Tenth of December by George Saunders Read Free Book Online Page A

Right?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Very much in love,” he said. “Twice.”
    “I said yes,” I said.
    “But you just now expressed no preference,” he said. “Ergo, no trace of either of those great loves remains. You are totally cleansed. We brought you high, laid you low, and now here you sit, the same emotion-wise as before our testing even began. That is powerful, that is killer. We have unlocked a mysterious eternal secret. What a fantastic game changer. Say someone can’t love? Now he or she can. We can make him. Say someone loves too much? Or loves someone deemed unsuitable by his or her caregiver? We can tone that shit right down. Say someone is blue, because of true love? We step in,or his or her caregiver does: blue no more. No longer, in terms of emotional controllability, are we ships adrift. No one is. We see a ship adrift, we climb aboard, install a rudder. Guide him/her toward love. Or away from it. You say, ‘All you need is love’? Look, here comes ED289/290. Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down! Suddenly the soldiers on both sides start fucking. Or, at low dosage, feeling superfond. Or say we have two rival dictators in a death grudge. Assuming ED289/290 develops nicely in pill form, allow me to slip each dictator a mickey. Soon their tongues are down each other’s throats and doves of peace are pooping on their epaulets. Or, depending on the dosage, they may just be hugging. And who helped us do that? You did.”
    All this time, Rachel and Heather had just been sitting there in Large Workroom 1.
    “That’s it gals, thanks,” Abnesti said on the P.A.
    And they left, neither knowing how close they had come to getting Darkenfloxxed™ out their wing-wangs.
    Verlaine took them out the back way, i.e., not through the Spiderhead but via the Back Alley. Which is not really an alley, just a carpeted hallway leading back to our Domain Cluster.
    “Think, Jeff,” Abnesti said. “Think if you’d had the benefit of ED289/290 on your fateful night.”
    Tell the truth, I was getting kind of sick of him always talking about my fateful night.
    I’d been sorry about it right away and had gotten sorrier about it ever since, and was now so sorry about it that himrubbing it in my face did not make me one bit sorrier, it just made me think of him as being kind of a dick.
    “Can I go to bed now?” I said.
    “Not yet,” Abnesti said. “It is hours to go before you sleep.”
    Then he sent me into Small Workroom 3, where some dude I didn’t know was sitting.
    V
    “Rogan,” the dude said.
    “Jeff,” I said.
    “What’s up?” he said.
    “Not much,” I said.
    We sat tensely for a long time, not talking.
    I kept waiting to feel myself all of a sudden wanting to jump Rogan’s bones.
    But no.
    Maybe ten minutes passed.
    We got some rough customers in here. I noted that Rogan had a tattoo of a rat on his neck, a rat that had just been knifed and was crying. But even through its tears it was knifing a smaller rat, who just looked surprised.
    Finally Abnesti came on the P.A.
    “That’s it, guys, thanks,” he said.
    “What the fuck was that about?” Rogan said.
    Good question, Rogan, I thought. Why had we been left just sitting there? In the same manner that Heather and Rachel had been left just sitting there? Then I had a hunch. To test my hunch, I did a sudden lurch into the Spiderhead. Which Abnesti always made a point of not keeping locked, to show how much he trusted and was unafraid of us.
    And guess who was in there?
    “Hey, Jeff,” Heather said.
    “Jeff, get out,” Abnesti said.
    “Heather, did Mr. Abnesti just now make you decide which of us, me or Rogan, to give some Darkenfloxx™ to?” I said.
    “Yes,” Heather said. She must have been on some VeriTalk™, because she spoke the truth in spite of Abnesti’s attempt at a withering silencing glance.
    “Did you recently fuck Rogan, Heather?” I said. “In addition to me? And also fall in love with him, as you did with