Ubik

Another trip into the inside of Philip K. Dick's head.

A new thought struck him, an eerie idea. Suppose Runciter had made the videotape recording under the assumption, based on inaccurate precog information, that the bomb blast would kill him and leave the rest of them alive. The tape had been made honestly but mistakenly; Runciter had not died. They had died, as the graffiti on the men's room wall had said, and Runciter still lived. Before the bomb blast he had given instructions for the taped commercial to be played at this time, and the network had done so, Runciter having failed to countermand his original order. That would explain the disparity between what Runciter had said on the tape and what he had written on the bathroom walls; it would in fact explain both. Which as far as he could see no other explanation would.

Unless Runciter was playing a sardonic game with them...

And a few pages later:

But he felt alone. It's overtaking me too soon, he realized. The proper time hasn't come: something has hurried this up -- some conniving thing has accelerated it, out of malice and curiosity: a polymorphic, perverse agency which likes to watch. An infantile, retarded entity which enjoys what's happening. It has crushed me like a bent-leggged insect, he said to himself. A simple bug which does nothing but hug the earth, which can never fly or escape. Can only descend step by step into what is deranged and foul. Into the world of the tomb which a perverse entity surrounded by its own filth inhabits. The thing we call Pat.

"Do you have your key?" Pat asked....