Ubik

Joe picks up the phone in his hotel room to order room service, but instead he hears Runciter discussing the accident on the phone. It appears that while Joe can hear Runciter, Runciter cannot hear Joe. Von Vogelsang arrives at Chip’s apartment, apparently sent by Al to escort Joe to the moratorium where Ella is located. He also says it’s strange that Runciter’s brain function should have been high enough for the half-life procedure but isn’t. Suspicious of Al’s intentions, Joe refuses to go straight to the moratorium. Instead, he decides to return to New York and the company’s headquarters. Before leaving, Joe and Von Vogelsang find a desiccated corpse in his closet. Joe is distraught when he discovers it’s Wendy. Though Von Vogelsang suspects massive radiation caused her death, Joe thinks that it might have something to with what she said earlier about the premature aging of objects and themselves.

Back at the headquarters in New York, the inertials await Chip’s arrival. They craft a list of clues: “Stale Cigarettes, Out-of-Date Phone Book, Obsolete Money, Putrefied Food, Ad on Matchbook Folder” (103). Concerning the matchbook folder, one of the inertials Edie Dorn adds that it contains strange information about Runciter, yet was definitely in his pocket before they went to Luna. Pat suggests that two processes are at work: “One, a process of deterioration,” while the other involves Runciter (105). They all check their money and notice that some of it now depicts Runciter’s portrait. Someone suggests that processes “are going in opposite directions. One is going away, so to speak. A going-out-of-existence. That’s process one. The second process is a coming-into-existence. But of something that’s never existed before” (106). 

In Baltimore, Joe and Al select a random grocery store and purchase a pack of cheap cigarettes. The machine accepts the Runciter currency, which is curious to them. The cigarettes, meanwhile, are dry and old. They grab a random carton of cigarettes, which is empty except for a note from Runciter. The note states how essential it is that he speak with them.

Joe and Al don’t understand how Runciter knew that they would come to that store. Al, testing a theory, buys a tape recorder to bring back with them. When they arrive back in New York, the shop foreman informs them that the recorder has tremendous wear and tear and is forty years out of date. Al had suspected that this would be the case when he bought it. He says, “A brand new tape recorder, completely worn out. Bought with funny money that the store is willing to accept. Worthless money. Worthless articles purchased; it has a sort of logic to it” (114).

The shop foreman gives Joe and Al the instruction manual to the recorder, which reads, “Made by Runciter of Zurich” (116). The company has a maintenance station in Des Moines, Runciter’s hometown. Joe and Al realize that there’s some element of Runciter in Des Moines, even though he’s at the moratorium. When they go to the elevator to speak with the others, Al sees the elevator as an old-fashioned one, while Joe does not. This concerns Al, who begins to feel cold, like he is on the cusp of death: “This can’t be normal death, he said to himself” (119).

Al feels sick in the hallway and goes into the bathroom. Joe follows him. They see a note written on the wall: “Jump in the urinal and stand on you head. I’m the one that’s alive. You’re all dead” (120). The note is in Runciter’s handwriting. Struck by the idea that Runciter was the only one to survive the crash, Al pushes Joe out of the bathroom so he can be alone to die the way that Wendy did. Joe returns to the conference room to find that all of the inertials have disappeared. The TV screen shows a message similar to the one he found in the bathroom. 

On television, a news report announces that Runciter’s body will be taken to Des Moines for burial. It shows the mourners who include the disappeared inertials. Joe accidently switches off the TV. When he turns it back on, the face of Runciter appears. Runciter speaks about a product called Ubik: “One invisible puff-puff whisk of economically priced Ubik banishes compulsive obsessive fears the world is turning into clotted milk, worn-out tape recorders, and obsolete iron elevators, plus other, further, as-yet unglimpsed manifestations of decay” (127). Runciter appears to speak directly to Joe. Runciter encourages Joe to use some Ubik sent to his apartment and then to travel to Des Moines. He blames Al for the strange messages on the bathroom wall.

Joe suspects that Runciter recorded this message before the accident, and that he and the rest of the inertials—no matter what this ghostly unreal Runciter says—are really dead. Joe returns to his apartment, which has reverted to how the space would look in the 1930s. He ruminates on the idea that there must remain in things a residual life or memory: “The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately…vanished” (132). He takes the Ubik product out of his mailbox, but it is not a spray, as Runciter advertised. It is an old balm that contains ingredients Chip knows to be toxic. He decides not to take the product.

Joe’s keys work in an old LaSalle automobile parked out front. He realizes that it will take him a long time to drive to Des Moines, Iowa, and he remembers that an airport is nearby. He needs to get there “[b]efore it’s too late, before we’re back to the days of the Gnome rotary engine…and its castor oil lubricant” (139). By the time Joe reaches the airport, his LaSalle is now an even older model, a Ford Model A. His Ubik balm is now “Elixir of Ubique.” Joe considers giving up but finds a note on the seat next to him that reads: “Don’t do it, Joe. There’s another way. Keep trying. You’ll find it. Lots of luck” (142).