Yevgeny Zamyatin

“ It is your work! You did your ‘duty’! Well . . .” She tore her hand from mine; the Valkyrie helmet with indignant wings was soon to be seen some distance in front of me. I was alone, torpid, silent. Like everyone else I followed into the dining saloon. ”

“ The hands of the clock on the table were slowly moving from minute to minute. Everything was permeated by a thin, hardly perceptible quivering (only I noticed it) . For some reason a thought passed through my head: it would be better if all this took place not here but somewhere below, nearer to earth.
“Stop!” I commanded.
We kept moving by inertia, but more and more slowly. Now the Integral was caught for a second by an imperceptible little hair, for a second it hung motionless, then the little hair broke and the Integral, like a stone, dashed downward with increasing speed. ”

“ I had bounded over the inevitable border, having left my body somewhere there below, and I was soaring bodiless to a new world, where everything was to be different, upside down.
“Keep the same course!” I shouted into the engine room, or perhaps it was not I but a phonograph in me, and the same machine that I was, with a mechanical, hinge-like movement, handed the commander’s trumpet to the Second Builder. Permeated by that most delicate, molecular quiver known only to me, I ran down the companionway, to seek . . . ”

“ We . . .”
I felt I was growing pale, and that they would soon notice it. But the phonograph within me performed the prescribed fifty chewing movements for every bite. I locked myself into myself as though into an opaque house; I threw up a heap of rocks before my door and lowered the window blinds. . . .
Afterward, the telephone of the commander was again in my hands, and again we made the flight through the clouds with icy, supreme anxiety into the icy, starry, sunny night. Minutes, hours passed. Apparently all that time the motor of logic within me was working feverishly at full speed. ”

“ An infinitesimal, molecular quiver of my whole body. This quivering did not stop to the very end—it was as if an enormous motor had been placed under the very foundation of my body, which was so light that the walls, partitions, cables, beams, lights—everything was quivering. . . .
I did not yet know whether she was there. But I had no time . . . They were calling me: quick! To the commander’s bridge; time to go . . . where?
Gray, rayless faces. Below in the water—tense blue veins. Heavy, cast-iron patches of sky. ”

“ But the phonograph within me, with a hinge-like motion and precision, took the telephone and commanded: “Low speed!” The stone ceased falling. Now only the four lower tubes were growling, two ahead and two aft, only enough to hold the Integral motionless; and the Integral, only slightly trembling, stopped in the air as if anchored, about one kilometer from the earth. ”

“ If only I could reach the radio room soon . . . wing-like helmets, the odor of blue lightning . . . I remember telling her something in a low voice, and I remember how she looked through me, and how her voice seemed to come from a distance:
“I am busy. I am receiving a message from below. You may dictate yours to her.”
The small, box-like little cabin . . . I thought for a second and then dictated in a firm voice:
“Time fourteen-forty. Going down. Motors stopped. The end of all.”
The commander’s bridge. The machine heart of the Integral stopped; we were falling ”