A Scanner Darkly

“But a photo can get accidentally reversed, too, if the negative is flipped—printed backward; you usually can tell only if there’s writing. But not with a man’s face. You could have two contact prints of a given man, one reversed, one not. A person who’d never met him couldn’t tell which was correct, but he could see they were different and couldn’t be superimposed.”

“There, Fred, does that show you how complex the problem of formulating the distinction between a left-hand glove and—”

“Then shall it come to pass the saying that is written,” a voice said. “Death is swallowed up. In victory.” Perhaps only Fred heard it. “Because,” the voice said, “as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not down into the body but up—in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now: we shall not all sleep in death.”

The mystery, he thought, the explanation, he means. Of a secret. A sacred secret. We shall not die.

The reflections shall leave. And it will happen fast. We shall all be changed, and by that he means reversed back, suddenly. In the twinkling of an eye!

Because, he thought glumly as he watched the police psychologists writing their conclusions and signing them, we are fucking backward right now, I guess, every one of us; everyone and every damn thing, and distance, and even time. But how long, he thought, when a print is being made, a contact print, when the photographer discovers he’s got the negative reversed, how long does it take to flip it? To reverse it again so it’s like it’s supposed to be?

A fraction of a second.

I understand, he thought, what that passage in the Bible means, Through a glass darkly. But my percept system is as fucked up as ever. Like they say. I understand but am helpless to help myself.

Maybe, he thought, since I see both ways at once, correctly and reversed, I’m the first person in human history to have it flipped and not-flipped simultaneously, and so get a glimpse of what it’ll be when it’s right. Although I’ve got the other as well, the regular. And which is which?

Which is reversed and which is not?

When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?

And how much allotment for sick pay or retirement or disability do I get while I dry out? he asked himself, feeling horror already, deep dread and coldness everywhere. Wie kalt ist es in diesem unterirdischen Gewölbe! Das ist natürlich, es ist ja tief. And I have to withdraw from the shit. I’ve seen people go through that. Jesus Christ, he thought, and shut his eyes.

“That may sound like metaphysics,” one of them was saying, “but the math people say we may be on the verge of a new cosmology so much—”

The other said excitedly, “The infinity of time, which is expressed as eternity, as a loop! Like a loop of cassette tape!”

***

He had an hour to kill before he was supposed to be back in Hank’s office, to listen to and inspect Jim Barris’s evidence.

The building’s cafeteria attracted him, so he walked that way, among those in uniform and those in scramble suits and those in slacks and ties.

Meanwhile, the psychologists’ findings presumably were being taken up to Hank. They would be there when he arrived.

This will give me time to think, he reflected as he wandered into the cafeteria and lined up. Time. Suppose, he thought, time is round, like the Earth. You sail west to reach India. They laugh at you, but finally there’s India in front, not behind. In time—maybe the Crucifixion lies ahead of us as we all sail along, thinking it’s back east.

Ahead of him a secretary. Tight blue sweater, no bra, almost no skirt. It felt nice, checking her out; he gazed on and on, and finally she noticed him and edged off with her tray.

The First and Second Coming of Christ the same event, he thought; time a cassette loop. No wonder they were sure it’d happen, He’d be back.

He watched the secretary’s behind, but then he realized that she could not possibly be noticing him back as he noticed her because in his suit he had no face and no ass. But she senses my scheming on her, he decided. Any chick with legs like that would sense it a lot, from every man.

You know, he thought, in this scramble suit I could hit her over the head and bang her forever and who’d know who did it? How could she identify me?

The crimes one could commit in these suits, he pondered. Also lesser trips, short of actual crimes, which you never did; always wanted to but never did.

“Miss,” he said to the girl in the tight blue sweater, “you certainly have nice legs. But I suppose you recognize that or you wouldn’t be wearing a microskirt like that.”

The girl gasped. “Eh,” she said. “Oh, now I know who you are.”

“You do?” he said, surprised.

“Pete Wickam,” the girl said.

“What?” he said.

“Aren’t you Pete Wickam? You always are sitting across from me—aren’t you, Pete?”