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"...science fiction is sort of like a sociological genome. It's a huge range of possible futures, most of them useless; some vital. You never really know in advance."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Federal Bureau of Termination | ||
| The door out of this life is always open - for you. |
This possible future of our world is summed up thusly:
A strict population cap.
"The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of the child could find someone who would volunteer to die."
| "If you don't like it here, Grandpa—" he said, and he finished the thought with the trick telephone number that people who didn't want to live any more were supposed to call. The zero in the telephone number he pronounced "naught."
The number was: "2 B R 0 2 B." It was the telephone number of an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included: "Automat," "Birdland," "Cannery," "Catbox," "De-louser," "Easy-go," "Good-by, Mother," "Happy Hooligan," "Kiss-me-quick," "Lucky Pierre," "Sheepdip," "Waring Blendor," "Weep-no-more" and "Why Worry?" "To be or not to be" was the telephone number of the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination. |
| Technovelgy from 2 B R 0 2 B,
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Published by Worlds of IF in 1962 Additional resources -
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Tech news articles related to 2 B R 0 2 B
Tech news articles related to works by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
| Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million |
| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
