Cover image for

2 B R O 2 B

Language English
Published 1962
Notes

Got a problem? Just pick up the phone. It solved them all--and all the same way!

Approx. 3,610 words.

Excerpt

ring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.

One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.

Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.

X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his first.

Young Wehling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with spattered dropcloths.

The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had voluntee

ReviewsAdd a review for this title.

Average Rating:

2008.05.19
gnawingonfoot

It's quirky and pessimistically fun in that wonderfully depressing Vonnegut sort of way. It's a great example of his style, and I absolutely loved it.

2007.12.26
Carl Heerwagen

I found this story to be very interesting and sad. A classic Vonnegut tale.