Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Chapter 6: The New Neighbor
John Isidore hears a TV playing somewhere below him in the building. That’s it. That’s all it takes. He grabs a cube of margarine and goes downstairs to meet whoever is there.
Think about that. This guy lives completely alone in a giant decaying apartment building. He hasn’t had a neighbor in who knows how long. So the moment he hears a television set, he practically runs down the stairs with a gift. A cube of margarine. That’s his welcome basket.
The Knock
The second Isidore knocks on the door, the TV doesn’t just go quiet. It stops existing. Dick uses this great phrase, “scared into its grave by his knock.” Whoever is inside that apartment does not want to be found.
Isidore can feel it. Someone is in there, backing away from the door, trying to become invisible. But he doesn’t give up. He stands there and starts talking through the door. Introduces himself, mentions his job, his boss Mr. Hannibal Sloat. He’s trying to sound reputable. Like a normal person with a normal life who just wants to say hello.
And then the door opens. Just barely.
Pris
There’s a girl inside. Young, dark-haired, with big eyes and long black lashes. But the first thing you notice is the fear. Dick describes her like someone who was broken and then put back together wrong. She’s cringing, holding onto the door for support, trying to force a smile.
Isidore gets it right away. She thought the building was empty. She picked this place specifically because she thought nobody would be here. And now here’s this guy with margarine.
But here’s what makes Isidore such a good character. He doesn’t care that she’s scared of him. He doesn’t care that she clearly wants him to leave. He’s just happy. Someone else is in the building. He has a neighbor.
He tries small talk. Mentions Buster Friendly, the TV personality that everyone in this world watches obsessively. The girl doesn’t seem to know who Buster Friendly is. That’s weird. Everyone knows Buster Friendly.
When Isidore asks where she came from, she shuts it down. “I don’t see that it matters.” Cold. Direct. No room for follow-up questions.
The Kipple Speech
Here’s where the chapter gets really fun. Isidore looks past her into the apartment and sees the place is a disaster. Not from her, from years of abandonment. The furniture is rotted. Everything is falling apart. He offers to help her raid other apartments in the building for better stuff.
She says she’ll do it herself. Alone.
This shocks Isidore. He’s tried going into those empty apartments. Once. Just once. They’re full of dead people’s things. Photographs. Clothes. The belongings of people who either died or left Earth and never came back. Hundreds of apartments, all full of ghosts.
And then Isidore gives his speech about kipple. This is one of the most famous passages in the whole book. Kipple is useless junk, he explains. Junk mail, empty matchbooks, gum wrappers, yesterday’s newspaper. And when nobody is around, kipple reproduces itself. You leave some kipple in your apartment at night, by morning there’s twice as much.
“There’s the First Law of Kipple,” he tells her. “Kipple drives out nonkipple.”
It’s like entropy, but for stuff. And Isidore has accepted that kipple always wins. You can fight it temporarily, hold it back in one room, one apartment. But eventually kipple takes everything. The entire universe is moving toward total, absolute kippleization.
I love this concept. Dick took the idea of entropy and made it into something you can see and touch. We all know this feeling. The junk drawer that keeps growing. The closet that fills itself. The inbox that never stays at zero. Kipple is real. Dick just gave it a name.
The Coldness
Isidore connects kipple to Mercerism, the empathy religion. The only thing fighting the decay of the universe is Wilbur Mercer’s upward climb. Connection. Empathy. People holding onto each other.
But when Isidore mentions his empathy box, he accidentally reveals something about himself. He almost passed the IQ test. He’s a “special,” a chickenhead. Not very smart by society’s standards. He catches himself too late, and he sees it in her face. The flicker of disgust.
She tells him flatly that his kind being accepted by Mercerism is, in her opinion, a “major objection” to the whole religion.
That is brutal. Isidore has just opened his heart to this person, shared his one source of spiritual comfort, and she basically tells him that a religion that includes people like him is a religion she wants nothing to do with.
He starts to leave. Margarine still in his hand, now warm and damp from squeezing it.
But then she calls him back. She needs his help after all. For the furniture. She’s practical like that. Cold, but practical.
The Name Game
The chapter ends with a small bombshell. When Isidore asks her name, she pauses. Then says, “I’m Rachael Rosen.”
Isidore, bless him, immediately asks if she’s connected to the Rosen Association, the biggest android manufacturer in the system. A complicated expression crosses her face. Then she backtracks. No, she says. Her name is actually Pris Stratton. That’s her married name. Call me Miss Stratton.
So she gave a fake name first, then corrected herself. And the fake name she chose was Rachael Rosen. That’s not a random detail. Something is going on with this girl that goes way beyond being shy or antisocial.
Isidore doesn’t push it. He just stands there in the dusty hallway, alone again, holding his unwanted margarine. But for the first time in a long time, there’s someone else in the building. And for Isidore, that’s enough.