Rules Of The Enrichment Center

Nineteen rules, enamelled on a plate and bolted at every landing in every shaft. Eighteen of them are printed below. The nineteenth is not printed below, for the reason given in the fourth.

Posted under the authority of Cave Johnson, President & Founder

Every one of these rules is on the plate because something happened. That is worth stating at the top, because a man reading a list of rules assumes somebody sat in a room and imagined them. Nobody imagined any of these. Each one has a date and an incident behind it and the incidents are in the day books on Sub-Level 7.

The Plate, Reproduced

1Do not run in the corridors. The corridors are salt and salt is slick and we have lost more afternoons to a man running than to any apparatus in this building.

2Do not enter a chamber whose door is closed. A closed door is a chamber in use, a chamber being cleaned, or a chamber that Operations has closed. All three are the same instruction.

3Do not carry metal past the emancipation grill. This includes tools, coins, buttons, buckles and fillings. The grill does not distinguish and has never been asked to.

4Do not write down what you saw in a chamber until you have left the shaft. A note written underground is a note written by a man who is still underground, and this company has learned to treat the two as different documents.

5Do not press the elevator button twice. The car is coming. The car has always been coming. The second press does not reach the car, it reaches the relay room, and the relay room does not want it.

6Report any apparatus found outside its chamber. Do not carry it back. Do not put it right. Report it and leave it exactly where it is.

7Do not eat in a gel chamber, a substrate room, or Corridor 6.

8The observation windows are one-way. Personnel are reminded that this means one way.

9Do not acknowledge the observation windows. Do not wave at them, speak to them, or address a remark to whoever you believe is behind them. Whoever you believe is behind them is very often behind them, and it is not a rule about them; it is a rule about the data.

10Do not remain in a chamber after the buzzer. The chamber is being reset. You do not want to see a chamber being reset and, more to the point, this company does not want a man in a chamber that believes it is empty.

11Volunteers may withdraw at any time up to the sealing of the chamber door. Personnel may withdraw at any time whatever, from anything, and will be paid to the end of the week, and I will not be told about it.

12Do not open a wall panel. The panels bolt from the outside for a reason and the reason is ventilation, and if the reason is not ventilation, report it and do not open the panel.

13Do not enter a room that is not on the drawing you were given. Note its position, leave the level, and give the drawing to Facilities with the position marked.

14If a corridor is longer than the drawing says it is, walk back the way you came. Do not walk forward to establish how much longer it is. Facilities has established that. Facilities is not publishing it.

15Below the fourth level of Shaft 07 the signage reads right to left. This is not an error and it is not to be repainted. Read it as you find it.

16Do not descend alone after the six o’clock whistle. Not because it is dangerous. Because the gate ledger has a down column and an up column and they are required to agree.

17If the lights go out, stand still. The shaft is four thousand feet of vertical street and you do not know it as well as you think you do. Someone will come. Someone has come every time.

18If you meet yourself, keep walking. Do not stop, do not speak, and do not turn around to check. Report it at the gate house on ascent, to Mr. Pike, who will write it in the book without comment because he has written it in the book before.

19The nineteenth rule is on the plate and is not in this publication.

Rules 12 through 15 were all added in one week in 1958. Operations has been asked which week. Operations has answered that it was the week after the one before it.

On The Nineteenth

I am going to address this directly, because if I do not address it the Bulletin will print three letters about it and I will have to address it anyway.

The nineteenth rule is on the plate. It is on every plate, at every landing, in every shaft, enamelled the same as the other eighteen, in the same size, in the same house type. Nobody has painted it out. Nobody is hiding it. Any man on the payroll can walk to a landing and read it.

It is not printed in this publication because this publication leaves the building. Rule four says that a note written underground is a different document from a note written above it, and the nineteenth rule is the reason rule four is on the plate.

If you want to know what it says, come and work here. That is not a dodge. That is a recruitment offer and the Personnel Department is on the second floor.

Verifying personnel file…

Rules Posted At Every LandingDo Not Acknowledge The Windows

The plates are enamelled steel, eleven by fourteen inches, made on the third floor by the same press that makes the shower curtain grommets. There are two hundred and six of them in the building. Facilities has counted them four times and got two hundred and six three times.

Rules on the plate: Nineteen
Rules in this publication: Eighteen
Plates in the building: Two hundred and six
Times counted: Four
Times the count was two hundred and six: Three.

Rule eighteen was added in March 1956. Rule eighteen was added before rules twelve through fifteen and it is numbered after them. I have asked. Nobody renumbered anything. — C.

Form ASI-308. Volunteers are bound by rules 1 through 11 for the duration of one afternoon. Personnel are bound by all nineteen at all times, including at home, including after leaving the company — a clause Legal inserted in 1957 and which the President has read exactly once, approved, and never mentioned again.

there is a landing on six with no number on it. i have read the plate. i read it twice