Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 4

Kathy and Jason are in Kathy's small single room apartment. Jason dislikes the small space and Kathy's screwdrivers made from orange juice and cheap gin and soon enough, absurdly, picks up that Kathy has two apartments and this one is the shit one, and resents that as well. To complete the bad tinder date feel Jason notices a copy of Remembrances of Things Past by Proust on Kathy's nightstand, and yes, I only know that book as a Monty Python reference. She's not read it very far, and Jason admits he only knows it as his show did a dramatic recreation of a scene one time. Jason then notices Kathy has a Cheerful Charlie, which is some kind of talking robot doll. He starts talking to it and just when he's about to turn it off it says "hey, I know how you can get your name, game, and fame back! Go talk to your girlfriend." When Jason asks who that is, the Charlie says "Heather Hart." (Oh, no wonder I was thinking of Mary Hart earlier; Jason's showbiz girlfriend has the same last name.) Jason weirdly takes this in stride, and starts to ask about Kathy, but Kathy immediately hauls away the Cheerful Charlie, as she doesn't want it snitching on her. This is literally her given reason, and I'm glad we've come to a place where real life and Phillip K. Dick novels coincide, as Cheerful Charlie is clearly an Amazon Echo except with a better interface. This leads to Jason quoting a line from Finnegan's Wake (which Kathy has not read but seen the film four times) and when Jason, who's met the director of said film on his show offers to tell what the man is really like, Kathy stridently refuses. She wants to believe what she wants to believe, much in the same way she's more or less respecting that Jason is who he believes he is.

Jason then lets slip that he is a six. Kathy has only a vague idea of what that means, but remembers that Jason said that, cranking Jason's paranoia up another notch. Increasingly, Jason is trying to manage Kathy like he managed Heather and Marilyn: in this case, trying to keep his date smooth sailing with a police informant. She removes the purple tracker dots from his documents. Talking about Kathy's cat leads immediately back to sharp reefs as Kathy manages to move from her cat to Mr. McNulty, her handler. Jason manages to squeeze out of Kathy that most of her money goes into Other Apartment, where she has some sort of weekly time-share arrangement with one or two other girls. Possibly not liking admitting things, Kathy confesses that her husband is alive, and in a gulag in Alaska. She's working with the police to keep him alive and safe, as well as for the money. So she's sending other people up the river to save one, and estimates she's sent about "150" up shit creek.

Jason says that this is evil, which naturally pisses off Kathy. She says she gets letter from her husband, Jack, "all the time", which Jason points out are likely fakes and Jack is already dead. Kathy weeps with almost shocking intensity at this, so Jason lies and rationalizes "well it's probably cheaper to keep Jack alive and have him write letters than fake it", which gets Kathy to calm down. Man, lots of Tinder date memories for me here!

Jason realizes Kathy is in an impossible situation from which she can't get out, but tries to get Kathy to give up this little life. She ignores him of course, but says Jason is a good person for trying. Speaking of good person, apparently Jack gave full permission for Kathy to have sidepiece action. And besides, Kathy hadn't met Jason before, and Kathy was in a psychiatric hospital for eight weeks one time, and she met two people who were totally convinced they were celebrates, too. Huh. Maybe she's moved back to her delusional stage again...anyway, that's why it was alright for her to fuck a guy who thought he was Mickey Quinn named David, because it was Destiny, and she'd still pick Jack anyway because she cares for Jack more than the rest of humanity, and no Jason, I'm not going to turn you in after we fuck, I love you.

Jason objects, saying they've known each other only a few hours, but Kathy is very earnest and serious on the love issue.

They decamp to an "Italian-type" restaurant where Kathy seems to know the staff, and both sit down to what Kathy describes as "really authentic" and Jason describes as "fucking awful" Italian food. Jason now senses some crisis building in Kathy, and asks her what a fit from her would look like. She responds "toddler style tantrum with truckstomp profanity directed at anyone impinging on my freedom." And yes, she does feel like that's coming on, which makes sense, she hasn't been taking her medication. Kathy doesn't take her daily psych meds because it fucks with her mind. Kathy sees that Jason doesn't want to be involved with Kathy's incipient psychological episode, and invites him to leave. Jason refuses, both out of concern for her and convinced she'll rat out Jason instantly if he does. Kathy says that the people around her will take care of her, like that degenerate drunk at the bar, or that cook back there in the tiny kitchen who lacks A/C. Jason challenges her to take some fuckin' responsibility for her actions, and Kathy points out Jason can go fuck himself, Kathy has not hurt Jason. Jason gives up, realizing he's totally in the thrall of this mentally ill police informant and they both know it.

Kathy tries some sexy talk about how her love is a growing vine reaching for Jason, and Jason flags down a waiter and discovers they don't serve hard liquor here. Any sort of managing of Kathy now gone, Jason is honest with Kathy and said "this place sucks, let's bail." This provokes the psychological attack in Kathy. She begins screaming, throwing herself on the floor while swearing like she's channeling the collective unconscious profanity of the world's longshoreman. The manager and the waiter of the shitty Italian place, after assessment, pick up Kathy and dump her out on the street, and then extract a bribe of $300 from Jason to keep the cops out of it.

Under the neon sign of Senor Luigi's or whatever, Kathy recovers. Jason realizes she called his bluff and won. She may not know much, but her manipulation skills are first rate.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 3

Jason and the hotel clerk (pencil mustache, slightly effeminate, telepathic) are in the clerk's quibble, driving to Watts. [Note: I'm not sure of a quibble is distinct from a skyfly, as right now the clerk is driving but quibbles also might be able to fly. I'm picturing an old Checker Marathon.) Because of the clerk's telepathy, he functionally has access to Jason's thoughts just like we do and comments on them. An elderly black man is crossing the street, and the clerk comments nowadays black people are like whooping cranes, rare and protected by extensive laws. So, fun story: apparently the civil rights struggle ended with African-Americans getting what they wanted: equal protection under the law, etc. The price they paid for this was genocide, with a forced sterilization program and the right to only have one child per couple. With the later police state, this has resulted in all [surviving] black people actually *retaining* all their old fashioned legal rights while everybody else lost theirs. The sight of the black man causes the clerk to say "I don't like your racist views, even if you are paying me $500". Jason responds "there's enough blacks alive to suit me." Watts is not only run down but abandoned.

They reach their destination, a abandoned restaurant. The clerk and Jason go inside, where a wall opens to reveal a small but well organized and equipped workshop. Kathy is the forger - Jason thinks she's 15 or 16, [not much in tits, but with nice legs, he thinks] though for reasons that will soon become clear I sorta doubt this and think she must be in her mid 20s. Maybe she's like Sissy Spacek in Badlands(1973) in that was in her mid 20s in that role but really does look 16? Not sure.

Anyway, Kathy charges Jason $2000 of his $5K wad o' cash for comprehensive documents, but appears to really know her fake document shit. At the same time, she's clearly a little lonely and intrigued by this well dressed non-student who suddenly needs all the docs. She hasn't heard of Jason, but like the clerk, quickly buys that for some reason Jason is a man who believes he was a big celebrity until yesterday. We learn her husband is dead, killed in national service. She then makes Jason guess her age (he guesses 16, she say it is 20) and then guesses his age to be "about 50" which enrages Jason, who tells between clenched teeth he's 43. Kathy is sorry for the accidental offense and turns to sorting Jason's shit out. But the troublesome conversation continues. She asks about Jason's career, and all the people he'd fucked over to get to the top. Jason (who in Chapter one briefly thought about exactly this) denies fucking people over is a thing, saying it's a business so talent and rationality - he doesn't use the term meritocracy, but Dick would definitely find it amusing to use a term created specifically to mock the whole idea used with a straight face.

As she's counter-fitting, Kathy confesses she thinks Jason is insane, which on the basis of his story and beliefs only makes sense. Eddie (the hotel clerk) is lurking in the background, smoking a big cigar. Kathy then gets into a booth with Jason on some counterfeit pretext [] and confesses both Eddie and herself are police informants. She shows him the subtle purple dots on his cards that act as tracking beacons and as microphones. She tells him this because she wants to help Jason escape. Her deal: get rid of all the tracking stuff on his cards and docs, slip Eddie an extra $500 to keep quiet, and spend the night with Kathy. Jason is angry because he has no choice but to agree. Or does he? He attempts to say "fuck it then' and strides out of the little shop. Kathy stops him, first saying he's already got a tracker on him, and, in an eerie replay of Mason trying to put a lid on Jason says "cmon, one night, and you get everything. That's all I'm asking." So Jason, completely outplayed, agrees. Now operating under Phillip K. Dick levels of paranoia, he realizes this could all be a grift to squeeze a little extra money out of Jason before the big net descends.

So once again, Jason is attached to a female who he has to make happy, or else.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 2

 Jason wakes up. He is not in the hospital.

He's in a fleabag hotel. The marks of the jellyfish are gone. Hanging in the closet is his silk suit, which improbably has that gigantic wad of cash he was flashing earlier. Understandably confused and on the brink of panic, Jason dresses and unsteadily shuffels to the lobby and its phone, as hotels as nasty as this don't have phones in their rooms. Using the payphone he calls his agent and his attorney, but neither have heard of Jason Taverner and blow him off as a crank. Jason checks a discarded LA Times, and the date printed is literally the next day - according to the date, the events of chapter one happened the night before. Jason's agent made a brief appearance in it. Looking through the paper, he can't find any of the ads or notices featuring him, his regular appearance at a fancy club, or a mention of his TV show. Now on the verge of freaking out, only Jason's Six status keeps him working. He decides to call someone else, goes to his wallet to get the number, and discovers all his IDs are gone.

This is worse than you'd think.

Y'see, fun story, America in 1988 is a totalitarian police state. Flow My Tears was published in 1974, and Dick has the campus protest movement become permanent - revolutionary structures have taken over the universities. The Government meanwhile, has formed siege lines around the universities, and most of the activity has moved literally underground, where students and professors do...something. Anybody caught without any ID is presumed to be an agent or an escapee from the radical underground, and thus someone who's going to spend the rest of their lives in a forced labor camp.

So Jason has not only been reduced to nothing, he's a substantial negative person; an untermenchen as the Nazis used to say. Jason calls the Birth Registration control center in Iowa, and, nope, no record of his birth. Because of the terrifying possibilities of forgetting your IDs, everyone has an ID tattoo on their forearm, plus some stuff we'd call RFID chips today...but Jason is so paranoid now he doesn't trust that it will do anything. Six to the fore: first job is to get fake IDs. Jason doesn't want to end up with a pickaxe on the moon.

The Hotel clerk is reading Box magazine. Jason takes a $500 bill and plops it on the hotel desk. Saying his cards have been stolen and he needs replacements ASAP, the clerk agrees to help. Oh and the clerk is telepathic and can read Jason's mind.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 1

Jason Taverner is at the top of his game. He's a famous singer with his own, mega-succsessful TV show. That's because he's a Six. It's not explained at this juncture, but he and his girlfriend/special guest that night Heather Locklear are both people who got themselves genetically modified - Stage six modification? They just finished Dick's TV show, and now have to run a gauntlet with police to get to Dick's Rolls-Royce skyflyer.

Things are maybe not the best between Heather and Jason. They are a celebrity couple professionally but also a couple outside of that, and Heather is sounding burnt out. She hates People, especially her fans, and wants to give up being a celebrity, marry Jason, have Jason's kids, etc. Though this could just be burnout; she also thinks flying to the secluded house they have in Zurich is stupid. This surprises Dick, as the house was chosen especially so they could get away from People. (She does not look like Heather Locklear, being described as having a roman nose, red hair, and violet eyes, but the showbiz/30 million viewers immediately put me in mind of Locklear and Mary Hart, this kind of inhumanly perfect beauty, a flawless diamond, never scratched even as they bore through concrete at the end of a pneumatic drill.)

Dick takes all this, and much else, in. Evidently being a six gives you one king-hell-ass brain, as he's managing his GF on the brink of a psychological crisis, flying his Rolls, feeling smug at how awesome he is, thinking about some of Heather's secrets, flashing a big wad of cash, promising to use said wad of cash to buy Heather something nice, then dreaming of using said wad of cash to hit up a Vegas casino to play blackjack (Sixes win all the time, even beating the dealers) even as Heather rolls her eyes and calls him a selfish asshole.

Dick then gets a call. It's from Marylin Mason, who is some starlet Dick got an audition for. She's also having a nervous breakdown and threatening to kill herself, which Dick thinks is a sign she's pregnant. (Of course he's fucking her on the side.) And after he got her *two* auditions, the first one for the president of Columbia records! Typical "ordinares"! She blew both auditions and can't process it, blaming Taverner instead. Dick's tired and already managing crazy, but MM is super insistent he stop by briefly. He lands on the field in her building complex. Heather waits in the skyflyer.

There's something strange with Marylin Mason - spooky. Dick doesn't let it show , but Mason's mood is something hidden and dangerous. Before he can even begin trying to calibrate what's going on, Mason takes a plastic bag, and hucks an alien jellyfish at Dick. It attaches to his chest and begins boring through his suit with its 50 tentacles. As a Six, instead of screaming, Dick instantly grabs a nearby whiskey bottle, unscrews it, and empties it on the jellyfish. This kills the jellyfish in a few seconds, but now the tubes are inside him and can apparently survive jellyfish death, and continue to tunnel into his torso. Dick and Mason have a moment of "well, wasn't expecting that", and then Dick passes out.

Dick comes to as he's racing through a hospital on a gurney. Heather is there. Apparently Dick was seconds from death at Mason's, and is being rushed to emergency surgery. Holding Heather's hand, Dick passes out again. 

 Addition, chapter one: Jason momentarily wonders if he's given himself brain damage using the "phone-grid transex network", but dismisses the through with a junkie's excuses: he didn't do it much, and there had been no premature aging or brain damage. (Point of fact Heather had noticed Jason needs to dye his hair, which apparently is unusual for a Six, so one of those signs is definitely a question mark.)