A train of our ether waves accidently fell into
parallelism with a train of waves from the Venus Substation. By the most
peculiar mischance, the two trains happened to be displaced, with
reference to each other, one half of a wave length, with the unfortunate
result that the negative points of one coincided with the positive
points of maximum amplitude of the other. Hence the two wave trains
nullified each other and communication ceased for one hundred and
eighty-five seconds--until the earth had revolved far enough to throw
them out of parallelism."

"Ah! Thank you," replied the professor. He dropped his instrument into
his coat pocket and gazed in the direction of the glass square whose
image had so aroused his ire. "I apologize, B262H72476Male, for my
suspicions as to your veracity--but I had in mind several former
experiences." He shook a warning forefinger. "I will now resume my
talk."

"A moment ago, gentlemen, I mentioned the John Jones Dollar. Some of you
who have just enrolled with the class will undoubtedly say to
yourselves: 'What is a John Jones? What is a Dollar?'

"In the early days, before the present scientific registration of human
beings was instituted by the National Eugenics Society, man went around
under a crude multi-reduplicative system of nomenclature. Under this
system there were actually more John Joneses than there are calories in
a British Thermal Unit. But there was one John Jones, in particular,
living in the twentieth century, to whom I shall refer in my lecture.
Not much is known of his personal life except that he was an ardent
socialist--a bitter enemy, in fact, of the private ownership of wealth.

"Now as to the Dollar. At this day, when the Psycho-Erg, a combination
of the Psych, the unit of esthetic satisfaction, and the Erg, the unit
of mechanical energy, is recognized as the true unit of value, it seems
difficult to believe that in the twentieth century and for more than ten
centuries thereafter, the Dollar, a metallic circular disk, was being
passed from hand to hand in exchange for the essentials of life.

"But nevertheless, such was the case. Man exchanged his mental or
physical energy for these Dollars. He then re-exchanged the Dollars for
sustenance, raiment, pleasure, and operations for the removal of the
vermiform appendix.

"A great many individuals, however, deposited their Dollars in a
stronghold called a bank. These banks invested the Dollars in loans and
commerci