A/N: Since FFN doesn't even have a category for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or its related film Blade Runner, I have a sad feeling that this short little fic is doomed from that start. But, paradoxically, I also have hope that fans of Philip K. Dick might stumble across this piece and enjoy it. I don't own Rick Deckard, Wilbur Mercer, Rachael Rosen, or the toad, so credit where credit is due.
Rick stood for a long time, holding the box, relishing the feel of it, the knowledge of what it held, the precious little bit of unconquerable life inside. It felt good, this life. Living, breathing, unquenchable. A speck of breath in an ugly landscape, hillsides riddled with rock and dust. The toad was an incongruous equal, like water in the desert or stars that burned bright in the day. Finite and mortal, it would die someday. But not while he held it. Not while he protected it. He'd never protected anything before. Not Iran, not electric Groucho. Definitely not real Groucho. It hurt more when animals died; animals had to be protected, animals couldn't argue for their existence, and most of them couldn't fight back.
Not like androids.
The andys didn't really die when they were retired; a thing that was never properly alive couldn't, by its very nature. But retirement felt like death. The explosion of their brains in response to the laser tube's powerful beam felt like a bloodbath, tiny circuitry, interconnected wires, and fabricated skin melting and dripping onto any available surface. Onto his clothes, his skin, his hands. Rachael Rosen's blood on his hands. No, she wasn't Rachael Rosen; she was Pris Stratton. It was Pris Stratton, the other Rachael. The hard one.
Rick set the box carefully down on the passenger seat of his hovercar and scratched absently at his bleeding ear. The rock had hit him hard, real, sharp, and solid, its solidity not yet reduced to radioactive dust. It brought Mercer's word to mind; but he was Mercer. They were his words. And there it went, the individual, the particular, Aristotle absorbed into Plato's universal whole, the one. There goes I and becomes Us, which becomes yet again The. No need for anything after the definite article; if all things are an empathic one, what use is vocabulary? Andys would never understand the concept; they would never even want to.
But that confused him still more: if electric animals, if Groucho and Snappy, were considered objects of empathy (they were designed to be cared for, after all), why did andys not fall under the same category? It wasn't empathy that drove him into bed with Rachael Rosen. That wasn't the wrong he was meant to do; Buster Friendly would have said it was animal lust and nice breasts, not Mercerism. But Buster Friendly wasn't there. And he wasn't into Mercerism anyway.
But he was Mercer.
Rick picked up the box and unwrapped the rope, oh so slowly and carefully. The toad gazed up at him sleepily, its textured body gray as the dust but so very alive. He touched it, felt it, run two fingers over its back; squeezed it experimentally. It blinked, and its crooked legs unbent and kicked. Rick studied it intently as the muscles moved slowly, responsive to his stimulus but independent of his consciousness. The toad wasn't an I, Rachael Rosen wasn't a She, Rick Deckard wasn't Us. And with colonies spread across the galaxy, Terra wasn't The. Aristotle rises from the dust to bring Plato down to his level, two worn old men in ragged clothing conversing in a desolate landscape, each struggling to ascend higher than the other, while the Killers push rocks down the incline to warn them off.
With a swift motion, Rick wiped blood off his ear and tightened the ropes around the box. Lifting his hovercar into the air, he sped away toward San Francisco. On the ground below him, one of the dreary rocks moved, uncoiling itself into a long-legged figure distinct from the wilderness and yet one with it. This figure, a man, rose on unsteady legs and wobbled up the hill, a look of grim determination on his face and the echo of an internal conversation reverberating in his mind. Buster Friendly would have said this man was a fraud, a figure in a fabricated landscape. But Buster Friendly wasn't there. And Buster Friendly, like all the andys, would never understand the concept of empathy. Not as this man knew it.
The man was Mercer.
Thanks for reading! And, just so this fic doesn't fade into obscurity (like some of my other works), would somebody please leave a review? You don't have to like it, you can even flame on it if you want (though I'll probably delete that if you do), but some feedback would be nice. 'Til next time!