Escape From Spiderhead Read online

  Escape from Spiderhead

  by George Saunders

  “D

  rip on?” Abnesti said over the P.A.

  “What’s in it?” I said.

  “Hilarious,” he said.

  “Acknowledge,” I said.

  Abnesti used his remote. My MobiPak™ whirred. Soon the Interior Garden looked really nice. Everything seemed super-clear.

  I said out loud, as I was supposed to, what I was feeling.

  “Garden looks nice,” I said. “Super-clear.”

  Abnesti said, “Jeff, how about we pep up those language centers?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Drip on?” he said.

  “Acknowledge,” I said.

  He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.

  I sat, pleasantly engaged in these thoughts, until the Verbaluce™ began to wane. At which point the garden just looked nice again. It was something about the bushes and whatnot? It made you just want to lay out there and catch rays and think your happy thoughts. If you get what I mean.

  Then whatever else was in the drip wore off, and I didn’t feel much about the garden one way or the other. My mouth was dry, though, and my gut had that post-Verbaluce™ feel to it.

  “What’s going to be cool about that one?” Abnesti said. “Is, say a guy has to stay up late guarding a perimeter. Or is at school waiting for his kid and gets bored. But there’s some nature nearby? Or say a park ranger has to work a double shift?”

  “That will be cool,” I said.

  “That’s ED763,” he said. “We’re thinking of calling it NatuGlide. Or maybe ErthAdmire.”

  “Those are both good,” I said.

  “Thanks for your help, Jeff,” he said.

  Which was what he always said.

  “Only a million years to go,” I said.

  Which was what I always said.

  Then he said, “Exit the Interior Garden now, Jeff, head over to Small Workroom 2.”

  II

  I

  nto Small Workroom 2 they sent this pale tall girl.

  “What do you think?” Abnesti said over the P.A.

  “Me?” I said. “Or her?”

  “Both,” Abnesti said.

  “Pretty good,” I said.

  “Fine, you know,” she said. “Normal.”

  Abnesti asked us to rate each other more quantifiably, as per pretty, as per sexy.

  It appeared we liked each other about average, i.e., no big attraction or revulsion either way.

  Abnesti said, “Jeff, drip on?”

  “Acknowledge,” I said.

  “Heather, drip on?” he said.

  “Acknowledge,” Heather said.

  Then we looked at each other like, What happens next?

  What happened next was, Heather soon looked super-good. And I could tell she thought the same of me. It came on so sudden we were like laughing. How could we not have seen it, how cute the other one was? Luckily there was a couch in the Workroom. It felt like our drip had, in addition to whatever they were testing, some ED556 in it, which lowers your shame level to like nil. Because soon, there on the couch, off we went. It was super-hot between us. And not merely in a horndog way. Hot, yes, but also just right. Like if you’d dreamed of a certain girl all your life and all of a sudden there she was, in your Domain.

  “Jeff,” Abnesti said. “I’d like your permission to pep up your language centers.”

  “Go for it,” I said, under her now.

  “Drip on?” he said.

  “Acknowledge,” I said.

  “Me, too?” Heather said.

  “You got it,” Abnesti said, with a laugh. “Drip on?”

  “Acknowledge,” she said, all breathless.

  Soon, experiencing the benefits of the flowing Verbaluce™ in our drips, we were not only fucking really well but also talking pretty great. Like, instead of just saying the sex-type things we had been saying (such as “wow” and “oh God” and “hell yes” and so forth), we now began freestyling re our sensations and thoughts, in elevated diction, with eighty-per-cent increased vocab, our well-articulated thoughts being recorded for later analysis.

  For me, the feeling was, approximately: Astonishment at the dawning realization that this woman was being created in real time, directly from my own mind, per my deepest longings. Finally, after all these years (was my thought), I had found the precise arrangement of body/face/mind that personified all that was desirable. The taste of her mouth, the look of that halo of blondish hair spread out around her cherubic yet naughty-looking face (she was beneath me now, legs way up), even (not to be crude or dishonor the exalted feelings I was experiencing) the sensations her vagina was producing along the length of my thrusting penis were precisely those I had always hungered for, though I had never, before this instant, realized that I so ardently hungered for them.

  That is to say: a desire would arise and, concurrently, the satisfaction of that desire would also arise. It was as if (a) I longed for a certain (heretofore untasted) taste until (b) said longing became nearly unbearable, at which time (c) I found a morsel of food with that exact taste already in my mouth, perfectly satisfying my longing.

  Every utterance, every adjustment of posture bespoke the same thing: we had known each other forever, were soul mates, had met and loved in numerous preceding lifetimes, and would meet and love in many subsequent lifetimes, always with the same transcendently stupefying results.

  Then there came a hard-to-describe but very real drifting-off into a number of sequential reveries that might best be described as a type of nonnarrative mind scenery, i.e., a series of vague mental images of places I had never been (a certain pine-packed valley in high white mountains, a chalet-type house in a cul-de-sac, the yard of which was overgrown with wide, stunted Seussian trees), each of which triggered a deep sentimental longing, longings that coalesced into, and were soon reduced to, one central longing, i.e., an intense longing for Heather and Heather alone.

  This mind-scenery phenomenon was strongest during our third (!) bout of lovemaking. (Apparently, Abnesti had included some Vivistif™ in my drip.)

  Afterward, our protestations of love poured forth simultaneously, linguistically complex and metaphorically rich: I daresay we had become poets. We were allowed to lie there, limbs intermingled, for nearly an hour. It was bliss. It was perfection. It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

  We cuddled with a fierceness/focus that rivalled the fierceness/focus with which we had fucked. There was nothing less about cuddling vis-à-vis fucking, is what I mean to say. We were all over each other in the super-friendly way of puppies, or spouses meeting for the first time after one of them has undergone a close brush with death. Everything seemed moist, permeable, sayable.

  Then something in the drip began to wane. I think Abnesti had shut off the Verbaluce™? Also the shame reducer? Basically, everything began to dwindle. Suddenly we felt shy. But still loving. We began the process of trying to talk après Verbaluce™: always awkward.

  Yet I could see in her eyes that she was still feeling love for me.

  And I was definitely stil
l feeling love for her.

  Well, why not? We had just fucked three times! Why do you think they call it “making love”? That was what we had just made three times: love.

  Then Abnesti said, “Drip on?”

  We had kind of forgotten he was even there, behind his one-way mirror.

  I said, “Do we have to? We are really liking this right now.”

  “We’re just going to try to get you guys back to baseline,” he said. “We’ve got more to do today.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Rats,” she said.

  “Drip on?” he said.

  “Acknowledge,” we said.

  Soon something began to change. I mean, she was fine. A handsome pale girl. But nothing special. And I could see that she felt the same re me, i.e., what had all that fuss been about just now?

  Why weren’t we dressed? We real quick got dressed.

  Kind of embarrassing.

  Did I love her? Did she love me?

  Ha.

  No.

  Then it was time for her to go. We shook hands.

  Out she went.

  Lunch came in. On a tray. Spaghetti with chicken chunks.

  Man, was I hungry.

  I spent all lunchtime thinking. It was weird. I had the memory of fucking Heather, the memory of having felt the things I’d felt for her, the memory of having said the things I’d said to her. My throat was like raw from how much I’d said and how fast I’d felt compelled to say it. But in terms of feelings? I basically had nada left.

  Just a hot face and some shame re having fucked three times in front of Abnesti.

  III

  A

  fter lunch in came another girl.

  About equally so-so. Dark hair. Average build. Nothing special, just like, upon first entry, Heather had been nothing special.

  “This is Rachel,” Abnesti said on the P.A. “This is Jeff.”

  “Hi, Rachel,” I said.

  “Hi, Jeff,” she said.

  “Drip on?” Abnesti said.

  We Acknowledged.

  Something seemed very familiar about the way I now began feeling. Suddenly Rachel looked super-good. Abnesti requested permission to pep up our language centers via Verbaluce™. We Acknowledged. Soon we, too, were fucking like bunnies. Soon we, too, were talking like articulate maniacs re our love. Once again certain sensations were arising to meet my concurrently arising desperate hunger for just those sensations. Soon my memory of the perfect taste of Heather’s mouth was being overwritten by the current taste of Rachel’s mouth, so much more the taste I now desired. I was feeling unprecedented emotions, even though those unprecedented emotions were (I discerned somewhere in my consciousness) exactly the same emotions I had felt earlier, for that now unworthy-seeming vessel Heather. Rachel was, I mean to say, it. Her lithe waist, her voice, her hungry mouth/hands/loins—they were all it.

  I just loved Rachel so much.

  Then came the sequential geographic reveries (see above): same pine-packed valley, same chalet-looking house, accompanied by that same longing-for-place transmuting into a longing for (this time) Rachel. While continuing to enact a level of sexual strenuousness that caused what I would describe as a gradually tightening, chest-located, sweetness rubber band to both connect us and compel us onward, we whispered feverishly (precisely, poetically) about how long we felt we had known each other, i.e., forever.

  Again the total number of times we made love was three.

  Then, like before, came the dwindling. Our talking became less excellent. Words were fewer, our sentences shorter. Still, I loved her. Loved Rachel. Everything about her just seemed perfect: her cheek mole, her black hair, the little butt-squirm she did now and then, as if to say, Mmm-mmm, was that ever good.

  “Drip on?” Abnesti said. “We are going to try to get you both back to baseline.”

  “Acknowledge,” she said.

  “Well, hold on,” I said.

  “Jeff,” Abnesti said, irritated, as if trying to remind me that I was here not by choice but because I had done my crime and was in the process of doing my time.

  “Acknowledge,” I said. And gave Rachel one last look of love, knowing (as she did not yet know) that this would be the last look of love I would be giving her.

  Soon she was merely fine to me, and I merely fine to her. She looked, as had Heather, embarrassed, as in, What was up with that just now? Why did I just go so overboard with Mr. Average here?

  Did I love her? Or her me?

  No.

  When it was time for her to go, we shook hands.

  The place where my MobiPak™ was surgically joined to my lower back was sore from all our positional changes. Plus I was way tired. Plus I was feeling so sad. Why sad? Was I not a dude? Had I not just fucked two different girls, for a total of six times, in one day?

  Still, honestly, I felt sadder than sad.

  I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing.

  IV

  A

  fter Snack Abnesti called me into Control. Control being like the head of a spider. With its various legs being our Workrooms. Sometimes we were called upon to work alongside Abnesti in the head of the spider. Or, as we termed it: the Spiderhead.

  “Sit,” he said. “Look into Large Workroom 1.”

  In Large Workroom 1 were Heather and Rachel, side by side.

  “Recognize them?” he said.

  “Ha,” I said.

  “Now,” Abnesti said. “I’m going to present you with a choice, Jeff. This is what we’re playing at here. See this remote? Let’s say you can hit this button and Rachel gets some Darkenfloxx™. Or you can hit this button and Heather gets the Darkenfloxx™. See? You choose.”

  “They’ve got Darkenfloxx™ in their MobiPaks™?” I said.

  “You’ve all got have Darkenfloxx™ in your MobiPaks™, dummy,” Abnesti said affectionately. “Verlaine put it there Wednesday. In anticipation of this very study.”

  Well, that made me nervous.

  Imagine the worst you have ever felt, times ten. That does not even come close to how bad you feel on Darkenfloxx™. The time it was administered to us in Orientation, briefly, for demo purposes, at one-third the dose now selected on Abnesti’s remote? I have never felt so terrible. All of us were just moaning, heads down, like, How could we ever have felt life was worth living?

  I do not even like to think about that time.

  “What’s your decision, Jeff?” Abnesti said. “Is Rachel getting the Darkenfloxx™? Or Heather?”

  “I can’t say,” I said.

  “You have to,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “It would be like random.”

  “You feel your decision would be random,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  And that was true. I really didn’t care. It was like if I put you in the Spiderhead and gave you the choice: which of these two strangers would you like to send into the shadow of the valley of death?

  “Ten seconds,” Abnesti said. “What we’re testing for here is any residual fondness.”

  It wasn’t that I liked them both. I honestly felt completely neutral toward both. It was exactly as if I had never seen, much less fucked, either one. (They had really succeeded in taking me back to baseline, I guess I am saying.)

  But, having once been Darkenfloxxed™, I just didn’t want to do that to anyone. Even if I didn’t like the person very much, even if I hated the person, I still wouldn’t want to do it.

  “Five seconds,” Abnesti said.

  “I can’t decide,” I said. “It’s random.”

  “Truly random?” he said. “O.K. I’m giving the Darkenfloxx™ to Heather.”

  I just sat there.

  “No, actually,” he said. “I’m giving it to Rachel.”

  Just sat there.

  “Jeff,” he said. “You have convince
d me. It would, to you, be random. You truly have no preference. I can see that. And therefore I don’t have to do it. See what we just did? With your help? For the first time? Via the ED289/290 suite? Which is what we’ve been testing today? You have to admit it: you were in love. Twice. 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 emotionwise 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 super-fond. 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.