Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

Technodemons of the Digital Self 225use this system (mainly acquired to ward off depression) to make herselfdepressed. She explains to the amazed Deckard how the “absence of life” issurrounding them from everywhere, and instead of just intellectually acknowledgingit, she wants to have the appropriate affect, as well. 103 Deckardoverrules his wife’s “irrationality” and dials for her the mood 594: “pleasedacknowledgement of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters.” 104In the course of his inquiry, Deckard negotiates his own reactions tootherness, to female androids as the demonic “others” of his male self, andin particular to the “absence of life” that relates to Dick’s “androidization.”The inhumanity of androids, despite their surface resemblance to humans, isconfirmed during the narrative. This culminates in a key scene, as the androidsare watching television and one of them cuts off a spider’s legs. Themutilation of the spider is motivated by intellectual curiosity – the androidswant to see if it can walk on four legs, instead of eight. At the same time, italso demonstrates the unfeeling cruelty that the total lack of empathy creates.During the torture, TV show host “Buster Friendly” (actually an android,as well) does his best to reveal Mercerism as a hoax. He claims thatthe landscape seen through the empathy box is actually a Hollywood soundstage, the moon is a painted prop, the “stones” are made of soft plastic, andthe role of Mercer himself was played by the actor Al Jarry, now an aged alcoholic.105 The opposition between normal and abnormal, real and artificialis upset: the only “real” person in this scene is John Isidore, a pitiable“chickenhead” whose intellect has been damaged by radiation. Yet, despitehis intellectual inferiority, he is able to grasp the value and meaning of a spider’slife through his empathic suffering in a manner beyond the intellectualandroids. The androids aim to prove that the Mercerism is based on artificialillusions, and that the “whole experience of empathy is a swindle.” 106Similar doubts, anxieties of what is real and unreal, and different subversionscharacterise the novel at large. 107 Luba Luft is quick to turn the suspicionon the investigator himself: perhaps Deckard himself is an android? 108Because it is possible to give androids artificial memories (and thereby afalse sense of identity), anyone in the novel could be an android withoutknowing it. Deckard is arrested and brought to a police station – but this isthe Other Police Station (Dick’s appellation) 109 where no-one knows him.103 DA, 3.104 DA, 5.105 DA, 181-84.106 DA, 185.107 Reversals of identity are quite common: “‘You’re not Polokov, you’re Kadalyi,’Rick said. – ‘Don’t you mean that the other way around? [Polokov/ Kadalyi replied.]You’re a bit confused.’” (DA, 81.)108 DA, 89. – This possibility is played with in Blade Runner, the movie (see Sammon1996, 391-2). Such complex suspicions structure also the work that K.W. Jeter has donein replicating “other Blade Runners” (see Blade Runner 2 : the Edge of Human, 1995, andBlade Runner: Replicant Night, 1996).109Dick, “<strong>Note</strong>s on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968; Dick 1995, 157).