Electric sheep
Rick Deckard's electric sheep is a premium-quality mechanical replica of a black-faced Suffolk ewe, built by a specialized shop to replace his real sheep Groucho, which died of tetanus contracted from a piece of baling wire in its hay. The ersatz animal grazes on the covered roof pasture of his conapt building, chomping simulated contentment and bamboozling the other tenants, who are themselves likely hiding their own electronic fakes behind a polite taboo against inquiring whether a neighbor's animal is genuine. The sheep contains an oat-tropic circuit that makes it scramble convincingly toward any rolled oats, and its fleece is genuine wool, but beneath the thick white wool lies a concealed control panel that reveals the mechanism's true nature. Deckard must care for it with the same vigilance he gave the real animal, because any breakdown — such as a fouled voice tape that would not stop baaing — would expose the fraud to the entire building. He has had it at the repair shop six times, mostly for minor malfunctions, and the repair truck is disguised as an animal hospital with a driver dressed in white like a veterinarian.
Social and Psychological Burden
The electric sheep imposes a tyranny of pretense on Deckard. He explains to his neighbor Bill Barbour that owning and maintaining a fraud has a way of gradually demoralizing one, yet from a social standpoint it must be done given the absence of the real article. The sheep allows him to participate in the basic theological and moral structure of Mercerism, since every family in the building has an animal of some sort, and to be without one would violate the fusion with Mercer that requires empathy toward living creatures. But the sheep is not the same as a real animal, and Deckard feels this keenly. His wife Iran spends the bounty money he brings home instead of saving it to buy a real sheep, and Deckard's longing for a genuine large animal — a sheep, cow, steer, or horse — drives his professional ambition to retire enough androids to afford one.
The Electric Animal as a Subform of the Android
While inspecting the Rosen Association's collection of living animals in Seattle, Deckard experiences a sudden, bitter realization about the similarity between his electric sheep and an android. The electric animal, he reflects, could be considered a subform of the android, a kind of vastly inferior robot; conversely, the android could be regarded as a highly developed, evolved version of the ersatz animal. Both viewpoints repel him. The electric sheep does not know he exists, and like the androids, it has no ability to appreciate the existence of another. This insight deepens his unease with his profession and with the entire system of simulation that pervades his world.
The Electric Toad as a Final Irony
After retiring the last three androids, Deckard drives north to the desolate Oregon border and discovers what he believes is a living toad, the creature most sacred to Wilbur Mercer. He carefully captures it, ties the box shut, and flies home in triumph. But when he presents the toad to Iran, she flips open a tiny control panel on its abdomen and reveals it to be electric. Deckard's face falls by degrees; he gazes mutely at the false animal, fiddling with its legs as if baffled. He wonders how it got out into the desert, and concludes that someone must have put it there. The electric toad, like the electric sheep before it, is a manufactured imitation of life, and Deckard's moment of transcendent discovery is undercut by the same simulation that has haunted him throughout the novel. Yet he accepts it: "The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are." Iran orders artificial flies for the toad and arranges for its maintenance, and the electric animal becomes part of their household, a final emblem of the blurred boundary between the real and the artificial that defines their world.
