Player Piano

Vonnegut writes, “Doctor Paul Proteus, an unclassified human being, was put aboard the 12:52, where he shared an ancient coach […] with sixty troops on furlough from Camp Drum” (251). He watches an old man who didn’t have time to kiss his wife goodbye get on the train. The old man sits near Paul. He tells Paul that used to be a conductor for “For-tee-wunnn years” (254), and that machines could never deliver a baby or take care of child like he did as a conductor.

Later, Paul listens to the soldiers discuss some wartime stories while playing poker. The sergeant seems to have been a remarkable soldier, but is now being shipped to the Sahara Desert: “Paul sighed for [him], born into a spiritual desert, now being shipped to where the earth was sterile, too” (257).

Paul enters Ilium, but there’s no human there to help him get a cab. He decides to walk. A woman calls down to him from an upper floor. She invites him up. Paul agrees, and spends the night with the woman.