Barry Riordan takes a test to apply for a special license, but finds out that his results were ambiguous and his license is only temporary. It is a license giving him the ability of free speech, but Barry realizes that he only ever agrees with everyone else: he has no original ideas of his own. Barry goes to Partyland, a celebratory event for others with the free-speech license so that they can have conversations. He needs endorsements from other conversationalists; otherwise, his license will expire. He speaks to someone else with a temporary license and realizes that both of their documents came with staples, though nothing was stapled to them. After another conversation with an elderly man, Barry earns his first endorsement claiming that he is a good conversationalist. Barry goes to take the exam again in hopes of getting a permanent license and meets a young Ph.D who wants to violently overthrow the government. Barry explains that he is married, but that he and his wife never said anything of substance to each other. He doesn't pass all the way and still has to get more endorsements, but the young man gives him information about another Partyland-like setting (these are called speakeasies). At this new speakeasy, he meets a woman who is the winner of the Miss Georgia pageant. She promises to give him an endorsement in a short period of time. At the grocery store, he meets a woman with sciata and goes over to her apartment. She is a poet and will give him his last endorsement if he gives her twenty ideas for new poems. However, days later, he finds out that the pageant queen never had any intention of giving him an endorsement in the first place. He goes back to Partyland and meets the young woman he spoke to on the first night; she trades him an endorsement sticker for one of his shoes.