“You could bury people one hundred floors down, and a whole dead world could be underneath the living one.”

“A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living.”

“Isn't it weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore?”

“In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.”

“Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots.”

“What about a device that knew everyone you knew? So when an ambulance went down the street, a big sign on the roof could flashDON’T WORRY! DON’T WORRY!if the sick person’s device didn’t detect the device of someone he knew nearby. And if the device did detect the device of someone he knew, the ambulance could flash the name of the person in the ambulance, and eitherIT’S NOTHING MAJOR! IT’S NOTHING MAJOR!Or, if it was something major,IT’S MAJOR! IT’S MAJOR!And maybe you could rate the people you knew by how much you loved them, so if the person in the ambulance detected the device of the person he loved the most, or the person who loved him the most, and the person in the ambulance was really badly hurt, and might even die, the ambulance could flashGOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!One thing that’s nice to think about is someone who was the first person on lot’s of people’s lists, so that when he was dying, and his ambulance went down the streets to the hospital, the whole time it would flashGOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!”

“We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.”