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licked the tasty debris from his palm, he confirmed his analysis: Cheez-It crumbs.

He liked Cheez-Its. But he didn’t like crumbs being left on kitchen counters. This was unacceptable.

At the gas cooktop, he lifted one of the burner grates, set it aside, hesitated, and wiped his fingertips over the stainless-steel drip pan. Grease.

Erskine Potter believed in cleaning a cooktop after each use, not just once or twice a week. A tool or a machine, or a system, would function better and last longer if it was clean and properly maintained.

In the sink, he found dishes waiting to be washed: plates, bowls, flatware standing in drinking glasses. At least everything seemed to have been rinsed.

He hesitated to look in the refrigerator, concerned that what he found might make him angry. Anger would make him less focused and less efficient.

Focus and efficiency were important principles. Few people in the world were focused and efficient. For the good of the planet, the unfocused and inefficient needed to be killed.

As the mayor of Rainbow Falls, Montana, he would never be in a position of sufficient power to exterminate millions of people, but he would do his small part. Regardless of the scope of his authority and the size of his assignment, each member of the Community—with a capital C—was as valuable as any other.

Absolute equality was an important principle.

The embrace of cold reason and the rejection of sentimentality was another important principle.

Unfailing cooperation with others of the Community was an important principle, too, as was keeping their existence secret from ordinary men and women.

There were other important principles, as well, but none was more important than any other. When no hierarchy of values existed, making decisions became easy. Confronted with any problem, snared in any difficult situation, Erskine Potter—like any member of the Community—just did the most efficient thing, took the most direct action, and was confident that what he had done was right.

The only morality was efficiency. The only immorality was inefficiency.

Testing his self-control, risking anger, Mayor Potter opened the refrigerator. What a mess.

Jars of olives and pickles stood on the same door shelf as a squeeze-bottle of chocolate syrup. Capers, mustard, ketchup, and salsa—which logically should have been with the olives and pickles—rested instead on a shelf with a pressurized can of whipped cream and a jar of maraschino cherries, which obviously belonged with the chocolate syrup. The items on the primary shelves were stored in an unspeakably disordered fashion.

Appalled, Potter hissed between clenched teeth. Although displeased, even indignant, he would not allow himself to be angry.

Determined to proceed briskly with the task at hand, he closed the refrigerator door.

Faint footsteps crossed the room above. Potter heard someone descending the front stairs.

Beyond the kitchen, the hallway brightened. A cut-crystal fixture on the ceiling cast geometric patterns of light across the walls and floor, as if reality were fracturing.

Erskine Potter did not flee. He did not hide. He remained by the refrigerator, waiting.

A silhouette appeared in the doorway. In the kitchen, from the overhead fluorescents, cool light suddenly fell through the air.

Wearing pajamas and slippers, evidently seeking a late-night snack, the current mayor of Rainbow Falls, Montana, entered the kitchen. Five feet ten, a hundred eighty pounds, fifty-two years old, with brown hair and a sweet round face, the son of Loretta and Gavin Potter, his name was Erskine.

The current Mayor Potter halted in stunned disbelief when he saw his duplicate.

The future Mayor Potter said, “Erskine. My dear brother, I’ve been searching for you half my life.”

This was a lie. Loretta and Gavin Potter weren’t the intruder’s parents. He had no mother or father. He had never been born. Instead, he was grown to maturity in mere months, programmed, and extruded.

He pretended to be the current Mayor Potter’s twin only because the claim would confuse and briefly disarm his prey.

As he talked, he moved, opening his arms as if to embrace his long-lost sibling. He gripped the mayor, drove a knee viciously into his crotch, and pinned him in a corner beside the double ovens with the incorrect clocks.

From under his jacket, he withdrew a pistol-like device. He pressed the muzzle to the mayor’s left temple and pulled the trigger.

Instead of a bullet, the gun fired a needle that pierced the skull and penetrated the brain to a precise depth.

Instantly, the mayor stopped convulsing around his crushed testicles, stopped gasping for breath. His eyes were as wide as the eyes of a child struck by wonder.

Because the needle chemically cauterized the tissue that it