A Scanner Darkly

by Philip K. Dick

At night; that was when. The shops all lit up. He could—all the brothers and sisters could—see the lights from without, like showers of sparks, like a fun park for grown-up kids.

What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.

I was into that trip as much as they were. We all got into it together that deep. He shook himself, shuddered, and blinked. Knowing what I know, I still stepped across into that freaked-out paranoid space with them, viewed it as they viewed it—muddled, he thought. Murky again; the same murk that covers them covers me; the murk of this dreary dream world we float around in.

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?

I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. 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.

She did not answer. She just kept on going. A small figure on foot facing an infinity of oncoming lights.

"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."

They disappear forever. New names, new locations. You ask yourself, where is she now? And the answer is— Nowhere. Because she was not there in the first place.

The tragedy in his life already existed. To love an atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself.

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.