Retreat Syndrome
"Retreat Syndrome" is a 1965 short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story contains some common Dick themes such as a questionable reality and drug use. It was first published in Worlds of Tomorrow Science Fiction and was later reprinted the collections The Preserving Machine (1969), The Preserving Machine and Other Stories (1977), We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (2000) and The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Stories (2004).
Plot summary
The story follows John Cupertino, a man seemingly under medical care, and his quest to find the truth behind the memory of him killing his wife.
It begins as Cupertino is caught speeding by police officers who suspect he may be on the drug 'Frohedadrine' and suggest that he probably believes he is not on Earth but is in the midst of a drug-induced guilt-fantasy and is actually at home on Ganymede. Cupertino disputes this and states he knows he is on Earth but is concerned that something strange is happening to him. To prove this he reaches out with his hand towards the dashboard. His hand disappears within the heavily-padded dashboard. The officers see this and contact Cupertino's full-time doctor, Dr. Hagopian. Cupertino tells the officers he believes this is happening because of the death of his wife, Carol.
Cupertino then has a conversation with Dr. Hagopian in which he tells the doctor that the reason he killed his wife was to stop her from telling the media that there was to be an uprising to free Ganymede. Dr. Hagopian gives Cupertino an address where he says Carol is currently living. Cupertino says this cannot be, as she was unmistakably dead after he left her, shot between the eyes with a laser beam. The doctor tells Cupertino he knows this is his detailed memory, but convinces him to go anyway, saying that Carol was there the night he killed her and therefore may be able to tell him how he obtained his false memory.
Cupertino arrives at Carol's address in Los Angeles at 6 in the morning. She invites him in and gives him coffee. He says she doesn't look a day older, even though the last time he saw her was three years ago. She tells him that the night he tried to kill her he received no false memory but was aware he failed in killing her. He apparently was offered by the district attorney a choice of mandatory psychiatric help or formal charges for attempted murder. She tells him the false memory was implanted after he visited Dr. Edgar Green, the psychologist at his employer, Six-Planet Educational Enterprises, just before he left Ganymede, and they did this because they knew he had told her of the planned uprising and he was supposed to commit suicide from remorse and grief but instead booked passage to Terra (Earth).
Cupertino speaks to Dr. Hagopian while at Carol's and tells him he believes he is actually a prisoner on Ganymede and what he is experiencing at Carol's is an illusion. Hagopian tells him this is not true, he is actually on Terra but is not a free man for the fact that he must remain a patient of his as part of the District Attorney's orders. Cupertino tells Hagopian that he has learned Carol is employed by the parent company of Six-Planet Educational Enterprises, Falling Star Associates. He believes she was sent down to earth as a watchdog to see that he remained loyal and would not tell of the proposed uprising on Ganymede. Hagopian tells Cupertino that this cannot be the case as the uprising happened three years ago and is a matter of historical fact. Ganymede and two other moons overthrew Terra and became self-governing in the Tri-Lunar war of 2014.
Cupertino returns to his apartment and contacts Dr. Edgar Green of Six-Planet Educational Enterprises. He requests his case history be sent to him. He comes to the conclusion that they could easily tamper with the file in order to hide any procedure of memory implant. He receives the file and finds that it contains no reference to the implant. He sends the file off for analysis and requests a blood fraction test from Dr. Hagopian for traces of Frohedadrine. The doctor tells him this would not matter; if he still believes the theory that he is a prisoner on Ganymede, then all these things would be illusory too. Hagopian tells Cupertino that Carol is actually a prisoner on Ganymede and that is where he visited her. She is imprisoned because she told Terra of the planned revolt. The doctor tells him that the guilt of him telling Carol and causing the Terra to be alerted of the revolt by Ganymede caused him to retreat into a fantasy world. He tells the doctor that to test his memory of killing Carol, he will return to Los Angeles and try and kill her again. If she is already dead then it will prove impossible.
The story continues in Hagopian's office, with Cupertino looking through the Los Angeles Times, searching for the story of the recent murder of his wife. His search is in vain, as Hagopian tells him that he was not permitted to go to Los Angeles because the authorities knew he planned violence. Cupertino tells him he is sure he killed her, walking into her office and shooting her with a laser while her co-workers watched. Hagopian says he now has a delusional memory of killing her twice now. The doctor calls Carol to prove this on a video phone. When Cupertino sees Carol on the display and she acknowledges him, he asks to return to his apartment. On the way home he admits to himself there are gaps in his logic but realizes he could try once more to kill her. He directs his car to Los Angeles to where he believes his wife will be sleeping.
- v
- t
- e
- Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
- Voices from the Street (1952)
- Solar Lottery (1954)
- Mary and the Giant (1954)
- The World Jones Made (1954)
- Eye in the Sky (1955)
- The Man Who Japed (1955)
- A Time for George Stavros (1956)
- Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
- The Broken Bubble (1956)
- The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
- Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
- Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
- Time Out of Joint (1958)
- In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
- Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
- Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
- Dr. Futurity (1960)
- The Man in the High Castle (1961)
- We Can Build You (1962)
- Martian Time-Slip (1962)
- Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
- The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
- The Simulacra (1963)
- The Crack in Space (1963)
- Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
- The Zap Gun (1964)
- The Penultimate Truth (1964)
- The Unteleported Man (1964)
- The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
- Counter-Clock World (1965)
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
- Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
- Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
- Ubik (1966)
- Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
- A Maze of Death (1968)
- Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
- Deus Irae (1976)
- Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
- A Scanner Darkly (1977)
- Valis (1981)
- The Divine Invasion (1981)
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
- The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)
- A Handful of Darkness (1955)
- The Variable Man (1956)
- The Preserving Machine (1969)
- The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
- The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
- The Golden Man (1980)
- Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
- The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
- The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
- The Father-Thing (1989)
- Second Variety (1989)
- The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
- The Little Black Box (1990)
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
- The Minority Report (1991)
- Second Variety (1991)
- The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
- The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
- Paycheck (2004)
- Vintage PKD (2006)
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)
- "Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
- "The Gun" (1952)
- "The Skull" (1952)
- "The Little Movement" (1952)
- "The Defenders" (1953)
- "Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
- "Piper in the Woods" (1953)
- "Roog" (1953)
- "The Infinites" (1953)
- "Second Variety" (1953)
- "Colony" (1953)
- "The Cookie Lady" (1953)
- "Impostor" (1953)
- "Paycheck" (1953)
- "The Preserving Machine" (1953)
- "Expendable" (1953)
- "The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
- "The Commuter" (1953)
- "Out in the Garden" (1953)
- "The Great C" (1953)
- "The King of the Elves" (1953)
- "The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
- "The Variable Man" (1953)
- "The Impossible Planet" (1953)
- "Planet for Transients" (1953)
- "The Builder" (1953)
- "Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
- "The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
- "Prize Ship" (1954)
- "Beyond the Door" (1954)
- "The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
- "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
- "The Golden Man" (1954)
- "Sales Pitch" (1954)
- "Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
- "The Crawlers" (1954)
- "Exhibit Piece" (1954)
- "Adjustment Team" (1954)
- "Shell Game" (1954)
- "Meddler" (1954)
- "A World of Talent" (1954)
- "The Last of the Masters" (1954)
- "Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
- "The Father-thing" (1954)
- "Strange Eden" (1954)
- "The Turning Wheel" (1954)
- "Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
- "Human Is" (1955)
- "War Veteran" (1955)
- "Captive Market" (1955)
- "Nanny" (1955)
- "The Chromium Fence" (1955)
- "Service Call" (1955)
- "The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
- "Autofac" (1955)
- "Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
- "The Hood Maker" (1955)
- "The Minority Report" (1956)
- "Pay for the Printer" (1956)
- "A Glass of Darkness (The Cosmic Puppets)" (1956)
- "The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
- "Null-O" (1958)
- "Explorers We" (1959)
- "Recall Mechanism" (1959)
- "Fair Game" (1959)
- "War Game" (1959)
- "All We Marsmen" (1963)
- "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
- "The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
- "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
- "Waterspider" (1964)
- "Novelty Act" (1964)
- "Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
- "The War with the Fnools" (1964)
- "What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
- "Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
- "Cantata 140" (1964)
- "The Unteleported Man" (1964)
- "The Little Black Box" (1964)
- "Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
- "Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
- "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
- "Holy Quarrel" (1966)
- "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
- "Not by Its Cover" (1968)
- "The Electric Ant" (1969)
- "A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
- "The Pre-persons" (1974)
- "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
- "The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
- "Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
- "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
- "The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
- "Stability" (1987)
Films |
|
---|---|
TV series |
|
- Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
- I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
- Your Name Here (2008 drama film)
- Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
- Philip K. Dick Award