Ubik

by Philip K. Dick

‘Everything is destined to reappear as simulation. Landscapes as photography, woman as the sexual scenario, thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television. Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether the world itself isn’t just here to serve as advertising copy in some other world.’ Jean Baudrillard, America.

he felt unhappy cravings arise, cloudy and pointless wants that led nowhere, that returned to him empty, as in the completion of a geometrically perfect circle.

Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, he got out a bent cigarette and lit it.

‘you have a will to fail. No combination of circumstances - including this - is going to change that.’

Maybe Baltimore is only there when one of us goes there. And the Lucky People Supermarket; as soon as we left, it passed out of existence. It could still be that only us who were on Luna are really experiencing this.’ ‘A philosophical problem of no importance or meaning,’ Joe said. ‘And incapable of being proved one way or the other.’

‘No,’ he said. It took vast effort, saying the word aloud; it clung to the internal cavern lodged in his heart, a hollowness which grew with each second.