“Nooo!” she protested, breaking into tears. “I would never do anything to hurt you. I love you. I want you to come back to me.” Her despair was heartbreaking.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. But his certainty was shaken. It would be so easy to take her in his arms…
“What’s unbelievable, Mr. Quaid?” Edgemar asked. He assumed a reasonable tone. “That you’re having a paranoid episode triggered by acute neurological trauma? Or—” Now his voice was derisive. “That you’re really an invincible secret agent from Mars who’s the victim of an interplanetary conspiracy to make him think he’s a lowly construction worker?”
Quaid’s certainty, such as it was, was being further undermined. The recent events he had experienced certainly did seem nonsensical now! The things that didn’t make much sense—how better to explain them than as the product of a slightly deranged dreaming mind?
Edgemar looked at him with great sympathy and kindness. “Doug, how many of us are heroes? You’re a fine, upstanding man. You have a beautiful wife who loves you.”
Lori beamed at Quaid with pure affection.
“You have a secure job with a bright future,” Edgemar continued. “Your life is ahead of you, Doug.” He frowned benignly. “But you’ve got to want to return to reality.”
It did seem to fit together. Quaid was almost convinced. Certainly he had wanted to be an adventurous hero, but this adventure had pretty well turned him off that sort of thing. He had wanted a beautiful woman, and in fact Lori was that. So her hair wasn’t dark—was that cause to throw her away? Considering the way Melina had treated him…
“What do I do?” he asked.
Edgemar opened his hand, revealing a small pill. “Take this pill.”
“What is it?” Quaid was not so dull as to miss the fact that an imagined pill could not do anything the imagination couldn’t.
“It’s a symbol. A symbol of your desire to return to reality,” Edgemar explained. “Inside your dream, you’ll fall asleep.”
And wake up in reality? That had happened before, when he had fallen down the alien tube on Mars and woken in bed with Lori. That had its appeal! He picked up the pill and contemplated it. He could appreciate the rationale: in life a person took a pill to get well. In a dream he took one to want to get well. The effect could be similar.
“You should know, Mr. Quaid, that Rekall will provide you with free counseling for as long as you need it. In addition, if you sign a release, we’ll agree to a large cash settlement.”
“How much?” The question was automatic, though he hardly cared. The larger question was whether he wanted the reality he had known on Earth or a continuation of this crazy-quilt adventure on Mars. The answer should have been obvious, but the memory of Melina, and the hint of something else, something so important that—
“A hundred thousand credits. Maybe more.”
Lori brightened, becoming hopeful. “Think about it Doug. We could buy a house.”
Instead of the conapt on the two hundredth floor. That, too, had its appeal. Maybe a vacation in an undersea dome.
“Of course,” Edgemar said, “this all hinges on your taking the pill.”
On the verge of succumbing to their logic, Quaid grew suspicious again. Why should it all hinge on his taking the pill? Why couldn’t he merely declare, “I’m through with dreaming! I want to return to reality and Lori!” and be there? On rare occasions he had had what he thought was called lucid dreaming, where he came to realize that it was a dream, and could control it somewhat. Generally when that happened, though, the dream lost its substance and he woke. So instead of hauling in a lucid sexpot, he woke with a hard-on and nowhere to put it. That had been back when he was a teenager, before Lori. Still, the principle was there: if he couldn’t break out of the dream without the symbol, why should it work with the symbol? Why were they so eager for that symbol?
“Let’s say you’re right,” Quaid said. “This is all a dream.” He raised the gun to Edgemar’s head. “Then I can pull this trigger, and it won’t matter.”
He started to pull the trigger. Here was a test that meant something. If this was not a dream, Edgemar would be exceedingly eager to avoid this test!
“Doug, don’t!” Lori cried.
But Edgemar remained preternaturally calm. His eyes and voice expressed his unselfish concern for his patient. “It won’t make the slightest difference to me, Doug, but the consequences to you would be devastating. In your mind, I’ll be dead. And with no one to guide you out, you’ll be stuck in permanent psychosis.”
Was it possible? Psychosis was a disease of the mind. Could his own act determine which way his mind went? Would shooting Edgemar be his decision to avoid reality, rather than any tangible act to embrace it, such as taking the pill?
“Doug, please let Dr. Edgemar help you!” Lori pleaded.
His finger on the trigger, Quaid was torn with doubt. He knew he could do it, and splatter the doctor’s brains. But did he want to? If that meant that he was locking himself into a dream of violence and uncertainty and frustrated love?
“The walls of reality will come crashing down,” Edgemar said. “One minute you’ll be the savior of the rebel cause, then, next thing you know, you’ll be Cohaagen’s bosom buddy. Until finally, back on Earth, you’ll be lobotomized.”
Quaid was totally demoralized. It had to be true: if he really was in a semicoma back on Earth and could not be brought out of it, they would lobotomize him. There was no point in maintaining a vegetable. It was uneconomic. A lobotomized man might not be very creative, but he could handle a jackhammer. So he had better guess right; it was disaster to go with illusion, either way.
“So get a firm grip on yourself, Doug,” Edgemar said firmly. “And put down the gun.”
Hesitantly, Quaid lowered the gun. If this was a dream, and he shot someone, he would die (or be lobotomized: same thing) instead of the other person.
“That’s right. Now take the pill, there you go…” Edgemar paused as Quaid’s hand slowly took the pill. “And put it in your mouth.”
Quaid put the pill in his mouth. It tasted exactly like a pill. But of course it would, in a dream as well as in reality.
“And swallow,” Edgemar continued, as if talking a blinded pilot down to a landing.
Quaid hesitated. Edgemar and Lori watched with great anticipation.
“Go ahead, Doug,” Lori said.
But he was racked with indecision. Suppose this wasn’t a dream? Then the pill might be—in fact, probably was—a knockout dose, or even lethal.
Then he saw a single drop of sweat trickle down Edgemar’s brow.
His Hauser-reflex took over. Abruptly he swung his gun at Edgemar and fired.
The plastic explosive in the plastic gun sent the plastic bullet straight through the man’s head. Blood splattered in a dense circle on the wall.
Then the bloodstain exploded, blasting Quaid backward through the air. A big hole appeared in the wall. He had guessed wrong! His dream world was crashing down, exactly as Dr. Edgemar had said it would!
Then he struck the far wall and sank to the floor, dazed. Four Mars agents stormed through the hole in the wall and grabbed hold of him.
But this wasn’t the end of the dream! This was the confirmation of the Mars reality! They had not attacked him before because they were trying to catch him alive, to find out what he knew. When the pill didn’t do it, they burst in to grab him physically. It was perfect sense!
Reassured, he started to fight back. They were trying to handcuff him, but he elbowed a jaw, dislocated a shoulder, and shoved and kicked his way out of their grasp. He pulled clear of an agent who was holding his foot. They weren’t using guns, they were trying to wrestle him down!