WM. Manet /--Trader /--Tom

    ..............
    (Sign Here)        Trader Tom

When he looked up from the card, Manet saw the box. Trader Tom was pushing it across the floor towards him.

The box had the general dimensions of a coffin, but it wasn't wood--only brightly illustrated cardboard. There was a large four-color picture on the lid showing men, women, and children moving through a busy city street. The red and blue letters said:

    LIFO
    The Socialization Kit

"It is commercialized," Trader Tom admitted with no little chagrin. "It is presented to appeal to a twelve-year-old child, an erotic, aggressive twelve-year-old, the typical sensie goer--but that is reality. It offends men of good taste like ourselves, yet sometimes it approaches being art. We must accept it."

"What's the cost?" Manet asked. "Before I accept it, I have to know the charges."

"You never know the cost. Only your executor knows that. It's the Trader Tom plan."

"Well, is it guaranteed?"

"There are no guarantees," Trader Tom admitted. "But I've never had any complaints yet."

"Suppose I'm the first?" Manet suggested reasonably.

"You won't be," Trader Tom said. "I won't pass this way again."

Manet didn't open the box. He let it fade quietly in the filtered but still brilliant sunlight near a transparent wall.

Manet puttered around the spawning monster, trying to brush the copper taste of the station out of his mouth in the mornings, talking to himself, winking at Annie Oakley, and waiting to go mad.

Finally, Manet woke up one morning. He lay in the sheets of his bunk, suppressing the urge to go wash his hands, and came at last to the conclusion that, after all the delay, he was mad.

So he went to open the box.

The cardboard lid seemed to have become both brittle and rotten. It crumbled as easily as ideals. But Manet was old enough to remember the boxes 

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