The Penultimate Truth

by Philip K. Dick

“Listen,” he would program to Megavac 6-V. And all those funny little dingbats that the ’vac had in it would spin, and out of the sim’s mouth would come the utterance but transformed; the simple word would be given that fine, corroborative detail to supply verisimilitude to what was—let us face it, he thought caustically—an otherwise incredibly bald and unconvincing narrative. What entered Megavac 6-V as a mere logos would emerge for the TV lenses and mikes to capture in the guise of a pronouncement, one which nobody in his right mind—especially if encapsulated subsurface for fifteen years—would doubt. But—it would be a paradox, because Yancy himself would be pontificating it; like the old saw, “Everything I say is a lie,” this would confound itself, tie its skinny, slippery self into a good hard sailor’s knot.