We. Евгений Замятин

They dealt with the man who, his reason lost and lips like glass, stood on the steps and waited for the logical consequences of his own insane deeds.

      … A blaze…. Buildings were swaying in those iambic lines, and sprinkling upward their liquefied golden substance, they broke and fell. The green trees were scorched, their sap slowly ran out and they remained standing like black crosses, like skeletons. Then appeared Prometheus (that meant us):

      “…he harnessed fire

      With machines and steel

      And fettered chaos with Law …”

      The world was renovated; it became like steel—a sun of steel, trees of steel, men of steel. Suddenly an insane man “unchained the fire and set it free,” and again the world had perished… Unfortunately I have a bad memory for poetry, but one thing I am sure of: one could not choose more instructive or more beautiful parables.

      Another slow, heavy gesture of the cast-iron hand and another poet appeared on the steps of the Cube. I stood up. Impossible! But… thick Negro lips—it was he. Why didn’t he tell me that he was to be invested with such high … His lips trembled; they were gray. Oh, I certainly understood; to be face to face with the Well-Doer, face to face with the hosts of Guardians! Yet one should not allow oneself to be so upset.

      Swift, sharp verses like an ax… They told about an unheard-of crime, about sacrilegious poems in which the Well-Doer was called… But no, I do not dare to repeat…

      R-13 was pale when he finished, and looking at no one (I did not expect such bashfulness of him) he descended and sat down. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second I saw right beside him somebody’s face—a sharp, black triangle—and instantly I lost it; my eyes, thousands of eyes, were directed upward toward the Machine. Then—again the superhuman, cast-iron, gesture of the hand.

      Swayed by an unknown wind, the criminal moved; one step … one more … then the last step in his life. His face was turned to the sky, his head thrown back—he was on his last… Heavy, stony like fate, the Well-Doer went around the machine, put his enormous hand on the lever … Not a whisper, not a breath around; all eyes were upon that hand… What crushing, scorching power one must feel to be the tool, to be the resultant of hundreds of thousands of wills! How great his lot!

      Another second. The hand moved down, switching in the current. The lightning-sharp blade of the electric ray…. A faint crack like a shiver, in the tubes of the Machine…. The prone body, covered with a light phosphorescent smoke; then, suddenly, under the eyes of all, it began to melt—to melt, to dissolve with terrible speed. And then nothing; just a pool of chemically pure water which only a moment ago had been so red and had pulsated in his heart….

      All this was simple; all of us were familiar with the phenomenon, dissociation of matter—yes, the splitting of the atoms of the human body! Yet every time we witnessed it, it seemed a miracle; it was a symbol of the superhuman power of the Well-Doer.

      Above, in front of Him, the burning faces of the female Numbers, mouths half-open from emotion, flowers swaying in the wind. According to custom, ten women were covering with flowers the unif of the Well-Doer, which was still wet with spray. With the magnificent step of a supreme priest He slowly descended, slowly passed between the rows of stands. Like tender white branches there rose toward Him the arms of the women; and, millions like one, our tempestuous cheers! Then cheers in honor of the Guardians, who all unseen were present among us… Who knows, perhaps the fancy of the ancient man foresaw them centuries ahead, when he created the gentle and formidable “Guardian Angels” assigned to each person from the day of his birth?

      Yes, there was in our celebration something of the ancient religions, something purifying like a storm…You whose lot it may be to read this, are you familiar with such emotions? I am sorry for you if you are not.