"I've seen the films!" She had seen the crumpled metal, the severed limbs, the spreading blood. "Driver error. No drivers left. Too expensive on government allowance." "No one stupid enough left, you mean!" But it was stupid to glare when he wouldn't frown. "Okay, what's it feel like?" she demanded. He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. "It must feel some way." She peered down into the machine, trying to imagine herself hurtling in it. "You fly an airplane too," she accused. He nodded. "I bet it feels just like gridding. And it takes longer." "Gridding." He snorted, mildly. "There's no sensation at all to gridding." "Then how does it feel to fly?" she prodded. Brendel moved restlessly, bored. "Let's get going." "We just got here, stupid," she protested. He was already pulling her to the corner grid. "I'm getting hungry." She tried to jerk her arm free but couldn't. "How long will you be here?" she called back, swatting Brendel's arm. He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. "If I come--" But Brendel had given their number. They were outside their own door, and she hadn't felt a thing. Today she resented not feeling a thing. "These weird-o's, they talk too much. I'm hungry." She resented punching his food and didn't even want to quarrel. * * * * * She drowsed back into sleep, remembering. Everything was empty. She ate, she slept, she quarreled, she gridded around seeing friends. What else was there? She couldn't get a job; there weren't that many jobs. And with the government allowance for not working, who needed a job? Who needed anything? A time of plenty, her school machine had called it. You just gridded around collecting and arguing to make it interesting. There were so many people moving so fast that you had to quarrel and push or you'd get stepped on. It was all stupid. Brendel didn't help a bit. He was stupid too. She tried to imagine Latsker Smith echoing through the empty streets in his scarlet splinter of car. Latsker Smith couldn't be stupid. She slept three hours before the gridbell rang. Elka, her cousin, stood on the grid, loose-haired, big-toothed. She swung a hatbox. "I didn't get you up?" "No," Pollony said hopelessly. "I'm gridding to NYC hatting and--" "It's not even seven." "Poll, I'm contritest but you weren't sleeping and--" "I don't need hats." "You haven't seen the darling I got in Paris. I gridded over with Sella Kyle and, honestly, there was a shop that--" She convinced Elka that she was not going hatting. Elka took her toll in coffee and gridded after her Paris hat. Pollony barely admired it and Elka left. Before she could dial Brendel's breakfast her mother was on the grid, fluffy, fleecy, thrusting a wad of bills at her. "Just on my way to Mexico, toodle. Punch me some coffee?" Breathless moments later she was gone. "What took so long?" Brendel demanded when she woke him.