The Penultimate Truth

by Philip K. Dick

Around him the four bearded men continued to stare. “How could I not recognize him?” Nicholas said, then. “I’ve seen him on TV for fifteen years, three or four and even five nights a week.” After a time Jack Blair said, “But—the thing is, there is no Talbot Yancy.” One of the other men spoke up, explaining. “See, what it is, is that it’s a fake; you know?” “What is?” Nicholas said, and yet he did know; he sensed the enormity of it in a flash: a fake so vast that it could not even be described. It truly beggared description; it was hopeless for these men to try and he was going to have to see, to experience it, for himself. Jack Blair said, “What you’re looking at on your TV screen every night, down there in—what’d you say? The Tom Mix?—down in your tank, what you call ‘Yancy,’ the Protector, that’s a robot.” “Not even a robot,” one of the other bearded men corrected. “Not even independent, or what they call intrinsic or homeo; it’s just a dummy that sits there at that desk.” “But it talks,” Nicholas said, reasonably. “It says heroic things. I mean, I’m not arguing with you. I just don’t understand.”