Options

  Options

  Robert Sheckley

  Options is a 1975 absurdist science fiction novel by Robert Sheckley.

  The story is ostensibly about a marooned space traveller's attempt to get a spare part for his starship, the Intrepid III. He has a robotic guard, programmed to guard him against all planetary dangers. But soon he discovers that the robot has not been programmed for the planet where they are, with comic results. However, the narrative later descends into a mass of diversions, non-sequiturs and meditations on the nature of authorship. Eventually the diversions take over the book to the extent that the author openly introduces an increasingly bizarre succession of deus ex machina in an attempt to get the novel back on track, but eventually admits defeat.

  Options

  Robert Shekley

  PART ONE

  NOTICE

  The rules of normalcy will be temporarily suspended while new rules are being drawn.

  The new rules may not be the same as the old rules. No hints can be given concerning the new rules.

  The best thing to do might be to avoid conflict situations, spend the rest of the day in bed, cool out.

  Or, if that sounds boring, I could take you for a ride.

  1. Use of "Simple Premises" Termed Misleading

  Tom Mishkin was tooling along through the Lesser Magellanic Cloud at a low multiple of the speed of light, moving along smartly but not really pushing it. His ship, the Intrepid III, was loaded with frozen South African lobster tails, tennis shoes, air conditioners, malted milk makers, and other general stores, bound for the settlement on Dora V. Mishkin was catnapping in a big command chair, lulled by the light patterns rippling across the control board and by the quiet snap and crackle of the circuit breakers. He was thinking of a new apartment he planned to buy in the town of Perth Amboy-bas-mer, ten miles due east of Sandy Hook. You could get a little peace and quiet in the suburbs, although the problem of commuting by submarine…

  One of the snaps turned into a clank.

  Mishkin sat upright, his pilot's ear always attuned for the Malfunction That Could Not Happen but frequently did.

  Clank, clank, clank, crunch.

  Yes. It had happened.

  Mishkin groaned — that special pilot's groan compounded of foreknowledge, fatalism, and heartburn. He could hear bad things happening deep in the guts of the ship. The Malfunction Telltale (supposedly for external impingement only) went violet, then red, then purple, then black. The ship's computer awoke from its dogmatic slumber long enough to growl, "Malfunction, malfunction, malfunction."

  "Thanks, I already got the idea," Mishkin said. "Where is it and what is it?"

  "Malfunction in Part L-1223A. Catalogue name: Port Side Crossover Lock Valve Assembly and Retainer Ring. Proximate cause of malfunction: 8 (eight) sheered bolts plus spiral fracture in retainer ring housing. Intermediate cause: angular pressure on aforesaid parts resulted in molecular changes in metal composition of aforementioned parts, resulting in the condition known as metal fatigue."

  "Yeah. But why?" Mishkin asked.

  "Conjecture as to primary cause: various bolts in said assembly torqued to unacceptable pressures, thus reducing the assembly's life to 84.3 hours rather than the 195.441 working years called for in the specifications."

  "Very nice," Mishkin said. "What's happening now?"

  "I have cut out the unit and shut down the main drive."

  "Up space creek without a paddle," Mishkin commented. "Can I use the main drive at all, just long enough to get to the nearest Ship Service Centre?"

  "Negative. Use of aforementioned malfunctioned Part would cause immediate and cumulative distortions in other parts of Main Drive, resulting in total disablement, implosion, and death, and a permanent black mark on your service record. You would also be billed for a new spaceship."

  "Well, I certainly don't want any black marks on my record," Mishkin said. "What should I do?"

  "Your only feasible option is to remove and replace the malfunctioned Part. Caches of spare parts have been established on various uninhabited planets to cover such a necessity. The planet nearest to your present coordinates is Harmonia II, 68 hours from here by secondary drive."

  "That sounds simple enough," Mishkin said.

  "It is, theoretically."

  "But practically?"

  "There are always complications."

  "Such as?"

  "If we knew that," the computer told him, "the complications wouldn't be very complicated, would they?"

  "I suppose not," Mishkin said. "All right, cut a course and let's get going!"

  "To hear is to obey," the computer said.

  USE OF "MULTIPLE PREMISES" TERMED CONFUSING

  In an exclusive press interview yesterday, Professor David Hume of Harvard declared that sequence did not imply causality. When asked to amplify, he pointed out that sequence is merely additive, not generative.

  We asked Dr Emmanuel Kant for his opinion on this statement. Professor Kant, in his Cal Tech study, looked badly shaken. "This," he said, "has awakened me from my dogmatic slumber."

  2. The Mad Synaesthesiast Strikes

  Mishkin leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. That was bad: derangement of various sense ratios, ideas of reference, hot flashes. He opened his eyes. That was not so good either. He reached for the Turn-off Bottle. It had a label that read, IF THE TRIP GOES BAD, DRINK THIS. He drank it, then noticed a label on the other side of the bottle that read, IF THE TRIP GOES BAD, DO NOT DRINK THIS.

  One of the radios was moaning softly to itself, "Oh, God, I'll be killed. I just know I'll be killed. Why did I ever go on this crazy trip? It wasn't good enough for me to just sit in the window at the Hallicrafters and dig the scene. No, I had to get active about it and where in hell am I now?"

  Mishkin had no time for the radio. He had problems of his own. At least he assumed that they were his own. It was difficult to be sure.

  He found that he had only imagined opening his eyes. Therefore he opened his eyes.

  But had he really? He considered opening his eyes again, in case he had only imagined it again, but stopped himself, thus avoiding a really nasty form of infinite regression.

  The radio was babbling again: "God, I don't know where I'm going. But if I knew where I was going I wouldn't go there. But not knowing where I'm going, I don't know how not to go there because I don't know where I'm going. Damn it, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. They told me it would be fun."

  Mishkin quickly drank the contents of the Turn-off Bottle. It couldn't get much worse he decided, which showed how much he knew.

  Firmness seemed called for. Mishkin sat up straight in his chair. He said, "Now hear this. We will proceed to act on the premise that we all are what we seem to be at this moment and that we will remain this way indefinitely. That is an order. Is it understood?"

  The turntable said, "Everything's going to goddamn hell and he's giving orders, yet. What's with you, Jack, you think this is a goddamned submarine or something?"

  "We must all pull together," Mishkin said, "else we shall all be pulled apart."

  "Platitudes, yet," the armchair said. "We could all be killed and he's spouting platitudes."

  Mishkin shuddered and drank the contents of the Turn-on Bottle, then put it down quickly before the bottle had a chance to drink him. Bottles had been known to do that; you could never tell when it was role-reversal time.

  "Now I shall land this ship," Mishkin said.

  "It's a dreary premise," the control board said. "But go ahead and play games if you want to."

  "Shut up," Mishkin said. "You're a control board."

  "What would you say if I told you that I am a middle-aged psychiatrist from New York City and that your act of labelling me a control board — by which
you mean a to-be-controlled board — or bored — shows where your head is at, powerstrugglewise?"

  Mishkin decided to drink the contents of the Turn-on Bottle. He was in enough trouble as it was. With an enormous effort he blew his nose. Lights flashed.

  A man in a blue uniform came through the baggage room and said, "All tickets, please." Mishkin gave him his ticket, which the man punched.

  Mishkin punched a button, which took it like a man. There were groans and squeaks.

  Was he coming down?

  3. New "Plausibility Generator" said to Cure Schizophrenia

  The cache on Harmonia was a large brightly lighted structure, all stainless steel and glass, looking irrevocably like a Miami Beach supermarket. Mishkin drove his spaceship in, turned off the engine, and put the key in his pocket. He walked down the gleaming aisles past shelves loaded with trays of transistors, six-pacs of silicones, vapour recovery systems, chuck roasts, freezer-pacs of glycol brine, baby spectrometers, spark plugs, coaxial loudspeakers, tuner modules, foil-sealed vitamin B6 capsules, and nearly everything else that the far-travelling tripper of inner/outer space might require.

  He came to the central communications panel. There he asked for Part L-1223A.

  He waited. Minutes passed.

  "Hey!" Mishkin called out. "What happened? What's up?"

  "Terribly sorry," the control panel replied. "I'm afraid I was woolgathering. I've been having rather a trying time of it."

  "What's been the matter?" Mishkin asked.

  "Difficulties, many difficulties," the panel said. "Really, you can have no idea. My head is positively swimming. I speak figuratively, of course."

  "You talk funny for a control panel," Mishkin said, suspiciously.

  "These days control panels come equipped with personalities. It makes us seem less inhuman, if you know what I mean."

  "So what's been going wrong around here?" Mishkin asked.

  "Well, I suppose a lot of it is me," the control panel said. "You see, when you equip a computer with a personality, well, it's like giving him the ability to feel. And if we can feel then you can't expect us to do the old, soulless thing any more. I mean to say, my personality makes it impossible for me to do a robot-like job, even though essentially I am a robot and the job I have to do should be done in essentially a robot-like fashion.

  But I can't do that, I'm absentminded, I have my bad days, my moods… Does that make any sense to you?"

  "Of course it does," Mishkin said. "Now, what about that part?"

  "It isn't inside here. It's outside."

  "Where outside?"

  "About fifteen miles away, or possibly twenty."

  "But what is it doing outside?"

  "Well, originally we had all the parts stockpiled here inside the cache. All very logical and convenient. Perhaps it was too simple for the human mind to endure, for all of a sudden some humans got to thinking, "What would happen if a disabled ship crashed right on top of the cache?" That freaked everybody out, so the problem was fed to a computer, and the answer came up, "Decentralize!" The engineers and planners nodded and said, "Decentralize, of course, why didn't we think of that?" So orders were cut and work teams came out and stuck parts all over the area. And then everybody sat back and said, "Well, that's OK now." And then the trouble really began."

  "What sort of trouble?" Mishkin asked.

  "Well, humans had to leave the cache and go out on to the surface of Harmonia in order to get what they needed. And that meant danger. Alien planets are dangerous, you know, because alien things happen on them, and one does not know how to respond, and by the time one figures out what the situation is and how to deal with it, it has already come and gone and maybe killed you."

  "What sort of alien things?" Mishkin asked.

  "I am not allowed to mention specifics," the computer said. "If I did, it would all get much trickier."

  "Why?"

  "Successful adaptation to alien dangers requires the broad-spectrum ability to recognize what constitutes danger and what does not. If I were to mention only one or two possibilities you would become overconditioned — the so-called tunnel effect — thus limiting your perceptions of other risk situations. Besides, it isn't necessary."

  "Why not?"

  "Because provision has been made. You will be accompanied outside by a SPER robot.

  If we have one in stock. There was a mix-up in the last shipment…"

  The control panel became silent. Mishkin said, "What…"

  "Please," said the panel, "I'm checking the inventory."

  Mishkin waited. In a few moments the panel said, "Yes, we do have a SPER robot in stock. It came in the last shipment. It would have been pretty gross if that had been missing, too."

  "What is this robot?" Mishkin asked. "What is it supposed to do?"

  "The initials stand for Special Purpose Environmental Response robot. These machines are programmed to respond to the conditions of a specific alien world. They detect whatever might constitute noxious stimuli to a human, warn him, defend him, and suggest appropriate counter-measures. With a SPER robot you'll be as safe as if you were back in New York."

  "Thanks a lot," Mishkin said.

  4. Chicken Little Claims Personification most Common Sign of Impaired Sense Ratios

  The SPER robot was short and rectangular. His lacquered, scarlet case was most attractive. He walked on four spindly limbs and had four more on the upper part of his control case. He resembled a tarantula disguised as a robot.

  He said to Mishkin. "OK, sonny, let's get cracking."

  "Will it be very dangerous?" Mishkin asked.

  "Piece of cake. I could do it blindfolded."

  "What should I watch out for?"

  "I'll let you know."

  Mishkin shrugged and followed the robot past the checkout counter and through the swinging doors out on to the surface of Harmonia. He figured that the robot knew what he was doing. But Mishkin was wrong. His lack of knowledge was monstrous, ineluctable, and strangely touching. Perhaps only a virgin mounted on a unicorn could have been quite so dumb as Mishkin.

  (Of course, his robot buddy was not exactly the last word in smart, either. Add his ignorance to Mishkin's and you get a really big negative number equal to the cases of pleurisy since the beginning of the second Peloponnesian War.)

  Jam, hot cross buns, fellatio, the colour of lips, these were on his mind as Mishkin stepped tumulously on to the dubious surface of Harmonia.

  "How long do the hallucinations continue?" Mishkin asked.

  "Why ask me?" said the kindly chef with the battered harmonica. "I, too, am an hallucination."

  "How can I tell which things are real and which are not?"

  "Try litmus paper," advised Chuang-tzu.

  "The whole deal is this," said the robot. "You gotta do exactly like I say — otherwise you're real dead in a hurry. Got it?"

  "Got it," said Mishkin. They were strolling a purple plain. The wind was from the east at five miles an hour, and one could hear the electronic sound of birds.

  "When I tell you to git down," the robot went on, "you gotta hit the deck fast. There'll be no time for blinking and stumbling. I just hope that your reflexes are in good shape."

  "I thought you said it wasn't dangerous here," Mishkin said.

  "So, big deal, you've caught me in a contradiction," the robot sneered. "Maybe I had my reasons for lying to you."

  "What were they?"

  "Maybe I've got my reasons for not telling you," the robot said. "Just listen to what I say now. Hit it!"

  Mishkin, too, had heard the faint, high-pitched drone. He threw himself on the grass, bruising his nose in his eagerness to comply. He could see the robot swivelling, two blasters in his metal hands.

  "What is it?" Mishkin asked.

  "Mating call of the six-legged proto-Brontostegosaurus. When the durned critters are in heat, they'll try to make it with anything."

  "Can't they see that I am not an appropriate object for their affecti
ons?"

  "Sure, but it takes a few minutes for the message to get through to their brains, since the proto-B is not exactly anyone's idea of bright. And in the meantime, you got twenty-three tons of inflamed critter squatting on your head."

  "So where is it?" Mishkin asked.

  "It's coming," the robot said grimly, twirling the blasters by their trigger guards.

  The drone increased in volume and amplitude. Then Mishkin saw something that looked like a butterfly with a six-foot wingspan come fluttering past, droning merrily. It ignored them and went off stage left.

  "What was that?" Mishkin asked.

  "It sure as hell looked like a butterfly with a six-foot wingspan," the robot said.

  "That's what I thought. But you said…"

  "Yes, yes, yes," the robot said testily. "It's obvious enough what happened. That butterfly critter has learned how to imitate the mating cry of the proto-B. Mimicry is a commonplace phenomenon throughout the galaxy."

  "Commonplace? It took you by surprise."

  "What's so surprising about that? It was the first time I ever encountered that butterfly critter."

  "You should have known about it," Mishkin said.

  "Wrong. I'm programmed only to detect and cope with situations and things that'll be dangerous to humans. That big old flapper couldn't hurt you unless you tried to swallow it, so naturally enough I've got nothing on it in my memory files. You gotta realize that I'm not a goddamned encyclopedia. I deal strictly with dangerous stuff, not with every damned thing that walks or swims or flies or crawls or burrows or however it happens to get around. You get my meaning, son?"

  "I get it," Mishkin said. "I suppose you know what you're doing."

  "That's what I happen to have been built for," the robot said. "C'mon, let's get on with this promenade."

  5. The Prepared Statement