the initiative in suggesting that they visit a nearby Public Intercourse Booth for the weekly hour allowed to Assigned, he had pleaded fatigue. Back in his room alone, unaccountably tired, he had drifted into and out of the fringes of uneasy sleep. He could recall thinking that they were taking away the last symbol of personal identity. Everything was to be reduced to One, like those ancient religions in which man strove to lose himself completely in his God and be One with Him. But the new god was one vast, all-encompassing, impersonal Organization.

At last sleep had come. And with it, from some deep recess of his mind, emerged a scene from the old world before the Organization, a world preserved on flickering films in the Historical Museum, a world where men once walked freely on the shores of a great sea. In the mysterious logic of the dream, it seemed quite natural for TRH-247 to be there, walking on a wide sandy beach, white under a brilliant sun by a blue sea. In the distance there was another distinct beach, and beyond that another—individual crescents of sand succeeding one another. But there were no people. He was alone. He ran in the wet sand close to the water, feeling its coolness and firmness. He ran so fast that his feet hardly seemed to touch, and his heart pounded with exhilaration. Coming to the end of the curving beach, he stopped. And as he stood there watching, the sand moved, lapping outward like the waves of the sea, reaching toward the next beach. And that golden crescent in turn expanded. Hendley felt a nameless terror. He turned and raced back along the shoreline. But at the opposite end the beaches were already meeting, hungry fingers of sand interlacing like lovers' hands. Staring into the distance, Hendley saw that everywhere the sands were flowing into each other, pushing back inland, filling every crevice, covering every footprint, burying every stone, until at last he could see no marking, no line of difference, no beginning or end. And he knew that all of the beaches of the world had merged into one. His heart filled his chest with a painful drumming. Looking wildly all around him, he saw with terrifying clarity that the area where he stood was no longer like a beach at all. There was no beach, nothing anywhere but a great empty desert bordering the sea....

It was past 6:40 in the morning. TRH-247 lay in bed staring at the ceiling. If he got up now, he thought, if he did without a shower, without breakfast or coffee, he could still be at his drafting board on time.

And something would have ended.

How did you rebel? How did you 

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