Vintage PKD (17 page)
He crushed it—and felt great inner horror. What have I done? he asked himself. My first moment here and I have wiped out a little life. Is this my new beginning?
Turning, he gazed back up at the ship. Maybe I ought to go back, he thought. Have them freeze me forever. I am a man of guilt, a man who destroys. Tears filled his eyes.
And, within its sentient works, the interstellar ship moaned.
During the ten long years remaining in the trip to the LR4 System, the ship had plenty of time to track down Martine Kemmings. It explained the situation to her. She had emigrated to a vast orbiting dome in the Sirius System, found her situation unsatisfactory, and was en route back to Earth. Roused from her own cryonic suspension, she listened intently and then agreed to be at the colony world LR4–6 when her ex-husband arrived—if it was at all possible.
Fortunately, it was possible.
“I don’t think he’ll recognize me,” Martine said to the ship. “I’ve allowed myself to age. I don’t really approve of entirely halting the aging process.”
He’ll be lucky if he recognizes anything, the ship thought.
At the intersystem spaceport on the colony world of LR4–6, Martine stood waiting for the people aboard the ship to appear on the outer platform. She wondered if she would recognize her former husband. She was a little afraid, but she was glad that she had gotten to LR4–6 in time. It had been close. Another week and his ship would have arrived before hers. Luck is on my side, she said to herself, and scrutinized the newly landed interstellar ship.
People appeared on the platform. She saw him. Victor had changed very little.
As he came down the ramp, holding on to the railing as if weary and hesitant, she came up to him, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her coat; she felt shy and when she spoke she could hardly hear her own voice.
“Hi, Victor,” she managed to say.
He halted, gazed at her. “I know you,” he said.
“It’s Martine,” she said.
Holding out his hand, he said, smiling, “You heard about the trouble on the ship?”
“The ship contacted me.” She took his hand and held it. “What an ordeal.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Recirculating memories forever. Did I ever tell you about a bee that I was trying to extricate from a spider’s web when I was four years old? The idiotic bee stung me.” He bent down and kissed her. “It’s good to see you,” he said.
“Did the ship—”
“It said it would try to have you here. But it wasn’t sure if you could make it.”
As they walked toward the terminal building, Martine said, “I was lucky; I managed to get a transfer to a military vehicle, a high-velocity-drive ship that just shot along like a mad thing. A new propulsion system entirely.”
Victor Kemmings said, “I have spent more time in my own unconscious mind than any other human in history. Worse than early-twentieth-century psychoanalysis. And the same material over and over again. Did you know I was scared of my mother?”
“
I
was scared of your mother,” Martine said. They stood at the baggage depot, waiting for his luggage to appear. “This looks like a really nice little planet. Much better than where I was . . . I haven’t been happy at all.”
“So maybe there’s a cosmic plan,” he said grinning. “You look great.”
“I’m old.”
“Medical science—”
“It was my decision. I like older people.” She surveyed him. He has been hurt a lot by the cryonic malfunction, she said to herself. I can see it in his eyes. They look broken. Broken eyes. Torn down into pieces by fatigue and—defeat. As if his buried early memories swam up and destroyed him. But it’s over, she thought. And I did get here in time.
At the bar in the terminal building, they sat having a drink.
“This old man got me to try Wild Turkey bourbon,” Victor said. “It’s amazing bourbon. He says it’s the best on Earth. He brought a bottle with him from . . .” His voice died into silence.
“One of your fellow passengers,” Martine finished.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Well, you can stop thinking of the birds and the bees,” Martine said.
“Sex?” he said, and laughed.
“Being stung by a bee, helping a cat catch a bird. That’s all past.”
“That cat,” Victor said, “has been dead one hundred and eighty-two years. I figured it out while they were bringing us out of suspension. Probably just as well. Dorky. Dorky, the killer cat. Nothing like Fat Freddy’s cat.”
“I had to sell the poster,” Martine said. “Finally.”
He frowned.
“Remember?” she said. “You let me have it when we split up. Which I always thought was really good of you.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“A lot. I should pay you something like—” She calculated. “Taking inflation into account, I should pay you about two million dollars.”
“Would you consider,” he said, “instead of the money, my share of the sale of the poster, spending some time with me? Until I get used to this planet?”
“Yes,” she said. And she meant it. Very much.
They finished their drinks and then, with his luggage transported by robot spacecap, made their way to his hotel room.
“This is a nice room,” Martine said, perched on the edge of the bed. “And it has a hologram TV. Turn it on.”
“There’s no use turning it on,” Victor Kemmings said. He stood by the open closet, hanging up his shirts.
“Why not?”
Kemmings said, “There’s nothing on it.”
Going over to the TV set, Martine turned it on. A hockey game materialized, projected out into the room, in full color, and the sound of the game assailed her ears.
“It works fine,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I can prove it to you. If you have a nail file or something, I’ll unscrew the back plate and show you.”
“But I can—”
“Look at this.” He paused in his work of hanging up his clothes. “Watch me put my hand through the wall.” He placed the palm of his right hand against the wall. “See?”
His hand did not go through the wall because hands do not go through walls; his hand remained pressed against the wall, unmoving.
“And the foundation,” he said, “is rotting away.”
“Come and sit down by me,” Martine said.
“I’ve lived this often enough now,” he said. “I’ve lived this over and over again. I come out of suspension; I walk down the ramp; I get my luggage; sometimes I have a drink at the bar and sometimes I come directly to my room. Usually I turn on the TV and then—” He came over and held his hand toward her. “See where the bee stung me?”
She saw no mark on his hand; she took his hand and held it.
“There is no bee sting,” she said.
“And when the robot doctor comes, I borrow a tool from him and take off the back plate of the TV set. To prove to him that it has no chassis, no components in it. And then the ship starts me over again.”
“Victor,” she said. “Look at your hand.”
“This is the first time you’ve been here, though,” he said.
“Sit down,” she said.
“Okay.” He seated himself on the bed, beside her, but not too close to her.
“Won’t you sit closer to me?” she said.
“It makes me too sad,” he said. “Remembering you. I really loved you. I wish this was real.”
Martine said, “I will sit with you until it is real for you.”
“I’m going to try reliving the part with the cat,” he said, “and this time
not
pick up the cat and
not
let it get the bird. If I do that, maybe my life will change so that it turns into something happy. Something that is real. My real mistake was separating from you. Here; I’ll put my hand through you.” He placed his hand against her arm. The pressure of his muscles was vigorous; she felt the weight, the physical presence of him, against her. “See?” he said. “It goes right through you.”
“And all this,” she said, “because you killed a bird when you were a little boy.”
“No,” he said. “All this because of a failure in the temperature-regulating assembly aboard the ship. I’m not down to the proper temperature. There’s just enough warmth left in my brain cells to permit cerebral activity.” He stood up then, stretched, smiled at her. “Shall we go get some dinner?” he asked.
She said, “I’m sorry. I’m not hungry.”
“I am. I’m going to have some of the local seafood. The brochure says it’s terrific. Come along anyhow; maybe when you see the food and smell it you’ll change your mind.”
Gathering up her coat and purse, she came with him.
“This is a beautiful little planet,” he said. “I’ve explored it dozens of times. I know it thoroughly. We should stop downstairs at the pharmacy for some Bactine, though. For my hand. It’s beginning to swell and it hurts like hell.” He showed her his hand. “It hurts more this time than ever before.”
“Do you want me to come back to you?” Martine said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll stay with you as long as you want. I agree; we should never have been separated.”
Victor Kemmings said, “The poster is torn.”
“What?” she said.
“We should have framed it,” he said. “We didn’t have sense enough to take care of it. Now it’s torn. And the artist is dead.”
THE ZEBRA PAPERS
February 11, 1977
[TO MARK HURST,
VALIS editor
]
Dear Mark,
Having told you that I am preparing a major new theme for VALIS I called Sydny [
Weinberg, Bantam Books
] and told her, too. She asked what the new theme was and I told her. I’d like now to outline it for you.
Ten years ago (by way of preamble) John Brunner sent me a French scientific book called THE MASKS OF MEDUSA, which studied the phenomenon of insect mimicry. The author’s main conclusion was that no theory existed by which such mimicry could be explained; a spinoff conclusion was that if high-order mimicry existed (e.g. at a level to fool humans, not just birds and other insects) we would probably not be aware of it, any more than the birds are aware of the insect mimicry at their level. John thought I’d be interested because of my preoccupation with the question, What is reality? and secondarily, Are some of us not really human but merely appear human?
For years I reread the book, annotating the margins throughout, but no idea for a novel came out of it and finally I gave the book away. However, I had virtually memorized it. Well, Mark, about a month and a half ago, while reworking VALIS, the idea—not an idea but THE IDEA—suddenly popped fullblown into my mind, having germinated subconsciously over the years. What I call it is the Zebra Principle. It is (to me anyhow) terribly exciting and fantastic, and I have literally hundreds of pages of notes on it now. I talked to Jack Scovil at SMLA and he thought it’d make an entire complete novel on its own, and that I should hold it for that, not using it in VALIS. But in my opinion it would go perfectly into VALIS. In point of fact it was produced by my mind
for
VALIS. Viz.
Houston Paige is employed by the Fremont Administration as a top-ranking scientist probing possible enemies of the state. In conjunction with police computers Paige has developed the Zebra Principle: that it is possible, even likely, that high-order mimicry exists, undetected. (1) The mimicking organism is undoubtedly benign; (2) There is no reason to suppose that it mimics humans but rather that it mimics inanimate objects. Houston Paige supposes that there must be tests which can be arranged which will smoke Zebra out (Zebra being their code word for the mimicking organisms). Sciencefiction writers are especially suspected of knowing of—of having contact with—Zebra, who, in the minds of the government, has become just one more enemy of the state. Because of this, Houston Paige approaches s-f author Philip K. Dick with a commission, through a government-owned publishing house, to write a novel about Zebra. Phil Dick accepts the advance but never gets anything actually written. This makes Paige very suspicious.
Paige is an interesting person, being a total fuckup and a lush as well. He never, even at the end of VALIS, even gets near to detecting Zebra. But Zebra does in fact exist.
Zebra is enormous in physical size, which is one reason why Paige never manages to detect it. Zebra, in fact, spans thousands, possibly even millions of miles of our space, having grown very large over the past three thousand years. Paige can’t detect Zebra because he is inside Zebra every day of his life. In fact a portion of Zebra has assimilated the police computers which predicted the theoretical existence of Zebra. When Paige drinks an Old Fashioned, Zebra is the bottle of bourbon, the ice, the slice of orange, the bitters, the glass. When Paige takes notes on the probable characteristics of Zebra, Zebra is the ballpoint pen, clipboard and paper.
The relationship of this Zebra plot to the main plot of VALIS is not visible offhand; I will have my customary twin threads which eventually I weave together. In point of fact, Zebra is the Aramchek satellite—as well as the police computers. It allows itself to be blown up (i.e., the satellite portion of it) by the Russians. This overcomes a great weakness of the present plot: the fact that the Russians so easily shoot the satellite down. Another, much smaller weak point is that Phil Dick the character in VALIS is not working on anything. The Zebra theme overcomes both.
The new, final version of VALIS will be much longer. As it stands, the ending is weak. The new ending will consist of a manifestation by Zebra of itself to one of the characters in the novel, probably to me (in the slave labor camp). The satellite is gone, but Zebra remains. Its body is plasmatic and invisible. It is always there, no matter what happens. It made use of a portion of itself to become what seemed to be a communications, teaching satellite. There is no way that the tyranny can perceive Zebra, much less blow it up.
By means of this superimposed theme I can edit out much of the merely Christian material and bias (as well as explanation at the end of the novel), which I would like to do. Zebra, if it can be said to resemble the contents of any religion, resembles the Hindu concept of Brahman:
“They reckon ill who leave me out,
When me they fly I am the wings.
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahman sings.”
The Zebra theme will also enable me to add the elements of black humor which are presently missing from VALIS. We will have a lot of fun with Houston Paige as he constantly encounters Zebra, never realizing it and always drunkenly theorizing as to the nature and location of Zebra. Paige who seeks to apprehend Zebra is denied that very vision, and Phil Dick (in the novel) who has ripped off the tyranny and doesn’t care a shit about Zebra—he just needs the money—gets finally to see it.
One ability which Zebra has that Paige doesn’t suspect is its capacity to restructure human memory. Every time Paige sets up a test to detect Zebra and obtains positive results, Zebra lays down a false memory template in Paige’s head so that he is deluded into thinking the results are negative. This ability to delude is a major aspect of Zebra. It does not assimilate humans but it can and does tamper—not just with their percept systems—but their memories as well. Zebra creates what the Hindu religions call Maya; it lays a veil over the world so that its enormous plasmatic body cannot be distinguished. “Zebra” is indeed the right term for it . . . which is natural, inasmuch as Zebra itself programmed the computer’s findings.
Zebra is in fact a non-terrestrial life form which came here to live and grow, but being as benign as it is it aids all life as much as it can. Every now and then the characters get a glimpse of a dreadful “alternate world” which is just a cruel, crushing prison (represented in the novel already by the visionary encounter with A.D. 70 Rome); this is our world as it would be without Zebra; it allows the characters a glimpse of this non-Zebra world with the purpose of eventually disclosing not only itself to man but what it has achieved for man. Zebra regards the biological and historic forces on this planet as malign, and seeks to ameliorate them. It is finally revealed to one of the characters—probably Phil Dick—what this black iron prison world actually is (or would have been).
Part of Zebra’s ability to disguise itself grows out of its ability to move along a fourth orthogonal spatial axis unknown to us, in fact denied to us; thus Zebra can appear and disappear at will, without our understanding how. To our eyes, any object moving along this fourth axis is simply invisible. From our standpoint, then, Zebra is capable of transcending time, which permits it also to move retrograde in time, or to leave the temporal world, be “not there” and then to reenter wherever (to us, whenever) it wishes. Thus Zebra spans three thousand years of an extended present; to it both past and future are now. Like the vast life form which took over Palmer Eldritch and could extend itself between star systems, over millions of miles, Zebra extends itself in the fourth axis world, and thus, to us, is godlike (but in fact it is limited; it is merely superior by one whole spatial dimension to us, giving the impression of infinite power and knowledge—but it is an impression only).
Through the manifesting of Zebra into visibility, Phil Dick in the novel realizes that what has always been called “god” by mankind is in fact merely a superior life form.
However, Zebra is so superior that it might as well be god. But it is timid and retiring (like Lord Running Clam in CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON), and can be destroyed—although not by us. If it could not be destroyed it would not need to hide itself continually. The character Phil Dick understands that on its lofty level Zebra has enemies which could destroy it; hence the religious myths about Satan. Phil Dick conjectures that there may exist in the universe life forms even
superior
to Zebra, since Zebra has come here and hidden itself from sight as best it can. There may well be hostile life forms which can better distinguish Zebra, Phil Dick realizes. Part of Zebra’s sympathy for man derives from its own vulnerability.
However, I will not treat this theme with the continual seriousness which it would seem to entail. For instance, one of the characters (Phil Dick, Nicholas Brady or Houston Paige) finds himself able to obtain answers from Zebra by means of bowls of alphabet soup. The letters swim to the surface and form words (which is of course a parody on the I CHING, but also something like the way Glimmung speaks to them in GALACTIC POT-HEALER and the way Runciter communicates in UBIK; this should be a lot of fun—and I no doubt will be able to find other “trash in the gutter” ways by which great Zebra communes with man). (As you know, Mark, this is a favorite theme of mine: the sentient universe speaking to us in these trite ways. Each time I use this theme I find new ways to do it, and new explanations—such as Zebra—to account for the phenomenon. It all goes back to the early sixties when I was trying to find an explanation for how the I CHING works.)
(For example, Paige deliberately sets up 26 bowling pins with a different letter on each and then rolls bowling balls at them; the pattern of remaining pins—he hopes—will spell out words; but all he gets is:
AQW PVC XSLLR
And the like—which, once again, seems to indicate that Zebra does not exist. But Zebra has deliberately caused the pins to form a non-pattern.)
(Also, for example, Paige, with all the funds and laboratory and research facilities of the tyranny available to him, could construct a vast device operating on the principle of randomness, which continually constructs arrangements of letters, in order to see if they eventually form words. I can envision them forming nothing for days, even weeks, and finally this message is arrived at by mere randomness:
THER IS NO ZE
Which Paige construes to mean, “There is no Zebra,” which, he realizes, is a paradox.)
Using huge, expensive computers and a large staff of trained technicians he employs a variety of antique methods of divination: from apantomancy to xylomancy (with the possible exception of sciomancy). The only method which gives him any results is oneiromancy; he keeps dreaming of a great zebra which smiles at him. But this may mean nothing. However, as Paige deliberately employs all these means to no avail, Phil or Nicholas is puzzling over a bowl of alphabet soup which spells out such things as:
WARNING YOU MUST BE CAUTIOUS ALL DAY
The fact of the matter is that Paige with his Zebra hypothesis and Nicholas Brady with his weird experiences between them have both halves of the puzzle. Brady, on his own, without the part which Paige has, cannot account for what has been happening to him all his life; Paige, with his giant computers and highly skilled work-staff, cannot get a manifestation or revelation of Zebra no matter what. It is the reader who, possessing both halves in the twin themes of the novel, can perhaps put it all together. In other words, when Paige approaches Phil Dick with his Zebra plot idea, he is bringing the missing clues into focus for the astute reader. The element of suspense, then, is greatly enhanced in VALIS by introducing this new material.
In essence: what I have written in the rough draft is only one side of the coin . . . the Zebra material will add the other. The novel will open with twin, opposed plot-lines (which I love to do and am good at), but will end with a dovetailed single plot outline. Brady is having the experiences with Zebra but has no theory to explain it; Paige, whom we encounter through Phil Dick, not through Brady, has the theory but can’t get specific experiences. Brady has the concrete examples, Paige the abstract reasoning. In the character Phil Dick, who knows both men, it all comes together, for the edification and amusement of the reader.
This way, Mark, we can get rid of the Christian, theological explanation at the end; we will have just that one phase of Brady’s theorizing; the
true
explanation is quite different (i.e., a superior but limited life form which has taken refuge here to escape its own enemies, and who helps us, but only in a limited fashion—the best it can do). As VALIS stands now I am forced to fall back onto stereotyped explanations for the assistance, for the satellite, and this is not good, as you pointed out. In fact, it was you who gave me the insight that much more was needed in VALIS by way of explanation.
There will even be a scene in which Paige gets loaded on good hash (or Angel’s Dust) and hallucinates clowns from a circus wearing zebra suits and jeering at him; as the epitome of this ersatz vision, the Chief Clown removes his zebra head and tells Paige that the ultimate manifestation of Zebra is Mortimer Snerd. Paige then has a dope-inspired vision of Mortimer Snerd as Brahman, saying in his Snerd voice:
“Sometimes Mortimer sleeps and sometimes Mortimer dances.”
Which are the two phases of the Brahman’s cycle. In this vision (which I will try to make funny) it is revealed to Paige that Zebra is only a mask which Mortimer Snerd wears to delude mankind, that in reality we are all carved from trees. For a whole week Paige keeps seeing people as pine trees—a parody of my own “android as human” theme. When he tries to ball his chick he suffers the annoying delusion that her sexual organ is a knothole in a felled tree on its way down Kalamath [
sic, Klamath
] River in Oregon. Instead of an orgasm he hallucinates a huge buzzsaw.
Thus I offset Brady’s genuine visions with Paige’s phony (and absurd) ones.
Paige kills himself, and as he lies dying he receives a final vision: Edgar Bergan [
sic, Bergen
] is gazing down at him from heaven and there is a whole host of Mortimer Snerds, all of whom are singing. At Bergan’s right hand sits Charley McCarthy. Charley’s wooden mouth moves and he says,
“Welcome to the next world. You will become one with your maker.”
Paige has been metamorphosed into a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Anyhow, Mark, I do feel that it would be better to use the Zebra material in VALIS since, as I say, I feel it is the other half of the coin, the theoretical analog to Brady’s experiences (for which I wasn’t able to come up with a completely satisfactory explanation; the satellite is fine but not fine enough, so to say). I asked Sydny for permission to at least try superimposing Zebra onto VALIS, and she said to talk with you, which I am herewith doing. If I start reconstructing the novel and it doesn’t work, well, then I will finish VALIS more or less as it stands. But this superimpositionary method is how I wrote some of my best novels, and as the author not only of them but of the rough draft of VALIS, I feel it would work here.
Please let me know.
With warm personal regards to both you and Jodie,
Phil Dick
March 6, 1977
[TO MARK HURST]
Dear Mark,
I am now working until
five
A.M. on the VALIS/Zebra Project, rather than just until three. A lot of what I’m doing consists of scientific or quasi-scientific research, and into the most varied areas. Mark, this Zebra concept leads to fascinating speculative possibilities, which I hadn’t been able to see originally. For instance, I’ve been reading about Hegel’s idea of an “Absolute Spirit” at work in human history which evolves us upward through a dialectic process toward greater and greater human freedom—this is exactly what VALIS does, is it not? Only I’ve set VALIS up in the sky, not on the ground, so to speak. As Zebra, VALIS so to speak superimposes itself downward onto mankind, as if arriving from above—like a vast invisible ship descending. Although as I conceive it, Zebra/VALIS was minute at the start, and only now is becoming planet-size and truly capable of significantly affecting historic events. It’s as if VALIS has been trying to affect these events in the past, but its efforts were not that successful until the Ferris Fremont situation (i.e., VALIS is literally growing, like any organism which is viable & healthy). Then, too, there is Spinoza’s fascinating heretical “atheistic” idea that the world is somehow the literal, physical body of God (which can’t be “god” in any sense that we normally understand it, but rather the ancient Greek idea of the universe is a living body or creature or organism). This view (panpsychism) believes that everything without exception is alive; it’s just a question of degree. We’re inside a huge living creature, they thought . . . and can you see how this fits with my conception of Zebra? We’re not aware of it because (1) it is everywhere; and (2) it has to some extent always been there . . . and then I add, in contrast to the Greeks, that there is a not-organism, a not-Zebra, into which Zebra has inserted itself in such a way as to look like a further extension of the not-Zebra which came
before
Zebra. From a strictly paranoid standpoint—that which the Government thinkers would have—Zebra is an ETI taking over the world. In a sense this is true; Zebra certainly is taking it over— literally, as if consuming it, as if devouring it and replacing it with itself. The Government thinkers compare this to cancer—alien cells replacing “natural” cells, although what they can’t see is that these invading “cells” are benign. From their standpoint, however, Zebra is not benign—and here again they are right. I want to have the Government view clearly delineated as being subjectively correct: an alien, hostile entity is slowly and invisibly spreading throughout the world, and it is getting ready to do in the “legitimate” (sic) authorities and take complete control. Well, Zebra is not God; Zebra (VALIS) is not all-powerful. What it can do is make a decisive intrusion into the historical process, but it is not the historical process as such, any more than when I turn on a light switch I am the switch, the wires, the electricity and the bulb; all I do is so to speak intervene. But to the paranoid Government thinkers, Zebra is everywhere. And since Zebra can’t be seen, well, who knows . . . perhaps he is; he could be (or it could be). Houston Paige is forever watchful, in true paranoid style. When the ice cubes from his drink creep across the counter and slide to the floor and crawl under the refrigerator—imagine his reaction:
It seemed to him that he was either going crazy or else was already crazy, and in the most terrible way. This fear, as a furious onrush of insight, paralyzed him with its intensity, and the near-absolute quality of it—not as emotion or mood—but as a glimpse of reality. And yet, he realized, this was precisely what he was supposed to be looking for, this life-like mobility of the mere inanimate. Was this not how Zebra would give itself away, a lapse of this kind? So, in his head, two utterly opposing theories conflicted, now, one good, the other dreadful: he had seen Zebra, and he was crazy; both views, perhaps—and this was the most threatening insight of all—were correct. To perceive Zebra, he realized, you must be insane. This is what classical schizophrenia is: the paranormal perceptual ability to distinguish as set-ground the real and actual Presence of this great invading and alien being, inserting itself into the normal world; to this process the “sane” man was oblivious—and this was exactly what Zebra wanted. This was how its deception functioned! Sanity, then, in the strict clinical sense, was playing into Zebra’s clutches. Zebra had a vested interest in human sanity—for
its
advantage. Where Zebra failed was when some so-called “schizophrenic,” jeered at by his human peers, saw around the corner of the world too suddenly or too unexpectedly for Zebra to scuttle off . . . this unfortunate human, then, had glimpsed what indeed truly was. And his reward? Given twice-daily injections of Thorazine and shut away. It could happen to me, Houston said to himself grimly; my reward for uncovering Zebra could be imprisonment in the ultimate dungeon of the modern world: the up-to-date psychiatric hospital. This is what our society has become like: you go to jail for seeing what others can’t see. And you go to jail especially if you raise a warning, a warning of invasion. (etc.)
I’ve run the text somewhat together, Mark, because I am trying to give a general impression of the Government viewpoint, not the strict presentation I’m doing of this, but I think you’ll be able to pick it up as it will be in finished form. Notice how Houston’s brain, by the end of the paragraph, has cleverly weeded out his own insight that he may be crazy; he winds up with a new definition of crazy which is it’s not something you are; it’s something they say you are. But the real irony, of course, is that Zebra does exist and Houston Paige is (as he realizes) NOT crazy. The reader knows this— despite the internal evidence of classic schizophrenic paranoia on Houston’s part—because of the experiences which Nicholas Brady and Phil Dick are also having. If there is group validation, it is not hallucination. Naturally, Houston Paige is highly motivated in this novel to get this consensual validation and he astutely thinks he could get it from a noted s-f writer, if he could get it anywhere.
Of course Houston Paige has a deeper plan vis-à-vis Phil Dick which he is craftily unfolding. If the Zebra Concept gets written up in a work of
fiction
, and published and widely read, then perhaps the other people who’ve encountered Zebra—and, like Houston, had to suffer the imaginary fear that they’re psychotic—maybe these people will contact Phil Dick and describe how their own secret experiences have been along the lines put forth in Phil’s novel. Because as it stands, Houston must put forth his idea as fact, in a report or article, and he dreads the inevitable consequences: “The author of this article,” they’ll say, “is a paranoid psychotic.”
Houston’s projected titled article stands as:
THE COOPERATION OF DISCRETE OBJECTS: A CLUE TO POSSIBLE HIGH-ORDER MIMICRY
If discrete objects can be observed functioning in a cooperative way, so that distinct results occur which deviate meaningfully from the statistically probable outcome, is it possible or even likely that we have been witnessing high order sentient mimicry? No other hypothesis seems to account for such occurrences, assuming they do exist.
This is how he’d have it appear in, say,
Scientific American
. He has mingled hopes for fame & immortality—versus being sent off to the hospital forever; it could go both ways—he could be considered psychotic now but—ah! how pleasing this thought!—history will some day show he was right (unconsciously Houston has a martyr complex, and without realizing it is being drawn, through his T.A. inner script, to seek this outcome: hospitalization and stigma now, but historic vindication later on,
after
Zebra has destroyed half the world . . . and aren’t they all sorry they laughed at Houston Paige now?).
So, Mark, you can see I’m creating a very complex character in Houston Paige, who is working toward goals he himself has no conscious conception of. Phil Dick, though, through whom Houston is seen, gets a clear view of all these fucked up conflicting motivations. For instance, although consciously Houston would like Phil to write up Zebra in a novel, Houston is simultaneously incredibly jealous and hateful toward Phil for “stealing all the glory” of being the first to write about Zebra. In his fantasy world—which Phil glimpses—Houston is motivated to rub out Phil for “stealing” Houston’s ideas.
Well, enough progress report to date for right now, Mark, and back to VALIS itself. But you can see how menacing I am making Houston vis-à-vis Phil, and how really schizophrenic he is . . . although ironically not because he believes in Zebra.
Love,
Phil Dick
