I read this story in middle school, circa 1986, but it may not have been current then. I think it was in some kind of science fiction collection, but whether it was an anthology or a magazine or something else I have no idea.
The story was set way in the future, like several thousand years from now. 5,000 or 10,000 might be right. The idea was that humanity had changed so much that it was barely recognizable to us primitive types. I remember it used the stylistic device of replacing quotation marks with plus signs, so that a line might look like this:
+What is your name,+ she said.
I also remember that everyone had very, very specific occupations. Two people were meeting each other and one said he/she was some super-specialized profession, like a “vulpine aortic surgeon” or something, and the other one said, +Oh, I’ve never met one of those before.+
That’s about all I remember, sadly. I may have encountered it at the same time as R. A. Lafferty’s “Slow Tuesday Night,” but I looked in the only anthology I couldd find that contained that one and didn’t see the story I’m looking for.
Any help?
P.S. This is my first time checking in in a couple years. Nice to see things are still trucking along!