Counter-Clock World Read Online Free
Author: Philip K. Dick
sighed contentedly as he glanced over the sports section of the
Los Angeles Times.
Then at last walked to the kitchen and began to lay out soiled dishes. In no time at all he faced a bowl of soup, lamb chops, green peas, Martian blue moss with egg sauce, and a cup of hot coffee. These he gathered up, slid the dishes from beneath and around them—of course first checking the windows of the room to be sure no one saw him—and briskly placed the assorted foods in their proper receptacles, which he placed on shelves of the cupboard and in the refrigerator. The time was eight-thirty; he still had fifteen minutes in which to get to work. No need to dwindle himself hurrying; the People’s Topical Library Section B would be there when he arrived.
It had taken him years to work up to B. And now, as a reward, he had to deal tête-à-tête with a bewildering variety of surly, boorish inventors who balked at their assigned—and, according to the Erads, mandatory—final cleaning of the sole remaining typescript copy of whatever work their name had become associated with—linked by a process which neither he nor the assortment of inventors completely understood. The Council presumably understood why a particular given inventor got stuck with a particular assignment and not some other assignment entirely. For instance, Eng and HOW I MADE MY OWN SWABBLE OUT OF CONVENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS IN MY BASEMENT DURING MY SPARE TIME. Appleford reflected as he glanced over the remainder of the ’pape. Think of the responsibility. After Eng finished, no more swabbles in all the world, unless those untrustworthy rogues in the F.N.M. had a couple illicitly tucked away. In fact, even though the ter-cop, the terminal copy, of Eng’s book still remained, he already found it difficult to recall what a swabble did and what it looked like. Square? Small? Or round and huge? Hmm. He put down the ’pape and rubbed his forehead while he attempted to recall—tried to conjure up an accurate mental image of the device while it was still theoretically possible to do so. Because as soon as Eng reduced the ter-cop to a heavily inked silk ribbon, half a ream of bond paper, and a folio of fresh carbon paper there existed no chance for him or for anyone else to recall either the book or the mechanism—up to now quite useful—which the book described.
That task, however, would probably occupy Eng the rest of the year. Cleaning of the ter-cop had to progress line by line, word by word; it could not be handled as were the assembled heaps of printed copies. So easy, up until the terminal typescript copy and then . . . well, to make it worth it to Eng, a really huge salary would be paid him, plus—
By his elbow on the small kitchen table the receiver of the vidphone hopped from its mooring onto the table, and from it came a distant tiny shrill voice. “Goodbye, Doug.” A woman’s voice.
Lifting the receiver to his ear he said, “Goodbye.”
“I love you, Doug,” Charise McFadden stated in her breathless, emotion-saturated voice. “Do you love me?”
“Yes, I love you, too,” he said. “When have I seen you last? I hope it won’t be long. Tell me it won’t be long.”
“Most probably tonight,” Charise said. “After work. There’s someone I want you to meet, a virtually unknown inventor who’s desperately eager to get official eradication for his thesis on, ahem, the psychogenic origins of death by meteor strike. I said that because you’re in Section B—”
“Tell him to eradicate his thesis himself. At his own expense.”
“There’s no prestige in that.” Her face on the vidscreen earnest, Charise pleaded, “It’s really a dreadful piece of theorizing, Doug; it’s as nutty as the day is long. This oaf, this Lance Arbuthnot—”
“That’s his name?” It almost persuaded him. But not quite. In the course of a single day he received many such requests, and every one, without exception, came represented as a socially dangerous
Los Angeles Times.
Then at last walked to the kitchen and began to lay out soiled dishes. In no time at all he faced a bowl of soup, lamb chops, green peas, Martian blue moss with egg sauce, and a cup of hot coffee. These he gathered up, slid the dishes from beneath and around them—of course first checking the windows of the room to be sure no one saw him—and briskly placed the assorted foods in their proper receptacles, which he placed on shelves of the cupboard and in the refrigerator. The time was eight-thirty; he still had fifteen minutes in which to get to work. No need to dwindle himself hurrying; the People’s Topical Library Section B would be there when he arrived.
It had taken him years to work up to B. And now, as a reward, he had to deal tête-à-tête with a bewildering variety of surly, boorish inventors who balked at their assigned—and, according to the Erads, mandatory—final cleaning of the sole remaining typescript copy of whatever work their name had become associated with—linked by a process which neither he nor the assortment of inventors completely understood. The Council presumably understood why a particular given inventor got stuck with a particular assignment and not some other assignment entirely. For instance, Eng and HOW I MADE MY OWN SWABBLE OUT OF CONVENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS IN MY BASEMENT DURING MY SPARE TIME. Appleford reflected as he glanced over the remainder of the ’pape. Think of the responsibility. After Eng finished, no more swabbles in all the world, unless those untrustworthy rogues in the F.N.M. had a couple illicitly tucked away. In fact, even though the ter-cop, the terminal copy, of Eng’s book still remained, he already found it difficult to recall what a swabble did and what it looked like. Square? Small? Or round and huge? Hmm. He put down the ’pape and rubbed his forehead while he attempted to recall—tried to conjure up an accurate mental image of the device while it was still theoretically possible to do so. Because as soon as Eng reduced the ter-cop to a heavily inked silk ribbon, half a ream of bond paper, and a folio of fresh carbon paper there existed no chance for him or for anyone else to recall either the book or the mechanism—up to now quite useful—which the book described.
That task, however, would probably occupy Eng the rest of the year. Cleaning of the ter-cop had to progress line by line, word by word; it could not be handled as were the assembled heaps of printed copies. So easy, up until the terminal typescript copy and then . . . well, to make it worth it to Eng, a really huge salary would be paid him, plus—
By his elbow on the small kitchen table the receiver of the vidphone hopped from its mooring onto the table, and from it came a distant tiny shrill voice. “Goodbye, Doug.” A woman’s voice.
Lifting the receiver to his ear he said, “Goodbye.”
“I love you, Doug,” Charise McFadden stated in her breathless, emotion-saturated voice. “Do you love me?”
“Yes, I love you, too,” he said. “When have I seen you last? I hope it won’t be long. Tell me it won’t be long.”
“Most probably tonight,” Charise said. “After work. There’s someone I want you to meet, a virtually unknown inventor who’s desperately eager to get official eradication for his thesis on, ahem, the psychogenic origins of death by meteor strike. I said that because you’re in Section B—”
“Tell him to eradicate his thesis himself. At his own expense.”
“There’s no prestige in that.” Her face on the vidscreen earnest, Charise pleaded, “It’s really a dreadful piece of theorizing, Doug; it’s as nutty as the day is long. This oaf, this Lance Arbuthnot—”
“That’s his name?” It almost persuaded him. But not quite. In the course of a single day he received many such requests, and every one, without exception, came represented as a socially dangerous
Readers choose
G.P. Grewal
Linda Washington
Vanessa Gray Bartal
Rob Riggan
Gerard Brennan
I. J. Parker
Khelsey Jackson
Lynne Hinton
J. Richardson
Alicia Quigley