Compulsory registration and the classification of each individual by means of the discrete patterns of his brain waves had accomplished for man what no ordinary census could have. The machine knew who was alive, who was dead, and where everybody was.
Once a year the Bureau issued The Index, an exact accounting of Earth's four billion inhabitants. Four billion names and addresses, compressed into microprint, a tremendous achievement even for the "Proud Era." In all of his life, Charles had never once glanced at The Index. The average person had little necessity to do so since the Bureau information service would answer questions free of charge at any time.
Reaching the gigantic building, Charles pushed aside the body of a young man and walked into the main foyer. Passing behind once-guarded doors, he entered the giant computer room and paused in admiration.
Only once, before the plague, had he seen the interior of this room. But he still remembered it and he still recalled the powerful emotional experience it had been those many years ago.
All children had to have a brain-wave recording made by the Bureau during the first month of their life. And again at the age of 10 each child returned to the Bureau for a recheck. It was for this latter recording that Charles had come to the Bureau some twenty-two years before and a friendly guard had let him peep briefly into the computer room. The impression of intense activity, of organized confusion, of mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life.
"So different now," he thought, surveying the room. "Now it's empty, so empty." The machine seemed to reflect the stillness, the very deadness of the world. The silence became unbearable.
Charles walked to the master control panel. With newly acquired dexterity he switched the computer screens on and watched them glow to life. All around the world sensitive receiving stations pulsed to activity, sending out searching fingers, hunting for elusive patterns of neutral energy, mapping and tabulating the results.
The main computer screen dominated one wall of the room. Other smaller screens clustered around it. On these screens could be graphed the population of any and every part of the globe. An illuminated counter immediately above it would give the numerical strength of the area being sampled while the screen would show population density by individual pinpoints of light that merged to form brightness patterns.
"I'll try New York first," he said to himself, knowing that he was a coward, afraid to check the whole world from the start. "I'll start with New York and work up."