e caller's number, which you just wrote earlier. You then look
and see if the number this guy wants is in fact on your switchboard,
which it generally is, since it's generally a local call. Long
distance costs so much that people use it sparingly.

Only then do you pick up a calling-cord from a shelf at the base of the
switchboard. This is a long elastic cord mounted on a kind of reel so
that it will zip back in when you unplug it. There are a lot of cords
down there, and when a bunch of them are out at once they look like a
nest of snakes. Some of the girls think there are bugs living in those
cable-holes. They're called "cable mites" and are supposed to bite
your hands and give you rashes. You don't believe this, yourself.

Gripping the head of your calling-cord, you slip the tip of it deftly
into the sleeve of the jack for the called person. Not all the way in,
though. You just touch it. If you hear a clicking sound, that means
the line is busy and you can't put the call through. If the line is
busy, you have to stick the calling-cord into a "busy-tone jack," which
will give the guy a busy-tone. This way you don't have to talk to him
yourself and absorb his natural human frustration.

But the line isn't busy. So you pop the cord all the way in. Relay
circuits in your board make the distant phone ring, and if somebody
picks it up off the hook, then a phone conversation starts. You can
hear this conversation on your answering cord, until you unplug it. In
fact you could listen to the whole conversation if you wanted, but this
is sternly frowned upon by management, and frankly, when you've
overheard one, you've pretty much heard 'em all.

You can tell how long the conversation lasts by the glow of the
calling-cord's lamp, down on the calling-cord's shelf. When it's over,
you unplug and the calling-cord zips back into place.

Having done this stuff a few hundred thousand times, you become quite
good at it. In fact you're plugging, and connecting, and
disconnecting, ten, twenty, forty cords at a time. It's a manual
handicraft, really, quite satisfying in a way, rather like weaving on
an upright loom.

Should a long-distance call come up, it would be different, but not all
that different. Instead of connecting the call through your own local
switchboard, you have to go up the hierarchy, onto the long-distance
lines, known as "trunklines." Depending on how far the call goes, it
may have to work its