Philip Dick - A Scanner Darkly

And, he reflected as he dialed Yellow Cab again, Arctor has not been very responsible in making good on that check over this prolonged period. Whose fault is that? Getting it out once more, he examined the date on the check. A month and a half. Jesus, talk about irresponsibility! Arctor could wind up inside looking out, for that; it’s God’s mercy that nutty Carl didn’t go to the D.A. already. Probably his sweet old sister restrained him.

Arctor, he decided, better get his ass in gear; he’s done a few dingey things himself I didn’t know about until now. Barris isn’t the only one or perhaps even the primary one. For one thing, there is still to be explained the cause of Barris’s intense, concerted malice toward Arctor; a man doesn’t set out over a long period of time to burn somebody for no reason. And Barris isn’t trying to burn anybody else, not, say, Luckman or Charles Freck or Donna Hawthorne; he helped get Jerry Fabin to the federal clinic more than anyone else, and he’s kind to all the animals in the house.

One time Arctor had been going to send one of the dogs—what the hell was the little black one’s name, Popo or something?—to the pound to be destroyed, she couldn’t be trained, and Barris had spent hours, in fact days, with Popo, gently training her and talking with her until she calmed down and could be trained and so didn’t have to go be snuffed. If Barris had general malice toward all, he wouldn’t do numbers, good numbers, like that.

“Yellow Cab,” the phone said.

He gave the address of the Shell station.

And if Carl the locksmith had pegged Arctor as a heavy doper, he pondered as he lounged around moodily waiting for the cab, it isn’t Barris’s fault; when Carl must’ve pulled up in his truck at 5 A.M. to make a key for Arctor’s Olds, Arctor probably was walking on Jell-O sidewalks and up walls and batting off fisheyes and every other kind of good dope-trip thing. Carl drew his conclusions then. As Carl ground the new key, Arctor probably floated around upside down or bounced about on his head, talking sideways. No wonder Carl had not been amused.

In fact, he speculated, maybe Barris is trying to cover up for Arctor’s increasing fuckups. Arctor is no longer keeping his vehicle in safe condition, as he once did, he’s been hanging paper, not deliberately but because his goddamn brain is slushed from dope. But, if anything, that’s worse. Barris is doing what he can; that’s a possibility. Only, his brain, too, is slushed. All their brains are …

… slushed and mutually interacting in a slushed way. It’s the slushed leading the slushed. And right into doom.

Maybe, he conjectured, Arctor cut the wires and bent the wires and created all the shorts in his cephscope. In the middle of the night. But for what reason?

That would be a difficult one: why? But with slushed brains anything was possible, any variety of twisted—like the wires themselves—motives. He’d seen it, during his undercover law-enforcement work, many, many, times. This tragedy was not new to him; this would be, in their computer files, just one more case. This was the phase ahead of the journey to the federal clinic, as with Jerry Fabin.

All these guys walked one game board, stood now in different squares various distances from the goal, and would reach it at several times. But all, eventually, would reach it: the federal clinics.

It was inscribed in their neural tissue. Or what remained of it. Nothing could halt it or turn it back now.

And, he had begun to believe, for Bob Arctor most of all. It was his intuition, just beginning, not dependent on anything Barris was doing. A new, professional insight.

And also, his superiors at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office had decided to focus on Bob Arctor; they no doubt had reasons which he knew nothing about. Perhaps these facts confirmed one another: their growing interest in Arctor—after all, it had cost the department a bundle to install the holo-scanners in Arctor’s house, and to pay him to analyze the print-outs, as well as others higher up to pass judgment on what he periodically turned over—this fitted in with Barris’s unusual attention toward Arctor, both having selected Arctor as a Primo target. But what had he seen himself in Arctor’s conduct that struck him as unusual? Firsthand, not dependent on these two interests?

As the taxi drove along, he reflected that he would have to watch awhile to come across anything, more than likely; it would not disclose itself to the monitors in a day. He would have to be patient; he would have to resign himself to a longterm scrutiny and to put himself in a space where he was willing to wait.

Once he saw something on the holo-scanners, however, some enigmatic or suspicious behavior on Arctor’s part, then a three-point fix would exist on him, a third verification of the others’ interests. Certainly this would be a confirm. It would justify the expense and time of everyone’s interest.

I wonder what Barris knows that we don’t know, he wondered. Maybe we should haul him in and ask him. But—better to obtain material developed independently from Barris; otherwise it would be a duplication of what Barris, whoever he was or represented, had.

And then he thought, What the hell am I talking about? I must be nuts. I know Bob Arctor; he’s a good person. He’s up to nothing. At least nothing unsavory. In fact, he thought, he works for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, covertly. Which is probably …

… why Barris is after him.

But, he thought, that wouldn’t explain why the Orange County Sheriff’s office is after him—especially to the extent of installing all those holos and assigning a full-time agent to watch and report on him. That wouldn’t account for that.

It does not compute, he thought. More, a lot more, is going down in that house, that run-down rubble-filled house with its weed-patch backyard and catbox that never gets emptied and animals walking on the kitchen table and garbage spilling over that no one ever takes out.

What a waste, he thought, of a truly good house. So much could be done with it. A family, children, and a woman, could live there. It was designed for that: three bedrooms. Such a waste; such a fucking waste! They ought to take it away from him, he thought; enter the situation and foreclose. Maybe they will. And put it to better use; that house yearns for that. That house has seen so much better days, long ago. Those days could return. If another kind of person had it and kept it up.

The yard especially, he thought, as the cab pulled into the newspaper-splattered driveway.

He paid the driver, got out his door key, and entered the house.

Immediately he felt something watching: the holo-scanners on him. As soon as he crossed his own threshold. Alone—no one but him in the house. Untrue! Him and the scanners, insidious and invisible, that watched him and recorded. Everything he did. Everything he uttered.

Like the scrawls on the wall when you’re peeing in a public urinal, he thought. SMILE! YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA! I am, he thought, as soon as I enter this house. It’s eerie. He did not like it. He felt self-conscious; the sensation had grown since the first day, when they’d arrived home—the “dog-shit day,” as he thought of it, couldn’t keep from thinking of it. Each day the experience of the scanners had grown.