Ubik

Runciter and Ashwood muse over Pat, the new inertial, and her ability to seemingly travel back in time. Joe, who is working on the special project to Luna, gathers the 11 inertials into Runciter’s office. They introduce Pat to the team and ask her to show them what she can do. She immediately changes the present, so that Runciter is “before a ship window on Fifth Avenue, a rare coin shop” (53). He recognizes the strangeness of this reality. Next, he is in his office, meeting Joe and Pat, who is now Chip’s wife. They all sense something is amiss when Pat admits that she has powers. In this reality, they do not know that. Eventually, Pat returns everything and everyone to the normal reality. They read off the names of the other inertials going to Luna, including Wendy Wright, for whom Joe has feelings. Runciter, meanwhile, seems worried about the job.

Runciter and the entire inertial team arrive on Luna and are shown their living quarters by Miss Wirt. While discussing the available medicine on Luna, one inertial, Francesca Spanish, reveals to everyone that she had a dream in which a pair of telepaths recited poetry and song. Other inertials claim to have had the same dream. Runciter is upset at Joe for knowing this and not telling him sooner. Upset by the testing equipment used by Joe, Stanton Mick—Miss Wirt’s employer—enters the room. Moments later, Mick transforms into a mechanical bug-like creature and flies into the air. The inertials realize the job is a trap and that Mick is really a bomb. They try to get everyone out, but the bomb detonates. When everyone comes to, it appears that only Runciter is badly injured and dying. They need to get him to a half-life facility before he loses too much brain function. Joe discusses how Hollis is probably behind the bomb and did not expect any of them to live.

As the group takes an elevator back up to their ship to escape, Pat is questioned about why she did not prevent the explosion by going back in time. “Too much time passed,” she replies, “I would have had to do it right away” (72). She claims she didn’t think of it. The group gets Runciter into the ship’s frozen chamber to try to preserve his brain function, but they can’t be sure if they got him in quickly enough. As the ship prepares for takeoff, Wendy suggests that they’ve grown older. “Did it age us?” she asks (75). The cigarettes they try to light seem quite old, and they themselves appear to have aged.

Joe plans to put Runciter in the same moratorium as his wife, Ella. Wendy admits that she plans to marry Joe, while Pat seems jealous and says that she lives with him and pays his bills. Joe tries to use a phone book to call the moratorium in Switzerland, but the phone book is two years old. They do finally connect to Von Vogelsang and explain the situation. They ask him to meet them in Switzerland. On the way, Chip orders a coffee, but the cream is spoiled and there is mold growing in the coffee itself, like it’s been sitting around for years. The group takes off on a helicopter with Von Vogelsang and head for the moratorium with Runciter. As the group waits to see if there will be any functionality left in Runciter, Joe wants to talk to a precog for information. He tries to use a payphone, but the quarter he puts in is 40 years too old. He does manage to trade it for a usable one.

Joe reaches Hollis on the phone: “A grim blue face swam into focus, a mysterious countenance without neck or body” (89). Joe accuses Hollis of murder and hangs up the phone. Von Vogelsang reports that they could not get functionality from Runciter’s brain, and thus he cannot be saved in half-life. Joe decides to check into a motel. Al, one of the inertials, will send Wendy to him as comfort. Joe worries, however, about Pat, and how he will ever manage to leave her, given her ability to manipulate the present. With Runciter dead, Joe is now the acting director of Runciter Associates. He possesses a renewed conviction. “What I actually have,” Joe says, “is a will to succeed” (92). He wonders about all of the items that he came in to contact with suddenly becoming old collector’s items.