Rachael in San Francisco

Fillmore Street, San Francisco

"I wish we could go somewhere," she said. "Not just around here. I want to see different places. Maybe someday we could see the Rockies. We could drive up high; we could even live up there. They have towns up there right in the mountains."

"It's hard to get a job there," he said.

"We could open a store," Rachael said. "There's always things people want. We could open a bakery."

"I'm not a baker," he said.

"Then we could put out a newspaper."

He kissed her again, and then he lifted her up, off the floor and against him. Then he set her down on the arm of the couch.

"Tell your brother Nat," she said, "to give us one of his cars so we can drive. Tell him we need a new one we can sell when we get there."

"You mean it?" he said.

Of course she did. "But not yet," she said. "We better wait until after I have the baby. Then we can go. In a couple of years, when we have some money. When you're finished being an apprentice."

"You really want to get out of here?" After all, he thought, she had been born here; she had grown up here.

She said, "Maybe we could even go up to Canada. I was thinking about that. To one of those towns where they trap animals and there's a lot of snow."

"You wouldn't like that," he said. But, he thought, maybe she would.

-- Philip K. Dick, The Broken Bubble (London: Gollancz, 1988), pp. 73-4.