Philip Dick: Sales Pitch

COMMUTE ships roared on all sides,-as Ed Morris made his way wearily home to Earth at the end of a long hard day at the office. The Ganymede-Terra lanes were choked with exhausted, grim-faced businessmen; Jupiter was in opposition to Earth and the trip was a good two hours. Every few million miles the great flow slowed to a grinding, agonized halt; signal-lights flashed as streams from Mars and Saturn fed into the main traffic-arteries.

«Lord,» Morris muttered. «How tired can you get?» He locked the autopilot and momentarily turned from the control-board to light a much-needed cigarette. His hands shook. His head swam. It was past six: Sally would be fuming; dinner would be spoiled. The same old thing. Nerve-wracking driving, honking horns and irate drivers zooming past his little ship, furious gesturing, shouting, cursing. . .

And the ads. That was what really did it. He could have stood everything else—but the ads, the whole long way from Ganymede to Earth. And on Earth, the swarms of salesrobots; it was too much. And they were everywhere.

He slowed to avoid a fifty-ship smashup. Repair-ships were scurrying around trying to get the debris out of the lane. His audio-speaker wailed as police rockets hurried up. Expertly, Morris raised his ship, cut between two slow moving commercial transports, zipped momentarily into the unused left lane, and then sped on, the wreck left behind. Horns honked furiously at him; he ignored them.

«Trans-Solar Products greets you!» an immense voice boomed in his ear. Morris groaned and hunched down in his seat. He was getting near Terra; the barrage was increasing. «Is your tension-index pushed over the safety-margin by the ordinary frustrations of the day? Then you need an Id-Persona Unit. So small it can be worn behind the ear, close to the frontal lobe—»

Thank God, he was past it. The ad dimmed and receded behind, as his fast-moving ship hurtled forward. But another was right ahead.

«Drivers! Thousands of unnecessary deaths each year from inter- planet driving. Hypno-Motor Control from an expert source-point insures your safety. Surrender your body and save your life!» The voice roared louder. «Industrial experts say—»

Both audio ads, the easiest to ignore. But now a visual ad was forming; he winced, closed his eyes, but it did no good.

«Men!» an unctuous voiced thundered on all sides of him. «Banish internally-caused obnoxious odors forever. Removal by modern painless methods of the gastro-intestinal tract and substitution of the all-plastic GE absorption system will relieve you of the most acute cause of social rejection» The visual image locked: a vast nude girl, blonde hair disarranged, blue eyes half shut, lips parted, head tilted back in sleep- drugged ecstasy. The features ballooned as the lips approached his own. Abruptly the orgiastic expression on the girl's face vanished. Disgust and revulsion swept across, and then the image faded out.

«Does this happen to you?» the voice boomed. «During erotic sex-play do you offend your love-partner by the presence of gastric processes which—»

THE VOICE died, and he was past. His mind his own again, Morris kicked savagely at the throttle and sent the little ship leaping. The pressure, applied directly to the audio-visual regions of his brain, had faded below spark point. He groaned and shook his head to clear it. All around him the vague half-defined echoes of ads glittered and gibbered, like ghosts of distant video-stations. Ads waited on all sides; he steered a careful course, dexterity born of animal desperation, but not all could be avoided. Despair seized him. The outline of a new visual-audio ad was already coming into being.

«You, mister wage-earner!» it shouted into the eyes and ears, noses and throats, of a thousand weary commuters. «Tired of the same old job? Wonder Circuits Inc. has perfected a marvelous long-range thoughtwave scanner.' Know what others are thinking and saying. Get the edge on fellow employees. Learn facts, figures about your employer’s personal existence. Banish uncertainty!»

Morris’ despair swept up wildly. He threw the throttle on full- blast; the little ship bucked and rolled as it climbed from the traffic-lane into the dead zone beyond. A shrieking roar, as his fender whipped through the protective wall—and then the ad faded behind him.

He slowed down, trembling with misery and fatigue. Earth lay ahead. He’d be home, soon. Maybe he could get a good night’s sleep. He shakily dropped the nose of the ship and prepared to hook onto the tractor beam of the Chicago commute field.

«The best metabolism adjuster on the market,» the salesrobot shrilled. «Guaranteed to maintain a perfect endocrine-balance or your money refunded in full.»

Morris pushed wearily past the salesrobot, up the sidewalk toward the residential-block that contained his liying-unit. The robot followed a few steps, then forgot him and hurried after another grim-faced commuter.

«All the news while it’s news,» a metallic voice dinned at him. «Have a retinal vidscreen installed in your least-used eye. Keep in touch with the world; don’t wait for out-of-date hourly summaries.»

«Get out of the way,» Morrison muttered. The robot stepped aside for him and he crossed the street with a pack of hunched over men and women.

ROBOT-SALESMEN were everywhere, gesturing, pleading, shrilling. One started after him and he quickened his pace. It scurried along, chanting its pitch and trying to attract his attention, all the way up the hill to his living unit. It didn’t give up until he stooped over, snatched up a rock, and hurled it futilely. He scrambled in the house and slammed the doorlock after him. The robot hesitated, then turned and raced after a woman with an armload of packages toiling up the hill. She tried vainly to elude it, without success.

«Darling!» Sally cried. She hurried from the kitchen, drying her hands on her plastic shorts, brighteyed and excited. «Oh, you poor thing! You look so tired!»

Morris peeled off his hat and coat and kissed his wife briefly on her bare shoulder. «What’s for dinner?»

Sally gave his hat and coat to the closet. «We’re having Uranian wild pheasant; your favorite dish.»

Morris’ mouth watered, and a tiny surge of energy crawled back into his exhausted body. «No kidding ? What the hell’s the occasion?»

His wife’s brown eyes moistened with compassion. «Darling, it’s your birthday; you’re thirty-seven years old today. Had you forgotten ?»

«Yeah,» Morris grinned a little. «I sure had.» He wandered into the kitchen. The table was set; coffee was steaming in the cups and there was butter and white bread, mashed potatoes and green’ peas. «My golly. A real occasion.»

Sally punched the stove controls and the container of smoking pheasant was slid onto the table and neatly sliced open. «Go wash your hands and we’re ready to eat. Hurry—before it gets cold.»

Morris presented his hands to the wash slot and then sat down gratefully at the table. Sally served the tender, fragrant' pheasant, and the two of them began eating.

«Sally,» Morris said, when his plate was empty and he was leaning back and sipping slowly at his coffee. «I can’t go on like this. Something’s got to be done.»

«You mean the drive? I wish you could get a position on Mars like Bob Young. Maybe if you talked to the Employment Commission and explained to them how all the strain—»

«It’s not just the drive. They re right out front. Everywhere. Waiting for me. All day and all night.» «Who are, dear?»