"Respected Numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a book written in the twentieth century. In this book the ironical author tells about a Wild Man and a barometer. The Wild Man noticed that every time the barometer's hand stopped on the word 'rain,' it actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word 'rain' (on the screen a Wild Man with feathers, letting out the mercury. Laughter). "You are laughing at him, but don't you think the 'European' of that age deserves more to be laughed at? He, like the Wild Man, wanted rain,--rain with a little r, an algebraic rain; but he remained standing before the barometer like a wet hen. The Wild Man at least had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic. The Wild Man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the path which...." Here (I repeat, I am not concealing anything, I am setting down everything) I suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents coming from the megaphone. I suddenly felt I had come here in vain (why in vain and how could I not have come here, where I was assigned?). Everything seemed to me empty like a shell. I succeeded with difficulty in switching my attention in again when the phono-lecturer came to the main theme of the evening,--to our music as a mathematical composition (mathematics is the cause, music the effect). The phono-lecturer began the description of the recently invented musicometer. "... By merely rotating this handle any one is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration,--an extinct form of epilepsy. Here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the music of Scriabin, twentieth century. This black box," (a curtain parted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument) "this box they called the 'Royal Grand.' They attached to this the idea of _regality_, which also goes to prove how their music...." And I don't remember anything further. Very possibly because ... I'll tell you frankly, because she, I-330, came to the "Royal" box. Probably I was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the platform. She was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her shoulders and breast and that warm shadow waving with her breath between.... And the dazzling, almost angry teeth. A smile, a bite, directed downward. She took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then,--not a shadow of rational mechanism. Of course all those around me were right; they were laughing. Only a few ... but why is it that I too, I...?