In a future where aging has been cured and death has been carefully regulated, humanity has achieved what appears to be perfect stability. Population is fixed. Order is absolute. Every new life must be balanced by a willing death.
Inside a Chicago hospital, this system is carried out with quiet efficiency. Clerks keep count. Doctors follow protocol. Volunteers step forward. When a man waits for the birth of triplets, the logic of this world presses in on him, forcing a reckoning that no amount of order can soften.
First published in 1962, 2 B R 0 2 B is one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most chilling and incisive short works—a clinical dystopia rendered with calm prose, sharp irony, and devastating restraint. The story examines what happens when compassion is replaced by systems, and when moral responsibility is reduced to procedure.
Narrated with measured clarity, this recording preserves the story’s unsettling balance between reason and horror, leaving listeners to confront a question that remains disturbingly unresolved.
