After
Philip K. Dick
A huge cloud descended over
Swindon. People were asked to relocate to other cloudless, safer towns such as
Chippenham. Some refused to leave and were branded as 'Special.' No one knew
what was in the cloud, but it contained
an omnipresent dust of befouling filth and everyone who remained in the
town suffered from a depression that could only be controlled by mood
organs. Each household was given an electric person to cheer them up.
Barry is in a pair of hi-viz pyjamas.
Mabel is sleeping on the sofa. She has not touched her twin-tub in days.
MABEL:
Keep your hand off my settings! I don't want to do the
washing.
BARRY:
You set your Penfold too weak, let me reset it? If you surge yourself high
enough you'll be happy to do the washing. At setting C you'll be dancing with
your electric paddle agitator again.
MABEL:
Get your crude road-digger hands off my paddle agitator.
BARRY:
I'm not a road digger, I haven't dug a road since the cloud came.
MABEL:
You're worse. You make road-blocks to keep people from leaving this town.
People that refuse to be 'special'.
BARRY:
Only the electric people.
MABEL:
They're still people. Ursula's on the roof. Would you stop Ursula?
BARRY:
She was a real woman once, a lovely woman.
MABEL:
I'd
like a real woman friend again.
BARRY:
Impossible.
MABEL:
Exactly, which is why my schedule for today is a six hour
self-accusatory depression.
BARRY:
What?
Why did you set it for that? It defeats the purpose of the mood-organ. You
might as well go live in Chippenham.
MABEL:
Never, I'd rather have electronic depression thank you.
BARRY:
Why are you so bent on being depressed? Who will do the washing?
MABEL:
I
saw that awful commercial again, the one for Hotpoint Lead Codpieces. I felt
sad about the past and the direction Hotpoint were being forced to go in. So I
shut off the sound and I heard the…(Mabel gestures to the houses next door)
BARRY:
The emptiness, the silence?
MABEL:
I
was in a 382 mood, so although I heard the noise intellectually, I didn’t feel
it. I was grateful for my Penfold at that point and stroked the twin-tub in
deep appreciation, loading it with a pile of washing I had already done. But
then I realised how unhealthy it all was, sensed an absence of life. I miss the
real Ursula.
BARRY:
But
despair like that. You’ll end up in Reading!
MABEL:
I’ve got an automatic resetting for three hours later. A 481: awareness of the
manifold possibilities and joy in housework.
BARRY:
Let’s dial a 104 together, forget all this. Then I’ll set mine for collecting a
skip, ready for work, then I'll pop up on the roof to check on Ursula.
MABEL:
Look what happened the last time someone dialled what you wanted them to Barry.
Ursula happened, she dialled for ecstatic sexual bliss and bang! The end of her.
So I won’t be taking advice from a road-blocker, or skip-remover if that’s the
job of the day.
BARRY:
You turn into a bloody snob when you are depressed. You belong in Bath. Not
here, with the Swindon Specials.
MABEL:
Just keep off my settings and go to work.
After
breakfast, Barry abandons Mabel in her six-hour self-accusatory depressive
state and leaves for work. First, he goes to check on Ursula. Despite his lead, hi-viz codpiece, the cloud filtered in and at him, brought him daily as long as
he refused to move to Chippenham. He was now, quite special. Doug, another
Swindon refuserite had come to check on his human too.
DOUG:
I’d
give you five hundred pounds a month for your electric human. I do like her.
BARRY:
But that’s my Ursula, I can’t sell Ursula.
DOUG:
There’s none like her in stock.
BARRY:
I
had her specially designed.
DOUG:
But
for you to have a unique person, it violates the whole basic theological and
moral structure of Swindon.
BARRY:
Not really, if you didn't have your own human there on the roof, I’d see some
logic in your position. And if I had two electric humans and you didn't have
any, I’d be helping to deprive you of true fusion.
DOUG:
I
think Ed down the road had his wife made up into an electric one but possibly
he’s just pretending. How did you get her done like this?
BARRY:
When she was real, she dialled for some ecstatic sexual bliss on the mood organ
and I came into the bedroom to find her lying on her back on the floor, legs in
the air. I managed to lift her up but after a moment or two that was it, she
keeled over.
DOUG:
Women get strange reactions to this mood organ.
BARRY:
Any organ.
DOUG:
So
what did you do next.
BARRY:
We
had her buried, as usual and Mabel and I started to miss her. No mood-dialling
worked on the loss we felt. So I took her photo to one of those shops that
manufacture humans. They made her up for us. Pity she can’t live in the house,
rules are rules.
DOUG:
It’s not the same though is it? Don't you dream about her?
BARRY:
I
have some funny electric Ursula dreams that is true. Some involving button
377.
DOUG:
Good lord! 377 ... no one goes on 377. I didn't know organs still came with
that one. Better watch that Mabel of yours in there then, she could die like
Ursula died. Keep a sticker over those settings. When you get home from work
this evening, you might find her laid out, feet in the air, like a bug.
Barry
strode off, car key in hand, and in silence plucked open the door of his
hover-car. He had nothing to say to Doug.
