Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Chapter 6

The TV set boomed; descending the great empty apartment building's dust-stricken stairs to the level below, Jung Hoseok made out now the familiar voice of Buster Friendly, burbling happily to his system-wide vast audience.
" - ho ho, folks! Zip click zip! Time for a brief note on tomorrow's weather; first the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.A. Mongoose satellite reports that fallout will be especially pronounced toward noon and then will taper off. So all you dear folks who'll be venturing out ought to wait until afternoon, eh? And speaking of waiting, it's now only ten hours 'til that big piece of news, my special exposé! Tell your friends to watch! I'm revealing something that'll amaze you. Now, you might guess that it's just the usual - "
As Hoseok knocked on the apartment door the television died immediately into nonbeing. It had not merely become silent; it had stopped existing, scared into its grave by his knock.
He sensed, behind the closed door, the presence of life, beyond that of the TV. His straining faculties manufactured or else picked up a haunted, tongueless fear, by someone retreating from him, someone blown back to the farthest wall of the apartment in an attempt to evade him.
"Hey," he called. "I live upstairs. I heard your TV. Let's meet; okay?" He waited, listening. No sound and no motion; his words had not pried the person loose. "I brought you a cube of margarine," he said, standing close to the door in an effort to speak through its thickness. "My name's Jung Hoseok and I work for the well-known animal vet Mr. Hannibal Sloat; you've heard of him. I'm reputable; I have a job. I drive Mr. Sloat's truck."
The door, meagerly, opened and he saw within the apartment a fragmented and misaligned shrinking figure, a boy who cringed and slunk away and yet held onto the door, as if for physical support. Fear made him seem ill; it distorted his body lines, made him appear as if someone had broken him and then, with malice, patched him together badly. His eyes, enormous, glazed over fixedly as he attempted to smile.
He said, with sudden understanding, "You thought no one lived in this building. You thought it was abandoned."
Nodding, the boy whispered, "Yes."
"But," Hoseok said, "it's good to have neighbors. Heck, until you came along I didn't have any." And that was no fun, god knew.
"You're the only one?" the boy asked. "In this building besides me?" He seemed less timid, now; his body straightened and with his hand he smoothed his dark hair. Now he saw that he had a nice figure, although small, and nice eyes markedly established by long black lashes. Caught by surprise, the boy wore pajama bottoms and nothing more. And as he looked past him he perceived a room in disorder. Suitcases lay here and there, opened, their contents half spilled onto the littered floor. But this was natural; he had barely arrived.
"I'm the only one besides you," Hoseok said. "And I won't bother you." He felt glum; his offering, possessing the quality of an authentic old pre-war ritual, had not been accepted. In fact the boy did even seem aware of it. Or maybe he did not understand what a cube of margarine was for. He had that intuition; the boy seemed more bewildered than anything else. Out of his depth and helplessly floating in now-receding circles of fear.
"Good old Buster," he said, trying to reduce his rigid postural stance. "You like him? I watch him every morning and then again at night when I get home; I watch him while I'm eating dinner and then his late late show until I go to bed. At least until my TV set broke."
"Who - " the boy began and then broke off; he bit his lip as if savagely angry. Evidently at himself.
"Buster Friendly," he explained. It seemed odd to him that this boy had never heard of Earth's most knee-slapping TV comic. "Where did you come here from? " he asked curiously.
"I don't see that it matters." he shot a swift glance upward at him. Something that he saw seemed to ease his concern; his body noticeably relaxed. "I'll be glad to receive company," he said, "later on when I'm more moved in. Right now, of course, it's out of the question."
"Why out of the question?" He was puzzled; everything about him puzzled him. Maybe, he thought, I've been living here alone too long. I've become strange. They say chickenheads are like that. The thought made him feel even more glum. "I could help you unpack," he ventured; the door, now, had virtually shut in his face. "And your furniture."
The boy said, "I have no furniture. All these things" - he indicated the room behind him - "they were here."
"They won't do," Hoseok said. He could tell that at a glance. The chairs, the carpet, the tables - all had rotted away; they sagged in mutual ruin, victims of the despotic force of time. And of abandonment. No one had lived in this apartment for years; the ruin had become almost complete. He couldn't imagine how he figured on living in such surroundings. "Listen," he said earnestly. "If we go all over the building looking we can probably find you things that aren't so tattered. A lamp from one apartment, a table from another."
"I'll do it," the boy said. "Myself, thanks."
"You'd go into those apartments alone?" He could not believe it.
"Why not?" Again he shuddered nervously, grimacing in awareness of saying something wrong.
Hoseok said, "I've tried it. Once. After that I just come home and go in my own place and I don't think about the rest. The apartments in which no one lives - hundreds of them and all full of the possessions people had, like family photographs and clothes. Those that died couldn't take anything and those who emigrated didn't want to. This building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized."
"Kipple-ized'?" he did not comprehend.
"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."
"I see." The boy regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.
"There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. "'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple."
"So it has taken over completely," the boy finished. He nodded. "Now I understand." "Your place, here," he said, "this apartment you've picked - it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But - " He broke off.
"But what?"
Hoseok said, "We can't win."
"Why not? The boy stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him; arms folded self-consciously before his small torso he faced him, eager to understand. Or so it appeared to him, anyhow. He was at least listening.
"No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization." He added, "Except of course for the upward climb of Wilbur Mercer."
The boy eyed him. "I don't see any relation."
"That's what Mercerism is all about." Again he found himself puzzled. "Don't you participate in fusion? Don't you own an empathy box?"
After a pause the boy said carefully, "I didn't bring mine with me. I assumed I'd find one here."
"But an empathy box," he said, stammering in his excitement, "is the most personal possession you have! It's an extension of your body; it's the way you touch other humans, it's the way you stop being alone. But you know that. Everybody knows that. Mercer even lets people like me - " He broke off. But too late; he had already told him and he could see by his face, by the flicker of sudden aversion, that he knew. "I almost passed the IQ test," he said in a low, shaky voice. "I'm not very special, only moderately; not like some you see. But that's what Mercer doesn't care about."
"As far as I'm concerned," the boy said, "you can count that as a major objection to Mercerism." His voice was clean and neutral; he intended only to state a fact, he realized. The fact of his attitude toward chickenheads.
"I guess I'll go back upstairs," he said, and started away from him, his cube of margarine clutched; it had become plastic and damp from the squeeze of his hand.
The boy watched him go, still with the neutral expression on his face. And then he called, "Wait."
Turning, he said, "Why?"
"I'll need you. For getting myself adequate furniture. From other apartments, as you said." He strolled toward him, his bare upper body sleek and trim, without an excess gram of far. "What time do you get home from work? You can help me then."
Hoseok said, "Could you maybe fix dinner for us? If I brought home the ingredients?"
"No, I have too much to do." The boy shook off the request effortlessly and he noticed that, perceived it without understanding it. Now that his initial fear had diminished, something else had begun to emerge from him. Something more strange. And, he thought, deplorable. A coldness. Like, he thought, a breath from the vacuum between inhabited worlds, in fact from nowhere: it was not what he did or said but what he did not do and say. "Some other time," the boy said, and moved back toward his apartment door.
"Did you get my name?" he said eagerly, "Jung Hoseok, and I work for - "
"You told me who you work for." He had stopped briefly at his door; pushing it open he said, "Some incredible person named Hannibal Sloat, who I'm sure doesn't exist outside your imagination. My name is - " he gave him one last warmthless glance as he returned to his apartment, hesitated, and said, "I'm Kim Taehyung.
"Of the Kim Association?" he asked. "The system's largest manufacturer of humanoid robots used in our colonization program?
A complicated expression instantly crossed the boys face, fleetingly, gone at once. "No," he said. "I never heard of them; I don't know anything about it. More of your chickenbead imagination, I suppose. Jung Hoseok and his personal, private empathy box. Poor Mr. Jung."
"But your name suggests - "
"My name," the boy said, "is Min Yoongi. That's my married name; I always use it. I never use any other name but Yoongi. You can call me Yoongi." He reflected, then said, "No, you'd better address me as Mr. Min. Because we don't really know each other. At least I don't know you." The door shut after the boy and he found himself alone in the dust-strewn dim hall.