Records 1-5 Summary

The morning State newspaper announces the Integral will be finished in 120 days and rise into space. This generation will subjugate other planets to the United State, which has existed 1,000 years. They will try to persuade primitives to abandon freedom and embrace "mathematical faultless happiness." Numbers are encouraged to write tributes for inclusion in the Integral's first cargo. Its builder, D-503, blushes as he starts a diary about what "we" think and do. It is like being pregnant, nurturing and painfully making his sacrifice, as nearly everyone is ready to do.

O-90 comes to pick up D-503 for the supplementary walk. She is short and round. Oddly, she comments on the beauties of springtime rather than D-503's dancing machinery. They join thousands dressed in blue, walking four abreast. Admiring the "square harmony" of their way of life, D-503 recalls a raucous...