Buster Friendly's exposé of Mercerism

Buster Friendly, the relentlessly cheerful television host whose show "Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends" beams across Earth and the colony planets twenty-three hours a day, had long chipped away at Mercerism with subtle ridicule. But on the night of January 3, 1992, he delivered the blow he had been promising for months: a carefully documented exposé that aimed to prove that the entire Mercerist experience—the fusion, the empathy, the ascent of Wilbur Mercer—was a fraud. The revelation, broadcast to a system-wide audience, struck at the very foundation of what it meant to be human in a world already poisoned by radioactive dust and haunted by the presence of androids.

The Buildup and the Broadcast

Buster Friendly had been teasing a major news item for some time. Earlier that day, his show had been interrupted by a commercial for Mountibank Lead Codpieces, which had driven Iran Deckard to dial a six-hour self-accusatory depression on her Penfield mood organ. Now, in the evening, the moment arrived. On the screen, Buster introduced Earl Parameter, head of his research staff, who presented enlarged video images of the gray backdrop against which Mercer climbed. Under rigorous laboratory scrutiny, the "sky" revealed brushstrokes; the "moon" was painted. The scraggly weeds, the sterile soil, even the stones hurled at Mercer—all appeared to be faked. The "stones," Parameter claimed, were made of soft plastic, causing no authentic wounds. "In other words," Buster declared, "Wilbur Mercer is not suffering at all."

The Discovery of Al Jarry

The research team had tracked down a former Hollywood special-effects man named Wade Cortot, who recognized the stage as one used by a now-defunct minor moviemaker. From there, they located an elderly bit player named Al Jarry, living in a tottering, shabby house in East Harmony, Indiana. A member of the research team visited Jarry and, by telepathic means, scanned his blurred, debris-cluttered mind. The old man admitted that he had made a series of short fifteen-minute video films for an employer he never met. The "rocks" were rubber-like plastic; the "blood" was catsup. The only suffering Jarry underwent was having to go an entire day without a shot of whisky. Buster Friendly concluded: "Mercerism is a swindle!"

The Immediate Aftermath

The broadcast reached John Isidore's apartment just as the three remaining androids—Roy Baty, Irmgard Baty, and Pris Stratton—were watching. Roy Baty, who had organized the group's escape from Mars, listened with grim satisfaction. Irmgard Baty declared that the exposé proved that the empathy humans claimed to feel was a swindle. Pris Stratton, meanwhile, was in the kitchen mutilating a spider Isidore had found, snipping off its legs with cuticle scissors. When Isidore protested, Roy Baty lit a match to make the crippled spider crawl. The androids revealed that Buster Friendly himself was an android, and that they had known the exposé was coming for months. For Isidore, the revelation that the sky behind Mercer was painted and that Mercer himself was a fraud plunged him into a vision of the tomb world, where everything decayed and the mutilated spider returned to life only through Mercer's presence. The exposé did not, however, end Mercerism for Isidore; Mercer appeared to him and admitted the fraud, but insisted that he would continue to lift Isidore from the tomb world regardless.

Consequences for Rick Deckard

Rick Deckard, returning home after retiring the last three androids, learned from his wife Iran that Buster Friendly had exposed Mercer as a fake. Iran asked him what he thought. "Everything is true," he replied. "Everything anybody has ever thought." The exposé had not changed his own experience of fusion; earlier that night, he had held the empathy box handles and encountered Mercer, who told him he was required to do wrong. The broadcast's claim that Mercer was a fraud did not alter the reality of that encounter for Deckard, nor did it prevent him from later finding a toad—which turned out to be electric—in the desert near the Oregon border. The exposé, for all its apparent power, left the fundamental structure of belief and doubt intact for those who had already fused with Mercer.