At the bottom, the stream was diverted momentarily around a small area occupied by a crippled fiddler. Quaid smiled, refreshed by the sight of someone claiming space and attention for himself in the midst of the anonymous morning crush. He paused to slide his ID card into the fiddler’s portable credit register. It recorded his donation and he allowed himself to be swept back into the stream again.

He squeezed into a security area. The mass of working folk formed into lines to pass the large X-ray panels. This was a bottleneck, costing him time, but couldn’t be helped. There had been so much violence on the mass transit system that measures had had to be taken, and certainly he didn’t want to be robbed or killed by some hophead freak on the subway, or be part of a group taken hostage by a nascent revolutionary cult. No metal or weapons-caliber plastics were allowed, unless they were plainly not weapons, and that did reduce incidents of violence somewhat.

Having nothing better to do, he watched the line ahead of him as it turned to pass the panels. Each person lost clothing and flesh to become a walking skeleton, then returned to full human form beyond the panel. He saw an attractive young woman approach, and watched closely as she paraded on the panel, but it was no good; all that showed was her bones, not her bare body. He always hoped that someday something would go wrong, the the X-rays would be diminished just enough to abolish the clothing, leaving the naked flesh. Unfortunately, it never happened; the panels either worked or they didn’t, full on or full off. Still, those were nice bones.

His turn came. He passed through, feeling like a stripper on stage. As he passed beyond the panel he glanced back at the line behind him and saw a young woman staring at him, the tip of her tongue playing across her lips, her eyes fixed. She had been trying to see his naked flesh! That pleased him, in a minor way. He knew he had good bones too.