A Scanner Darkly

by Philip K. Dick

Suppose everybody in California and parts of Oregon runs out the same day, he thought. Wow. This was the all-time winning horror-fantasy that he ran in his head, that every doper ran. The whole western part of the United States simultaneously running out and everybody crashing on the same day, probably about 6 A.M. Sunday morning, while the straights were getting dressed up to go fucking pray. Scene: The First Episcopal Church of Pasadena, at 8:30 A.M. on Crash Sunday. “Holy parishioners, let us call on God now at this time to request His intervention in the agonies of those who are thrashing about on their beds withdrawing.” “Yeah, yeah.” The congregation agreeing with the priest. “But before He intervenes with a fresh supply of—”

But, he thought, when you’re living inside looking safely out, and your wall is electrified and your guard is armed, why think about that?

Someday, he thought, it’ll be mandatory that we all sell the McDonald’s hamburger as well as buy it; we’ll sell it back and forth to each other forever from our living rooms. That way we won’t even have to go outside.

Entering the phone booth, he did a phone thing.

This change in him as Fred was an economy of the passions. Firemen and doctors and morticians did the same trip in their work. None of them could leap up and exclaim each few moments; they would first wear themselves out and be worthless and then wear out everyone else, both as technicians on the job and as humans off. An individual had just so much energy.

IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF.

“Why this is a superior test to the Rorschach,” the seated deputy interrupted, producing the next drawing, “is that it is not interpretive; there are as many wrongs as you can think up, but only one right. The right object that the U. S. Department of Psych-Graphics drew into it and certified for it, for each card; that’s what’s right, because it is handed down from Washington. You either get it or you don’t, and if you show a run of not getting it, then we have a fix on a functional impairment in perception and we dry you out for a while, until you test okay later on.”

THERE THEY ALL SAT AS BEFORE.

“I’ll tell you a story I heard about Donna,” Luckman said. “One time, see, Donna put a quarter into one of those automatic stamp machines that operate off a coil of stamps, and the machine was dingey and just kept cranking out stamps. Finally she had a market-basket full. It still kept cranking them out. Ultimately she had like—she and her rip-off friends counted them—over eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps. Well, that was cool, except what was Donna Hawthorne going to do with them? She never wrote a letter in her life, except to her lawyer to sue some guy who burned her in a dope deal.” “Donna does that?” Arctor said. “She has an attorney to use in a default on an illegal transaction? How can she do that?” “She just probably says the dude owes her bread.” “Imagine getting an angry pay-up-or-go-to-court letter from an attorney about a dope deal,” Arctor said, marveling at Donna, as he frequently did.

her family is peasant stock from some European country.

“Hey, Donna, man,” he said. “Do you like cats?” She blinked, red-eyed. “Drippy little things. Moving along about a foot above the ground.” “Above, no, on the ground.” “Drippy. Behind furniture.”

“I don’t expect to live long. So what? I don’t want to be around long. Do you? Why? What’s in this world?

But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly?

scanner

heh

darkly,

heh

Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening to everybody he knew, decided finally to off himself.

I resemble that worm which crawls through dust, Lives in the dust, eats dust Until a passerby’s foot crushes it.

When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, “—as near as I can figure out, God is dead.” Luckman answered, “I didn’t know He was sick.”

“It’s as if you have two fuel gauges on your car,” the other man said, “and one says your tank is full and the other registers empty. They can’t both be right. They conflict. But it’s—in your case—not one functioning and one malfunctioning; it’s … Here’s what I mean. Both gauges study exactly the same amount of fuel: the same fuel, the same tank. Actually they test the same thing. You as the driver have only an indirect relationship to the fuel tank, via the gauge or, in your case, gauges. In fact, the tank could fall off entirely and you wouldn’t know until some dashboard indicator told you or finally the engine stopped.

There should never be two gauges reporting conflicting information, because as soon as that happens you have no knowledge of the condition being reported on at all. This is not the same as a gauge and a backup gauge, where the backup one cuts in when the regular one fouls up.”

“How come,” Fred grated, “that even if both hemispheres of my brain are dominant they don’t receive the same stimuli? Why can’t their two whatevers be synchronized, like stereo sound is?” Silence. “I mean,” he said, gesturing, “the left hand and the right hand when they grip an object, the same object, should—” “Left-handedness versus right-handedness, as for example what is meant by those terms with, say, a mirror image—in which the left hand ‘becomes’ the right hand …” The psychologist leaned down over Fred, who did not look up. “How would you define a left-hand glove compared to a right-hand glove so a person who had no knowledge of those terms could tell you which you meant? And not get the other? The mirror opposite?” “A left-hand glove …” Fred said, and then stopped. “It is as if one hemisphere of your brain is perceiving the world as reflected in a mirror. Through a mirror. See? So left becomes right, and all that that implies. And we don’t know yet what that does imply, to see the world reversed like that. Topologically speaking, a lefthand glove is a right-hand glove pulled through infinity.”

a darkened scanner.

heh

“Then shall it come to pass the saying that is written,” a voice said. “Death is swallowed up. In victory.”

“Because,” the voice said, “as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not down into the body but up—in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now: we shall not all sleep in death.”

Through a glass darkly.

“I am warm on the outside, what people see. Warm eyes, warm face, warm fucking fake smile, but inside I am cold all the time, and full of lies. I am not what I seem to be; I am awful.”

The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him—should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living. That, he reasoned, is the law of life.

—works out, the phone book has only one number in it; you call that number for whoever you want. Listed on page after page … I’m talking about a totally burned-out society. And in your wallet you have that number, the number, scribbled down on different slips and cards, for different people. And if you forget the number, you couldn’t call anybody.” “You could dial Information.” “It’s the same number.”

“Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.

In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.