Read Online Tenth of December by George Saunders - Free Book Online

Heather? Use your noggin. You are not a scientist, but Lord knows you work around scientists all day. Drip on?”
    I did not say “Acknowledge.”
    “What’s the problem, Jeff?” Abnesti said.
    “I don’t want to kill Rachel,” I said.
    “Well, who does?” Abnesti said. “Do I? Do you, Verlaine?”
    “No,” Verlaine said over the P.A.
    “Jeff, maybe you’re overthinking this,” Abnesti said. “Is it possible the Darkenfloxx™ will kill Rachel? Sure. We have the Heather precedent. On the other hand, Rachel may be stronger. She seems a little larger.”
    “She’s actually a little smaller,” Verlaine said.
    “Well, maybe she’s tougher,” Abnesti said.
    “We’re going to weight-adjust her dosage,” Verlaine said. “So.”
    “Thanks, Verlaine,” Abnesti said. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
    “Maybe show him the file,” Verlaine said.
    Abnesti handed me Rachel’s file.
    Verlaine came back in.
    “Read it and weep,” he said.
    Per Rachel’s file, she had stolen jewelry from her mother, a car from her father, cash from her sister, statues from their church. She’d gone to jail for drugs. After four times in jail for drugs, she’d gone to rehab for drugs, then to rehab for prostitution, then to what they call rehab refresh, for people who’ve been in rehab so many times they are basically immune. But she must have been immune to the rehab refresh, too, because after that came her biggie: a triple murder—her dealer, the dealer’s sister, the dealer’s sister’s boyfriend.
    Reading that made me feel a little funny that we’d fucked and I’d loved her.
    But I still didn’t want to kill her.
    “Jeff,” Abnesti said. “I know you’ve done a lot of work on this with Mrs. Lacey. On killing and so forth. But this is not you. This is us.”
    “It’s not even us,” Verlaine said. “It’s science.”
    “The mandates of science,” Abnesti said. “Plus the dictates.”
    “Sometimes science sucks,” Verlaine said.
    “On the one hand, Jeff,” Abnesti said, “a few minutes of unpleasantness for Heather—”
    “Rachel,” Verlaine said.
    “A few minutes of unpleasantness for Rachel,” Abnesti said, “years of relief for literally tens of thousands of underloving or overloving folks.”
    “Do the math, Jeff,” Verlaine said.
    “Being good in small ways is easy,” Abnesti said. “Doing the huge good things, that’s harder.”
    “Drip on?” Verlaine said. “Jeff?”
    I did not say “Acknowledge.”
    “Fuck it, enough,” Abnesti said. “Verlaine, what’s the name of that one? The one where I give him an order and he obeys it?”
    “Docilryde™,” Verlaine said.
    “Is there Docilryde™ in his MobiPak™?” Abnesti said.
    “There’s Docilryde™ in every MobiPak™,” Verlaine said.
    “Does he need to say ‘Acknowledge’?” Abnesti said.
    “Docilryde™’s a Class C, so—” Verlaine said.
    “See, that, to me, makes zero sense,” Abnesti said. “What good’s an obedience drug if we need his permission to use it?”
    “We just need a waiver,” Verlaine said.
    “How long does that shit take?” Abnesti said.
    “We fax Albany, they fax us back,” Verlaine said.
    “Come on, come on, make haste,” Abnesti said, and they went out, leaving me alone in the Spiderhead.

    X
    It was sad. It gave me a sad, defeated feeling to think that soon they’d be back and would Docilryde™ me, and I’d say “Acknowledge,” smiling agreeably the way a person smiles on Docilryde™, and then the Darkenfloxx™ would flow, into Rachel, and I would begin describing, in that rapid, robotic way one describes on Verbaluce™/VeriTalk™/ChatEase™, the things Rachel would, at that time, begin doing to herself.
    It was like all I had to do to be a killer again was sit there and wait.
    Which was a hard pill to swallow, after my work with Mrs. Lacey.
    “Violence finished, anger no more,” she’d make me say, over and over. Then she’d have me do a Detailed Remembering