But it could be all a farce. They could all be working in the great dome because they didn't know what was beyond. Who could know if they'd never been beyond? And so they were held under the domes with the buildings and the machines that carried them all around in the city; held with the plumbing and the theatres and all the intricate mechanisms that spoke to them and fed them, that washed them and poured thoughts into their minds, that healed them when they were sick and rested them when they were tired. The same as they were held with the great dome. Held and shackeled with the replacing of parts that didn't need replacing; the making over and over again of the tiny and large pieces of the mechanisms and the taking of the old mechanisms and the melting of them or smashing of them to powder so that this dust or molten metal could be fashioned again and again into the same pieces that they had been for so many thousands of years. All this to keep them busy? All this to keep something outside that was supposed to be destructive because once it had been so five thousand years ago or ten or fifty? All this because that was the way it had been for as long as the hundreds and the thousands of years that history had been recorded? He walked on through the silence, dimly aware now of the people moving about him, of the automobiles rolling past, as though moved by some invisible force. He passed row upon row of movie theatres that called to him with invisible vibrations. He turned away. Where was the little man? He stopped, moving only his eyes. After a moment, he saw the little man step out of a shop-front and stand waiting. Twenty-three, a cigarette in his mouth, walked over and asked for a light. The little man touched a lighter to the cigarette, at the same time dropping a packet of cards into Twenty-three's pocket. Twenty-three moved on. He felt the pounding of his heart. If only his wife were asleep so he would not have to wait to look at these new cards.