John Isidore and Pris Stratton
John Isidore, a "chickenhead" — a special with diminished mental faculties — lives in almost total isolation in a decaying apartment building in the radioactive suburbs of San Francisco. When he hears a television set from a lower floor, he realizes another resident has moved in, and he rushes to make contact, carrying a cube of margarine as a traditional offering. The door is opened by a frightened young woman, Pris Stratton, who initially cringes and slinks away. Isidore introduces himself, explains he works for the Van Ness Pet Hospital, and tries to reassure her. Despite her fear, she eventually tells him her name is Pris Stratton, though she first claimed to be Rachael Rosen, a name associated with the Rosen Association, the system's largest manufacturer of androids. She quickly denies the connection, calling it "more of your chickenhead imagination." Isidore is struck by her coldness, a quality he finds strange and deplorable, like a breath from the vacuum between worlds.
Isidore's Courtship and Pris's Instrumental Acceptance
Isidore is immediately smitten and eager to help. He returns later that evening with rare delicacies — bean curd, ripe peaches, cheese, and a bottle of Chablis wine he had been saving for years — hoping to share a meal with her. Pris initially rejects him, saying the food is "wasted on me," but she eventually lets him in. She reveals that she and seven others came from Mars and that bounty hunters are killing them one by one. Isidore, horrified, offers to protect her, even vowing to get a laser weapon. When her fellow androids, Roy and Irmgard Baty, arrive, they vote on whether to trust him. Irmgard argues that Isidore is their only hope, and Pris, despite calling him a "chickenhead" with contempt, votes to stay. She agrees to move into his apartment, and Isidore feels a glow of satisfaction, believing he has finally achieved a goal. He carries her possessions upstairs, thrilled to be useful.
The Asymmetry of Care and Cruelty
The relationship is profoundly one-sided. Isidore dotes on Pris, but she remains detached and remote, her face often showing a sour expression of displeasure. When he finds a living spider on the stairs, he carefully captures it in a medicine bottle, excited to show her. Pris, however, takes the spider, and with Irmgard's cuticle scissors, begins snipping off its legs one by one, smiling as she does so. Isidore pleads with her to stop, but she continues, mutilating the creature until it can barely move. He is devastated, and later, after the androids have been distracted by Buster Friendly's exposé of Mercerism, he drowns the spider in the sink to end its suffering. This act of cruelty reveals the fundamental gulf between them: Pris, an android, lacks the empathy that Isidore, a human special, feels so acutely. She treats the living creature as an object of curiosity, while he sees it as a sacred life.
The Ending: Death and Grief
Later that night, bounty hunter Rick Deckard arrives at the building. Isidore, having been warned by the androids, refuses to help Deckard, but the hunter finds the apartment anyway. Deckard kills Pris on the stairs, mistaking her for Rachael Rosen, the android prototype. After the shooting, Isidore appears at the door, crying. Deckard tells him not to look, but Isidore has already seen her body. He is left alone with his grief, his hopes for a connection shattered. The relationship ends not with a reconciliation or a grand gesture, but with the cold finality of death, leaving Isidore to confront the emptiness of his world once more.
