"Your father's tired."
"I want to ask him something."
"What is it, Larry?" Eddie asked.
"Eddie, you know the little culture I was running for science class?
Something's wrong. Will you look at it?"
"Daddy's...."
"I'll look at it, Lois." Eddie accompanied his son to his son's room.
"What do you think is wrong, Dad?"
"Well, let's see...."
"What is it?" Larry asked. "What made it stop growing?"
Eddie did not answer for a minute. Then: "You start with one or two ...
well, it's like this, Larry. I'm afraid it's dead. They grow
exponentially. Figure out how much money you'd have at the end of a month
if you started with just a penny and doubled your money every day. In just
a little while, you'd have all the money in the world. Figure it out
sometime. Things that grow exponentially, they just don't know when to
quit. And your culture, here, it grew until the environment could no
longer support it and all at once the food was eaten up and it died."
"I ... see.... Something like that could just grow until it took over
the whole world, couldn't it?"
Again Eddie was silent for a moment. Then he rumpled his son's hair.
"That's science fiction, Larry."
* * * * *
Later, while they were listening to FM, there was a news break
reporting a fire out of control in South Los Angeles.
"That's near Becky's, I'll bet," she said. "I better phone."
The phone was still out of order.
"I sure feel cut off without a phone."
After an interlude of music, Lois said, "Larry wants to be an
engineer, now. I guess after what you said, maybe that's a pretty good
thing."