We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (Dick)
Short summary
Earth, future. Douglas Quail, dissatisfied with his mundane life as a government clerk, dreamed of visiting Mars. Unable to afford a real trip, he visited Rekal, Incorporated, a company that implanted artificial memories of experiences. Quail requested memories of being a secret agent on Mars.
During the procedure, Rekal's technicians discovered that Quail actually had been to Mars as an Interplan agent, and his memories had been deliberately erased. The company returned half his fee and sent him away. Back home, Quail found evidence of his Mars trip, including alien specimens he had collected.
Interplan agents confronted Quail, revealing he had been an assassin for them on Mars. They planned to kill him since his memories were resurfacing. Quail escaped and negotiated with Interplan through a telepathic transmitter in his brain. They agreed to try implanting new false memories that might satisfy his psychological needs.
Psychiatrists discovered Quail's deepest fantasy: as a child, he had saved Earth from alien invasion by showing kindness to small extraterrestrial creatures who then promised not to invade as long as he lived. Interplan decided to implant this fantasy as a false memory.
"We started interrogating him," Lowe said, white-faced. "To find out exactly when to place the fantasy-memory of him single-handedly having saved Earth. And strangely enough—"
To everyone's shock, they discovered this seemingly absurd childhood fantasy was also true. Quail had actually saved Earth from alien invasion. Interplan realized they couldn't kill him without risking the aliens' return.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
Douglas Quails dream of Mars
Douglas Quail woke up with an intense desire to visit Mars. He dreamed of trudging through the Martian valleys, a yearning that grew stronger as he became fully conscious. This was a world that only government agents and high officials had seen, not ordinary clerks like him.
He awoke—and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning.
His wife Kirsten reminded him of his mundane reality, as she did at least once a day. She dismissed his dreams and suggested they could instead visit an underwater resort, which she insisted would be more beautiful than Mars. But Douglas was fixated on his Martian obsession, ignoring her suggestions as he prepared for work.
Visiting Rekal, Incorporated for artificial memories
Later that day, Douglas found himself standing outside the doorway of Rekal, Incorporated. He had scrutinized their sign before but had never come so close to entering. After taking a deep breath, he walked through the doorway and approached the receptionist's counter. The blonde receptionist greeted him by name and directed him to Room D where Mr. McClane was waiting.
Inside the office, McClane, a genial middle-aged man wearing a Martian frog-pelt gray suit, welcomed Douglas and explained the services Rekal offered. For a fee, they would implant artificial memories of a trip to Mars, complete with souvenirs, photos, and other evidence that would make Douglas believe he had actually gone there as an Interplan secret agent.
"Mr. Quail, as you explained in your letter to us, you have no chance, no possibility in the slightest, of ever actually getting to Mars... This is the only way you can achieve your, ahem, life-long dream."
Douglas expressed doubt about whether an extrafactual memory would be convincing. McClane assured him that their implanted memories were even more convincing than real ones, as they contained no omissions or distortions. He explained that the actual procedure would involve sedation, after which Douglas would "return" from Mars with no memory of ever visiting Rekal.
"Don't think of it that way," McClane said severely. "You're not accepting second-best. The actual memory, with all its vagueness, omissions and ellipses, not to say distortions—that's second-best."
Still nervous but intrigued, Douglas paid the fee and followed two technicians from the office, wondering if he would truly believe he had been to Mars and fulfilled his lifelong ambition.
Will I actually believe I've been on Mars? he wondered. That I managed to fulfill my lifetime ambition? He had a strange, lingering intuition that something would go wrong. But just what—he did not know.
Complications during the memory implantation procedure
As Douglas was sedated, McClane prepared the props that would be planted in Quail's apartment to support his false memories: a sneaky-pete side arm, a pellet-sized transmitter, a code book, and various other items that would align with the implanted memory of being a secret agent on Mars. However, his preparations were interrupted when Lowe, one of the technicians, called him to the work area, indicating a problem had arisen.
In the work area, Douglas lay on a hygienic bed, breathing slowly under sedation. Lowe explained that they had encountered an unexpected issue. Under the influence of the truth drug narkidrine, Douglas had revealed something shocking: he had actually been to Mars as an Interplan agent. His hostility and demeanor had completely changed under sedation, becoming hard and cold.
When questioned, Douglas stated that he had been on Mars for one month as an agent for Interplan. He explained that he had never wanted to go to Mars but had been assigned the mission. The drug had brought up memories that had been completely erased from his conscious mind. He even wondered if his wife Kirsten might be an Interplan contact keeping an eye on him.
McClane and the technicians realized they had stumbled onto something dangerous. Keeler, the other technician, advised against proceeding with the memory implantation, warning that grafting a false memory over a real one could cause psychological damage. Douglas would have to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously: that he both did and didn't go to Mars, that he both was and wasn't an Interplan agent.
They decided to revive Douglas without implanting any false memories and to return half his fee. McClane was eager to wash his hands of the situation, having unwittingly uncovered a genuine Interplan spy with a cover so perfect that even he didn't know what he was.
The shocking truth about Quails past as an Interplan agent
As Douglas returned home in a cab, he felt good to be back on Terra. His memories of Mars were already beginning to fade: the craters, the ancient eroded hills, the gray-brown cacti and maw-worms. He remembered smuggling some Martian fauna through customs and reached into his pocket to find them.
Instead, he found an envelope containing 570 poscreds and a slip of paper marked "one-half fee ret'd. By McClane." Confused, Douglas realized this was from Rekal, Incorporated. He looked up their address in the phone book and directed the cab to take him there instead of home.
Using the cab's phone, he called his wife and told her he'd been to Mars. Kirsten dismissed him as drunk and hung up. When he arrived at Rekal, the receptionist was startled to see him. She claimed he had only discussed a potential trip but never actually gone through with the procedure. Douglas insisted he remembered everything about his visit and demanded the rest of his fee back.
"I remember everything, miss. My letter to Rekal, Incorporated, which started this whole business off... Then the two lab technicians taking me in tow and administering a drug to put me out."
Eventually, Douglas was brought back to McClane's office. He complained that his "memory" of the Mars trip was hazy and contradictory, and that he hadn't received any of the promised artifacts to support the false memory. McClane reluctantly agreed to refund the balance of his fee but warned Douglas not to discuss his "recent trip to Mars" with anyone.
Back at his apartment, Douglas was planning to write a complaint letter to the Better Business Bureau when he discovered a small box in his desk drawer. Opening it, he found six dead maw-worms and several varieties of Martian unicellular life that he remembered collecting during his day of exploration on Mars. This discovery confused him further—if he hadn't gone to Mars, how could he have these specimens?
When his wife arrived, Douglas asked her if he had gone to Mars, hoping she would know the truth. Kirsten scoffed at the idea, reminding him that he was always talking about wanting to go. Douglas expressed his confusion, saying he had two conflicting memory tracks in his head and couldn't tell which was real. Frustrated by his behavior, Kirsten announced she was leaving him and walked out.
"I have both memory-tracks grafted inside my head; one is real and one isn't but I can't tell which is which. Why can't I rely on you? They haven't tinkered with you." She could do this much for him at least.
On the run from Interplan police
As soon as Kirsten left, a voice behind Douglas ordered him to put up his hands and turn around. He found himself facing an Interplan Police officer with a gun. The officer explained that they knew all about Douglas's trip to Mars and had been monitoring his thoughts through a telepathic transmitter implanted in his skull.
The officer revealed that Douglas's visit to Rekal had triggered the return of his real memories, which was problematic for Interplan. Under narkidrine at Rekal, Douglas had told the technicians about his actual mission on Mars. The officer confirmed that Douglas had indeed been to Mars, and that he now remembered enough to be dangerous to the agency.
As more memories surfaced, Douglas recalled his true purpose on Mars: he had been an assassin for Interplan. He had killed a man after getting past fifteen bodyguards. This revelation explained the officer's tension—Douglas had been trained over five years to be a professional killer and knew how to take out armed adversaries.
The officer fired his gun, but Douglas moved quickly, disarming him and gaining control of the weapon. He fled the apartment and escaped into the crowded pedestrian tunnels, realizing the irony of his situation. He had received exactly what he'd asked Rekal for—adventure, danger, and a secret mission to Mars—but as a real experience rather than an implanted memory.
Ironically, he had gotten exactly what he had asked Rekal, Incorporated for. Adventure, peril, Interplan police at work, a secret and dangerous trip to Mars... The advantages of it being a memory—and nothing more—could now be appreciated.
Finding a solution through ultimate fantasy fulfillment
Sitting alone on a park bench, Douglas contemplated his options. He couldn't escape the telepathic transmitter in his head, which allowed Interplan to monitor his thoughts. He mentally proposed a deal to them: what if they implanted a new false memory that was compelling enough to satisfy his craving for adventure and prevent him from seeking out Rekal again?
A voice inside his head responded, explaining that standard memories wouldn't be enough—Douglas would eventually grow restless again. Douglas suggested they explore his mind to find his most expansive daydream and use that instead. The voice agreed to investigate this possibility if Douglas surrendered himself voluntarily, with the understanding that they would still kill him if his authentic memories resurfaced again.
Douglas surrendered at Interplan headquarters, where psychiatrists conducted personality-profile tests to determine his ultimate fantasy. The elderly Interplan psychiatrist revealed that Douglas's deepest wish-fulfillment fantasy was not about being a secret agent, but something from his childhood: as a nine-year-old boy, he had encountered a small alien advance party attempting to invade Earth.
In this fantasy, Douglas had shown the aliens kindness and mercy, impressing them so much that they made a covenant with him: they would not invade Earth as long as he lived. This made him, in effect, the most important person on Terra simply by existing. The senior Interplan officer asked McClane if Rekal could implant such an extreme fantasy, and McClane confirmed they could handle it.
After erasing Douglas's memories of Mars once again, they returned to Rekal to implement the new fantasy. McClane prepared the evidence that would support this memory: a magic healing rod given to Douglas by the aliens, a document from the UN Secretary General thanking him for saving Earth, and alien writing that Douglas couldn't read but remembered being translated to him.
As they began the procedure, however, another complication arose. Under narkidrine, Douglas revealed that this "fantasy" had actually happened—he really had encountered aliens as a child and made a covenant with them. He even mentioned having a scroll of gratitude and a magic invisible destroying rod, which he had used to kill the man on Mars. The Interplan officer, realizing the implications, silently left the room.
Wordlessly, the Interplan officer turned and stalked from the work area. I might as well put those packets of proof-artifacts away, McClane said to himself resignedly... The real one probably would not be long in coming.