Philip Dick

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

More of your chickenbead imagination, I suppose.

Maybe when you deteriorate back down the ladder of evolution —as I have, when you sink into the tomb world slough of being a special—well, best to abandon that line of inquiry.

The rubbish-littered, lifeless roof of his apartment building as always depressed him.

You think I’m suffering because I’m lonely. Hell, all Mars is lonely. Much worse than this

I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be a depression, like you get. I can understand now how you suffer when you’re depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then by means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don’t care. Apathy, because you’ve lost a sense of worth. It doesn’t matter whether you feet better because if you have no worth—”

“How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see? There is no salvation.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you—about it being electrical.” She put her hand out, touched his arm; she felt guilty, seeing the effect it had on him, the change.

“No,” Rick said. “I’m glad to know. Or rather—” He became silent. “I’d prefer to know.”

Yes, he thought, and now they’ll blacklist me; my skill is no use—I have no trade. Fifteen years’ experience. Gone

Yet, there was after all something humorous about it, the picture of stolid, grumpy Germans walking around on Mars, on the red sand where no humans had ever stepped before