The benumbed waves—Everything is improving—I am a microbe.
Please imagine that you stand at the seashore. The waves go rhythmically up, down, up. … Suddenly when they have risen they remain in that position, benumbed, torpid! It was just as weird and unnatural when everything became confused and our regular walk which is prescribed by the Tables, suddenly came to an end. The last time such a thing happened was 119 years ago, when according to our historians a meteorite fell hissing and fuming into the very midst of the marchers. We were walking yesterday as usual, that is like warriors on the Assyrian monuments, a thousand heads and two composite, integrated legs and two swinging integrated arms. At the end of the avenue where the Accumulating Tower was formidably resounding, a quadrangle appeared: on the sides, in front and behind—guards; in the centre three Numbers. Their unifs were already stripped of the golden State badges; everything was painfully clear. The enormous dial on the top of the Tower looked like a face; it bent down from the clouds and spitting down its seconds, it waited with indifference. It showed six minutes past thirteen exactly. There was some confusion in the quadrangle. I was very close and I saw the most minute details. I clearly remember a thin, long neck and on the temple a confused net of small blue veins like rivers on the map of a small unfamiliar world, and that unknown world was apparently still a very young man. He evidently noticed someone in our ranks; he stopped, rose upon his tiptoes and stretched his neck. One of the guards snapped his back with the bluish spark of the electric whip—he squealed in a thin voice like a puppy. The distinct snaps followed each other at intervals of approximately two seconds; a snap and a squeal, a snap and a squeal. … We continued to walk as usual, rhythmically, in our Assyrian manner. I watched the graceful zigzags of the electric sparks and