A Scanner Darkly

by Philip K. Dick

“Do you think,” he said aloud as he painstakingly drove, “that when we die and appear before God on Judgment Day, that our sins will be listed in chronological order or in order of severity, which could be ascending or descending, or alphabetically? Because I don’t want to have God boom out at me when I die at the age of eighty-six, ‘So you’re the little boy who stole the three Coke bottles off the Coca-Cola truck when it was parked in the 7-11 lot back in 1962, and you’ve got a lot of fast talking to do.’”

How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just—change. With nothing causing it.

If that happens, he thought, I’ll boil him in Drāno, in the bathtub, in hot Drāno, until only bones remain, and then mail the bones to his mother or kids, whichever he has, and if he hasn’t either then just toss the bones out at passing dogs.

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?

Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

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

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment.

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

I think VR is an exciting new frontier in entertainment but, as always, we tend to create new devices first and then think about their societal ramifications later.