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For a long time he stood
gazing at the owl, who dozed on its perch. A thousand
thoughts came into his mind, thoughts about the war, about
the days when owls had fallen from the sky; he remembered
how in his childhood it had been discovered that species
upon species had become extinct and how the 'papes
had reported it each day -- foxes one morning, badgers the
next, until people had stopped reading the perpetual animal
obits.
He thought, too, about his
need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once
more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he
had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny
of an object, he thought. It doesn't know I exist. Like the
androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of
another. He had never thought of this before, the
similarity between an electric animal and an andy. The
electric animal, he pondered, could be considered a subform
of the other, a kind of vastly inferior robot. Or,
conversely, the android could be regarded as a highly
developed, evolved version of the ersatz animal. Both
viewpoints repelled him.
Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick |
