• Complain

Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)

Here you can read online Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.) full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Philip K. Dick The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)

The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.): summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Philip K. Dick: author's other books


Who wrote The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.) — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Philip K. Dick
The Unteleported Man
1
Over Rachmael ben Applebaum's head floated a creditor jet-balloon, and from within its articulation-circuit a flat but handsome, masculine artificial, however voice boomed, magnified so that not only Rachmael but everyone else crowding the ped-runnels heard it. The amplification was designed this way; you were singled out and simultaneously exposed; public ridicule, the jeers of the always-present crowds, was brought into play as a force working at you... and, Rachmael reflected, for the creditor, free.
"Mr. Applebaum!" The hearty, rich but machine-sponsored voice echoed, rolled and boomed, and a thousand human heads rotated in expectation, glanced up with amused interest, saw the creditor jet-balloon and spied also its target: Rachmael ben Applebaum trying to get from the parking lot where he had left his flapple and into the offices of Lies Incorporated, a distance of only two thousand yards but enough to make him visible so as to become the creditor balloon's target.
"Okay," Rachmael grated, and strode on, not breaking gait; he made for the fluoron-illuminated entrance of the private police agency and did not look up; he pretended as if this were possible to ignore a sight which, in the last three years, he had learned to know fully.
"Mr. Applebaum," the balloon boomed. "As of this Wednesday, November 8, 2014, you owe, as inheritor of your late father's assets and debts, the sum of four million poscreds to Trails of Hoffman Limited, a major backer in your late father's "
"Okay!" Rachmael said violently, halting, peering up in futile anguish... the desire to puncture, deflate and bring down the balloon was overwhelming yet what could he do? By UN ordinance, a creditor could hire such harassment; this was legal.
And the grinning crowd knew it. Saw in this for them a brief but amusing ent-show: entertainment. However, he did not blame them; it was not their fault because they had over the years been trained this way. All the info and edu media, controlled by the "disinterested" UN public affairs bureaus, had tinkered with this facet of modern man's complex character: his ability to enjoy the suffering of someone else whom he did not even know.
"I cannot," Rachmael said, "pay. And you know it." Above, the jet-balloon heard; it had exceeding marvelous aud receptors. But it did not believe him or care if what he said was true; its job was to hound him, not to seek the truth. Standing on the runnel as it automatically carried him along, Rachmael said, as reasonably as possible, "At present I have no funds, because continuously up to now, one by one, I've paid off as many of Applebaum Enterprise's creditors as I can."
Tauntingly, the mechanical voice from above boomed, "At three sigs on the poscred. Some settling of accounts."
Rachmael said, "Give me time."
"Plans, Mr. Applebaum?" The voice twisted with scorn.
After a pause he said, "Yes." But he did not specify; it depended in part on what he obtained from the private police agency, Lies Incorporated. If that was anything. But over the vidphone at least he did think he had detected a certain sympathetic resonance from the master proprietor of the police agency, Matson Glazer-Holliday.
Now, in five minutes, in a formal screening-interview with a Lies Incorporated psych-rep, Rachmael would find out learn just how far the private police agency, which after all had to survive the competition, had to stand up to the UN and the lesser titans of the nine planet system, would go in staking a man who was not merely broke but who owed owed for the wreckage of an industrial empire which had collapsed, carrying its operator and owner, Maury Applebaum, to his evidently voluntary death.
Evidently. A good word, and a big one, like any word pertaining to death. As the runnel, despite the lurking, booming creditor balloon above, carried Rachmael toward the sanctuary of the shifting-color doorway he thought, maybe they can help me there, too.
Because it had just never quite seemed reasonable to him that his father, and god knew he was familiar with his father, would laser himself to death due to economic collapse... although admittedly, as subsequent events had proved, that collapse was terminal for Applebaum Enterprise.
"You must pay," the jet-balloon howled. "Trails of Hoffman insists; your petition of bankruptcy was turned down by the UN courts you, Mr. Rachmael ben Applebaum, are legally liable for the sum of "
The voice abruptly vanished as Rachmael crossed the threshold of the private inter-planetary police agency, and the thoroughly soundproof rexeroid door slid shut after him.
"Yes, sir," the robot receptionist, not jeering but friendly, said to him; what a contrast with the circus outside.
"Miss Holm," Rachmael said, and heard his voice shake. The creditor balloon had gotten to him; he was trembling and perspiring.
"Syn-cof?" the receptionist asked sympathetically. "Or Martian fnikjuice tea, while you wait?"
Rachmael, getting out a genuine Tampa, Florida Garcia y Vega cigarillo, murmured, "I'll just sit, thanks." He lit the cigar, waited. For Miss Freya Holm, whatever or whoever she was and looked like.
A soft voice said, almost timidly, "Mr. ben Applebaum? I'm Miss Holm. If you'll come into my office " She held the door open, and she was perfection; his Garcia y Vega cigarillo dwindled, neglected in the ashtray as he rose to his feet. She, no more than twenty, chitin-black long hair that hung freely down her shoulders, teeth white as the glossy bond of the expensive UN info mags... he stared at her, at the small girl in the gold-spray bodice and shorts and sandals, with the single camellia over her left ear, stared and thought, And this is my police protection.
"Sure." Numbly, he passed her, entered her small, contemporarily furnished office; in one glance he saw artifacts from the extinct cultures of six planets. "But Miss Holm," he said, then, candidly, "maybe your employers didn't explain; there's pressure here. I've got one of the most powerful economic syndromes in the Sol system after me. Trails of Hoffman "
"THL," Miss Holm said, seating herself at her desk and touching the on ofher aud recorder, "is the owner of Dr. Sepp von Einem's teleportation construct and hence monopolistically has made obsolete the hyper-see liners and freighters of Applebaum Enterprise." On her desk before her she had a folio, which she consulted. "You see, Mr. Rachmael ben Applebaum " She glanced up. "I wish to keep you in data-reference distinct from your father, the late Maury Applebaum. So may I call you Rachmael?"
"Y-yes," he said, nettled by her coolness, her small, firm poise and the folio which lay before her; long before he had consulted Listening Instructional Educational Services or, as the pop mind called it in UN-egged-on derision, Lies Incorporated the police
agency had gathered, with its many data-monitors, the totality of information pertaining to him and to the collapse from abrupt technological obsolescence of the once formidable Applebaum Enterprise. And
"Your late father," Freya Holm said, "died evidently at his own instigation. Officially the UN police list it as Selbstmort... suicide. We however " She paused, consulted the folio. "Hmm."
Rachmael said, "I'm not satisfied, but I'm resigned." After all, he could not bring back his heavy, red-faced, nearsighted and highly over-taxed father, Selbstmort, in the official German of the UN, or not. "Miss Holm," he began, but she cut him off, gently.
"Rachmael, the Telpor electronic entity of Dr. Sepp von Einem, researched and paid for, developed in the several inter-plan labs of Trails of Hoffman, could do nothing else than bring chaos to the drayage industry; Theodoric Ferry, who is chairman of the board of THL, must have known this when he financed Dr. von Einem at his Schweinfort labs where the Telpor breakthrough occurred. And yet THL owned outside of your father's the largest single holding of the now-defunct Applebaum Enterprise.
Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)»

Look at similar books to The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.). We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.)»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Unteleported Man (aka Lies, Inc.) and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.