O

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One day everybody in the world whose name began with the letter o abruptly disappeared. Marina Oswald, who was then living in Chevy Chase, went away and never came back; so did Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Otto, of Binghamton, New York, and all their children; so did Barry Outka and Lynn Overall, both of Austin, Texas; so did Aram Ouzounian of the Armenian SSR and Jean-Luc Ouellette of France and Tetsu Okuma of Japan. All the O’Haras, O’Gradys, OTlahertys, and O’Keefes vanished like smoke, along with the Owens, the Ortegas, and the Oppenheims.

A good deal of real estate came on the market, especially in Ireland. Suddenly there was elbowroom in cities that had been overcrowded. The tempo of life relaxed; people had time to smile at each other on the street.

The next thing that happened was that all animals, birds, fish, and reptiles whose names began with the letter o disappeared—ocelots, octopuses, okapis, opossums, orangutans, orioles, ostriches, otters, owls, and oxen, together with whole orders and suborders such as the Ophidia, the Orthoptera, and the Ostracoda. As a general thing, nobody missed them.

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