There was no point in arguing with Helen, so he didn't. She apparently had little interest in politics other than a layman's desire to see justice prevail, and if the government wanted to tax the air they breathed, why--let them; they were taxing everything else. That's why he found himself drawn irresistibly to Julie; she wasn't a slave to convention. That's why he liked to meet her in the darkness of the outside, when the curfew forbade anyone venturing into the night--at least, that was one reason. She was part of the forbidden fruit he secretly desired and vowed would have. A government official's benign face appeared on the television screen to announce the Super State program. The World Flag materialized, waving in a studio-inspired breeze, and a chorus chanted: "Super State, Super State, Simply great is Super Sta-a-ate!" "Sixty minutes of uninterrupted commercial," Arthur Dunlop thought with distaste. Plays and songs subtly presented to show that contemporary living was equivalent to a golden age. He was careful, however, not to let his face reveal his mind's opinion. "The airtax man will be around to read the meter tonight," Helen reminded him. "Fine," he murmured, but already he was only half-aware of the world around him as he dozed while appearing outwardly alert. There was a time, he remembered vaguely, when there were no such things as respirators, when the air you breathed was free. For twenty of his thirty-four years he had known that golden era. There were taxes, of course, but only on the food you ate, the money you earned, the entertainment you saw, et cetera, almost ad infinitum. Air, it seemed--much to the government's evident dissatisfaction--was an untaxable commodity, a luxury which even the poor could enjoy without restriction. Then came the war. The war that caused all peoples to finally unite under one government to insure peace. Arthur Dunlop knew of the war, for he was a part of it. He fought back to preserve his life, and they gave him a medal for it, a piece of cloth and metal which indicated that he was lucky enough to survive. It was another war to make the world safe for something or other, and he still recalled with a shudder the Battle of Boston, the Siege of New York, the great topplings of great cities into greater dust. To counteract the poisonous by-products of civilized weapons, the respirators had been developed--small watch-like mechanisms that enabled the wearers to breathe in practically any atmosphere. After the war, they had been adapted to a new use. "What?" Arthur Dunlop said. Helen was extending a carton marked "6-C." "Mealtime," she declared. He took the box, another development of the Last War, and opened it. Standardization was the keynote, he remembered, for in that there is unity. Standardization of clothing, of living, of eating, of thinking.