Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

himself with exultation. Am I lucky; this space was just made for me. I’ll stay and stay; I can go days and then be alive, I know I was intended to be alive. Fergesson was intended to die right off the bat. It’s God’s will. God knows what to do; He watches out, there is no chance about this. All this, a great cleansing of the world. Room must be made, new space for people, for instance myself.
    He put out the match and the darkness returned; he did not mind it. Waiting, in the middle of his cart, he thought, This is my chance, it was made for me deliberately. It’ll be different when I emerge. Destiny at work from the start, back before I was born. Now I understand it all, my being so different from the others; I see the reason.
    How much time has passed? he wondered presently. He had begun to become impatient. An hour? I can’t stand to wait, he realized. I mean, I have to wait, but I wish it would hurry up. He listened for the possible sound of people overhead, rescue teams from the Army beginning to dig people out, but not yet; nothing so far.
    I hope it isn’t too long, he said to himself. There’s lots to do; I have work ahead of me.
    When I get out of here I have to get started and organize, because that’s what will be needed: organization and direction, everyone will be milling around. Maybe I can plan now.
    In the darkness he planned. All manner of inspirations came to him; he was not wasting his time, not being idle just because he had to be stationary. His head wildly rang with original notions; he could hardly wait, thinking about them and how they would work when tried out. Most of them had to do with ways of survival. No one would be dependent on big society; it would all be small towns and individuality, like Ayn Rand talked about in her books. It would be the end of conformity and the mass mind and junk; no more factory-produced junk, like the cartons of color 3-D television sets which had fallen on all sides of him.
    His heart pounded with excitement and impatience; he could hardly stand waiting—it was like a million years already. And still they hadn’t found him yet, even though they were busy looking. He knew that; he could feel them at work, getting nearer.
    “Hurry!” he exclaimed aloud, lashing his manual extensors; the tips scratched against the TV cartons, making a dull sound. In his impatience he began to beat on the cartons. The drumming filled the darkness, as if there were many living things imprisoned, an entire nest of people, not just Hoppy Harrington alone.

    In her hillside home in West Marin County, Bonny Keller realized that the classical music on the stereo set in the living room had gone off. She emerged from the bedroom, wiping the water color paint from her hands and wondering if the same tube as before had—as George put it—cut out.
    And then through the window she saw against the sky to the south a stout trunk of smoke, as dense and brown as a living stump. She gaped at it, and then the window burst; it pulverized and she crashed back and slid across the floor along with the powdery fragments of it. Every object in the house tumbled, fell and shattered and then skidded with her, as if the house had tilted on end.
    The San Andreas Fault, she knew. Terrible earthquake, like back ago eighty years; all we’ve built … all ruined. Spinning, she banged into the far wall of the house, only now it was level and the floor had raised up; she saw lamps and tables and chairs raining down and smashing, and it was amazing to her how flimsy everything was. She could not understand how things she had owned for years could break so easily; only the wall itself, now beneath her, remained as something hard.
    My house, she thought. Gone. Everything that’s mine, that means something to me. Oh, it isn’t fair.
    Her head ached as she lay panting; she smoothed herself, saw her hands white and covered with fine powder and trembling—blood streaked her wrist, from some cut she could not