The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  The scheme worked out by the Mission: Impossible team is as follows. The revolutionary leader (from hereon referred to as R) is at present at a swank resort within the borders of his country -- a pleasure palace left over from the previous dictator's reign. At this fashionable spot the R is conferring with heads of clandestine fighters operating in the mountains of other Latin American countries. R is therefore out of public circulation for a time. Using cinnamon as bait, the team captures and drugs the R and makes off with him -- meanwhile making use of word cuts from audiotapes that the R made in the past: These individual word cuts are assembled so as to form an oral statement to the others gathered at the mansion to explain why the R has "temporarily departed." (I don't believe Mission: Impossible has used word cuts from audiotapes before, as was done in the movie The Great Man.) The team takes the R off to a building that they have taken over. They have made the interior of the building appear to be that of a mental sanitarium. When the R comes to, he is told by the chief "psychiatrist" (probably, of the team, Jim Phelps) that he has been in a complete catatonic schizophrenic state for well over a year. The time is the present, but the R has not ruled; he went mad in the hills, believing himself ruler of the entire country. It was a delusion that the previous dictator (from hereon referred to as D) was kicked out of office and then executed; the D is very much alive and still in power.

  Here the magic fakery of the fertile minds of the team begins to operate. The D appears on TV, and this is not an old film or videotape; it is live, and in various ways alludes to the time -- to the now. The D might even scathingly refer to the R as being hopelessly mad and in a sanitarium. Then there are faked newspapers. The R makes phone calls to his demileaders, and Barney cuts into the circuit, at which point Rollin tells the R that first one demileader and then another is either in the D's prisons or dead. The movement failed; it collapsed after the R became psychotic and could no longer keep things running. (The appearance of the D on the TV screen is done by Rollin, using his handy rubber-face apparatus.) But the most overwhelming fakery is yet to come.

  When he took office, after deposing and killing the D, the R made an important speech; he remembers it well. It stated to the nation the aims and intentions that he intended to carry out; in this speech the R unmasked himself and informed his conquered country that he intended to lead it into "progressive anticapitalism," etc. The team therefore produces the following. They take the audio portion of the tape (or movie film) of that speech. Rollin, this time wearing a rubber face, etc., which makes him look like the R (repeat: like the R), only it is not the R speaking from the balcony of his new capitol building to huge masses of people: The video portion of the tape or film shows the R in a mental hospital -- the very same one he is in now -- wearing the standard clothes of a patient and delivering his speech to other patients and members of the hospital staff (the team accomplishes this via lip-sync plus Rollin's impersonation).

  However, there has been a minor, technical error in the film. A pile of magazines is shown, and the R has noticed this same pile in the now -- and the film is supposed to be at least a year old. The R now employs a bit of electronic gadget knowledge on his own; he manages to get a single frame of the film enlarged enough so that he can read the date on the top magazine. The magazine is current, not a year old. So the R realizes that this is all an illusion (the Mission: Impossible team does not know, however, that he has discovered this). But even though he knows this, he is still physically in their hands. How can he make contact with the outside world -- i.e. his followers? After all, Barney has all the phones tied up, and Willy is skulking about outdoors with a Skoda rapid-fire hand weapon.

  But the R is inventive and imaginative; after all, he did come down out of the hills and take over his country. The Mission: Impossible team, this time, is up against a person who is not only as resourceful as they are, but is so along some of the same lines -- for example, electronic gadgetry, Barney's specialty. (I don't recall a Mission: Impossible episode in which the team faced someone expert in their own sort of electronic delusion sleight-of-hand before.)

  There are two possible things that the R can do. (1) He can try to get hold of one of the team's walkie-talkies and rewire it so that it broadcasts over a much greater area, thus -- hopefully -- reaching a nearby outpost of the R's militia. Or (2) he might be able to splice into an underground phone cable that runs nearby (he now knows where he is geographically). But he can't be precisely sure where the phone cable is, and anyhow it's down deep, and he has no shovel or other tool by which to dig. Hence he decides to steal a walkie-talkie and rewire it.

  Cinnamon is currently posing as a fellow patient. The R manages to steal the miniaturized walkie-talkie from her purse; he sneaks off to an unnoticed spot where he can work on it. Where else than the basement? He is able to pick the lock on the basement door, and starts down into the darkness of his hiding place -- and then, when he turns the lights on, finds himself facing Barney's electronics center. Everything he needs is here. What a windfall!

  First, to take care of Barney should he come back, the R rapidly lays a hot cable across the wooden basement steps -- then he begins to work feverishly to alter the walkie-talkie, using Barney's tools and other equipment. Barney does come back, yanks out a pistol with a silencer on it, rushes down the stairs... and steps on the hot cable. He at once topples over, letting the gun bounce down the stairs to the floor, where the R waits. Alertly, the R snatches up the gun; now he doesn't need to rewire anything: He can fight his way out.

  Leaving the building, he scampers across the lawn of the building, whereupon he encounters Willy. He shoots Willy, and Willy falls down, obviously dead. The R continues to scuttle away from the "mental hospital," entering a wooded area; he is soon successfully gone from the team's custody.

  Segue to the R tramping wearily through the woods. Then, to his immense relief, he stumbles onto a paved road. Traffic will surely be coming soon; meanwhile he trudges along the road, still putting as much distance between himself and the MI team as possible.

  (The viewer, at this point, thinks that not only has the R gotten away and the mission has failed, but also that Barney and Willy are dead.)

  The R reaches a military picket shack, where several of his khaki-clad militiamen are lounging about. The R stumbles toward them. At the sight of him, the militiamen raise their rifles alarmingly. "It's me," the R pants. "Ernesto. Your leader, Ernest Guardia. Don't you recognize me?" Their faces remain hostile and cold, and then one of them fires. The R drops into safety behind a rock, and, with his silencer-equipped pistol, kills the several militiamen. All at once there is silence. The R alone remains alive.

  Getting to his feet, he gaspingly staggers toward the picket shack, numbed by the impossible: his own militiamen firing at him. Inside the shack he discovers current newspapers and a radio receiver (but not a transmitter). After examining the newspapers and listening to the radio, he discovers that, during his absence, two of his demileaders have tried to seize power; the country is now split into two warring camps, and what is worse, the two adversaries have released hitherto secret papers that incriminate the R -- this along the lines of the de-Stalinization in the USSR after Stalin's death.

  What can he do? Even though the MI team failed, he has been deposed anyhow, during his absence. The incriminating papers that were released tell how, while in the hills, the R worked with CIA agents, inasmuch as that at that time the R had not come out for a "people's democracy" along Marxist, pro-China lines.

  Obligingly, a small but high-speed plane lands in the rustic field behind the picket shack; the pilot gets out of his craft and saunters toward the shack, carrying various objects of a military nature. The R shoots him; the pilot obligingly falls to the ground, whereupon the R scuttles across the field and into the plane. In a moment he is airborne -- and heading for the United States. Then the camera returns to the field, where the "dead" pilot lies; he is now getting leisurely to his feet to watch the plane depart, as are the "d
ead" militiamen. They grin. What does all this mean?

  All this means that the R fell for a fraud within a fraud. The newspapers that he found in the picket shack were fakes. So was the radio broadcast that he heard: Barney did that, and Barney is very much alive. The team intended that the R "escape," that he "shoot" Willy and "electrocute" Barney, then flee the scene and make his way to the fake picket shack. The R did not in actuality leave the fake world and reenter the real world; no one seized power during his absence; there is no civil war; no incriminating documents were released; the "militiamen" and the pilot were spurious, and they did not die any more than Willy died; the gun, with its effective silencer, fired no bullets -- no wonder the silencer was so effective! And now he is on his way to the United States; the MI team did its job: It only appeared to have lost control of the situation for a time... when in actuality everything went exactly as planned. The whole unmasking of the "mental hospital" and the fake newsreel of the R delivering his important speech -- from the very beginning the team intended the R to discover the truth... right down to Rollin's rubber face and the lip-sync. The R was too smart to be fooled by the fakery, and the team knew this from the start. For the mission to work they had to include the R's discovering "everything" and go on from there.

  Of course, when he reaches Florida, the R will fairly soon discover the truth -- discover that there has been no seizure of power back home. But by this time the American authorities will have audio- and videotaped the R's formal statement that he is applying for formal sanctuary in the United States, and this will be sufficient to keep him from returning to his own country, for obvious reasons.

  "TV Series Idea" (1967)

  Location: The gray, foggy landscape of Heaven. "We Are Watching You, Inc.," a small guardian angel organization consisting of Anastasia Kelp, the owner, a Paul Douglas type; Miss Theola Feather, the phone operator, receptionist, and secretary; Morris Nimbleman, the research director; the protagonist, Herb DeWinter, in charge of field operations; Ludlow Orlawsky, sales manager; Fred Engstrom, repairman for the field equipment that Herb uses on his trips back and forth between Earth and Heaven. "We Are Watching You, Inc.," is a small outfit among several giants, but its record of bailing Earthlings out of jams is virtually 100 percent; it's a small but proud, fine old "handcrafted" firm, beset with worries -- namely, that the Government will cancel its franchise due to its smallness (the other guardian angel firms have thousands of field operators, whereas WAWY, Inc., has only DeWinter, who is a slender, good-looking, young, slightly baffled type who seems to fumble things up until the last moment, whereat he miraculously comes through). Additional character: Mr. Vane, the expert from the Government who is ghostly -- his voice booming through an echo chamber -- and somehow always on hand, checking up on them. He has the power to close them for good, and his "audit" is much feared, although admittedly it would be just. Anastasia Kelp is realistic, aware that his small outfit is an anachronism and probably ought to give up, but he can't quite bring himself to resign and fold up tents. Everything at WAWY, Inc., is old-fashioned, even the telephones and wooden counters; it reeks of the early twentieth century, without chrome or gadgets -- except the "magical" advanced electronic superscience gimmicks that the repairman Fred Engstrom provides Herb with at the start of each trip to Earth. Each time the gimmicks differ, according to the assignment. The gimmicks are really spectacular, so that Herb becomes a parody on James Bond with his magic attache case, and when he is operating in the field and the locale is Earth, this is the dominant mood of the drama: a sort of supernatural James Bond type, except well-intentioned and unsophisticated and a bit bungling. When in Heaven, however, at WAWY, Inc., the locale is like an old-fashioned small store, with much personal relatedness between the employees so that they form a bickering, loving small family, with Anastasia Kelp, of course, as the father.

  Each episode consists of a different field trip by Herb DeWinter. In each episode a client has come to WAWY, Inc., for help. A relative or loved one still on Earth is in trouble, and the client wants to hire the services of a professional Guardian Angel to bail that person out. Inasmuch as WAWY, Inc., is a small, marginal -- but reputable -- firm, it is bound to get a good many oddballs as clients... and this it does. The loved one or relative on Earth, too, is often wild or kookie, with a wild, kookie mess ensnaring him.

  When he has left Heaven and the offices of WAWY, Inc., and has journeyed down to Earth, Herb routinely approaches the beleaguered loved one in this manner: He shows him or her his business card -- he is, of course, wearing a natty New York-style suit of the latest cut -- and says something like, "Mr. Peterson. My name is Herb DeWinter, from We Are Watching You, Incorporated. Your grandmother Hatte has hired me to look into your situation with an eye toward effectively bringing about a positive solution," etc. In other words, he lays it on the line; the beleaguered loved one knows who is assisting him and why. Double takes are as brief as possible; then the two of them get down to brass tacks, and the beleaguered loved one accepts Herb from then as he would accept any expert help proffered him in his dilemma. The shortness of the double takes can be explained by the urgent peril surrounding the beleaguered loved one; he can't afford to be skeptical, not at a time like this.

  The drama of each episode consists of Herb DeWinter's efforts to collaborate with the beleaguered loved one in getting him out of his jam. He always does, but generally he makes it a lot worse before he extricates the victim, and often the victim is faster and brighter than he. Extra humor is supplied by the occasional tough Chicago syndicate-type enemies of the victim who also unhesitatingly accept Herb for what he is; for instance, he is sapped, knocked out, and his wallet examined by gunsels of the mobster. Mr. Big, the head of the mob, as did the victim, does very little double taking; he, too, accepts Herb at face value, but of course doubts cynically if Herb will be of much use. In addition, Mr. Big compares his electronic gimmicks with the supernatural magic ones that Herb is equipped with, and often Mr. Big's are more advanced (recall that WAWY, Inc., is quite obsolete: and not merely behind the times in Heaven but occasionally -- although not inevitably -- on Earth). Countering this is the occasional appearance of some gimmick rigged up at WAWY by Fred Engstrom, which is so potent as to be miraculous. So it can go either way, depending on the episode. The pendulum swings from miracle to complete bust of Herb's arsenal of wild supernatural gimmicks -- the fact that any gimmick may work spectacularly or be a total dud -- would help keep audience interest, in that the effect of these broad pendulum swings of electronic effectiveness on his part make him almost a superman in some episodes, an idiot in others. In fact, within the same episode there is no telling what the results will be the next time Herb dips into his ever-present attache case; a good deal of suspense can be built up here.

  The drama of struggle between the victim and those opposing him is always fought out beyond the pale of the law. If it were a situation in which actual, recognized legal bodies could cope with, Mr. DeWinter wouldn't be needed. In every case, the beleaguered loved one is isolated in his struggle, and this is what has caused the client up in Heaven to come to WAWY, Inc., for help.

  Sometimes, in extremely sticky situations, the owner of the firm, Anastasia Kelp, appears to confer with Herb -- appears without being called, in that Herb is always humiliated, not relieved, to see his shrewd, heavy-set, rough-talking employer. Kelp never really helps Herb solve the problem; he generally merely bickers with him in an effort to goad him into better work. The relationship between the two of them is highly turbulent, they being so different from each other.

  In addition, Herb occasionally -- but not usually more than once in an episode -- "phones" Heaven to confer either with the repairmen Engstrom or the delightfully sexy receptionist or, less frequently, Kelp himself. Engstrom, a nervous, twitchy electronics genius type, is a good friend of Herb, and can often give him suggestions as to how to put the gear in the attache case to work (almost always the gimmicks that Fred Engstrom has come up with are n
ew to Herb). And, of course, everyone at WAWY, Inc., is watching Herb's progress on their Terrascreen. As is the apprehensive client -- who occasionally manages to get hold of Herb when he calls up to Heaven and berates him old-ladywise. (This is a video intercom system, by the way; a mixture of science fiction and the supernatural: science fiction in the idea of a visual phone, but supernatural in that almost any object can be used as a Terrascreen, such as the mirror of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom; Herb is shaving, suddenly sees his lathered features dim, and in their place appears Anastasia Kelp's grumpy, irritated visage.)

  And also Mr. Vane, the Government man -- it is never made clear what this "government" is like, but obviously, by process of logical reasoning, he must either be God or represent God -- tends to hang around the locale of the action on Earth, studying Herb's activities, pursuant to his -- Vale's -- job of auditing the firm to see if it "fills a genuine need." He never participates in the victim rescue, except insofar as he's inadvertently brought in by such extravagant moments as the total collapse of the building, etc.

  Hence, in his job, Herb is under great pressure every episode; pressure from his boss Mr. Kelp, pressure from Mr. Vane, pressure from the victim's foes, and, of course, from the victim himself, who always expects absolutely spectacular, unlimited help from a representative from Heaven who has been hired as his professional guardian angel. He is, of course, disappointed each time, as is Kelp -- and Vane appears always on the verge of writing finis to the firm -- but then, as the final moments run out, Herb, with the help of Fred Engstrom and Miss Feather, manages to snatch final victory, and everyone can relax until next time. Reluctantly, with grudging admiration, Mr. Vane grants a temporary reprieve to the firm. The episode ends with Herb back in Heaven in the front office of the firm, and an identifying coda note closes each half hour: the entrance to the firm's office, with the shadow of a new client falling across it as the client prepares to enter.