Free Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick Page A

now-receding circles of fear. “Good old Buster,” he said, trying to reduce her rigid postural stance. “You like him? I watch him every morning and then again at night when I get home; I watch him while I’m eating dinner and then his late late show until I go to bed. At least until my TV set broke.”
    “Who—” the girl began and then broke off; she bit her lip as if savagely angry. Evidently at herself.
    “Buster Friendly,” he explained. It seemed odd to him that this girl had never heard of Earth’s most knee-slapping TV comic. “Where did you come here from?” he asked curiously.
    “I don’t see that it matters.” She shot a swift glance upward at him. Something that she saw seemed to ease her concern; her body noticeably relaxed. “I’ll be glad to receive company,” she said, “later on when I’m more moved in. Right now, of course, it’s out of the question.”
    “Why out of the question?” He was puzzled; everything about her puzzled him. Maybe, he thought, I’ve been living here alone too long. I’ve become strange. They say chickenheads are like that. The thought made him feel even more glum. “I could help you unpack,” he ventured; the door, now, had virtually shut in his face. “And your furniture.”
    The girl said, “I have no furniture. All these things”—she indicated the room behind her—“they were here.”
    “They won’t do,” Isidore said. He could tell that at a glance. The chairs, the carpet, the tables—all had rotted away; they sagged in mutual ruin, victims of the despotic force of time. And of abandonment. No one had lived in this apartment for years; the ruin had become almost complete. He couldn’t imagine how she figured on living in such surroundings. “Listen,” he said earnestly. “If we go all over the building looking, we can probably find you things that aren’t so tattered. A lamp from one apartment, a table from another.”
    “I’ll do it,” the girl said. “Myself, thanks.”
    “You’d go into those apartments alone? ” He could not believe it.
    “Why not?” Again she shuddered nervously, grimacing in awareness of saying something wrong.
    Isidore said, “I’ve tried it. Once. After that I just come home and go in my own place and I don’t think about the rest. The apartments in which no one lives—hundreds of them and all full of the possessions people had, like family photographs and clothes. Those that died couldn’t take anything and those who emigrated didn’t want to. This building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized.”
    “Kipple-ized’?” She did not comprehend.
    “Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.”
    “I see.” The girl regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.
    “There’s the First Law of Kipple,” he said. “‘Kipple drives out nonkipple.’ Like Gresham’s law about bad money. And in these apartments there’s been nobody there to fight the kipple.”
    “So it has taken over completely,” the girl finished. She nodded. “Now I understand.”
    “Your place, here,” he said, “this apartment you’ve picked—it’s too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But—” He broke off.
    “But what?”
    Isidore said, “We can’t win.”
    “Why not?” The girl stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her; arms folded self-consciously before her small high breasts, she faced him, eager to understand. Or so it appeared to him, anyhow. She was at least listening.
    “No one can win against kipple,” he said, “except temporarily and maybe in one spot,