Each speaker was given four minutes to present his paper, as there were so many scheduled-198 from 64 different countries. To help expedite the proceedings, all reports had to be distributed and studied beforehand, while the lecturer would speak only in numerals, calling attention in this fashion to the salient paragraphs of his work. To better receive and process such wealth of information, we all turned on our portable recorders and pocket computers (which later would be plugged in for the general discussion). Stan Hazelton of the U.S. delegation immediately threw the hall into a flurry by emphatically repeating: 4, 6, 11, and therefore 22; 5, 9, hence 22; 3, 7, 2, 11, from which it followed that 22 and only 22!! Someone jumped up, saying yes but 5, and what about 6, 18, or 4 for that matter; Hazelton countered this objection with the crushing retort that, either way, 22. I turned to the number key in his paper and discovered that 22 meant the end of the world. Hayakawa from Japan was next; he presented plans, newly developed in his country, for the house of the future-eight hundred levels with maternity wards, nurseries, schools, shops, museums, zoos, theaters, skating rinks and crematoriums. The blueprints provided for underground storage of the ashes of the dear departed, forty-channel television, intoxication chambers as well as sobering tanks, special gymnasiums for group sex (an indication of the progressive attitude of the architects), and catacombs for nonconformist subculture communities. One rather novel idea was to have each family change its living quarters every day, moving from apartment to apartment like chessmen-say, pawns or knights. That would help alleviate boredom. In any event this building, having a volume of seventeen cubic kilometers, a foundation set in the ocean floor and a roof that reached the very stratosphere, would possess its own matrimonial computers-matchmaking on the sadomasochistic principle, for partners of such opposite persuasions statistically made the most stable marriages (each finding in that union the answer to his or her dreams)-and there would also be a round-the-clock suicide prevention center.