Afterward--a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the middle of the square a dim, heavy threatening mass--the Machine of the Well-Doer; and a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the Machine: a snow-white pillow and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes and a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... All this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the Machine. I know _how_ this connection has come about but I do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud--I don't want to! I do not! I closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the Machine. I must have been running for my face was wet. From somewhere very far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: "Save me from it--save me!" If only I had a mother as the ancients had,--my mother, _mine_, for whom I should be not the Builder of the _Integral_ and not D-530, not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.... And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips.... RECORD THIRTY-SEVEN Infusorian Doomsday Her Room This morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone: "But why don't you eat? Don't you see, they are looking at you!" I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it--like a crack in my face; I smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful. What followed was this: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky--floating over heads and houses it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water. I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks, everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the Hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another.... They were asking: "What? What happened? What?..." And the disorderly fragments of the Machine which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions,--down the elevators, down the stairs.... Stamping of feet.... Pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind.... The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the infusoria locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing around, to the sides, up and down.