x society becomes. Each new one creates the need for two more.
I get a sort of feeling of--I don't know--vitality, I guess, when I
walk into, say, an automated factory. All that machinery and all that
electronic gear is like a single cell in a living organism--an
organism that's growing every day, multiplying like bacteria. And it's
always sick, and we're the doctors. That's job security. We're riding
the wave of the future. I don't think they'll make a salary cut
stick."

"I hope you're right," Eddie said.

* * * * *

Eddie checked out at 7:15, when the night supervisor finally arrived.
As he left the building, he noted that a burglar alarm down the street
had gone off; probably because of a short circuit. The clanking set
his nerves on edge. Apprehensively he felt a rising wind against his
cheeks.

At home, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss at the door.

"Honey," Lois told him, "you took the check book, and I didn't have
any money."

"Something come up? I'm sorry."

"We're all out of milk. The milk man didn't come today. Their
homogenizing machinery broke down. I phoned the dairy about nine; and
then, of course, the phone has been on the blink since about eleven or
a little before, so I couldn't ask you to bring some home."

"I kept trying to get you."

"I figured you had to work late again, when you weren't here at six,
and I knew you'd be here when you got here."

Eddie sat down and she sat on the chair arm beside him. "How did it go
today?"

He started to tell her about the wage cut and Ramon Lopez; but then he
didn't want to talk about it. "So-so," he said. "There was an outage
over in the Silver Lake Area just before I left."

"Fixed yet?"

"I doubt it," he said. "Probably a couple of more hours."

"Gee," she said, "when I think of all that meat in the deep
freezer...."

"I wouldn't stock so much," he said. "I really wouldn't."

She twisted away from him. "Honey. I'm jittery. Something's ... I
don't know. In the air, I guess."

The wind rattled the windows.

* * * * *

While Lois was warming dinner, his son came in.

"Hi, Eddie."

"Hi, Larry."

"Eddie, when we gonna get the TV fixed?"

Eddie put down the newspaper. "We just don't have a hundred dollars or
so right now." He searched for matches on the table by the chair.
"Lois, oh, Lois, where're the matches?"

She came in. "They were all out Friday at the store, a