Surrey becomes the unlikely refuge John chooses when he asks to be left alone: a landscape of heath, woods, ponds, and distant villages set within reach of London’s relentless traffic. Its quiet offers him room for a private life, but the reporters who arrive at his lighthouse show how readily even this apparent wilderness can be turned into public spectacle.

A landscape between countryside and city

The routes through Surrey are shaped by the World State’s aerial network. The down-line follows the Wey valley through Godalming, Milford, Witley, Haslemere, and toward Portsmouth; the upline runs by Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead, and Grayshott. Because portions of the routes once came within six or seven kilometres of one another, night flying and the impairment of soma had caused serious accidents. The upline was therefore diverted west. Four abandoned air-lighthouses still mark the old Portsmouth-to-London road between Grayshott and Tongham, while helicopters now pass over Selborne, Bordon, and Farnham.

Against that engineered geography, John’s chosen refuge stands on a hill between Puttenham and Elstead. In the valley, Puttenham rises nine stories above its poultry farm, silos, and vitamin-D factory; south of the lighthouse, slopes of heather descend toward ponds. Elstead’s fourteen-story tower rises beyond the woods, while Hindhead and Selborne recede into the hazy distance. The scene holds two kinds of space together: the standardized settlements and transport corridors of the World State, and a natural landscape that still appears expansive and unclaimed.

An unusual solitude

The countryside’s quiet is not produced by distance alone. John’s lighthouse is only a quarter of an hour’s flight from the Charing-T Tower, yet the hills seem nearly as deserted as Malpais. People leave London to play Electro-magnetic Golf or Tennis; Puttenham has no links, and the nearest Riemann-surfaces are at Guildford. With no approved recreation to draw visitors, flowers and landscape are left as the area’s attractions—and almost nobody comes.

For John, the nearby heath is beautiful in a way that makes it feel unfamiliar: its open ground, yellow gorse, Scotch firs, shining ponds, birch trees, water lilies, and rushes astonish an eye accustomed to the American desert. Its remoteness is therefore both geographic and cultural. The World State’s leisure system passes close by, but its preferences leave this particular landscape largely unattended. John can spend whole days without seeing another person.

The lighthouse and John’s retreat

John’s refuge is an old ferro-concrete lighthouse, still in excellent condition. Its comfort troubles him because it seems too civilized for the self-discipline he intends to practise. He resolves to compensate with more demanding purification, and makes his first night deliberately sleepless: he prays on his knees to several religious figures and traditions, then holds his arms out as if on the Cross until the posture becomes painful. The building supplies shelter, but his chosen use of it turns the refuge into a place of deliberate hardship.

Before leaving London, John spends most of his personal money on supplies: four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, tools, matches, pots and pans, seeds, and ten kilograms of wheat flour. He refuses synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute, though he accepts other processed provisions after a shopkeeper persuades him. Looking at the tins at the lighthouse, he reproaches himself and vows not to eat them, even if starving. The remaining money, he hopes, will last through winter; by spring, he expects his garden to make him independent. He has also seen rabbits and waterfowl, and begins making a bow and arrows.

From refuge to public spectacle

The isolation does not last. A reporter comes to the lighthouse seeking comments about John, the whip, and civilization. John answers with five words in Zuni and then kicks the reporter with enough force to send him away injured. Within eight minutes, The Hourly Radio has turned the encounter into a sensational headline. The report makes Surrey a setting for an abrupt collision between John’s desire to withdraw and the World State’s appetite for news about him.

That first injury does not deter other journalists. Four reporters, representing the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, arrive that afternoon and meet receptions of increasing violence. The landscape that had seemed empty because ordinary visitors had no reason to come is now sought out precisely because John has become a story. Surrey offers him solitude only temporarily: once the media discover the lighthouse, even the quiet countryside becomes part of the spectacle he hoped to escape.