Free The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick Page A

faltered.
    "It will come back to you," Zina said. "Through this. Use it. I don't think you should tell Elias either. He might not understand."
    Emmanuel said nothing. This was a matter that he himself would decide. It was important not to let others make his choices for him. And, basically, he trusted Elias. Did he also trust Zina? He was not sure. He sensed the multitude of natures within her, the profusion of identities. Ultimately he would seek out the real one; he knew it was there, but the tricks obscured it. Who is it, he asked himself, who plays tricks like this? What being is the trickster? He pressed the tab.
    DANCING
    To that, he gave a nod of assent. Dancing certainly was the right answer; in his mind he could see her dancing, with all the troop, burning the grass beneath their feet, leaving it scorched, and the minds of men disoriented. You cannot disorient me, he said to himself. Even though you control time. Because I control time, too. Perhaps even more than you.
----
    That night at dinner he discussed Valis with Elias Tate.
    "Take me to see it," Emmanuel said.
    "It's a very old movie," Elias said.
    "But at least we could rent a cassette. From the library. What does 'Valis' mean?"
    "Vast Active Living Intelligence System," Elias said. "The movie is mostly fiction. It was made by a rock singer in the latter part of the twentieth century. His name was Eric Lampton but he called himself Mother Goose. The film contained Mini's Synchronicity Music, which had considerable impact on all modern music to this day. Much of the information in the film is conveyed subliminally by the music. The setting is an alternate U.S.A. where a man named Ferris F. Fremount is president."
    Emmanuel said, "But what is Valis?"
    "An artificial satellite that projects a hologram that they take to be reality."
    "Then it's a reality generator."
    "Yes," Elias said.
    "Is the reality genuine?"
    "No; I said it's a hologram. It can make them see whatever it wants them to see. That's the whole point of the film. It's a study of the power of illusion."
    Going to his room, Emmanuel picked up the slate that Zina had given him and pressed the tab.
    "What are you doing?" Elias said, coming in behind him.
    The slate showed one word:
    NO
    "That's plugged into the government, Elias said. "There's no point in using it. I knew Plaudet would give you one of those." He reached for it. "Give it to me."
    "I want to keep it," Emmanuel said.
    "Good grief; it says I.B.M. right on it! What do you expect it to tell you? The truth? When has the government ever told anyone the truth? They killed your mother and put your father into cryonic suspension. Let me have it, damn it."
    "If this is taken from me," Emmanuel said, "they will give me another."
    "I suppose so." Elias withdrew his hand. "But don't believe what it says."
    "It says you're wrong about Valis," Emmanuel said.
    "In what way?"
    Emmanuel said, "It just said 'no.' It didn't say anything more." He pressed the tab again.
    YOU
    "What the hell does that mean?" Elias said, mystified.
    "I don't know," Emmanuel said truthfully. He thought, I will keep using it.
    And then he thought, It is tricking me. It dances along the path like a bobbing light, leading me and leading me, away, further, further, into the darkness. And then when the darkness is everywhere the bobbing light will wink out. I know you, he thought at the slate. I know how you work. I will not follow; you must come to me .
    He pressed the tab.
    FOLLOW ME
    "Where no one ever returns," Emmanuel said.
----
    After dinner he spent some time with the holoscope, studying Elias's most precious possession: the Bible expressed as layers at different depths within the hologram, each layer according to age. The total structure of Scripture formed, then, a three-dimensional cosmos that could be viewed from any angle and its contents read. According to the tilt of the axis of observation, differing messages could be extracted. Thus Scripture yielded up an infinitude