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therefore I do not exist. My God, I can kill hundreds of thousands of them before they even realize murder is out in the world again. I can make it look like an accident each time. Why, the idea is so huge, it’s unbelievable!”
    The fire burned the town. He sat under a tree for a long time, until morning. Then, he found a cave in the hills, and went in, to sleep.
    He awoke at sunset with a sudden dream of fire. He saw himself pushed into the flue, cut into sections by flame, burned away to nothing. He sat up on the cave floor, laughing at himself. He had an idea.
    He walked down into the town and stepped into an audio booth. He dialed OPERATOR. “Give me the Police Department,” he said.
    â€œI beg your pardon?” said the operator.
    He tried again. “The Law Force,” he said.
    â€œI will connect you with the Peace Control,” she said, at last.
    A little fear began ticking inside him like a tiny watch. Suppose the operator recognized the term Police Department as an anachronism, took his audio number, and sent someone out to investigate? No, she wouldn’t do that. Why should she suspect? Paranoids were nonexistent in this civilization.
    â€œYes, the Peace Control,” he said.
    A buzz. A man’s voice answered, “Peace Control. Stephens speaking.”
    â€œGive me the Homicide Detail,” said Lantry, smiling.
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œWho investigates murders?”
    â€œI beg your pardon, what are you talking about?”
    â€œWrong number.” Lantry hung up, chuckling. Ye gods, there was no such a thing as a Homicide Detail. There were no murders, therefore they needed no detectives. Perfect, perfect!
    The audio rang back. Lantry hesitated, then answered.
    â€œSay,” said the voice on the phone. “Who are you?”
    â€œThe man just left who called,” said Lantry, and hung up again.
    He ran. They would recognize his voice and perhaps send someone out to check. People didn’t lie. He had just lied. They knew his voice. He had lied. Anybody who lied needed a psychiatrist. They would come to pick him up to see why he was lying. For no other reason. They suspected him of nothing else. Therefore—he must run.
    Oh, how very carefully he must act from now on. He knew nothing of this world, this odd straight truthful ethical world. Simply by looking pale you were suspect. Simply by not sleeping nights you were suspect. Simply by not bathing, by smelling like a—dead cow?—you were suspect. Anything.
    He must go to a library. But that was dangerous, too. What were libraries like today? Did they have books or did they have film spools which projected books on a screen? Or did people have libraries at home, thus eliminating the necessity of keeping large main libraries?
    He decided to chance it. His use of archaic terms might well make him suspect again, but now it was very important he learn all that could be learned of this foul world into which he had come again. He stopped a man on the street. “Which way to the library?”
    The man was not surprised. “Two blocks east, one block north.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Simple as that.
    He walked into the library a few minutes later.
    â€œMay I help you?”
    He looked at the librarian. May I help you, may I help you. What a world of helpful people! “I’d like to ‘have’ Edgar Allan Poe.” His verb was carefully chosen. He didn’t say ‘read’. He was too afraid that books were passé, that printing itself was a lost art. Maybe all “books” today were in the form of fully delineated three-dimensional motion pictures. How in hell could you make a motion picture out of Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud?
    â€œWhat was that name again?”
    â€œEdgar Allan Poe.”
    â€œThere is no such author listed in our files.”
    â€œWill you please check?”
    She checked. “Oh, yes. There’s a red mark on