Read Online We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick - Free Book Online

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.

6
    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 toconceive 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?”
    “Yes sir, I do. You are Mr. Louis Rosen of Boise, Idaho. I recall a pleasant overnight stay with your father. Is he well?”
    “Not as well as I wish he was.”
    “A pity.”
    “Sir, I’d like to ask you a question. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that although you were born around 1800 you are still alive in 1982? And doesn’t it seem odd to you to be shut off every now and then? And what about your being made out of transistors and relays? You didn’t used to be, because in 1800 they didn’t have transistors and relays.” I paused, waiting.
    “Yes,” the Stanton agreed, “those are oddities. I have here a volume—” He held up his book. “Which deals with the new science of cybernetics, and this science has shed light on my perplexity.”
    That excited me. “Your perplexity!”
    “Yes sir. During my stay with your father I discussed puzzling matters of this nature with him. When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid.”
    “I should think so,” I said.
    “I am afraid, sir, and wonder to see myself here rather than there. For there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now rather than then.”
    “Did you come to any