A woman carries a black rectangle through the city. It has no wire. She speaks into it while walking and is answered by a man who is not there. The police do not find this remarkable; they are interested only in the murder.
At ten each morning the rectangle interrupts whatever its owner is doing. The President speaks for ten seconds. Citizens may switch off music, conversation and prayer, but not the President.
The machine composes every melody that can be composed and registers each one before breakfast. By noon the company owns the future of music. Musicians are advised to invent silence.
The patient is introduced to the self who remained married, then the self who divorced, then the self who never met his wife. After the fourth consultation he asks to speak to the version who refused treatment.
Every evening the citizen reports to the station and assists an officer in updating the illuminated map of his friendships. The citizen objects that he barely knows several of the people connected to him. The officer replies that the map knows them better.
No delegates attend. Their papers are read by machines to machines capable of understanding them completely. The proceedings are judged the most intellectually successful in the conference’s history.
A university discovers that the easiest way to improve student satisfaction is to remove every experience capable of producing dissatisfaction. The surviving course consists of enrolment and graduation.