Philip Dick - We Can Build You

The doctor carefully wrote those facts down.

"Aren't you going to answer my question?" I asked.

It was hopeless. The doctor, if he had a reaction to the simulacrum sitting in his office reading _Life_, was not going to reveal it. Or maybe he didn't have one; maybe he didn't care who he found sitting across from him or among his magazines--maybe he had taught himself long ago to accept anyone and anything he found there.

But at least I could get an answer out of him regarding Pris, who I regarded as a worse evil than the simulacra.

"I've got my .45 Service revolver and shells," I said. "That's all I need; the opportunity will take care of itself. It's just a question of time before she tries the same cruelty on someone else as she did on me. I consider it my sacred task to rub her out--that's god's truth."

Scrutinizing me, Horstowski said, "Your real problem, as you've phrased it--and I believe accurately--is the hostility you feel, a very mute and baffled hostility, seeking an outlet, toward your partner and this eighteen-year-old girl who has difficulties of her own and who is actively seeking solutions in her own way as best she can."

Put like that, it did not sound so good. It was my own feelings which harried me, not the enemy. _There was no enemy_. There was only my own emotional life, suppressed and denied.

"Well, what can you do for me?" I asked.

"I can't make your reality-situation palatable to you. But I can help you comprehend it." He opened a drawer of his desk; I saw boxes and bottles and envelopes of pills, a rat's nest of physician's samples, scattered and heaped. After rooting, Horstowski same up with a small bottle, which he opened. "I can give you these. Take two a day, one when you get up and one on retiring. Hubrizine." He passed me the bottle.

"What's it do?" I put the bottle away in my inside pocket.

"I can explain it to you because you are professionally familar with the Mood Organ. Hubrizine stimulates the anterior portion of the spetal region of the brain. Stimulation in that area, Mr. Rosen, will bring about greater alertness, plus cheerfulness and a belief that events will work out all right on their own. It compares to this setting on the Hammerstein Mood Organ." He passed me a small glossy folded printed piece of paper; I saw Hammerstein stop-setting indications on it. "But the effect of the drug is much more intense; as you know, the amplitude of affect-shock produced by the Mood Organ is severely limited by law."

I read the setting critically. By god, when translated into notes it was close to the opening of the Beethoven Sixteenth Quartet. What a vindication for enthusiasts of the Beethoven Third Period, I said to myself. Just looked at, the stop-setting numbers made me feel better.

"I can almost hum this drug," I said. "Want me to try?"

"No thank you. Now, you understand that if drug therapy does not avail in your case we can always attempt brain-slicing in the region of the temporal lobes--based, of course, on extensive brain-mapping, which would have to be conducted at U.C. Hospital in San Francisco or Mount Zion; we have no facilities, here. I prefer to avoid that myself if possible, since it often develops that the section of the temporal lobes involved can't be spared. The Government has abandoned that at its clinics, you know."

"I'd rather not be sliced," I agreed. "I've had friends who've had that done... but personally it gives me the shivers. Let me ask you this. Do you by any chance have a drug whose setting in terms of the Mood Organ corresponds to portions of the Choral Movement of the Beethoven Ninth?"

"I've never looked into it," Horstowski said.

"On a Mood Organ I'm particularly affected when I play the part where the choir sings, '_Mus' em Lieber Vater wohnen_,' and then very high up, like angels, the violins and the soprano part of the choir sing as an answer, '_Ubrem Sternenzelt_.'

"I'm not familiar with it to that extent," Horstowski admitted.

"They're asking whether a Heavenly Father exists, and then very high up they answer, yes, above the realm of stars. That part--if you could find the correspondence in terms of pharmacology, I might benefit enormously."

Doctor Horstowski got out a massive loose-leaf binder and began to thumb through it. "I'm afraid I can't locate a pill corresponding to that. You might consult with the Hammerstein engineers, however."

"Good idea," I said.

"Now, as to your dealings with Pris. I think you're a little strong in your view of her as a menace. After all, you are free not to associate with her _at all_, aren't you?" He eyed me slyly.

"I guess so."

"Pris has challenged you. She's a provocative personality... most people who know her, I'd imagine, get to feeling as you do. That's Pris's way of stirring them up, making them react. It is probably allied to her scientific bent... it's a form of curiosity; she wants to see what makes people tick." He smiled.

"In this case," I said, "she almost killed the specimen while trying to investigate it."

"Pardon?" He cupped his ear. "Yes, a specimen. She perceives other people sometimes in that aspect. But I wouldn't let that throw me. We live in a society where detachment is almost essential."

While he was saying this, Doctor Horstowski was writing in his appointment book.

"What do you think of," he murmured, "when you think of Pris."

"Milk," I said.

"Milk!" His eyes opened wide. "Interesting. Milk..."

"I'm not coming back here," I told him. "It's no use giving me that card." However, I accepted the appointment card. "Our time is up for today, is it?"

"Regrettably," Doctor Horstowski said, "it is."

"I was not kidding when I told you I'm one of Pris's simulacra. There used to be a Louis Rosen, but no more. Now there's only me. And if anything happens to me, Pris and Maury have the instructional tapes to create another. Pris makes the body out of bathroom tile. It's pretty good, isn't it? It fooled you and my brother Chester and almost my father. That's the actual reason he's so unhappy; he guessed the truth." Having said that I nodded goodbye and walked from the office, along the hall and through the waiting room, to the street.

But you, I said to myself. You'll never guess, Doctor Horstowski, not in a million years. I'm good enough to fool you and all the rest of them like you.

Getting into my Chevrolet Magic Fire, I drove slowly back to the office.

After having told Doctor Horstowski that I was a simulacrum I could not get the idea out of my mind. Once there had been a real Louis Rosen but now he was gone and I stood in his spot, fooling almost everyone, including myself.

This idea persisted for the next week, growing a little dimmer each day but not quite fading out.

And yet on another level I knew it was a preposterous idea, just a lot of drivel I had come up with because of my resentment toward Doctor Horstowski.

The immediate effect of the idea was to cause me to look up the Edwin M. Stanton simulacrum; when I got back to the office from my visit to the doctor I asked Maury where the thing could be found.

"Bundy's feeding a new tape to it," Maury said. "Pris came across a biography of Stanton that had some new material." He returned to his letter-reading.

I found Bundy in the shop with the Stanton; having finished, he was putting it back together. Now he was asking it questions.

"Andrew Johnson betrayed the Union by his inability to conceive the rebellious states as--" Seeing me, Bundy broke off. "Hi, Rosen."

"I want to talk to the thing. Okay?"

Bundy departed, leaving me alone with the Stanton. It was seated in a brown, cloth-covered armchair, with a book open on its lap; it regarded me sternly.

"Sir," I said, "do you recall me?"