"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"Why out of the question?" He was puzzled; everything about her 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 girl said, "I have no furniture. All these things" — she indicated the room behind her —
"they were here."
"They won't do," Isidore 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 she 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 girl said. "Myself, thanks."
"You'd go into those apartments alone?" He could not believe it.
"Why not?" Again she shuddered nervously, grimacing in awareness of saying something
wrong.
Isidore 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'?" She 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 girl 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 girl finished. She 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?"
Isidore said, "We can't win."
"Why not? The girl stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her; arms folded self-
consciously before her small high breasts she faced him, eager to understand. Or so it
appeared to him, anyhow. She 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 girl 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?"