 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 fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist, hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of a celesta. 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. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an orange patrol car parked down the street. Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. 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. He had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. 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 rocked from side to side, it pitched forward and back, it yawed and dipped and twisted, straining at the mooring of its foundation. The house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the.... It expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. every now and then their eyes widened as the house danced a new step. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch from outside.
 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