Short Answer #1 Describe the experience of “fusion with Mercer” when the empathy box is used. What happens? What does it look like etc.?
The reader at first experiences Mercerism as something that one can only experience through entering into a state of fusion with Mercer, mediated through the sights and sounds that one experiences while hooked into an empathy box. Empathy Boxes link simultaneous users into a collective consciousness based on the suffering of Wilbur Mercer. Yet, the reader slowly discovers that the world of the empathy box has very real consequences for the other world as well and that maybe the world of Mercer is just as real as the world that Rick Deckard lives and walks around in.
http://www.gradesaver.com/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/study-guide/themes
