“Probably the museum, being located on Fifth Avenue, was buried under the opposite apartment houses. If I was found here, you were within two hundred yards of your objective.” “What a treasure you are going to be to the archeologists, Bogardus,” exclaimed Acquilla. I was gazing at the map eagerly and indeed with a certain sadness. There were, it is true, indications of public squares and buildings, but though they were on a majestic scale, it was plain to see that New York, my New York, had been blotted out. An involuntary feeling of local pride brought with it a sharp chagrin. “Then Chicago has become the metropolis of America,” I said sadly. “In your day,” remarked Acquilla reflectively, “under your dreadful materialistic system, you crowded a million-- “A million? Ten millions!” “How dreadful, ten million human beings where fifty thousand hardly find space enough now!” “But Chicago?” I persisted clinging to my obsession. “Chicago? What about Chicago?” “What is the population of Chicago?” “Twenty-five to thirty thousand.” “San Francisco?” “The same.” “Good heavens, but then,” I sat up, staring at her. “But then, how many human beings have survived on this continent?” “North America? A million.” “And the entire world?” I said faintly. “I can tell you that exactly as I happen to be on the International Control of Population Board. All this, of course, Bogardus, you realize is the subject of the most careful regulation. For, as you will learn, it is the foundation of our modern individualization. For the rest of the world the figure with certain seasonal fluctuations is placed at two million, six hundred thousand. Five hundred thousand each for Europe, South America, and Africa. One hundred thousand for Australia, and a million for Asia.” “Good Lord, do you realize what it was in my day?” “In the twentieth century about twelve hundred millions, wasn’t it?” “A billion, six hundred millions.” “How dreadful! Why that was not humanity, but vermin!” “But how has all this happened?” “That, Bogardus, is a matter of history; the rise of womankind,” said Acquilla proudly. “But perhaps it would make it simpler for you to comprehend the changes that have taken place, if I took things in order.” She looked about reflectively a moment. “If you were put in the Frigidrome in 1929--” “Eleven years after the World War.” “The World War? Is that what you called that little struggle? Because after all it settled nothing, did it? The first true mondial conflict came in 1984 though there were local conflicts before that; the Japanese-Russian War of 1955, which brought all Asia, including Siberia, into the Oriental Empire; the breaking up of the British Empire and the Unification of Europe under the Germans in 1965.” “Then Bolshevism did not over-run the world,” I interrupted.