The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

"Joe Protagoras Is Alive and Living on Earth" (1967)

Theme: A revolution which has brought forth conditions less favorable than the dictator planned. He is asked to resign in favor of an aspirant who says he can do better. But a group opposed to the aspirant takes the dictator into an alternate Earth where the aspirant, not the dictator, has ruled. Conditions are much worse. In fact, all the alternate worlds are worse. The aspirant ponders; he knows about this group and what they are doing. Solution: Aspirant has a team cross into alternate world and create fake fakes here and there, very subtle in character, which, when dictator finds them, will convince him that this whole alternate world is faked. So far, so good. But aspirant now goes too far: He plans out entire faked world (alternate Earth), where he rules superlatively. Aspirant knows that the dictator will be suspicious, will look for flaws, but aspirant is sure he can bring it off. Next step: What would group loyal to the dictator (the group who took him to real alternate worlds) do? They don't need to plant fake fakes in the "good alternative" because it's already wholly faked!

Plot: Joe Protagoras has a puny job -- but in the overpopulated and economically malfunctioning socialist world of 2007 he is lucky to have any job at all. However, he has been saving up a sum of money by which to consult Mr. Job. This peculiar entity, with tens of thousands of outlets throughout Earth and its planetary colonies, is virtually alive, although artificial, and is important in the lives of Earth's hordes of jobless and near-jobless citizens. Mr. Job can tell Protagoras, after an analysis of his aptitudes and experience, where he can find a genuinely adequate career appointment; Mr. Job, through its network of multiple extensors, keeps computer-style tabs on all job openings everywhere. But consulting Mr. Job is expensive. Protagoras hasn't much "real" money saved up (i.e., metal coins, in contrast with the nearly worthless inflationary scrip floated by the government), but he can't wait any longer (among other things, his girlfriend is putting pressure on him). He accordingly enters one of Mr. Job's many booths (like a telephone booth), dials his facts in, drops his precious coins into the slot. He gets back a cryptic sentence-and-a-half: "Your twenty words are up," Mr. Job tells him, and then clicks off. Joe Protagoras leaves the booth, trying to decipher the oraclelike message, and at this point the novel shifts to its other main character.

Simon Herrlich, the ancient, tottering despot, has kept himself alive by means of artificial organs for far too many years -- and has kept himself in Earth's top office at the same time. He is ill-liked by his heir, an ambitious aspirant named Arthur Self. For years, Self has been trying to persuade the Old Man to bow out voluntarily and hence turn everything over to him, i.e., to the younger, more virile Art Self. It is Self's contention that if he had been ruling all this time, Earth would be in better shape economically, politically, and socially -- if not spiritually (i.e., ideologically, this being a totalitarian state).

From Self's viewpoint we learn about Project Almost, the breaking through to and investigation of alternate Earths. We learn about the scientist in charge of operating the inter-Earth project: Nick Edel, a close associate and good friend of Simon Herrlich -- a man whom Self hates because it is Nick Edel who is, by means of his project, keeping Herrlich in office... inasmuch as all alternate Earths visited are worse than their own.

This section of the novel ends with Self conceiving the idea of sending his own teams across into one of the worst alternate worlds and planting "simulated forgeries" -- in other words, fake fakes -- with the idea of discrediting Edel's whole project by giving the alternate Earths the appearance of being phony. We see him visiting the REM Corporation, a huge industrial concern owned by the government (which, of course, owns every economic enterprise on Earth, this being a Communist-type society). We now meet Cynthia Stonemerchant, the director of REM Corporation, the elderly widow who manages this vast industrial cartel. She is quite hostile toward the old dictator; she is, in fact, in favor of a non-Communist government, with industries privately owned, as in a capitalist society. Therefore she is glad to have her factories produce the fake fakes that Self wants. Then, together, they hatch out the extraordinary idea of creating an entire fake alternate world, a world that Mrs. Stonemerchant and her technical staff will plan.

Unknown to Self, Mrs. Stonemerchant plans to construct a capitalist fake alternate world that is better than their own. She is not merely hostile toward Simon Herrlich; she is hostile toward Art Self as well. She is in fact hostile to their whole totalitarian society, and is doing this job for her own purposes.

We return to Joe Protagoras, who has managed -- with the help of his girlfriend -- to decipher the sentence-and-a-half that Mr. Job gave him. It is telling him to go to REM Corporation's Los Angeles branch and apply for the job technically listed as 20583-AR... a designation that means absolutely nothing to him; he has no idea what the job for which he will be applying consists of. But Mr. Job is never wrong, so Joe Protagoras quits the meager job he has, gathers his few possessions together (he has only a rented room, adequate housing being years away, due to the faulty economics of the government). Going by second-class surface bus, he sets off for Los Angeles.

When he reaches REM Corporation's Los Angeles branch and applies for job 20583-AR he discovers what it is. Designing rides for what is called an "amusement park," something that he has never even heard of. The personnel manager of REM, however, assures him that he is the man for the job (Joe Protagoras has given the personnel manager the same resume he gave Mr. Job). "You'll do just fine," Mr. Bean assures him, and leads him to his bright, modern, high-class office. He is to begin work right away. Historical texts and technical manuals dealing with amusement parks are already in the office; Joe Protagoras begins to read, and we leave him. But before we return to the schemes of Art Self, we see Protagoras making an interesting inquiry. What is REM Corporation's product? What is his job for? He gets no answer from his new superiors; they know but won't tell him. "Just design good, scary, fun rides," he is told. "Pay special attention to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride from the twentieth-century amusement park called Disneyland; that is your prototype. Update it and you'll be on your way."

We of course know what REM Corporation is producing: the fake alternate world supposedly for Self's benefit, but actually for Mrs. Stonemerchant's personal purposes. In any case, Protagoras, the "little" protagonist, is now linked to Art Self, the "big" protagonist, as well as Mrs. Stonemerchant, the third force at work on the world stage, or rather inter-worlds stage.

At this point all the characters will have been introduced. These are:

Elderly despot: Simon Herrlich

Aspirant: Arthur Self

Director of REM Corporation: Mrs. Cynthia Stonemerchant

Craftsman little protagonist: Joe Protagoras

Girlfriend of Protagoras: Abby Vercelli

Girl, party zealot for Simon Herrlich: Marleen Poole

Hatchetman thug for Herrlich: Patrick O'Connell

Tough goon for REM Corp: Mike Fox

Group of top officials loyal to Herrlich: Calvin Gold, Dan Hastings, lan Kain

Spy and informer for Art Self: Demeter Troll

Wife (young) of Herrlich: Aulikki Mildmay

The plot continues as follows. Briefly, it's this: While REM Corporation is building the fake capitalist alternate world, Nick Edel's research workers stumble onto a genuine capitalist alternate world. This pleases no one; that is, neither Art Self nor the old despot (it would please Mrs. Stonemerchant, of course, but both Herrlich and Self keep this startling information top-secret). It is a better world than any other alternative -- including their own. This is one possibility that neither Self nor Herrlich anticipated; wrapped up in their Communist ideology, they were absolutely certain that if a capitalist alternate world showed up (which in itself is considered by both of them unlikely), it would, of course, be awful.

Art Self crosses over to it, spends time there skulking about incognito, then returns to his own world. And, back in it, encounters almost at once a fake fake object!

What does this discovery mean? Two hypotheses are possible. (1) It -- his own world -- is real and someone has planted fake fakes there, as he himself has done in the alternate worlds; for instance, Mrs. Stonemerchant, who may have learned about the real alternate capitalistic world. Or (2) his own world is entirely fake, and he has a false memory grafted into his brain by someone unknown to him but who is obviously out to destroy him. This someone could be either Herrlich's supporters in the party apparatus or Mrs. Stonemerchant's technicians. Hard to tell.

The maximum host of perplexities is now at its peak; from hereon the plot will unravel.

A. Protagoras is doing a strange sort of task for a purpose he does not know and for a corporation whose product is kept secret from him.

B. Mrs. Stonemerchant may or may not know about the discovery of an authentic capitalistic Earth. If she does find out, what will she do?

C. Art Self has found what appear to be fake fakes in his own world. What does this mean? Who put them there and why? Or is everything fake?

D. The old man, Simon Herrlich, has seen his hopes and dreams shattered, here at the end of his life, by the discovery that a capitalistic world would have been -- is, in fact -- far better than anything he and his world-revolution takeover can come up with. What should he do now? Renounce his own totalitarian society and attempt to bring capitalism back -- with Mrs. Stonemerchant's help and that of other industrial directors who share her attitude?

The novel is resolved in this way. A team working for REM Corporation is discovered, by Self's personal police, planting fake fakes in his own world. That answers that. His world is real, and Mrs. Stonemerchant has tried to do to him what he did to Herrlich. Self therefore has his thugs kill Mrs. Stonemerchant (after a heavy pitched battle with her company goons), since he knows for a certainty that she is, in totalitarian jargon, plotting against him, obviously with the idea of undermining their socialist state. However, Mrs. Stonemerchant has made certain arrangements; the instant she dies, an automatic instrument goes into action; it drops into a mail slot many, many copies of a full statement of REM Corporation's activities, its creating of fake fakes at Self's command. This letter is addressed to every powerful official loyal to old Simon Herrlich, and within twenty-four hours the elderly despot learns what Self has been up to.

Self becomes, at once, a hunted criminal in a society where escape from the government police is impossible. He knows he can't escape Herrlich's agent, but at least he can take revenge vis-a-vis REM Corporation -- which, he reasons, has brought about his downfall and certain death. He therefore, with all the resources he can muster, attacks REM Corporation's various branches, and, in a matter of hours, reduces most of them to rubble... killing the majority of the corporation's employees. Or so he thinks. Actually, Mrs. Stonemerchant had anticipated exactly this; upon her death, REM Corporation's employees began passing across to the alternate capitalist world via a pirated duplicate of Nick Edel's mechanism.

Again the novel focuses on Protagoras, who believes himself safe in this capitalist alternate world. However, he very soon makes a hideous discovery. This is not the authentic alternate capitalist world at all. Something -- at least in his case -- went wrong. This is the mere partly completed fake that REM Corporation was building for Self up to the time that Mrs. Stonemerchant learned of the existence of the real one. Here he finds, for example, the not yet functioning "rides" that he himself designed: a ghostly, lonely, echoing "amusement park," of which he is the sole patron; he is alone in this ersatz world, with no way to get back out.

The ending is not downbeat, however. REM Corporation has not removed its machinery, the autonomic building rigs by means of which they were constructing this "world." At the end of the book we find Joe Protagoras starting the great elaborate autonomic machines once more into action; if he can't leave this ersatz world, at least he can complete it -- make it pleasant and habitable, including the building of ersatz "people" to keep him company. He is emperor of an entire landscape, and he is happy. Of all the major characters, Joe Protagoras came out the best -- which the reader will agree is as it should be.

In this ending, the questions What is real? What is illusion? are answered (or anyhow the attempt will be made within the context of the novel). Joe Protagoras has gone from a "real" but unsatisfying world into an "unreal" but satisfying alternate. The test will be purely pragmatic. If this half-completed ersatz world is capable of answering Joe Protagoras' needs, then it is real -- in the sense that it provides the material out of which he can fashion a reasonably tolerable life. In fact, the issue of "real" versus "unreal" is itself false; the authentic issue is: What will sustain life? What will permit a living organism to function? In answer to this, the ersatz, half-completed world is advantageous, because, among other things, it gives Joe Protagoras a field in which to work creatively (i.e., as he personally completes it). Instead of a bureaucrat he is now an artist, and this ersatz world is the lump of clay out of which he will fashion his own, idiosyncratic reality. Which, we realize, is the finest reality of all.