The only explanation I could think of for this peculiar incongruity was that some of the journalists had been drinking the water that day, and some hadn't. Of course less water would be consumed by the staff of a right-wing newspaper, since reactionary editors were better paid than their radical counterparts and consequently could afford to imbibe more exclusive liquids while they worked. The radicals, on the other hand, though they were known to display a certain degree of asceticism in the name of higher principles, hardly ever quenched their thirst with water. Especially since quartzupio, a fermented drink from the juice of the melmenole plant, was extremely cheap in Costa Rica.

We had settled back in our comfortable armchairs, and Professor Dringenbaum of Switzerland was just delivering the first numeral of his report, when all at once the hollow rumble of an explosion shook the building and made the windows rattle. The optimists among us passed this off as a simple earthquake, but I was inclined to think that the group of demonstrators outside that had been picketing the hotel since morning was now resorting to incendiary tactics. Though the following blast and concussion, much more powerful, changed my mind; now I could hear the familiar staccato of machine-gun fire in the streets. No, there was no longer any doubt: Costa Rica had entered into the stage of open hostilities. Our reporters were the first to disappear; at the sound of shooting they jumped to their feet and rushed out the door, eager to cover this new assignment. But Professor Dringenbaum went on with his lecture, which was fairly pessimistic in tone, for it maintained that the next phase of our civilization would be cannibalism. He cited several well-known American theoreticians, who had calculated that, if things on Earth continued at their present rate, in four hundred years humanity would represent a living sphere of bodies with a radius expanding at approximately the speed of light.