The novel opens in the "year of stability," A.F. 632. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is taking a group of new on a tour of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center. The world's motto is inscribed at the entrance to the center: Community, Identity, Stability. The motto seems to appropriately state the nature of the hatchery, as well as the nature of the world that Huxley creates. The center strives for comiuntity, dentity, and stability as it literally creates the people of the world.