Chapter I: The Necromancer
1
I was sitting at my huge leather armchair, reading another Dickean novel, when suddenly I had the urge to write down what I was thinking. On the paper I scribbled down some notes as if I was a famous writer, hearing the clapping and applauding of the audience at the promotion the publishers would arrange for my first written book. But then I returned back into reality only to find my blank paper page staring at me from within the non-existent lines I thought I've wrote. Instead, there was this drawing of a black hole. A meaningless black hole. I closed my eyes and thought of my spiritual father – Philip K. Dick, and about my continuous failure as a writer, thinking what he would do, what he would have said, and then I heard this sucking noise and my stomach hurt – I fell down to the ground only to find the paper with the black hole ripped to shreds, and it was cold and wet and there was rain upon me as I realized I'm not at home anymore but in a graveyard, surrounded by beautiful tombs and dark, cold crypts. I wondered about necrophilia as I tried to pick up the torn black holed paper but the shreds were flying away from me, and I hasted to catch them but the wind was too powerful and faster then a failed writer who could barely dodge his thoughts, and I fell on my face, spitting mud and grass and allowed the rain to drench me from head to toes. When I had lifted my face from the muddy ground, my eyes stumbled upon a grave and a name craved upon it in soft but deep lettering – '[Dick]'.
Twins were buried there, 'Jane C.' and … 'Philip K.'!
Its Philip K. Dick's grave! How is it possible? I wondered as much as I was amazed. Somehow I drifted through some kind of a portal, that black hole I sketched on that silly now-torn-up paper, and by mistake, I had discovered his grave. Is it a mistake? I pondered on this as I touched the letters of his name –
Philip K.
Dec. 16. 1928
Mar. 2. 1982
And beside it, how sad, his twin sister's name –
Jane C.
Dec. 16. 1928
Jan. 26. 1929
Philip K. Dick died about a year before I was born. I never had the chance to meet him, but I plunged ravenously on his books as though they were pure gold. I felt emotions I never felt with any other books. I felt accepted, I felt as though I had found my place in time and space among his brilliant novels. I felt that although I always wished to live in the medieval times, I could never live there, in a world that have yet to hear about Philip K. Dick, a world without his wonderful creations.
I look at my hands and I see a book. I open it before my eyes and the blank pages mesmerize me. They are pure milky white, without a single stain who is as bold as to destroy their perfectness. I look down at the grave ground, where Philip K. Dick's body was buried and I notice a hole was dug up before me. I wonder why. I wonder who had the time to do so, right under my nose. I look at the cover of the book and it has an empty line, waiting to be filled. I ponder on this a bit and look for a pen – there is none around; why should it be there in the first place?
I look again at the cover and notice the empty line is not empty anymore but it’s a written word. So simple yet quite subtle – 'Pris'.
Under it, in small black inked letters, was written – 'A story of an android'. That doesn't sound too Dickean, I thought. It sounds like something a fan would write, such as I. but I'm not so good at writing, so it seems. Behind me came a whisper, it was a female voice. It said – "Sink it down".
Sink what down? I looked around and saw no one there. Who was that voice? Everything seemed so unreal. I didn't even knew how I got here. How could I draw a portal and make it work? I remembered reading about the subconscious part of the mind which takes over the conscious parts and creates things that weren't in the process of the conscious mind to begin with. A rotten hand came swiftly from the black hole in the ground and pulled the book from my hands, leaving them bare and shaking from what has just happened.
Was that his… hand? The ground heaved and rattled. For a moment I thought hell broke loose and that I shall fall into the depths of the abyss, but instead of falling, something grew out of it. Out of the ground. Those were roots that were flowing, curling in some twisted way.
Growing out of the tomb of Philip K. Dick was a tree! It rose upward and curled to different sides here and there, twists and turned. The thing that surprised me the most was that the roots were made of paper and cardboard, and a lot of words were written around it. Black inked letters were printed on the stump, forming words, forming sentences. And on each branch, beside the paper leaves, which were colored in purple and blue, there were the fruits. But they weren't ordinary fruits. Each of the "fruit" was a book. A genuine book wrapped in hardcover and some were wrapped as paperbacks. Each had a unique name. The first book I've cropped from the tree was the 'Pris Stratton' book. I opened it and it was full of words, written beautifully and creatively, a whole book about Pris! A book that had a plot and characters and amazing structure. A book that was written by Philip K. Dick; A writer from the grave. A ghost writer. Among the books were also a book dedicated to his Ubik's sinister character - 'Patricia Conley'. Each book was a life-time work, a documentation of that character, her youth, her life.
2
Pat Conley worked at the Topeka Kibbutz when G.G. Ashwood found her and brought her up to Joe Chip for testing of her psychic abilities. She was very intelligent, sophisticated, clever and sneaky, and of course, quite gorgeous. She had a copper colored skin, tanned and muscular. Her tattoo on her forearm – Caveat Emptor – in Latin, 'Let the buyer beware', suggested that she is a precious good but might be also dangerous, as she proved to be, as the novel, 'Ubik' progressed. Although, at the new novel - written from the grave, her childhood life were exposed; Her parents worked with Ray Hollis, which was the nemesis of Runciter. They had psychic abilities, but they didn't know of the counter-abilities that their daughter possessed as she learned to hide it from them to her advantage. Her parents were Precogs; they could predict the future, but she could alter their predictions, even after they chose it. She could go back in time to change a detail, and everything around her would change according to those alterations. It had a sort of use as in the chaos theory, the butterfly effect, only it was in her control. She changed a small detail, but her mind would still be the same. She would change herself according to her desire, but her mind was aware of it all, and that was of her advantage. On the age of six, she wanted a fur bunny doll a friend of her had at the kibbutz she lived in. She tried asking for it, but the girl refused. She wanted it so badly that she was willing to sneak into that girl's house and steal the bunny. On her thoughts about attempting to creep out of the house, she got caught by her parents who pre-seen it and punished her, even before she had done anything. She felt so ashamed of her thoughts that she wanted to erase the whole thing from her mind. So, while sitting in her room, locked from the world, she imagined that she took the bunny doll from the girl's house before her parents predicted it. And although her parents did predict it once, when came another future precognition which looked similar to the first, they realized they are having a similar future that might be slightly changed, although still has the same fate, they dismissed that precognition, and she got away with it. And then suddenly, she saw the bunny in her hands, as if it were always there. When her parents called her from behind the door, she was surprised they haven't mention anything about the bunny, as if it wasn't a new issue for them, they just told her dinner was ready. She then recollected in her mind an explanation of what had really happened. Her parents caught her before she took the bunny because they thought she was about to do so, but she changed the past and took the bunny before they seen that future, as though she implanted a detail that they couldn't control. When they let her out of the room, they saw the bunny and took it away from her. She was sad and in her disappointment she imagined that she hadn't stole the doll. Then her parents never locked her in her room, but because she was so alone and they saw she desired that doll, they bought it for her, and therefore it appeared in her arms. But then, she thought. That means that I'm not punished, and I'm not locked in my room. She rose from the bed, wiping her tears from her eyes, still holding the ragged bunny under her arm, and reached for the door knob; it opened slowly. She was free.
