 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. 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. 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. At least, he called it buffeting; he'd never thought to watch from outside. He watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. Instead of an orange sun at perpetual high noon, there was a red sun setting brilliantly, marred only by an occasional arcover which left the smell of ozone in the air. The sun and moon both looked down upon a garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses.
 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