We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

By Philip K. Dick

Hi, everybody, out there! This is a very nice short story of about 30-40 pages I read some months ago. 

What may interest you about it is that this story was adapted to make the two films known as "Total Recall" which take the idea of this story into their plots. I have to say the short story is different from the movies but the idea of false memories and the name of some characters are the same.

It's a story worth reading. So read it!

     Douglas Quail was an unsatisfied clerk who only wished for one thing: To go to Mars. His wife constantly makes fun of him reminding him he's only a employee and Quail knows that normal people don't go to Mars, only secret agents of Interplan and the like... so Quail makes the decisión that if he's too poor to actually go to Mars, he may buy an artifical memory of him being a secret agent who went there. He visits REKAL where he meets McClane, the boss, which assures a skeptical Quail of the workings of the artifical memory. He gives him information of how the trip will be so real in his mind, and how back home he will have solid but fake proof of his trip and that he will not remember coming to REKAL. Quaid is convinced by the boss's words and is set to be implanted the memories. 

     The boss starts gathering the fake proof when he receives a message that something went odd. When he arrives the technicians tell him that he responded strangely with the narkidrine, a sedative truth drug. A now colder and unconcious Quail reveals he actually is a secret agent who went to Mars which memories had been erased. The owner and the technicians feeling they're messing with something dangerous decide to get rid of him without altering his memories expecting he doesn't recall the trip to Mars or to REKAL. McClane then puts in his jacket half of the refund.

     Quail not remembering about REKAL recalls his time recollecting the worm-like fauna in Mars. He searches for the container in his jacket and finds an envelope. He suddenly remembers his trip to REKAL and furiously heads back to demand the full refund. He accuses the owner of giving him a hazy memory and the absence of the proof that should have appeared at his house. McClane returns his fee and recommends him that he doesn't tell anybody of the partial memory he has. 

     Angry, Quail returns to his house and searches for materials in a drawer to write a complaint... he then finds a familiar box full of worm-like fauna from Mars and starts doubting whether he went or not. Kirsten, his wife, arrives and Quail begs her to tell him whether he went to Mars o not. Kirsten treats him as if crazy, doesn't respond to his answer and abandons him. Suddenly, Interplan officials appear in his house who reading his thoughts know he's remembering something he shouldn't and is dangerous for their supreme leader's image. As they argue about what to do, Quail starts recalling even more until he remembers the reason he was sent there and isn't suprised they erased his memories. He was a government assassin sent to Mars to murder someone but what make the officers, who picked his thoughts, to consider him so dangerous and try to kill him was because he murder that someone after killing his 15 bodyguards. Quail disarms the agents and flees. 

     He stays at a park and thinks of a way to escape. Seeing it's impossible to hide from Interplan because he has a transmissor in his brain he makes them a deal. He will hand himself and they will implant on him an average person's memories. Interplan answers back that it will not be enough, when he has average memories he grows restless and will eventually seek again for REKAL or its competidors. Because of that he suggests them erasing his real memories but introducing a not-so-average memory that will satisfy his craving. Interplan agrees to hire psychiatrists to study him and implant him a memory in REKAL that will satisfy him if he surrenders himself. Quail seeing this as his only chance to survive, accepts it.

     The Interplan psychiatrist, after conducting his tests, points out his ultimate fantasy. This fantasy comes from his childhood dreams and consists that when he was 9 years old while he's in a lonely road he sees a little spaceship land on Earth which will be accompanied by many other spaceships to invade, but the aliens are surprised for his kindness and make a promise to him. To not invade Earth while he's alive. Quail seems pleased and Interplan agrees to it. They erase once again Quail's memories of Mars and take him to REKAL to implant the fake memory. McClane then seeks in his office for the fake proofs that they will insert in his house. While he's at it, his technicians call him: something was odd again. 

     McClane hurries to where Quail is. He has responded well to the narkidrine again but... he says he shouldn't have recalled it. Yet he just couldn't forget an event like that. They gave him a gratitude scroll. He even remembers the invisible destroying baton, which is in the same drawer where the martian fauna is, they gave him which he used to kill that man in Mars. McClane then head backs to his office to return the fake proof and recommend the Interplan agents not to kill him or they will come back.  

I felt goosebumps when I read this story, it's really good. I like this version better than the movie ones. The book is much more better for obvious reasons than this summary. I highly recommend it. 

You can find it in almost any Philip K. Dick collection of stories.

Hope you liked it!

History Lesson

By Arthur C. Clarke

     Any of you looking for a classroom. GO AWAY! No school here! Damn you, enjoy you're vacations.

     Some of you may already know this author for his book and movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey". Well, this guy also wrote an amazing short story which tells about some lizard aliens from Venus who come to Earth to research an extinct civilization.

You can find this story in the book, "Expedition to Earth".

Hope you find it!

     The story begins following a group of surviving humans who head to a mountain, fleeing from the glaciers that come from the north.
     This group carries what their ancestors brought with them. Although they're not sure what they are anymore, they worship the precious relics.
     The head of the group then climbs the mountain which seems may resist the advance of the ice. When he gets to the summit he loses all hope. He can see now from the other side, from the south, the also approaching glaciers which he predicts in a couple of years will arrive along with the north ones and clash them. They hide the relics in the mountain and wait for the ice to reach them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A world of lizard scientists but
no spider man.

     A lot of time after that, the reptile aliens from Venus arrive to Earth eager to discover the civilization which perished with the cooling of the sun that gave birth to life in Venus. They are intelligent beings who have found some relics in a mountain not buried under the ice.
     The most renowned scientists gather to try to study a relic which may give important information of how the dominant species' life was once on Earth. This relic is a film reel which the Venusines start seeing and are amazed and baffled by its contents.

      Then the story tells that no matter how much they study it and analyse it: They will never comprehend the contents of it. For they cannot understand the last words in the film: A Production of Walt Disney.

Hope you liked it! Again the story is much better and it's better if you don't read the summary which obviously has the spoiler in the end. 

Happy reading!

A Sound of Thunder

By Ray Bradbury

     Hi, I decided I will now talk about one of my favorite short stories!

     

     I really love Ray Bradbury's stories and this one is the one that I read the most. It even has a movie although I like the short story better. Another book of him I read a long while ago was Martian Chronicles but I will do an entry when I read it once again. But to really comprehend how amazing he is you have to read it, if you only read the summary you practically only get 1/8 of his awesomeness.

     You can find this story in the book called, "The Golden Apples of the Sun".

     Now enjoy!

Summary

     Now then this short story begins when Eckels goes to a Time Safari because he wants to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex -you know, when you have lots of money why use it to help starving kids around the globe when you can hunt dinosaurs. Eckels chats with the man behind the desk about how if Keith hadn't won the election he may had come to escape the dictatorship instead. The man agrees and Eckels asks if they guarantee he comes back safely. The man doesn't ensure it and says he still has time to change his mind. Eckels angrily accuses him of trying to scare him and that he can't make him desist.

     Eckels is then introduced to his safari guide, Travis; his assistant, Lesperance; and fellow hunters, Billings and Kramer. Travis explains the rules -while they travel back in time- which include only shooting what they tell them to, only if they have red paint and to not get off of the floating path the safari made.

     Eckels then asks, "Why?" Travis explains that the government doesn't like them there and they pay a lot of money to have their franchise because they don't know the effect time travelling can have in the future and while they still don't know if its a drastic change or a minor one they are being extremely careful to not modify anything, not even to introduce their own bacteria in the ancient atmosphere. He explains how Lesperance comes back in time and tracks them to know when they're going to die, applies them red paint so they know it will not have anymore offspring.

     Eckels again ask why that's important to which a clearly irritated Travis states an example, "What if you step on a mouse?" He explains how he will therefore kill all future families that mouse and his offspring would have. Eckels its like, "Yeah, but they're only mice". He contiues explaining how because a lack in mice, kills a predator along with all his descendants and destroys the chain food in that area. This food chain then arrives to one of the first human beings who looking for food dies because of the lack of it which would have a meaning equal to killing a whole civilization. A scolded Eckels then shyly asks where's their dinosaur.

     Lesperance tells them it is about to arrive and they should get ready. As they wait the once wriggling jungle silences and then they hear a sound of thunder. The Tyrannosaurus emerges from the jungle and Bradbury details the ferocious creature so powerful, so almighty, so murderous that Eckels is overwhelmed and feels the gun in his hands is no more than a toy against the lizard monster. Eckels babbles horrified and is heard by the evil lizard who approaches the safari as Eckels flees to the time machine. While Travis, Lesperance, Billings and Kramer fight the Tyrannosaurus; Eckels in its shock steps off of the path and walks through the grass. 

     They manage to kill the Tyrannosaurus after blinding it, just as they kill it a giant branch falls over the corpse -the branch that was supposed to kill it. Billings and Kramer puke after the fright and Travis goes to the time machine to get something to clean themselves. There he glares at Eckels who managed to find his way. When they return to the time machine, Travis angrily shouts to Eckels for almost killing them and threatens to leave him here. Lesperance tries to reason with him but Travis points out that they don't know anymore if things are unchanged for he stepped off of the path. To punish him, Travis makes him remove the bullets from the corpse which is brimming with scavengers. A frightened Eckels returns bloodstained up to the elbows and a bunch of bullets in each hand. 

     They activate the time machine to return home. Travis threatens Eckels to kill him himself if the future is destroyed. When they return, the man behind the desk welcomes them. Travis gazes around and admits maybe nothing happened. Yet Eckels feels things aren't the same, he gazes and feels as if his senses shout that something in the particles of air, the city beyond the walls, the people are a completely different world. Then he gazes at the sign in the entrance where now the words are mispelled. Feebly he asks to the man in the desk who won the elections to which he replies as if obvious that Deutscher won, not that weakling Keith.

     Eckels turns pale, sits and searches in the mud in the sole of his boots. There he discovers a very beautiful and very dead butterfly. He asks desperately if maybe they can do something, return it, revive it somehow. Travis shouts furiously and loads his gun. Eckels closes his eyes and then a sound of thunder.

     Now that's all. I like another of his short stories about a girl from Earth who lives in Jupiter where only once a lot of years the rains stops and reveals the sun. If anyone knows how its called I would be glad if someone can tell me.

     Well, soon I will comment on Dracula. Almost finish the book.

     Have a nice day!