In the final chapters of Phillip’s K. Dick novel – “Do androids dream of electric sheep” we read about a new, intense twist of events. Rick Deckard through his curiosity finds himself in a kind of close relationship with an attractive female Nexus-6 android called Rachel Rosen. Rachel is on the most advanced, important member in Rosen Association. Because of that Rachel cannot afford a luxury of becoming an independent android. Everything she does is for the good of corporation she serves. Deckard finds Rachel attractive, he desires her in a way humans desire one another. Naturally as a curious guy, Deckard makes a move on her just to find out how it is to make love to a machine. Rachel doesn’t care about Rick or his feelings. Seducing Deckard is just a way for Rachel to distract his investigation against other disobedient androids similar to Rachel. It’s the only way Deckard can be stopped from “retiring” other andys.

I believe Philip K. Dick wants to show a contrast between real love and fake love, or maybe lust in this weird case. Rick has a wife which he supposedly loves, however as time passes by he stops seeing the coldness of machines in androids, not only that he somehow fantasizes about intimate life with an android. Because androids don’t have empathy and are basically talking dolls, very sophisticated, but dead inside anyways. We get a grim, serious, emotional, rational, and existential conflict. What is it to love a dead thing? And another one. Is cheating with a machine a type of affair or bizarre way of masturbation? (After all it’s just a dead thing that gives you pleasure just like any other sex toy). Is there a way for a human being to cheat itself into believing that dead talking dolls are just as good as humans? Or better yet, imagine a child raised by androids without knowing it. Andys so sophisticated they can pass voight-kampff empathy test. If child doesn’t know that it’s being raised by machines it will probably think androids are just as real as humans. What if we humans are just “operating systems” inside meat coated skeletal machines called human bodies and programmed in different world by Mercer like entity called god… Ok, I got carried away a little with wild, impossible (I hope) ideas. But my approach to this incident between Rachel and Rick boils down to one scary question, what does it mean to be real and living? What do you guys think, I demand comments 🙂 !!!