The man told her they had tried leaving everything green all year round, but in the long run the people didn't approve of it. They liked to look out, some fine spring morning, and see the trugrass lawn and the maple trees unexpectedly green again. The service men came just before dawn to spray the lawns and unfold the maple leaves. It was a landscaping marvel. The grass never had to be cut and Lucy knew that the simulated maple tree would never be over eight feet tall. No pruning, no troublesome roots, no falling leaves to rake. Her only criticism was that the birds seemed to avoid both lawn and tree. She looked out, rather wistfully, in hopes of seeing a bird. But she rarely saw one. She remembered with a pang of nostalgia the red-winged blackbirds which descended on the cattails bordering the dump every spring. They were such bright, frolicsome, saucy creatures! But they never flew over the trugrass lawns. After a while, Lucy stopped visiting her neighbors. For some reason which she could not specifically name, they depressed her. They were old and listless and often ill, but it was more than that. At length she knew the reason. They were dead; they were corpses waiting for interment. They would be transferred from the plastic prefabs to State permaplastic coffins with scarcely a groan of protest. They were just waiting for death, day after day. Consciously, they swallowed their capsules, read their daily newstapes and sat with their eyes riveted on the screens. But subconsciously they had stopped living. Subconsciously they longed for death to release them from the bondage of State security, State brainwashing, the bland and eternal aura of State assurance and reassurance. She began to feel that she was being smothered to death in the plastic prefab. She grew to loathe the food capsules. The endless entertaintime programs finally filled her with boredom. The newstapes were some diversion but she resented them because she sensed that all the news had been too carefully sifted and predigested beforehand. She stared out at the meek leafless tree and hated it. Sometimes she sat on the floor because she was so tired of the foamease chair. Once she pressed the "Dispensary" button just to see what would happen, but she never tried it again because she was subjected to a tedious two-hour examination which left her exhausted and taut with irritation. The examination was thorough but so impersonal she was left feeling like an inanimate object.