This Crowded Earth

MP3 Audio CD. This Crowded Earth

1. Harry Collins--1997

The telescreen lit up promptly at eight a.m. Smiling Brad came on with
his usual greeting. "Good morning--it's a beautiful day in Chicagee!"

Harry Collins rolled over and twitched off the receiver. "This I
doubt," he muttered. He sat up and reached into the closet for his
clothing.

Visitors--particularly feminine ones--were always exclaiming over the
advantages of Harry's apartment. "So convenient," they would say.
"Everything handy, right within reach. And think of all the extra
steps you save!"

Of course most of them were just being polite and trying to cheer
Harry up. They knew damned well that he wasn't living in one room
through any choice of his own. The Housing Act was something you just
couldn't get around; not in Chicagee these days. A bachelor was
entitled to one room--no more and no less. And even though Harry was
making a speedy buck at the agency, he couldn't hope to beat the
regulations.

There was only one way to beat them and that was to get married.
Marriage would automatically entitle him to two rooms--_if_ he could
find them someplace.

More than a few of his feminine visitors had hinted at just that, but
Harry didn't respond. Marriage was no solution, the way he figured it.
He knew that he couldn't hope to locate a two-room apartment any
closer than eighty miles away. It was bad enough driving forty miles
to and from work every morning and night without doubling the
distance. If he did find a bigger place, that would mean a three-hour
trip each way on one of the commutrains, and the commutrains were
murder. The Black Hole of Calcutta, on wheels.