The Small Assassin

By Ray Bradbury

     Hi, everybody! I have a bit of free time after a shower of homework and I'd like to recommend a very cool story. Now returning with my favorite author. Here comes a story that may make baby-haters like it. This short story comes from a book I previously mentioned "The October Country".

Be afraid! I'm all powerful! I'm smirking at you!

     Alice Leiber has just survived a difficult delivering and she hates her baby. (See, baby-haters must be agreeing with her already.) David, her husband, is told by Dr. Jeffers that it will take time for her to come to love their baby. The difficult delivering that almost killed her must have make her blame the baby. So he must tolerate everything strange she may say.

     So Alice and David head to their home. Alice carrying the baby in her arms like she should but not motherly enough, just as she was carrying a porcelain figure which bugs David. Once in the house, Alice acts indifferent toward the child even though David makes an effort in to her showing some interest for him. Finally when they let him in his crib and head to their own room, Alice tells him she's afraid of him and thanks him for not getting mad at her. She starts explaining to him that she doesn't believe him to be harmless. The baby hates her and wants her dead. He tries to assure her that that can't be possible. Alice explains to him that she can't trust it. People have rules to know right from wrong. Between David and herself love shields each other from the other. But the baby is so new. He doesn't know right from wrong, knows no rules. He's amoral. David tells her that they would teach him but Alice looks reluctant.

     The baby starts crying in the other room and David decides to move the crib to their room much to Alice displease. There the blue-eyes baby gazes from its crib. Lights turn off and David feels Alice rush into her arms shaking. David suddenly remembers he will be out of town for a few days, the help they hired will come on Friday. Alice promises to look after the baby.

I thinks that's everyone's case.

     David heads to work and away. He's too busy and tired from work when he receives a call. It's Dr. Jeffers who tells him Alice is in the hospital with pneumonia. David rapidly returns and Dr. Jeffers explains to him that she got pneumonia due to exhaustion as she was being too good a mother. When the doctor leaves, Alice moans to David. The baby, the baby wouldn't stop crying at night. He wouldn't let her rest. He was all day still but at night he wouldn't let her sleep. He knew she was weak and drives her to pneumonia. She admits he tried to kill him since the first day he was gone. He tried smothering him against the pillow. She just put him upside-down into the pillow and waited, but when she returned the baby was already in her back smiling. Since then she didn't took care of him at all, she believes the help took care of the baby.
   
     Later on, Dr. Jeffers tells David that it wasn't the babies fault. She just tries to blame her troubles on him. He must shower her in love and be patient. Eventually she will understand the baby is harmless and start to love it. And so David does. Four months have passed and Alice seems to become healthier and her fears less frequent. Yet she would still shake in fear when the door to their bedroom opened a few inches for no reason or thought there was something in the hallway. One night while Alice was sleeping in his arms, he heard the baby crying. He decided to get the milk himself. He walked in the darkness and next to the stairs he slipped with something. He felt himself being thrown to the stairs but somehow managed to grab the railway. He cursed and grabbed the thing he had slipped with. He grew pale. It was a small doll he had got for the baby.

I'm sorry! I was just joking when I got you a doll.
I know that you're a boy, that's why it's funny.

     Next morning, when Alice left him in work she told him he couldn't deal with it anymore. She still fears the baby and wants to get away of it for a bit. Have some vacations and leave the baby to someone else. David tells her she will take her with a psychologist and if he decides so they would go on a vacation. David thought for a moment that Alice would start crying but she finally agrees.

     While he is at work he starts thinking if he should tell her about what happened last night but decides not to as that would only freak her out more. Accident are after all accidents. He returns home. Everything is quiet, a few cars honking faraway in the avenue. He slides the key into the keyhole and opens the door. Sunlight falls at the bottom of the stairs from the window and into the doll. But he isn't looking at the doll. He rushes to Alice who is at the bottom of the stairs like a twisted doll that doesn't want to play anymore. Ever. He grabs her in his arms, hugs her, calls her. But she's dead. Desperately he rushes to the baby's bedroom and there he finds the baby gasping with his face red as if he had tired himself by crying. He yells to him, "She's dead!," for no reason.

You're right. I should try throwing them into the stairs.

     In the meantime he must have called Dr. Jeffers but he can't really remember. He slaps him and tells him to snap out of it. He tells him the baby killed her as he tried last night with him. Dr. Jeffers tells him that it's just a baby but David explains to him that maybe what if one baby out of a million was born different. This one could already think, understand and hate. He could start moving faster than the others. That must be why he was always tired even when they didn't hear him cry. He had exhausted himself by climbing the crib and moving around in the hallway! Even so Dr. Jeffers tells him that even if he was right murder is motivated, what could have motivated a baby to kill their own parents. David told him what the thought. What if the baby hated that it was taken away from its peaceful slumber at birth. Sent out into a cold world where he had to provide, see and compete for himself. He hated Alice for that and his father as well. He wanted them death.

     He tells him how he knows now what name he should have. Lucifer. Oh, how he wants to kill him. Dr. Jeffers tells him he needs to sleep. He gives him some sedatives and tells him he will come tomorrow in the afternoon to see him. David goes to his bed and feels his consciousness slip but as he was falling asleep he thought he saw a white thing moving in the hallway.

     Dr. Jeffers arrives in the afternoon as promised. He finds the door open, enters and calls for David. No answer but thinks he just saw a white blur somewhere. He leaves his suitcase in the chair next to the door. He can smell gas. He rushes to the second floor and into David's room. He closes the valve next to the door and opens the windows. While coughing he heads to examine David. His body is already cold. He died some hours ago. He ponders in the hallway. David couldn't have committed suicide, the sedatives he gave him would only lose effect now. A thought slipped through his mind. He went to the baby's room and opened the door. He looked at the crib. It's empty. The baby killed David but the door to his room closed and he couldn't get back. But he would find him. He had brought him into this world, he could send it out of it too. Oh, now he was talking just like Alice and David!

     He went where he left his suitcase and took something out of it. He saw a white blur in the other room. He walked half a dozen small steps to where he was. He raised his hand to sunlight.
   
     "Look, baby, something pretty, something bright"

     A scalpel.

Remember an apple a day keeps a doctor away.

     Oh, such a cool story. I just love Bradbury's short stories. They're the best. Just for your information I don't hate babies but I do believe that they're amoral. It's not new to anyone that babies are selfish. 

     But I think Alice and David lacked luck. I mean, they get the only precocious child in millions and maybe he was also a gifted baby as he already knew you could kill someone with natural gas. Or maybe David suddenly started talking with Alice about how the valve next to their door could kill them when their murderous baby was hearing.

     So, happy reading!

Blade Runner

By Phillip K. Dick

Tired of only being able to care for rocks?
You're in luck, buy an artificial pet.
It will not starve to death!

     Hello, people! If you have read another of my posts or even paid attention to the name of the author you will see that he's the same author to another story we know as Total Recall or as We will remember it for you wholesale. Both, are cool stories. Only difference is that this is a novel and the other a short story. 

     Rick Deckard is a police officer in San Francisco but not the normal blue ones who love donuts. Nope, he's a bounty hunter in this post atomic war world. The Earth has been messed up by the Terminal War there was some decades ago. No one knows how or who but the world is full of radioactive dirt and most of the human population has fled to the colonies in Mars and other planets. Only few have remained on Earth, living in the now empty cities, trying to get past the day and continue their lives while using lead suits to avoid mutation and becoming a special.

     Now this colonies actually are very harsh to live in and lonely so humanity has exceed in the construction of androids so similar to humans that it is difficult to tell them apart. Sometimes these androids kill their owners and flee to Earth. So then Rick Deckard is one of many bounty hunters in the city who can get a thousand dollars by destroying them. And he really wishes for five androids to come. He wants the money to get a real animal just like everybody else. In this world, animals are scarce. Radioactivity killed lots of them and extincted not few of them. Everybody has horses, sheep, goats, ostriches, cats and dogs. Socially speaking, is the right thing: Having empathy toward other living things. But androids are not the same. They lack empathy and bounty hunters use the Voigt-Kampff test to separate android from humans. 

Tired of never finding the phone?
Worry not! This new pet is impossible to lose.

     When the chief bounty hunter of the area gets hospitalized by an android he was assigned to destroy. Rick takes over the mission and heads to the Rosen Association, the business that constructed the new Nexus-6 model, to apply the Voigt-Kampff and determine if it is still effective.There he meets Rachael Rosen and his uncle where they almost trick in to believing the Voigt-Kampff is useless. Rachel Rosen indeed results in being an android they were trying to pass as human to foil the test.

     Having assured the Nexus-6 androids can be identified correctly he heads back to San Francisco and receives a call from his boss. The Soviet Association has sent an agent to help him. Rick meets him, a middle-aged man with a Scandinavian accent. They head to the theater in his car and while travelling the agent happens to be Polokov, the android, who previously attacked his chief. Polokov tries to kill him, but Rick is faster and shoots him in the head.

     He arrives to the theater exhausted with the adrenaline still circling his body. He takes a moment to calm down, reads the report of the android he came to search. His target's name is Luba Luft who is suspected to be an android. He enters while they're still in the middle of rehearsal. He identifies her and later heads to her dressing room. He presents himself as a police officer and tells her he need to apply a test to determine she's not an android. She accepts warily. Rick starts asking the questions but Luba keeps asking him the meaning of words as she doesn't know that much english. Frustrated Rick tries to ask a different type of question, he asks her what will she do if she was invited by a man to his room. Luba asks him suddenly if he could get something from below the furniture. When Rick does it, Luba is pointing a gun at him. She takes his papers and read the questions out loud. She accuses him of being a pervert who only came to make her obscene questions. She calls a cop.
 

Saw Harry Potter but Mom never let you buy an
owl because they're dirty?
Worry not! Electric owls only creep you at night.

     Rick tries to explain to the fellow cop that he was attempting to apply the Voigt-Kampff but the cop doesn't understand what's he's talking about as there isn't a test with that name. When Rick attempts to contact his department, nobody answers. Unable to understand what's going on he tries to convince him showing him the retired android in his car. But things look grim, he asks Rick to come with him to the department. It seems the department Rick talks about is were the old department was before the new one. His boss nor his chief sound familiar to the cop. They arrive to a building Rick has never seen before.

     There he meets Garland, the boss, in the police department. They sent Pulokov's body to investigate just to be sure it is really synthetic. He lets Rick make a call. He calls his wife but the one who answers is another woman. He hangs and returns with Garland. The boss makes him clear that he believes Rick is an android with a false memory. An android used to kill humans. He points out to him how his list isn't of androids as even Garland's name appears. His test, the so called Voigt-Kampff, is a ruse to make him believe humans are androids.

They're everywhere.
Under every blue hat and eating your donuts.

     While Rick ponders, fellow bounty hunter Phil Resch appears. When Pulokov's corpse is confirmed to be one of an android, he insists in applying Rick their own test to prove his humanity. He even accepts applying the test to Garland and himself as he believes even cops should have applied this test. He leaves the room to get the equipment for the test. Garland sighs and admits he's android and how Phil is a fool. Everybody in this department is an android including Phil who happily comes to apply the test that will doom him. Garland takes aim at Phil yet the latter reacts sooner and shoots him. He admits he always thought Garland was an android. Phil helps Rick exit the fake department and both head to the theater once again. Rick confesses to Phil that Garland told him he was also an android but he refuses to believe it. Rick decides to deal first with Luba and then they will deal with his being an android or not.

     They find Luba in an art gallery and take her away to the elevator. Rick wants to finish applying the test to her just to be sure. She confesses she just wanted to be like a human girl and sing in the opera. Phil shoots her as he hears her admitting it. Rick becomes bewildered by his action. He accuses him of being an android as only one can enjoy so much having an excuse to kill. He applies the Voigt-Kampff to Phil only to find that indeed Phil is human. He comes to understand Phil only lacks empathy towards androids. He asks him to read the lectures and applies the test to himself and understand he has started to feel empathy toward androids. After that, Phil and Rick depart.

     Rick returns exhausted to the house but in his way buys a black nubian goat to surprise his wife. He's sad about Luba's death and tries to cheer up with his wife who talks to him about Mercerism (a kind of religion). His boss calls him and hurries him to dispose of the three androids that are left before they run away. Rick sadly departs still not sure if he will be able to kill them as coldly as before. He calls Rachael Rosen to help him retire the androids as she had offered before. When they meet, Rachael sleeps with Rick hoping to make him feel empathy towards the fugitive Nexus-6 that are left but is unable to stop him. Rick confesses his love for Rachael but she admits she has slept with multiple bounty hunters to dissuade them from killing other androids. In the end, he refuses her help and leaves her.

This android only wants a hug...

     He heads to the suburbs where he meets Isidore, a special, outside a building freeing a spider. He has been taking care of the three androids Rick is looking for: Pris Stratton, Irmgard Baty and Roy Baty. After having witnessed how these three androids mutilated the spider he had found and Mercerism displayed as fake by Buster Friendly (confirmed by the three androids as one of them), he tells Rick that they are in the building. Rick enters and in the darkness he hears someone approaching. He confuses her with Rachael Rosen. But it is really Pris Stratton, an android from the same series, who approaches with her arms wide as to hug him. Rick shoots her.

     Having dealt with the most difficult to him, he approaches to Isidore's room where he knocks. Roy Baty asks who he is. Rick fakes the voice of Isidore. Roy Baty opens with Irmgard by his side. As they see Rick both run away. Rick kills Irmgard who was awaiting to ambush him and shoots Roy soon after. When he heads down he finds Isidore lamenting the death of his only friends. He feels sorry for him and leaves.

Bored of your carbon-based toad?
Buy an electric one, fun ensured!

     When he returns home, his wife tells him their goat was pushed off the roof by a woman described as Rachael Rosen. His boss congratulates him by phone for having beat the record by killing six androids in a day. Yet Rick isn't happy at all. He leaves in his car to Oregon, a deserted state and meditates about their condition. He comes to understand he is now Mercer, as he has fused himself with him. He can understand and have empathy for both androids and humans. As he get to his conclusion he finds a toad between the rocks, an extincted species and the favorite animal of Wilbur Mercer. He takes him home and shows him to his wife. Iran discovers the toad is synthetic. Rick becomes a little disappointed but still wants to keep him. Iran calls the electric vet and starts asking instructions to care for their new electric pet.

     Well, this is another story I read this semester. Sometimes Mercerism wasn't that clear to me, it quite confused me how even though Mercerism was proved as fake, Rick and Isidore still could see Mercer as he was some kind of god. 

     But I really enjoyed not knowing if Rick was an android or not. I think that was my favorite part of the story. So I'm planning to see the movie soon.

     Happy reading!