Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Chapter 4: Meeting the Rosens
Before Rick can go hunt androids, his boss sends him on a field trip. To Seattle. To prove that his testing equipment actually works.
That’s the setup for Chapter 4. And honestly, the tension here is not about violence. It’s about something scarier: what if your tools are broken and you don’t know it?
Bryant Lays Down the Rules
Inspector Bryant gives Rick the rundown. There were eight escaped Nexus-6 androids on the list. Dave Holden retired two before one of them, Max Polokov, lasered him during a test. Six remain. All believed to be in Northern California.
But Bryant doesn’t just hand over the case. He has a condition. Before Rick chases anyone, he needs to fly to the Rosen Association, the corporation that manufactures the Nexus-6 brain unit, and validate his Voigt-Kampff empathy test against their latest models.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Bryant tells Rick that the test subjects will be a mix of androids and humans, but Rick won’t know which is which. Only Bryant and the Rosens will know. If Rick’s test correctly identifies every android, he’s good to go. If he misidentifies a human as an android, or misses an android entirely, they have a serious problem.
Bryant also drops a disturbing detail. A group of psychiatrists in Leningrad has been warning that certain human patients, schizophrenics with something called “flattening of affect,” might fail the empathy test too. Meaning they’d register as android. Meaning a bounty hunter could kill a real person thinking they were a machine.
Rick dismisses the odds. A million to one. But you can see it bothers him.
The Rosen Association
Rick lands on the roof of the Rosen building and immediately meets Rachael Rosen. She’s young, black-haired, wearing big dust-filtering glasses, and clearly annoyed. Whatever Bryant said to them on the phone, it wasn’t friendly.
Rachael is sharp. She knows Rick is a bounty hunter. She tells him so. She asks if he has any difficulty viewing an android as “inert.” Rick shrugs and nods. He wants to get to work.
But then he sees their animals.
The Owl and the Raccoon
This is the part that really gets me. The Rosen Association keeps real animals. A raccoon named Bill. An owl named Scrappy. Rick has never seen a raccoon in real life. He pulls out his Sidney’s catalogue to look up the price, and there is no price. Raccoons are so rare that the catalogue just lists the last known sale. Same with owls. Sidney’s has them marked as extinct.
Rick asks Rachael how much for the owl. She says they would never sell it. And even if they did, he couldn’t afford it.
Here’s what Dick does so well. Rick is about to determine the fate of a massive corporation. His test results could force the Rosen Association to pull every Nexus-6 off the market. But in this moment, standing next to an owl that shouldn’t exist, all he can think about is how much he wants a real animal. He hates his electric sheep. He hates pretending.
And there is a parallel he notices himself. An electric animal is a kind of inferior robot. An android is a kind of superior electric animal. Both are imitations of life. Both bother him.
The Power Play
When they go downstairs, Rick meets Eldon Rosen, Rachael’s uncle. The old man is nervous. Shaky hands, thinning hair, harried look. And Rick notices something that surprises him: they’re afraid of him.
Think about that. Rick is one low-level bounty hunter from San Francisco. The Rosen Association is one of the biggest corporations in the solar system. Their android production is so tied to the Mars colonization program that if they go down, colonization goes with them. But right now, in this room, Rick has all the power. His test results could reshape their entire business.
Rick finds this quietly pleasing. He even gets a small victory when he spots a February supplement to the Sidney’s catalogue sitting on an end table, three days before its public release. The Rosens clearly have insider access to animal pricing data. Rick confiscates it.
He also corrects Eldon when the man calls him “officer.” Rick says, “I’m not a peace officer. I’m a bounty hunter.” It’s a small thing. But it matters to him.
Rachael Volunteers
Rick sets up his Voigt-Kampff apparatus on a rosewood coffee table. The test works by measuring two involuntary physical responses: capillary dilation in the face (the blushing reaction) and muscle tension in the eyes. Both happen automatically when a person has an empathic response to a morally troubling scenario. Androids have the biological hardware for these reactions, but the right stimuli don’t trigger them.
Rachael asks to go first. Eldon confirms it. She may be an android, he says. They’re hoping Rick can tell.
And that’s where the chapter ends. Right on that edge. Is Rachael human or not? Can Rick’s equipment handle the Nexus-6? What happens if it can’t?
My Take
What I love about this chapter is how Dick turns a corporate meeting into a thriller. Nobody fires a weapon. Nobody runs. It’s just a guy with a briefcase walking into a building. But the stakes are enormous, and every character knows it.
The Rosens want the test to fail. If the Voigt-Kampff can’t detect Nexus-6 models, then bounty hunters can’t retire them, and the Rosen Association keeps selling. Rick needs the test to work. His entire career depends on it. And somewhere between these two interests sits Rachael, who may or may not be what she appears to be.
Dick also keeps pushing his central question. In a world full of imitations, electric sheep, android people, scheduled emotions, what is the reliable test for authenticity? Rick is about to find out if his answer holds up.