ONLY ONCE, BEFORE THE plague, had he seen the interior of this room. But he still remembered it and he still recalled the powerful emotional experience it had been those many years ago.
All children had to have a brain-wave recording made by the Bureau during the first month of their life. And again at the age of 10 each child returned to the Bureau for a recheck. It was for this latter recording that Charles had come to the Bureau some twenty-two years before and a friendly guard had let him peep briefly into the computer room. The impression of intense activity, of organized confusion, of mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life.
“So different now,” he thought, surveying the room. “Now it’s empty, so empty.” The machine seemed to reflect the stillness, the very dead
