A Scanner Darkly

Donna. He remembered a song his great-uncle used to sing years ago, in German. “Ich seh’, wie em Engel im rosigen Duft/Sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet,” which his great-uncle had explained to him meant “I see, dressed like an angel, standing by my side to give me comfort,” the woman he loved, the woman who saved him (in the song). In the song, not in real life. His great-uncle was dead, and it was a long time ago he’d heard those words. His great-uncle, Germanborn, singing in the house, or reading aloud.

Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! 0 grauen voile Stille!
Od’ ist es um mich her. Nichts lebet auszer mir…

God, how dark it is here, and totally silent.
Nothing but me lives in this vacuum …

Even if his brain’s not burned out, he realized, by the time I’m back on duty somebody else will have been assigned to them. Or they’ll be dead or in the bucket or in federal clinics or just scattered, scattered, scattered. Burned out and destroyed, like me, unable to figure out what the fuck is happening. It has reached an end in any case, anyhow, for me. I’ve without knowing it already said good-by.

All I could ever do sometime, he thought, is play the holotapes back, to remember.

“I ought to go to the safe apartment …” He glanced around and became silent. I ought to go to the safe apartment and rip them off now, he thought. While I can. Later they might be erased, and later I would not have access. Fuck the department, he thought; they can bill me against the back salary. By every ethical consideration those tapes of that house and the people in it belong to me.

And now those tapes, they’re all I’ve got left out of all this; that’s all I can hope to carry away.

But also, he thought rapidly, to play the tapes back I need the entire holo transport cube-projection resolution system there in the safe apartment. I’ll need to dissemble it and cart it out of there piece by piece. The scanners and recording assemblies I won’t need; just transport, playback components, and especially all the cube-projection gear. I can do it bit by bit; I have a key to that apartment. They’ll require me to turn in the key, but I can get a dupe made right here before I turn it in; it’s a conventional Schlage lock key. Then I can do it! He felt better, realizing this; he felt grim and moral and a little angry. At everyone. Pleasure at how he would make matters okay.

On the other hand, he thought, if I ripped off the scanners and recording heads and like that, I could go on monitoring. On my own. Keep surveillance alive, as I’ve been doing. For a while at least. But I mean, everything in life is just for a while—as witness this.

The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place.

Not for their sake. For mine.

Yeah, he amended, for theirs too. In case something happens, like when Luckman choked. If someone is watching—if I am watching—I can notice and get help. Phone for help. Bring assistance to them right away, the right kind.

Otherwise, he thought, they could die and no one would be the wiser. Know or even fucking care.

In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and goings. Mark and if possible permanently record, so they’ll be remembered. For a better day, later on, when people will understand.

***

In Hank’s office he sat with Hank and a uniformed officer and the sweating, grinning informant Jim Barris, while one of Barris’s cassette tapes played on the table in front of them. Beside it, a second cassette recorded what it was playing, for a department duplicate.

“… Oh, hi. Look, I can’t talk.”

“When, then?”

“Call you back.”

“This can’t wait.”

“Well, what is it?”

“We intend to—”

Hank reached out, signaling to Barris to halt the tape. “Would you identify the voices for us, Mr. Barris?” Hank said.

“Yes,” Barris eagerly agreed. “The female’s voice is Donna Hawthorne, the male’s is Robert Arctor.”

“All right,” Hank said nodding, then glancing at Fred. He had Fred’s medical report before him and was glancing at it. “Go ahead with your tape.”

“… half of Southern California tomorrow night,” the male’s voice, identified by the informant as Bob Arctor’s, continued. “The Air Force Arsenal at Vandenberg AFB will be hit for automatic and semiautomatic weapons—”

Hank stopped reading the medical report and listened, cocking his scramble-suit-blurred head.