Robert Sheckley - Options

An Indian war club. Mishkin made this at camp. He also made Mary Lou Watkins at the same camp but not all the way. Later on Mishkin made a lot of people all the way. Now he travels.

A page of sheet music entitled "Old Black Joe". Mishkin didn't think about Negroes when he was a boy. Now, a man, he doesn't think about blacks. But he talks about them and dreams about them.

A snapshot of Mishkin's mother at the age of twenty-three. Mishkin thinks he doesn't care very much about his mother. Mishkin also thinks he doesn't con himself very much.

A Sanskrit grammar. Mishkin once planned to learn Sanskrit in order to read The Upanishads in the original. Now he doesn't even read them in English.

Mishkin ascended to heaven on a fiery chariot and there he met the Lord God of Hosts, and Mishkin prostrated himself before the Deity and said, "Lord, Lord, I have sinned," which seemed a pretty good thing to say under the circumstances.

But God smiled and raised Mishkin up and said, "Rather, Mishkin, say that I have sinned; for what are your sins but the deficiencies that I caused to be put into you in order to test you and give you grievous trials and a dark night of the soul, the point being that you should overcome them. This may seem a kind of weird way of operating, but it is unreservedly recommended on page 102 of the best seller, This Business of Being God, written by a symposium of Parisian intellectuals and American hippies, and published by the Godhead Institution with offices in New York, London, Paris, Ibiza, and Katmandu, and with a foreword by Yours Truly."

"I have failed the crucial tests," Mishkin said. "I am mean, nasty, greedy, selfish, and uncaring."

"Don't get into a masochism number," said God. "Just as there is love which surpasseth understanding, so there is understanding which surpasseth love. For have I not written, the last shall be the first?"

"You are kind," Mishkin said. "But I don't really understand."

"Understanding is a down," God said. "Be comforted, Mishkin, for your vibrations are OK, and I think right now I need a vacation."

"I think," Mishkin said, "that it is time for a bit of static description. And then a bit of action." The space fleet came thundering in on fiery jets. Somewhere, a tree was crying.

Mishkin's father said, "Maybe I don't know what I like, but I sure as shooting know what I don't like." The people next door were a mystery, according to Angela. "Take nothing into account."

"But what do you mean, a mystery?" Claire couldn't explain, but she felt it was time for a bit of static description, and then a bit of action. "It doesn't really work that way." Mishkin knew that it was true and untrue, and he loved her and hated her for it. It was a complicated world, but so what?

Mishkin liked a bit of complication: "Excuse me, Captain, the pusher beam trigger mechanism seems to have broken down." But not too much. He liked story lines that you could follow while thinking of other things. "Spare me that avant-garde stuff," Alice said, "besides, it's not your thing." Not my thing? Then why bother building palaces out of frying pans, why look for a jewel on the forehead of a toad? Subjects and verbs must agree, everyone agreed, but not on anything else.

Mishkin wondered what a spaceship looked like. What could you compare a spaceship to? Itself? "The spaceship looked utterly like itself." Jane shook her head. Mishkin's father shook his head. Mishkin tried to play the flute. His skin itched. He wished he could think of something a spaceship looked like. Not itself. He decided to buy a toy spaceship and describe that.

Mishkin's eye fastened itself upon the sight and became what it saw. The eye is a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin is also a powerful organ of adaptation. Mishkin's eye had been cursed, and now, seeing crabgrass and hard boiled eggs, it became what it beheld.

Mishkin touched the young girl's head with an exploratory gesture. Then, swiftly, he turned up the two tabs and separated the halves of the skull. From within he drew out a printed circuit board. Soon he saw the damage and repaired it with professional competence, noting the work on the inventory list pasted to the inside of the left hemisphere of the skull. Then he put the two halves of the skull back together, taking care to bend the tabs carefully into place. The girl blinked her eyes and awakened, cured of her nervous tic and nocturnal enuresis.

Poor Ramsey Davis was impaled upon an ornamental iron railing at Thirteenth and Fifth. Of sweet, shy Marguerite Onger, less is known; she was last seen spiralling into the Arctic behind a howling dog pack, herself howling, the dogs saying to each other, "Wow, freaky scene, man, like get me out of here." Young David Broomsley died fever-twitched with clumsy face appalled. Mishkin himself was turned into a turnip by a malignant magician and inadvertently eaten by Richard Southey of Charing Cross Road. Ormsley never died and is still living in San Miguel de Allende, but his nose is in traction due to a rather unusual car accident. Orchidius is serving a ten-year sentence for mail fraud at Fulsome Prison. He swears he is innocent, and money to help his appeal should be sent to the author, care of the publisher, and I'll do what I can to assist this unfortunate man.

Various creatures in this work died in various ways. The author of this work would like to go out snarling but will probably be reduced to snuffling. Peace be to all, and to all a good night.

Mishkin loped gracefully along the contours of his life, stopping now and again to change into levis, suede pants, black bandit hats, and pausing to eat an unscheduled pizza here and there. Mishkin, slit-eyed against the wind of time, faintly smiling Mishkin, nerves twitching in the long, cold jaw, hard hands set on dream steering wheels. Prince of jesters, Mishkin, with his clown's grin and his errand boy mendacity. Was he not disastrous, unscheduled? Mishkin, of the bright, fey smile and winsome ways, dappling his way through all his completions. Mishkin in there for the big fifty-cent ride of all the amusements, holding on to his identity for dear life as the merry-go-round swirled his images about like dead leaves. Mishkin pretended to be who he was.

Mishkin sat in the Memory Theatre and scratched his crotch. On the stage, brilliantly lighted, a tableau appeared: a woman holding a baby. Mishkin recognized them as his own. A great voice called out, "What do you feel, Mishkin?" And Mishkin replied, "I feel an itch in my crotch. Also, I have a feeling that I forgot to file this year's income tax."

Acid is an intensifier. Soap is an emulsifier. Take your choice.

If you don't dig chromosome damage buy better chromosomes.

I used to be afraid that I was going out of my mind. Now I am afraid that I am not going out of my mind.

Dear Tom,

Thought I'd write you a letter, old buddy, learn how you are and fill you in on how it goes with yours truly and friends and company. Remember Martha? Well, she's gone and done it again but this time with a giant topaz on display at the Islamic Museum in Trebizond, of all places. Agnes has had another lamination, and more power to her, I say. Your little nephew Felix has been elected to a full term as Master of the neo-Eleusinian Mysteries. They say he's clairvoyant plus, but I say it's absurd to expose a little boy to those obscenities. Alleged obscenities, since I'm not supposed to know anything about it.