“What for?” I asked.
“To help your friend,” the girl said.
“Why does he need help?” I said.
The boy said, “Nicholas Brady has a suspect background, from his Berkeley days. If he is to retain the position he now holds, he will need the support of his friends. You’re willing to give that support, aren’t you? You are his friend.”
I said, “I’ll give Nicholas any and all help I can.” As I said it I knew instinctively that I had taken the bait; I was in some vague police trap.
“Good,” the girl said, and smiled, whereupon both of them rose to leave. The boy placed a plastic package down on the coffee table.
“Your kit,” he said. “Instructions, helpful hints, models; as an author you’ll undoubtedly find this very easy. Along with your statement about your friend we’d like you to draft a short autobiographical sketch, so the person who reads your statement will know a little about you too.”
“A sketch covering what?” I said, and now I was really afraid, really sure I had fallen into a trap.
“There’s instructions covering that as well,” the girl said, and both of them left. I was alone with the red-white-and-blue plastic kit. Seating myself, I opened the kit and began looking through the instruction booklet, which was printed on fine glossy paper. It bore the Presidential seal and the printed signature of F.F.F.
Dear American:
You have been invited to write a short article on the subject you know best: yourself! It is entirely up to you what matters you consider pertinent and what you feel should be left out. However, you will be graded not only on your inclusions but on what you omit.
Perhaps you have been asked to do this by a delegation of your friends and neighbors, the Friends of the American People. Or perhaps you wrote for this kit on your own initiative. Or perhaps your local police suggested it to you as a way to . . .
I turned to the instruction booklet on the preparation of a notarized statement about a friend’s loyalty.
Dear American:
You have been invited to write a short article on a subject well known to you: a close friend! It is entirely up to you what matters you consider pertinent and what you feel should be left out. However, you will benefit your friend by the greatest inclusion. What you write about him will, of course, be kept completely confidential; this article is for official use only.
Perhaps you have been asked to do this by a delegation of your friends and neighbors, the Friends of . . .
I went to my typewriter, put paper in it, and began to compose the autobiographical sketch.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
I, Philip K. Dick, being of sound mind and reasonably good health, wish to admit to being a high official for a period covering many years of the organization known to its enemies as Aramchek. In the course of my training for subversion and espionage, I have learned to lie and if not outright lie to distort so effectively that what I say is worthless to those who hold power in this our target nation, the U.S. of A. With these provisos in mind, I will now make a statement about my lifelong friend Nicholas Brady, who has, to my recollection, been a covert advocate and supporter of the policies of Aramchek for years, changing his mind as the official line of Aramchek continually changes in order that it be in accord with the policy of People’s China and other Socialist powers, not excluding the U.S.S.R., one of our earliest acquisitions in the power struggle against man which we have waged since our inception in the Middle Ages.
Perhaps I should speak further of Aramchek, in order to better clarify my own situation. Aramchek, an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church, is devoted to the principle that the means justify the end. We therefore employ the highest means possible, with no regard to the end, knowing that God will dispose of that which mere man has proposed. In connection with this we employ and have employed every artifice and strategy and resource available to us to thwart the goals of Ferris F. Fremont, current puppet tyrant of these the U.S. of A. During his childhood, to cite one example, we arranged to stencil an indentation of the name of our organization on the sidewalk down the street from the house in which he was born, for the purpose of spooking him in a most forceful way as to the fact that eventually WE WOULD GET HIM.
I signed this document and then sat back to consider the situation I was in. It wasn’t good. I recognized this red-white-and-blue plastic kit; it was the notorious “voluntary information” kit, the first step in drawing a citizen into the active intelligence system of the government. Like an income tax audit, sooner or later every citizen got one. This was our lifestyle under F.F.F.
If I failed to turn over my autobiographical sketch and statement about Nicholas, the FAPers would be back, and next time they would be less polite. If I turned in an inadequate report on Nicholas and myself, they would politely request more material. It was a technique first employed by the North Koreans on captured American prisoners: you were given a piece of paper and a pencil and told to write down anything about yourself you felt like, with no suggestions from the jailers. It was amazing what revelations prisoners made about themselves, far surpassing what they would have confessed under suggestion. When it came time to inform, a man was his own worst adversary, his own ultimate rat. All I had to do was sit before my typewriter long enough and I would have told them everything there was about myself and Nicholas, and probably after I had told them the facts
