Robert Sheckley - Options

"It sounds too good to be true," Mishkin said.

"It is," Mr Monitor said.

"The thing I need," Mishkin said, "is a spare engine part, number L-1223A."

"To hear is to obey. Are you prepared to pay for this thing?"

"Charge it to my account."

"You are a customer after my own heart. One spare engine part number L-1223A, coming up."

Mr Monitor showed Mishkin his write-ups in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the Village Voice. All of them were raves. What better recommendations could anyone ask? Mr Monitor departed.

Mishkin sat down on a stump and waited. After a few hours he heard the noise of a motorcycle. He saw a man in a fringed leather jacket and a chamois beanie come riding through the forest. Strapped to the back of the motorcycle was a large parcel.

Fifty yards from Mishkin the motorcyclist ran across a land mine. The man, the cycle, and the package were blown to bits.

"Easy come, easy go," Mishkin said.

Mishkin was clowning along through the forest, digging the sights and smells and sounds, feeling the air, really making it big in a spiritual way. He had a song without words on his lips, and his fingers snapped in time to inconceivable rhythms. It was in this mood that he came across a man leaning against a tree.

The man's eyes were closed. He didn't seem to be breathing, but he didn't seem to be dead, either. His chest was bare and there was a small bronze plaque on it. The plaque read, TURN ME ON. Above it was a toggle switch.

Mishkin turned the switch.

The man's eyes opened immediately. He clutched his forehead and swayed out of control and would have fallen if Mishkin had not caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.

"Thank you, dear sir," the man said. "My name is perhaps Alex Gonkin and I am much obliged to you; though perhaps it would have been better if you had left me turned off, for now, with my consciousness returned, my fear threatens to overthrow the precarious sanity of my mind."

"What seems to be the trouble?" Mishkin asked.

"I heard the voice that said, 'In order to kill him, we must kill all of his hims.' I saw at once that the secret of survival was to conceal the fact that one's self was many. This could be called the first line of defence. The second line of defence was the presence of the selves and their intercommunication. I knew at once that my selves had to be killed simultaneously, or as near to simultaneity as possible, to prevent my selves from learning what was happening and taking appropriate defensive action. Do you follow me?"

"I think so," Mishkin said.

"Then you're crazy, and I stand mute. Now we will have a few words from my Accusator."

The Accusator lowered himself from a tree and stood before Mishkin reproachfully munching an apple.

"Thou shalt not turn on what has been turned off," said the Accusator.

"Listen," Mishkin said, "if God hadn't meant this man to be turned on He wouldn't have put a toggle switch on his chest."

"True… But in His ineffable wisdom God caused the toggle switch to be capable of being turned off."

"But God also put a plaque on his chest which read TURN ME ON."

"Exegesis is a dangerous conceit," said the Accusator.

"I didn't mean to indulge in it," Mishkin said. "But the moral is clear enough to me: namely that people with toggle switches in their chests shouldn't dump on you."

"What was that?" the Accusator shouted. "What did you say? Are you absolutely out of your mind?"

"What did I say?" Mishkin asked. "What happened? Where am I?"

"Your actions will be studied," said the Accusator, "and we will let you know the results of our deliberations."

Automatism can be induced in people. Indeed, you might say that automatism is people. We are under the control of our emotions. We float here and there on currents of what we want and what we don't want, what we desire and what desires us.

Still, take an object, any object. An orange. But the mind rejects an orange, it is round and orange — paradoxically square. Let's take something else. But now we are stuck with the orange. Thick, pockmarked skin. Any number of associations to orange, most of them banal. Orange must be struck from the list of permissible objects to associate to.

No more truck with oranges, and no more trucking of oranges. Oranges occupy entirely too prominent a place. Take an orange. We've taken enough oranges. The orange is a placebo of the mind. Why not take an intestine? Easily visualized, capable of producing many novel trips. But intestines are tediously labyrinthine. Intestines go round and round and come out orange. Intestines are filled with unpleasant matter. Perhaps it's best to go back to oranges.

Take an orange. Take it quickly before it takes you. The world of the orange is perhaps not entirely incomprehensible.

Take the subject of Mishkin and oranges. For many years Mishkin had not thought much of oranges. Apparently. But in truth we know that a thing's absence implies its presence. Thus, we infer the presence of oranges in Mishkin's mind, and from that we can begin to deduce many other relationships.

One thing is certain: Mishkin never knew consciously about his negative infatuation with oranges. Mishkin and the anti-orange. Oranges and the anti-Mishkin.

We must not, however, make the error of positing simple opposition. Mishkin's overdetermined disregard for oranges might not imply an opposite. More likely the figure of speech we are looking for is the oxymoron: the mating of opposites. Incongruities are not reciprocal. Reciprocity is lost in the oxymoron.

"The beast that kills by boredom," said the robot, "is also found in these parts. His voice is firm and authoritative. His statements are unchallengeable and unbelievable. His appearance is unimpeachable and obnoxious. You meet him and wish him dead, although he had done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing. He speaks to you about this in a reasonable manner. The tension becomes unbearable. Your inability to act induces apathy, which is heightened by the extreme monotony of your situation. Since you cannot kill him, you kill yourself."

"Where is he now?" Mishkin asked.

"Boring fish for his dinner. He does this by lecturing to them on their inalienable rights."

"I beg your pardon," a fish said. "No fish has ever been bored to death."

"Go get stuffed," the robot snarled.

Upon a flat white rock Mishkin saw a white princess telephone. As he came up to it the telephone began ringing.

Mishkin picked it up and said, "Hello."

"Tom? Tom Mishkin? Is that you?"

"It is," Mishkin said. "Who is this?"

"This is your uncle, Arnold Epstein. Tom, how is everything?"

"Not bad," Mishkin said. "I've got a few problems…"

"Who hasn't? But your health, is it good?"

"Fine, Uncle Arnold. And yours?"

"Not bad, considering. Tom, it's good to hear your voice."

"Uncle Arnold, how did you happen to call me here?"

"It was a free gift from the A & P. I was the millionth customer for the morning and they awarded me a basket of groceries and one telephone call to anyone I wanted to call anywhere."

"Well, it's nice that you called me, I appreciate it."

"It's been a pleasure for me to hear your voice. Listen, Tom, your parents, are they well?"

"Fine," Mishkin said.

"And your sister?"

"She's fine. She's in Europe."

"That's nice. And where are you, I didn't quite understand the operator."

"I'm on a planet called Harmonia."

"Is it a nice place?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, have a nice vacation. Tom, is there anything I can do for you?"