Conapt Building 3967-C

Conapt Building 3967-C is a decaying, largely abandoned apartment block in the desolate suburbs of San Francisco, where the three remaining Nexus-6 androids—Roy Baty, Irmgard Baty, and Pris Stratton—hide after the rest of their group has been killed. It is the setting for the novel's climactic confrontation between bounty hunter Rick Deckard and the last fugitive androids, a place whose physical ruin mirrors the moral and emotional exhaustion of the hunter who pursues them there.

Location and Atmosphere

Inspector Harry Bryant gives Deckard the address of Conapt Building 3967-C late on the night of January 3, 1992, telling him the androids have taken "unlawful flight" there after learning of the deaths of Polokov, Garland, and Luba Luft. Deckard reflects that the building is "out in the suburbs where possibly a couple of deteriorated specials, antheads and chickenheads, hang out and go through their versions of living." The structure is one of countless abandoned residential towers left over from World War Terminus, its thousands of apartments mostly empty, its halls dark and dust-choked. When John Isidore, a special who lives in the same building, first encounters Pris Stratton there, he describes the building as "completely kipple-ized"—filled with useless objects that seem to multiply in the absence of human inhabitants. The silence of the place, Isidore reflects, "could not rein back its greed" now that it has "virtually won."

The Androids' Refuge

Roy Baty, the leader of the android group, chooses this building specifically because it offers concealment and because its only other tenant, John Isidore, is a chickenhead—a mentally diminished special—whom they can manipulate. When Roy and Irmgard Baty arrive at Pris's apartment, Roy immediately decides they should all stay in the building, saying, "I think you should move in with Isidore, Pris, and I think Irm and I should be here in the same building; that way we can help each other." He installs an alarm system with a Penfield unit designed to radiate panic at any intruder, and the three androids settle into Isidore's apartment to watch Buster Friendly's televised exposé of Mercerism. The building's emptiness gives them a false sense of security; Roy boasts that the bounty hunter "has our names but no location."

The Climax

Deckard arrives at Conapt Building 3967-C late at night, guided by his detection gear. Outside, he encounters Isidore, who has just released a spider he found, and asks the special to show him which apartment the androids are in. Isidore refuses. Deckard enters the building alone, using listening gear to locate the androids' cephalic activity on an upper floor. On the stairs, the figure of Wilbur Mercer appears to him and warns that "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." Pris Stratton, who physically resembles Rachael Rosen, emerges from the stairwell and approaches Deckard imploringly; he shoots her. He then goes to the apartment door, imitates Isidore's stammer to trick the Batys into opening it, and kills Irmgard Baty as she tries to shoot him from behind. Roy Baty, in another room, cries out in anguish; Deckard shoots him as well. The three androids are dead within minutes.

Aftermath and Significance

Deckard calls Harry Bryant from the apartment to report the retirements, then sits alone among the bodies. Isidore appears at the door, crying over Pris's corpse, and tells Deckard he is leaving the building to live "deeper in town where there's more people." When Deckard suggests a vacant apartment in his own building, Isidore refuses, saying, "I don't want to live near you." The building, now empty of all life except the dead androids and the departing special, reverts to its original state of desolation. Conapt Building 3967-C functions as the novel's final spatial emblem of entropy: a place where the last illegal androids make their stand and are destroyed, where a chickenhead's brief experience of companionship ends in horror, and where the bounty hunter completes his work only to find himself morally hollowed out. The building's decay is not merely atmospheric but thematic—it is the physical manifestation of the "tomb world" that Mercerism promises to transcend, and the site where that promise is tested and found wanting.