Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley by Robert Sheckley

me.”
    â€œWhat are you?” Anders asked again.
    â€œI don’t know,” the voice admitted. “I am a person. I am I. I am trapped.”
    â€œSo are we all,” Anders said. He walked on asphalt, surrounded by heaps of concrete, silicates, aluminum and iron alloys. Shapeless, meaningless heaps that made up the gestalt city.
    And then there were the imaginary lines of demarcation dividing city from city, the artificial boundaries of water and land.
    All ridiculous.
    â€œGive me a dime for some coffee, mister?” something asked, a thing indistinguishable from any other thing.
    â€œOld Bishop Berkeley would give a nonexistent dime to your nonexistent presence,” Anders said gaily.
    â€œI’m really in a bad way,” the voice whined, and Anders perceived that it was no more than a series of modulated vibrations.
    â€œYes! Go on!” the voice commanded.
    â€œIf you could spare me a quarter—” the vibrations said, with a deep pretense at meaning.
    No, what was there behind the senseless patterns? Flesh, mass. What was that? All made up of atoms.
    â€œI’m really hungry,” the intricately arranged atoms muttered.
    All atoms. Conjoined. There were no true separations between atom and atom. Flesh was stone, stone was light. Anders looked at the masses of atoms that were pretending to solidity, meaning, and reason.
    â€œCan’t you help me?” a clump of atoms asked. But the clump was identical with all the other atoms. Once you ignored the superimposed patterns, you could see the atoms were random, scattered.
    â€œI don’t believe in you,” Anders said.
    The pile of atoms was gone.
    â€œYes!” the voice cried. “Yes!”
    â€œI don’t believe in any of it,” Anders said. After all, what was an atom?
    â€œGo on!” the voice shouted. “You’re hot! Go on!”
    What was an atom? An empty space surrounded by an empty space.
    Absurd!
    â€œThen it’s all false!” Anders said. And he was alone under the stars.
    â€œThat’s right!” the voice within his head screamed. “Nothing!”
    But stars, Anders thought. How can one believe—
    The stars disappeared. Anders was in a gray nothingness, a void. There was nothing around him except shapeless gray.
    Where was the voice?
    Gone.
    Anders perceived the delusion behind the grayness, and then there was nothing at all.
    Complete nothingness, and himself within it.
    Where was he? What did it mean? Anders’s mind tried to add it up.
    Impossible. That couldn’t be true.
    Again the score was tabulated, but Anders’s mind couldn’t accept the total. In desperation, the overloaded mind erased the figures, eradicated the knowledge, erased itself.
    â€œWhere am I?”
    In nothingness. Alone.
    Trapped.
    â€œWho am I?”
    A voice.
    The voice of Anders searched the nothingness, shouted, “Is there anyone here?”
    No answer.
    But there was someone. All directions were the same, yet moving along one he could make contact ... with someone. The voice of Anders reached back to someone who could save him, perhaps.
    â€œSave me,” the voice said to Anders, lying fully dressed on his bed, except for his shoes and black bow tie.

WATCHBIRD
    W HEN G ELSEN entered, he saw that the rest of the watchbird manufacturers were already present. There were six of them, not counting himself, and the room was blue with expensive cigar smoke.
    â€œHi, Charlie,” one of them called as he came in.
    The rest broke off conversation long enough to wave a casual greeting at him. As a watchbird manufacturer, he was a member manufacturer of salvation, he reminded himself wryly. Very exclusive. You must have a certified government contract if you want to save the human race.
    â€œThe government representative isn’t here yet,” one of the men told him. “He’s due any minute.”
    â€œWe’re getting the green