Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [560]

During the first firing a dozen or so numbers from the dock neglected to get out of the way-nothing remained of them except some crumbs and soot I record with pride that this did not disturb the rhythm of our work for even a moment No one recoiled; both we and our machines continued our straight-line and circular motions with the same precision as before, as though nothing had happened. Ten numbers are less than a hundred-millionth part of the population of the One State; practically considered, it is an infinitesimal of the third order. Only the ancients were prone to arithmetically illiterate pity; to us it is ridiculous. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 560

Note

The chilling conflation of human casualties with technical calibration, where dead numbers become mere rounding errors in state arithmetic.