"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"If you dial," Iran said, eyes open and watching, "for greater venom, then I'll dial the same. I'll
dial the maximum and you'll see a fight that makes every argument we've had up to now seem like
nothing. Dial and see; just try me." She rose swiftly, loped to the console of her own mood organ,
stood glaring at him, waiting.
He sighed, defeated by her threat. "I'll dial what's on my schedule for today." Examining the
schedule for January 3, 1992, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for. "If I
dial by schedule," he said warily, "will you agree to also?" He waited, canny enough not to
commit himself until his wife had agreed to follow suit.
"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said.
"What? Why did you schedule that?" It defeated the whole purpose of the mood organ. "I didn't
even know you could set it for that," he said gloomily.
"I was sitting here one afternoon," Iran said, "and naturally I had tamed on Buster Friendly and
His Friendly Friends and he was talking about a big news item he's about to break and then that
awful commercial came on, the one I hate; you know, for Mountibank Lead Codpieces. And so for
a minute I shut off the sound. And I heard the building, this building; I heard the — " She
gestured.
"Empty apartments," Rick said. Sometimes he heard them at night when he was supposed to be
asleep. And yet, for this day and age a one-half occupied conapt building rated high in the scheme
of population density; out in what had been before the war the suburbs one could find buildings
entirely empty . . . or so he had heard. He had let the information remain secondhand; like most
people he did not care to experience it directly.
"At that moment," Iran said, "when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just
dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction
consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I read how
unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not
reacting — do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness;
they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood
organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair." Her dark, pert face showed
satisfaction, as if she had achieved something of worth. "So I put it on my schedule for twice a
month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying
here on Earth after everybody who's small has emigrated, don't you think?"
"But a mood like that," Rick said, "you're apt to stay in it, not dial your way out. Despair like
that, about total reality, is self-perpetuating."
"I program an automatic resetting for three hours later," his wife said sleekly. "A 481.
Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future; new hope that — "
"I know 481," he interrupted. He had dialed out the combination many times; he relied on it
greatly. "Listen," he said, seating himself on his bed and taking hold of her hands to draw her
down beside him, "even with an automatic cutoff it's dangerous to undergo a depression, any kind.
Forget what you've scheduled and I'll forget what I've scheduled; we'll dial a 104 together and both
experience it, and then you stay in it while I reset mine for my usual businesslike attitude. That
way I'll want to hop up to the roof and check out the sheep and then head for the office;
meanwhile I'll know you're not sitting here brooding with no TV." He released her slim, long
fingers, passed through the spacious apartment to the living room, which smelled faintly of last
night's cigarettes. There he bent to turn on the TV.
From the bedroom Iran's voice came. "I can't stand TV before breakfast."
"Dial 888," Rick said as the set warmed. "The desire to watch TV, no matter what's on it."
"I don't feel like dialing anything at all now," Iran said.
"Then dial 3," he said.
"I can't dial a setting that stimulates my cerebral cortex into wanting to dial! If I don't want to
dial, I don't want to dial that most of all, because then I will want to dial, and wanting to dial is