"The airtax man will be around to read the meter tonight," Helen reminded him.
"Fine," he murmured, but already he was only half-aware of the world around him as he dozed while appearing outwardly alert.
There was a time, he remembered vaguely, when there were no such things as respirators, when the air you breathed was free. For twenty of his thirty-four years he had known that golden era. There were taxes, of course, but only on the food you ate, the money you earned, the entertainment you saw, et cetera, almost ad infinitum. Air, it seemed—much to the government's evident dissatisfaction—was an untaxable commodity, a luxury which even the poor could enjoy without restriction.
Then came the war. The war that caused all peoples to finally unite under one government to insure peace. Arthur Dunlop knew of the war, for he was a part of it. He fought back to preserve his life, and they gave him a medal for it, a piece of cloth and metal which indicated that he was lucky enough to survive. It was another war to make the world safe for something or other, and he still recalled with a shudder the Battle of Boston, the Siege of New York, the great topplings of great cities into greater dust.
To counteract the poisonous by-products of civilized weapons, the respirators had been developed—small watch-like mechanisms that enabled the wearers to breathe in practically any atmosphere. After the war, they had been adapted to a new use.
"What?" Arthur Dunlop said.
Helen was extending a carton marked "6-C." "Mealtime," she declared.
He took the box, another development of the Last War, and opened it. Standardization was the keynote, he remembered, for in that there is unity. Standardization of clothing, of living, of eating, of thinking.
He plopped a pill marked "steak" into his mouth, nibbled absently at the ones labeled "bread" and "potatoes and gravy," and then followed with a pill called "coffee." It might have been funny had he been able to view the scene objectively, but the time when he had been able to do that had long passed. They were the best government-made pills and tasted not a bit like their labels.
From the television set, an enthusiastic voice declared: "Ronson Rotors are the best, Try the thousand foot drop test, Be convinced it'll break your fall, Ronson Rotors are the best of all!"