Scramble Suit

The scramble suit is the signature technology of A Scanner Darkly, Dick's 1977 novel about undercover narcotics agent Bob Arctor, who wears the suit when reporting to his superiors to protect his identity. The suit projects a vinylidene polyester membrane that displays a continuously shifting montage of faces, body types, clothing — thousands of different appearances cycling through at a rate that makes the wearer completely unrecognizable. The technology serves its stated purpose: Arctor's superiors cannot identify him. But it also produces a secondary effect that becomes the novel's psychological core: Arctor loses the ability to see his own face. When he watches surveillance footage of himself as a suspect, he sees only the scramble suit. The specific, located, particular human face that anchors identity in the physical world has been replaced by an algorithmically generated composite. He is everyone and no one. The scanner shows, but what it sees is dark.