Robert Sheckley - Options

"I don't know how it happened," Mishkin said, "but you are not where you think you are."

"We're on a plank over a ravine, huh?" Phil said.

"Exactly."

"So how come we think we're in room 2212 of the Sheraton-Hilton?"

"I don't know," Mishkin said. "Something very strange seems to have happened."

"Sure, it has," Burt said. "It's happened to your head. You're crazy."

"If anyone is crazy," Mishkin said, "you people are crazy."

The poker players laughed. George said, "Sanity is a matter of consensus. We say it's a hotel room and we outvote you four to one. That makes you crazy."

Phil said, "This damned city is full of nuts. Now they come up to your hotel room and tell you it's balanced on a plank over a ravine."

"Will you let me get by?" Mishkin asked.

"Suppose I do; where will you go?"

"To the other side of the ravine."

"If you go around us," Phil said, "you'll only come to the other side of the room."

"I don't think so," Mishkin said. "And, although I wish to be tolerant of your opinions, in this case I can see that they are based upon a false assumption. Let me get by and you can see for yourself."

Phil yawned and stood up. "I was going to the crapper, anyhow, so you can get by me. But when you reach the end of the room, will you turn around again like a good boy and get the hell out of here?"

"If it's a room, I promise to leave at once."

Phil stood up, took two steps back from the table, and fell into the ravine. His scream echoed and re-echoed as he fell into the depths.

George said, "Those goddamned police sirens are getting on my nerves."

Mishkin edged past the table, holding on to its edge, and made it to the other side of the ravine. The robot followed. Once they were both safe, Mishkin called out, "Did you see? It was a ravine."

George said, "While he's at it, I hope Phil gets Tom out of the crapper. He's been there about half an hour."

"Hey," Burt said, "where did the nut go?"

The card players looked around. "He's gone," George said. "Maybe he went into a closet."

"Nope," Burt said, "I've been watching the closet."

"Did he jump out a window?"

"You can't open the windows."

"Too much," George said. "That's really one for the books… Hey, Phil, hurry up!"

"You can never get him out of the crapper," Burt said. "How about a little gin rummy?"

"You're on," Burt said, and shuffled the cards.

Mishkin watched them for a few minutes then continued into the forest.

Mishkin asked the robot, "What was that all about?"

"I am reviewing the information now," the robot said. He was silent for a few minutes.

Then he said, "They did it with mirrors."

"That seems unlikely."

"All hypotheses concerning the present sequence of events are unlikely," the robot said. "Would you prefer me to say that we and the card players met at a discontinuity point in the space-time continuum in which two planes of reality intersected?"

"I think I would prefer that," Mishkin said.

"Simpleminded sod. Shall we go on?"

"Let's. I just hope the car works."

"It had better work," the robot said. "I spent three hours rewiring the generator."

Their car — a white Citroen with mushroom-shaped tyres and a hydraulic tail-light system — was parked just ahead of them in a little clearing. Mishkin got in and started up.

The robot stretched out on the back seat.

"What are you doing?" Mishkin asked.

"I thought I'd take a little nap."

"Robots never sleep."

"Sorry. I meant that I was going to take a little pseudo-nap."

"That's OK," Mishkin said, putting the car into gear and taking off.

Mishkin drove across a green and pleasant meadow for several hours. He came at last into a narrow dirt road that led between giant willow trees and then into a driveway. In front of him was a castle. He awakened the robot from his pseudo-snooze.

"Interesting," said the robot. "Did you notice the sign?"

In front of the castle, tacked up on a young spruce tree, was a sign reading: IMAGINARY CASTLE.

"What does it mean?" Mishkin asked.

"It means that some people have the decency to state a simple truth, and thus to avoid confusing passersby. An imaginary castle is one that has no counterpart in objective reality."

"Let's go in and take a look at it," Mishkin said.

"But I have just explained to you. The castle is not real. There is literally nothing to see."

"I want to see it, anyhow," Mishkin said.

"You have already read the sign."

"But maybe that's a lie or a joke."

"If you can't believe what is written plain as day," the robot said, "then how can you believe anything? You have observed, I hope, that the sign is exceptionally well made, and that the lettering is plain, forthright, and not at all flamboyant. In the right-hand corner is the seal of the Department of Public Works, an unimpeachable and businesslike organization whose motto is Noli me tangere. It is evident that they have classified this castle as a public service so that no one will walk into it thinking that he is in a real castle. Or isn't the Department of Public Works a reliable service to you?"

"It is a very acceptable reference," Mishkin said. "But maybe the seal is a forgery."

"That is typically paranoid thinking," the robot said. "First, despite its solid and commonplace air of reality, you consider the sign a lie or a joke (the two are essentially the same thing). Then, when you learn the source of this so-called «joke», you think that perhaps it is a forgery. Suppose I succeed in proving to you the authenticity and sincerity of the sign makers? I suppose that you would insist, despite the accepted principle of Ockham's razor, that the sign makers are imaginary, or deluded, and that the castle is real."

"It is simply a rather unusual thing," Mishkin said, "to come across a castle and to be told that it is imaginary."

"I see nothing unusual about it," the robot said. "Since the latest revision of the truth-in-advertising statutes, ten gods, four major religions, and eighteen hundred and twelve cults to date have been labelled imaginary in accordance with the law."

Guided by the sacristan — a short cheerful old man with a white beard and a wooden leg — Mishkin and the robot toured the Imaginary Castle. They went down long stuffy passageways and through short draughty cross passageways, past factory-tarnished suits of armour and pre-faded, pre-shrunk tapestries depicting virgins and unicorns in ambiguous poses. They inspected the punishment cells where make-believe prisoners pretended to suffer from the vile incursions of fraudulent racks, ersatz pincers, and fake thumbscrews wielded by stoop-shouldered torturers whose commonplace horn-rimmed glasses robbed them of any pretence to credibility. (Only the pasteurized blood was real, and not even that was convincing.) They passed the armoury where snub-nosed demoiselles typed triplicate requests for the latest model Holy Grail swords and Big Barbarian spears.

They went to the battlements and saw the vats of Smith & Wesson polyunsaturated oil suitable for low-temperature anointing or high-temperature boiling. They looked into the chapel, where a boyish, red-haired priest made jokes in Sanskrit to a congregation of Peruvian tin miners, while Judas, crucified by a contrived clerical error, looked down, bewildered, from a Symbolist cross of rare woods that had been especially selected for the spiritual sensibility of their textures.

Finally, they came to the great banquet hall, within which was a table loaded with Broasted chickens, mugs of Orange Julius, chili dogs, clams on the half shell, and two-inch slices of roast beef done crisp on the outside and rare on the inside. And there were platters of soft ice cream, and trays of pizza, both Neapolitan and Sicilian, all of them with extra cheese and sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, and capers. There were foil-wrapped heroes and poorboys, and combination, multiple-decker sandwiches of pastrami, tongue, corned beef, chopped liver, lox, cream cheese, onions, coleslaw, potato salad, and dill and half-sour pickles. And there were great tureens of kreplach soup, and chicken soup with noodles. And there were cauldrons filled with lobster Cantonese, and platters piled high with sweet and sour spareribs, and waxed-paper containers of pressed duck with walnuts. And there were roast stuffed turkeys with cranberry sauce, cheeseburgers, shrimps in black bean sauce, and much more besides.