Rick Deckard and Pris Stratton
Rick Deckard and Pris Stratton are the hunter and the hunted in the final phase of the six-android retirement that occupies a single January day in 1992. Their relationship is compressed into a single violent moment: Deckard kills Pris without ever exchanging a word with her. Yet that moment carries the full weight of the day's moral unraveling, because Pris is a physical duplicate of Rachael Rosen, the Nexus-6 android with whom Deckard has just spent the night. In destroying Pris, Deckard destroys the image of the being he has come to care for, and he does so with a clarity that leaves him no room for self-deception.
Identity and the Rachael Rosen Double
Pris Stratton is one of the eight escaped Nexus-6 androids who fled Mars together. She is the same subtype as Rachael Rosen, the android Deckard encountered at the Rosen Association in Seattle. When Deckard reads Dave Holden's notes on the remaining targets, Rachael immediately recognizes the description. "That last goddamn Nexus-6 type," she says, "is the same type as I am. . . . When you see her you'll know what I mean." The physical identity is so exact that Deckard, when he first glimpses Pris in the dim hallway of Conapt Building 3967-C, mistakes her for Rachael. "Rachael," he says, perplexed, before he sees that the clothes are wrong. The android's eyes are the same eyes; the body is the same body. The Rosen Association has stamped out multiple copies of the same design, and Pris is one of them.
The Ambush and the Killing
Deckard arrives at the abandoned building late at night, guided by his detection gear. John Isidore, the special who has been sheltering the three remaining androids, refuses to help him. Deckard proceeds alone. On the stairs, a figure waits for him in the shadows. It is Pris, and she carries a laser tube. Wilbur Mercer appears to Deckard in the hallway and warns him: "One of them is behind you and below, not in the apartment. It will be the hard one of the three and you must retire it first." Deckard spins and sees the android ascending toward him, her arms reaching out as if to embrace him. She speaks: "For what we've meant to each other." The words are a calculated appeal to the intimacy Deckard shared with Rachael. Deckard fires. The android bursts apart; her laser tube rolls down the stairs. The killing is instantaneous. Deckard later tells Irmgard Baty, "There is no Pris. Only Rachael Rosen, over and over again."
Aftermath and the Special's Grief
After retiring Roy and Irmgard Baty, Deckard sits alone in the dark apartment. John Isidore appears at the door. "I saw her on the stairs. Pris," the special says, crying. Deckard tells him not to take it so hard. Isidore does not answer; he only stands there. The special had befriended Pris, brought her food, let her move into his apartment, and watched her mutilate a spider with cuticle scissors. Now she is dead, and he has no words. Deckard leaves him and phones Harry Bryant to report the three bodies. The encounter with Pris — the android who looked like Rachael, who spoke as if they had a history, who died without a struggle — is the event that finally breaks Deckard's ability to see his work as clean or necessary.
Thematic Significance: The Face of the Other
Pris Stratton is the android who forces Deckard to confront the contradiction at the heart of his profession. He has just made love to Rachael Rosen, an android of the same subtype, and now he kills Pris without hesitation. The act is technically correct — she is an illegal escaped android — but it is also an act of violence against a being who shares the face and body of someone he has held. Deckard's earlier test on himself, administered in Phil Resch's car, had already shown that he feels empathy for specific androids. Pris is the proof of that empathy's cost: he can kill her, but he cannot pretend she was a machine. The special's grief and Deckard's own hollow exhaustion after the killing mark the end of his career as a bounty hunter. Pris, more than any other android, makes visible the line that Deckard has crossed and cannot uncross.
