• Substance D

    … The phone book had only one number in it; you called that number for whoever you wanted. Listed on page after page and in your wallet you had that number, the number, scribbled down on different slips and cards, for different people. And if you forgot the number, you couldn't call anybody. When you called it, the phone number was out of order, or if it wasn't they said, "Sorry, you have the wrong number." So you called it again, the same number, and got the person you wanted.

    When a person went to the doctor--there was only one, and he specialized in everything—there was only one medicine. After he had diagnosed you he prescribed the medicine. You took the slip to the pharmacy to have it filled, but the pharmacist never could read what the doctor had written, so he gave you the only pill he had, which was aspirin. And it cured whatever you had.

    If you broke the law, there was only the one law, which everybody broke again and again. The cop laboriously wrote it all up, which law, which infraction each time, the same one. And there was always the same penalty for any breaking of the law, from jaywalking to treason: the penalty was the death penalty, and there was agitation to have the death penalty removed, but it could not be because then, for like jaywalking, there would be no penalty at all. So it stayed on the books and finally the community burned out entirely and died. No, not burned out--they had been that already. They faded out, one by one, as they broke the law, and sort of died.

    Phillip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly