Steven had moments of bewilderment, of self-loathing, of despair, when the tears were real and the jaw muscles jumped to keep the mouth from screaming, no one in the Happy Young Men's dormitory where he slept ever knew it.

He managed his life well enough. He had a few affairs with girls, it was expected of one, and he did not have to work very hard at it since they always threw themselves at him; and he got along well with other young men, who forgave him for being so handsome because he did not work at it except on camera; but he was lonely. Surrounded by people, intruded and trespassed upon, continually touched in ways other than physical, he was yet lonely.

During his life he had met a few other nonconformists, shy, like him, wary of revealing themselves, but something always seemed to happen to them. Some were miserable being nonconformists and asked pitifully for the Steyner, some were detected, as Steven had been, and some were unfortunately surprised in hospitals. Under the anesthetic they sometimes talked, and then, if they were adults, they were immediately corrected by means of Steyner's lobotomy. It had been learned that adults did not respond to therapy.

There was never any organization, any underground, of misfits. An underground presupposes injustice to be fought, cruelty to be resisted, and there was no injustice and no cruelty. The mass of people were kind, and their leaders, duly and fairly elected, were kind. They all sincerely believed in the gospel of efficiency and conformity and kindness. It had made the world a wonderful place to live in, full of wonderful things to make and buy and consume (all wonderfully advertised), and if one were a misfit and the doctors found it out and gave one a Steyner, it was only to make one happy, so that one could appreciate what a wonderful world it was.

Steven met no nonconformists at the School of Television Arts, and none while he was acting in "The Happy Life" until Denise Cottrell joined the cast. Denise—called Denny, of course—was a pleasantly plain young woman with a whimsical face which photographed pretty, and remarkable dark blue eyes. It was her eyes which first made Steven wonder. They mirrored his own hope, and longing, and the desperate loneliness of the exile.

For two months they were together as often as they could be, talking intellectual treason in public under cover of conventional faces, and talking intellectual treason in private with excitement and laughter and sometimes tears—falling in love. They planned, after much discussion, to be 

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