trideo n.

Imagine that. No video or trideo. No jet-races or feelies. What do people do with their time in a place like this?

Actually, I suppose there’s really only one—though, of course, there'll be someone else in the studio at the time.…But on trideo it looks like four Lucilles, all speaking at once, sort of in chorus.

Mr Costello rapped the trideo screen in front of him. He said, ‘Make it a real good one, Lucille, real good. I'll be watching.’

At the same time she recalled his advice to get some sleep, not to watch the telethon; and in a sudden, almost childish burst of rebellion she slapped the arm of the divan and brought the trideo to life. The opposite wall of the room, twelve feet high, thirty feet long, seemed to turn to smoke, which cleared to reveal an apparent extension of the floor of the room, back and further back, to Heri Gonza’s great grey backdrop. All around were the sounds, the smells, the pressure of the presence of thousands of massed, rapt people.

There were meals, served in my room. I was allowed to watch trideo, except that certain channels were blacked out from time to time; news broadcasts, I deduced.

‘Living happily ever after doesn’t work as easily as the trideos say,’ she offered with a smile.