next day you had to start all over. There wasn’t any point to it. So he’d said to hell with it, and for five days now he’d ignored the Machine entirely except to line up automatically once a day at the concourse to have his card audited. And for five straight days the balance had been in red.

Then, today, he had seen Conley on the street, coming toward him. All of a sudden Mark had been scared. He didn’t know what Central would do to him⁠—nobody knew⁠—but he didn’t want to find out, either. He ran from Conley.

Now he crouched in the dust behind an empty counter while Conley’s footsteps approached. He held his breath when they got close, and when they passed the broken window he was very thankful.

It was late afternoon and he thought Conley would go back to Central. Nobody knew much about Conley except that he represented the Machine and that he seemed to disappear within it every afternoon.

So, presently, Mark crawled out of the broken window and walked down to Main Street. He looked carefully right and left and then, not seeing Conley’s tall form above the traffic, he wandered slowly down the street, trying to figure things out. Why wasn’t there anything worth while to do? What was the reason for all the broken windows and empty stores? Had there once been places where people could buy things like food and clothes? Maybe⁠—before Central Audit Bureau had come into existence. Or had Central always been there?

Mark saw the old lady sitting in the wheelchair. He turned out absently to walk by her. He saw her put her foot in his way but his brain wasn’t working. He stumbled over her foot.

Instantly the old lady half arose from her chair as if in pain, shrieking and brandishing her cane, the leg held stiffly out in front of her. “You’ve injured me,” she shrieked in a raucous voice. “You’ve hurt my lame foot!”