Paul Proteus is a doubt-ridden manager at Illium Engineering Works, which makes almost every product the residents of Illium, New York could possibly want. He got the position largely due to his father’s fame, which is why he wonders whether he really deserves it. The job comes with relatively high pay and great prestige; only those with high IQs can study to be engineers or managers. Almost all the other men are doomed to either the manual labor of the “Wrecks and Reeks” maintenance crews or the army. Poverty has been eliminated—apparently, the mechanization of the economy has reduced the cost of production so much that the state, which controls all the major factories and means of production, can easily provide everyone with basic necessities, entertainment, and a variety of appliances to make their lives easier, such as machines that cook food and wash clothes in seconds (the issue of where the raw materials for this come from is never addressed).
