 Why have so many people resorted to pick-pocketing?
He was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses, one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the handkerchief pocket. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. It was this rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning them. Conformity had become more than a social force; it was a physical necessity. He came to see that genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own small efforts, rarer. After years of searching for differences Lanfierre had seen how extraordinarily repetitious people were, echoes really, dimly resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. And if there was a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds did blow, it would shake exactly the way that one does. "You're starting to see flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—" At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed shut. It expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence.
 The pickpocketers are trying to acquire information about Fownes
 Resources are scarce in the Dome, so people have to resort to desperate measures  The pickpocketers are trying to acquire information about Fownes  All possessions are shared in the Dome under a new form of communism  There are no laws in the Dome, and people do whatever they please