Metaphysical Mysteries

This short story by Philip K. Dick takes us back to the Cold War era, when nuclear war was everyone's fear. A family suddenly wakes up in the future. A future too terrible for the people living in the present to accept. The family has a choice: They can stay in the future, go underground, and be dehumanized or take a chance by staying in the house of surviving the next ROM bomb attack and being blown back to the present.

Frank Boston, retired Air Force Pararescueman, experienced two separate incidents involving three back-to-back deaths early in his Air Force career. He concluded after the second incident that he has a strange power he calls nose-smell, a sort of mystic instinct of seeing who will die in a group of related deaths. He goes years without using his ability until a small girl drowns in a pond on the nearby Air Force base. He knows two more water-related deaths will soon follow.

Il commissario Falò, uomo integerrimo la cui intransigente, coriacea, ferrea volontà morale di natura abissale e ancestrale, una volontà illesa e duramente intatta, da nessuno demoralizzata, tantomeno infranta, fluttua morbida nella spirale avvolgente, delirante e al contempo affascinante, misterica e cabalistica della sua fervida mente alla perenne, infrangibile ricerca immarcescibile delle verità più pure, nitidamente e nudamente cristalline in modo suadente, verità grandiosamente splendenti.