hear?" was the last thing she screamed at me
as I hurried toward Main Street.

However, I had no intention of leaving town with Aunt Matilda upset that
way. I'd let her have time to cool off, then come back. Meanwhile I'd
try to get to the bottom of things. A thing as big as wall TV in full
color and stereophonic sound must be the talk of the town. I'd find out
where they had their office and go talk with them. A career with
something like that would be the best thing I could ever hope to find.
And getting in on the ground floor!

It surprised me that Aunt Matilda could be so insanely greedy. I shook
my head in wonder. It didn't figure.

I had breakfast at the hotel cafe and made a point of telling the
waitress, who knew me, that it was my second breakfast, and that I had
intended to catch the morning train back to Chicago, but maybe I
wouldn't.

After I finished eating I asked if it would be okay to leave my suitcase
behind the counter while I looked around a bit. She showed me where to
put it so it would be out of the way.

When I paid for my breakfast I half turned away, then turned back
casually.

"Oh, by the way," I said. "Where's this wall TV place?"

"This what?" she said.

"You know," I said. "Color TV like a picture you hang on a wall."

All the color faded from her face. Her eyes went past me, staring. I
turned in the direction she was staring, and on the wall above the
plateglass front of the cafe was a picture.

That is, there was a picture frame and a pair of dark glasses that took
up most of the picture, with the lower part of a forehead and the upper
part of a nose. I had noticed it once while I was eating and had assumed
it was a display ad for sun glasses. Now I looked at it more closely,
but could detect no movement in it. It still looked like an ad for sun
glasses.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I heard the waitress say, her
voice edged with fear.

"Huh?" I said, turning my head back to look at her. "Oh. Well, never
mind."

I left the cafe with every outward appearance of casual innocence; but
inside I was beginning to realize for the first time the possibilities
and the danger that could lie in the use of this new TV development.

That had been a Big-Brother-is-Watching-you setup back there in the
cafe, except that it had been a girl instead of a man, judging from the
style of sun glasses and the smoothness of the nose and forehead.

I had wondered about the broadcasti