Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

alone in the dust-strewn dim hall.

 

    7

    Well, so it goes, J. R. Isidore thought as he stood clutching his soft cube of margarine. Maybe she’ll change her mind about letting me call her Pris. And possibly, if I can pick up a can of pre-war vegetables, about dinner, too.
    But maybe she doesn’t know how to cook, he thought suddenly. Okay, I can do it; I’ll fix dinner for both of us. And I’ll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She’ll probably want to, once I show her how; as near as I can make out, most women, even young ones like her, like to cook: it’s an instinct.
    Ascending the darkened stairs, he returned to his own apartment.
    She’s really out of touch, he thought as he donned his white work uniform; even if he hurried he’d be late to work and Mr. Sloat would be angry, but so what? For instance, she’s never heard of Buster Friendly. And tha’s impossible; Buster is the most important human being alive, except of course for Wilbur Mercer…but Mercer, he reflected, isn’t a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template. At least that’s what I’ve heard people say; that’s what Mr. Sloat says, for instance. And Hannibal Sloat would know.
    Odd that she isn’t consistent about her own name, he pondered. She may need help. Can I give her any help? he asked himself. A special, a chickenhead; what do I know? I can’t marry and I can’t emigrate and the dust will eventually kill me. I have nothing to offer.
    Dressed and ready to go, he left his apartment and ascended to the roof where his battered used hovercar lay parked.

     

    An hour later, in the company truck, he had picked up the first malfunctioning animal for the day. An electric cat: it lay in the plastic dust-proof carrying cage in the rear of the truck and panted erratically. You’d almost think it was real, Isidore observed as he headed back to the Van Ness Pet Hospital—that carefully misnamed little enterprise which barely existed in the tough, competitive field of false-animal repair.
    The cat, in its travail, groaned.
    Wow, Isidore said to himself. It really sounds as if it’s dying. Maybe its ten-year battery has shorted, and all its circuits are systematically burning out. A major job; Milt Borogrove, Van Ness Pet Hospital’s repairman, would have his hands full. And I didn’t give the owner an estimate, Isidore realized gloomily. The guy simply thrust the cat at me, said it had begun failing during the night, and then I guess he took off for work. Anyhow, all of a sudden the momentary verbal exchange had ceased; the cat’s owner had gone roaring up into the sky in his custom new-model handsome hovercar. And the man constituted a new customer.
    To the cat, Isidore said, “Can you hang on until we reach the shop?” The cat continued to wheeze. “I’ll recharge you while we’re en route,” Isidore decided; he dropped the truck toward the nearest available roof and there, temporarily parked with the motor running, crawled into the back of the truck and opened the plastic dust-proof carrying cage, which, in conjunction with his own white suit and the name on the truck, created a total impression of a true animal vet picking up a true animal.
    The electric mechanism, within its compellingly authentic-style gray pelt, gurgled and blew bubbles, its vidlenses glassy, its metal jaws locked together. This had always amazed him, these “disease” circuits built into false animals; the construct which he now held on his lap had been put together in such a fashion that when a primary component misfired, the whole thing appeared—not broken—but organically ill. It would have fooled me, Isidore said to himself as he groped within the ersatz stomach fur for the concealed control panel (quite small on this variety of false animal) plus the quick-charge battery terminals. He could find neither. Nor could he search very long; the mechanism had