Payday (short story)

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Payday (English original title Paycheck ) is a short story by the American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick . It first appeared in Imagination magazine in 1953 and has been included in numerous short story collections. Payday is one of Dick's classics and served as a template for the 2003 film Paycheck of the same name .

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Engineer Jennings returns home from a two-year contract with Rethrick Constructions. However, he does not know what he did during that time. The basis of the contractual agreement was that the two years would be erased from his memory. At the company headquarters, he expects the wages, but has to realize that he must have made a different decision during his working hours. Instead of the money, he only receives a sack with seven small items from Secretary Kelly: a code key, a ticket remainder, a package slip, fine wire, a poker chip broken in half, a piece of green cloth and a bus ticket.

Immediately after leaving the company building, the security police arrested him. She wants to find out what Jennings has been doing in the past two years and where he has been. Jennings doesn't know anything about it. He manages to escape from the police car with the help of the wire. In traffic he saves himself from the chasers in a bus. There, the bus ticket helps him out of the bag in order to be accepted as a passenger by the robot attendant.

Jennings now wants to find out for himself where he was and what he did for Rethrick Constructions. He realizes that he has built a device for the company with which one can look into the future (a so-called time mirror ) and bring objects from the future to the present (a time shovel ). The things in the sack are such objects from the future. During his time at Rethrick, he obtained these future items himself to plan his actions after leaving the company. In the present, however, due to his erased memory, he does not know when the objects will be used.

Jennings finds Rethrick's hiding place, a guarded facility in Iowa. With the help of the objects, he succeeds in penetrating the facility and photographing the devices. With the pictures he wants to blackmail Rethrick into making him a partner. Jennings doesn't feel safe and comfortable in the society dominated by the secret police, so he wants to get into one of the companies. Business enterprises are areas over which the secret police have no influence. Jennings does not want to return to Rethrick as an engineer, but to the top of the company.

So that the photos do not fall into the hands of the security police, Jennings gives the papers to Kelly for safekeeping. In an interview with Rethrick, he reveals the meaning of his secret organization: Rethrick Corporations wants to support ordinary people if they ever rebel against the security police. A participation by Jennings is ruled out for him, as the company should only run in his family. Since Kelly turns out to be Rethrick's daughter, Jennings lacks the photos to carry out his plan. But Jennings has another trump card: a receipt for a parcel posting, where the photos are probably located. It shows this Kelly pulling it out of her pocket. At this moment the room vibrates and a gripper arm Kelly belonging to a time shovel wrests the note out of nowhere. Now only Jennings has the receipt and therefore access to the photos. Rethrick and Kelly agree that Jennings can become a partner. Since Kelly and Jennings are fond of each other, everything could stay in the family.

literature

Philip K. Dick: Payday . In: All 118 SF stories , Two Thousand One Publishing House, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86150-803-8

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