 What is the Bureau of Vital Statistics and what is its purpose?
There should be an epitaph for every man, big or little, but a really grand and special one for Loner Charlie. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1954. New York lay quietly below him. The street that led towards the Bureau of Vital Statistics was a mess of desolate carnage. Buildings were taller, men were healthier, most of the problems of humanity seemed licked, or nearly so. It was a time of free power, each small unit of population, each section of town operating on perpetual, ever-lasting, automatic atomic piles. Sales of poison dropped, scientific laboratories chained to a perpetual rodent-cycle began to complain bitterly. The Southern states joyously reported that mosquito control was working to an unprecedented degree. The largest cotton crop ever was forecast and rumors from Mexico had it that no one had died from scorpion bite in several weeks. A month later the meat animals, the birds and the household pets began dropping as rapidly as the flies which had dropped earlier. Congress was called into special session, as were all of the national governments around the world. The U.N. met at emergency sessions to cope with the situation. Within a year it was obvious to everyone that man was the only animal left on earth. The panic which had begun with the death of the animals was quieted somewhat by the fact that humans seemed immune to the pandemic. Within six months, half of the world's population was gone. Less than a month ago no more than a few thousand people remained in New York. Before the plague the Bureau of Vital Statistics had been one of man's crowning achievements. Housed as it was in a huge metallic globe of a building, it contained computers which kept exact account of every human on earth. Compulsory registration and the classification of each individual by means of the discrete patterns of his brain waves had accomplished for man what no ordinary census could have. The machine knew who was alive, who was dead, and where everybody was. Once a year the Bureau issued The Index, an exact accounting of Earth's four billion inhabitants. Four billion names and addresses, compressed into microprint, a tremendous achievement even for the "Proud Era." The average person had little necessity to do so since the Bureau information service would answer questions free of charge at any time. All children had to have a brain-wave recording made by the Bureau during the first month of their life. And again at the age of 10 each child returned to the Bureau for a recheck.
 It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer keeps track of all humans, monitoring their health, their lifespan, and where they are on Earth.
 It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer keeps track of all humans, monitoring their health, their lifespan, and where they are on Earth.  It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer monitors whether certain countries are more susceptible to alien invasion.  It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer keeps track of what is happening on nearby planets.  It holds a computer that keeps track of how many people are currently infected by the plague—a technology thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement.