda voor de leefwijze van de OneState en om zelf te kunnen ontsnappen.
"“No, brothers! Not down with it. The INTEGRAL must be ours. On that day when it launches out into the heavens for the first time—we will be on board. Because the Builder of the INTEGRAL is with us. He has left walls behind, he has come here with me, to be among you. Long live the Builder!”"(226)
"And I think I—yes, I think that was my voice—I think I jumped up onto the stone, from where I see sun, heads, a jagged-toothed saw of green against the blue, and I shout:
“Yes, yes, that’s right! And everybody has to go mad, everybody must absolutely go mad, and as soon as possible! This is crucial! I know it is!”"(228)
I-330 valt zijn woonruimte binnen. Ze gooit U eruit die D nog steeds wil beschermen als een moeder. Er staat iets te gebeuren, zegt ze. Maar dan komen de wachters met S eraan, die door U werden ingeschakeld. I-330 kan nog net verdwijnen. D schrijft gauw acceptabele zinnen op papier en wacht af. S leest dat en ziet geen verrader. De wachters gaan weer.
"I’d long ago lost track of who was they and who was we. I didn’t know which I wanted: for them to be late or not. One thing only was clear to me, and that is that 1-330 was walking right along the very edge, and at any moment ...
“But this is crazy,” I say. “You ... and OneState. It’s like putting your hand over the muzzle and thinking you can stop the shot. It’s absolutely crazy!”
With a smile: “Everyone has to go mad ... go mad as soon as possible. Someone said that yesterday. Remember? There ...”"(233)
Op weg naar het Oude Huis haast O zich naar hem toe. Ze is zwanger en wil hem redden van I-330 en haar plannen. Hij wil dat helemaal niet. Ze druipt af.
Weergave van zijn gesprek in het Oude Huis met I-330. ober dat ze de INTEGRAL willen bezetten en overnemen
"I jumped up. “This is unthinkable! It’s stupid! Can’t you see that what you’re plotting is ... revolution?”
“Yes—revolution! Why is that stupid?”
“Stupid—because there can’t be a revolution. Because our—this is me talking, not you—our revolution was the final one. And there cannot be any further revolutions of any kind. Everybody knows that....”"(247)
Hij is duidelijk nog steeds niet overtuigd van haar plannen.
"“That’s silly! A completely infantile question. Tell something to children, tell them the whole thing right to the end, and they’ll still ask: Then what? What comes next?”
“Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers will always be children. So you’re right, it’s a child’s question, just as it should be: Then what?”" [mijn nadruk] (248)
"“But, I-330—remember, just remember: That’s just what our ancestors did—during the 200-Years War....”
“Oh, and they were right, they were a thousand times right. They made only one mistake: Afterward, they got the notion that they were the final number—something that doesn’t exist in nature."(249)
"But you are not to blame. You are sick. The name of your illness is: IMAGINATION.(...) The latest discovery of State Science: The imagination is centered in a wretched little brain node in the region of the pons Varolii. Expose this node to three doses of X rays—and you are cured of imagination."(253)
"You are perfect, you are the equal of the machine, the path to 100 percent happiness is free. Hurry, then, all of you, young and old, hurry to undergo the Great Operation. Hurry to the auditoriums where the Great Operation is performed. Long live the Great Operation! Long live OneState! Long live the Benefactor!"(254)
"The door of the auditorium at the corner is wide open and out of it is coming a slow, heavy column of about fifty men. Or rather, not “men”—that isn’t the word. Those weren’t feet but some kind of heavy, forged wheels, drawn by some invisible drive mechanism. Not men but some kind of tractors in human form. Above their heads, snapping in the breeze, was a white banner embroidered with a golden sun, in the rays of which was a device: “We are the first! We have already had the Operation! Everybody follow us!”"(264)
Ze dreigen opgepakt te worden en maken dat ze wegkomen. O is met D. Ze worden gevolgd door S.
Er komt geen morgen en D neemt afscheid.
"I’m leaving ... for the unknown. These are my last lines. Farewell to you, my unknown, my dear readers, with whom I’ve lived through so many pages, to whom, when I came down with “soul,” I revealed all of myself, right down to the last pulverized screw, the last busted spring.... I’m leaving."(272)
Hij gaat aan boord van de INTEGRAL. Zijn collega's zijn al bezig.
"I couldn’t bear to look at them—to look at men whom I would, in an hour’s time, with these very hands, cast out forever from the cozy figures of the Table of Hours, whom I would tear away forever from the maternal breast of OneState."(273)
Ze maken hun eerste vlucht. De groep opstandelingen met I is aan boord. Hij zoekt haar op.
"“Well? What do we do now?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any idea how marvelous this is—just to fly, not knowing, no matter where.... And soon it’ll be 12:00 and no one knows what? And tonight ... where’ll we be tonight, you and I? On the grass, maybe, on dry leaves....”"(279)
Maar ook de bewakers zijn aan boord en nemen de gebeurtenissen over. U heeft de opstandelingen verraden. De INTEGRAL zal weer gaan landen.
Weer gewoon op aarde breekt de chaos uit. D zoekt U om haar te vermoorden. Net als dat bijna lukt wordt hij gebeld door de Weldoener. Die wil hem zien. En U heeft hen helemaal niet verraden.
"When I came to myself, I was already standing in front of Him, and I was too terrified to raise my eyes. All I could see were His huge cast-iron hands, resting on His knees. These hands were heavy even on Him, His knees gave under them. He moved His fingers slowly. His face was up there somewhere in a mist, and the only reason why His voice didn’t roar like thunder, didn’t deafen me, and sounded like an ordinary human voice, was that it reached me from such a height.
“So ... you too? You, the Builder of the INTEGRAL? You, to whom it was given to become greatest among the conquistadors. You, whose name was to have begun a new, brilliant chapter in the history of OneState.... You?”"
"Yes, yes. Builder of the INTEGRAL ... Yes, yes ... and immediately I had a picture of the infuriated face of U with its trembling brick-red gills—that morning when both of them were together in my room.... I remember it very clearly: I burst out laughing and lifted my eyes. In front of me sat a bald man who resembled Socrates and whose bald pate was covered over with tiny drops of sweat."(298)
[Lachen maakt alles onbelangrijk, relativeert alles, en ineens zie je alles anders.]
De Machine van de Weldoener wordt vernietigd. De opstandelingen doorbreken de muur en vallen binnen. D probeert I te vinden. Dat lukt niet en hij gaat naar zijn eigen huis.
"I was stumbling, the streets were empty, the city was strange and wild, the triumphant clamor of the birds would never cease—it was Doomsday. In several buildings I could see through the glass walls (this sank in) that male and female Numbers were copulating without the least shame, without even lowering the blinds, without so much as a ticket, in broad daylight...."(303)
"I’d never known this before, but now I do, and so do you: Laughter comes in different colors. It’s only the distant echo of an explosion inside you. It might come in holiday colors —red, blue, golden rockets. Or it might be the bits of a human body flying out."(304)
Als hij wakker wordt zit I-330 tegenover hem. Ze bedrijven de liefde. En dan moet ze weer weg. Voorgoed. Hij wil niet meer schrijven voor de mensen in het universum.
Hij holt naar het Bureau van de Bewakers.
"I was so tense all over that my ears were ringing. I said (not looking at him): “I think I always hated her, from the very beginning. I was fighting.... But no, no, better you don’t believe me: I could have saved myself and didn’t want to, I wanted to die, that meant more to me than anything. ... I mean, not to die, but for her to ... And even now, even now that I know everything ... You know, do you know that I was called before the Benefactor?”
“Yes, I know.”"(312)
"And then I told him the whole breathless, confused story —everything that’s written down here. About the real me and the shaggy me, and about what she’d said that time about my hands—yes, that was how it all started—and about how I then didn’t want to carry out my duty, and about how I fooled myself, and how she got the phony medical certificates, about how I got more corrupt from one day to the next, and about the corridors down there, and about how ... on the other side of the Wall ..."(313)
"And suddenly it hit me with shameless clarity, like a bolt of lightning to the head: He was one of them."(314)
Hij gaat er vandoor.
Ook hij moet de Operatie ondergaan. Daarna is hij weerr Normaal enrustig en hij geeft iedereen aan die hij kent van de opstandelingen.
"But on Fortieth Avenue, which runs crosstown, they’ve managed to build a temporary wall of high-voltage waves. And I hope we’ll win. More—I’m certain we’ll win. Because reason has to win."(318)