Free The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick Page B

adult male, “Isn’t he a good man, Daddy?”
    “Yes, Tommy,” the adult male answered, nodding. “He most certainly is.” It patted the boy on the shoulder. The whole family beamed.
    “I’ll keep you on until next Wednesday,” Maury decided. “That’s the best I can do, but maybe it’ll help a little. After that—I just don’t know. I can’t foresee anything. Even though I am slightly precognitive, as I’ve always said. I mean to a certain extent I’ve generally had valid hunches as to the future. Not in this case, though, not one damn bit. The entire thing is a mass of confusion, as far as I’m concerned.”
    Chic said, “Thanks, Maury.”
    Grunting, Maury Frauenzimmer resumed reading the morning paper.
    “Maybe by next Wednesday something good’ll come along,” Chic said. “Something we don’t expect.” Maybe, as sales manager, I can bring in a huge order, he thought.
    “Say, maybe so,” Maury said. He did not sound very convinced.
    “I’m really going to try,” Chic said.
    “Sure,” Maury agreed. “You try, Chic, you do that.” His voice was low, muffled by resignation.

SIX
    To Richard Kongrosian the McPhearson Bill was a calamity because in a single instant it erased his great support in life, Dr. Egon Superb. He was left at the mercy of his lifelong illness-process, which, right at the moment, had assumed enormous power over him. This was why he had left Jenner and voluntarily checked in at Franklin Aimes Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Francisco, a place deeply familiar to him; he had, during the past decade, checked in there many times.
    However, this time he probably would not be able to leave. This time his illness-process had advanced too far.
    He was, he knew, an anankastic, a person for whom reality had shrunk to the dimension of compulsion; everything he did was forced on him—there was for him nothing voluntary, spontaneous or free. And, to make matters worse, he had tangled with a Nitz commercial. In fact, he still had the commercial with him; he carried it about with him in his pocket.
    Getting it out now, Kongrosian started the Theodorus Nitz commercial up, listening once more to its evil message. The commercial squeaked, “At any moment one may offend others,
any
hour of the day!
” And in his mind appeared the full-color image of a scene unfolding: a good-looking black-haired man leaning toward a blond, full-breasted girl in a bathing suit in order to kiss her. On the girl’s face the expression of rapture and submission all at once vanished, was replaced by repugnance. And the commercial shrilled, “He was not fully safe from offensive body odor! You see?”
    That’s me, Kongrosian said to himself; I smell bad. He had, due to the commercial, acquired a phobic body odor; he had been contaminated through the commercial, and there was no way to rid himself of the odor: he had for weeks now tried a thousand rituals of rinsing and washing, to no avail.
    That was the trouble with phobic odors; once acquired they stayed, even advanced in their dreadful power. At this moment he did not dare get close to any other human being; he had to remain ten feet away so that they would not become aware of the odor. No full-breasted blond girls for him.
    And at the same time he knew that the odor was a delusion, that it did not really exist; it was an obsessive idea only. However, that realization did not help him. He still could not bear to come within ten feet of another human being—of any sort whatsoever. Full-breasted or not.
    For instance, at this very moment Janet Raimer, chief talent scout from the White House, was searching for him. If she found him, even here in his private room at Franklin Aimes, she would insist on seeing him, would force her way close to him—and then the world would, for him, collapse. He liked Janet, who was middle-aged, had a waggish sense of humor and was cheerful. How could he bear to have Janet detect the terrible body odor which the commercial