"The Gods haven't taken anything away from us," Forrester said.
"Haven't they?" the old man demanded. "How about television? Want to answer that one, Daddy-O? Years ago, everybody had a television set. Color and 3-D. The most. The end. Now there's no television at all. Why not? What happened to it?"
"Well," Forrester said reasonably, "what good is television?"
"What good?" Once more Forrester's rib felt the old man's elbow. "Let me tell you—"
"No," Forrester interrupted, suddenly irritated with the whole conversation. "Let me tell you. The trouble with your generation was that all they wanted to do was sit around on their glutei maximi and be entertained. Like a bunch of hypnotized geese. They didn't want to do anything for themselves. Half of them couldn't even read. And now you want to tell me that—"
"Hold it, Daddy-O," the old man said. "You're telling me that the Gods took away television just because we were a bunch of hypnotized geese. That it?"
"That's it."
"Okay," the old man said. "So tell me—what are we now? With the Gods and everything. I mean, man, really—what are we?"
"Now?" Forrester said. "Now you're retired. You're a bunch of retired hypnotized geese."
The doors of the train slid creakily open and Forrester got out onto the 34th Street platform, walking angrily toward a stairway without looking back.