A Scanner Darkly

Jerry put down the dog, which was wrapped in a towel, and knelt over the shag rug. “I’ll show you one,” he said. The rug was covered with aphids; they hopped up everywhere, up and down, some higher than others. He searched for an especially large one, because of the difficulty people had seeing them. “Bring me a bottle or jar,” he said, “from under the sink. We’ll cap it or put a lid on it and then I can take it with me when I go to the doctor and he can analyze it.”

Charles Freck brought him an empty mayonnaise jar. Jerry went on searching, and at last came across an aphid jumping up at least four feet in the air. The aphid was over aP inch long. He caught it, carried it to the jar, carefully dropped it in, and screwed on the lid. Then he held it up triumphantly. “See?” he said.

“Yeahhhhh,” Charles Freck said, his eyes wide as he scrutinized the contents of the jar. “What a big one! Wow!”

“Help me find more for the doctor to see,” Jerry said, again squatting down on the rug, the jar beside him.

“Sure,” Charles Freck said, and did so.

Within half an hour they had three jars full of the bugs. Charles, although new at it, found some of the largest.

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption. Like this: two men kneeling down on the shag rug, finding bug after bug and putting them into jar after jar.

“What do we get for these,” Charles Freck said, later on in the day. “I mean, does the doctor pay a bounty or something? A prize? Any bread?”

“I get to help perfect a cure for them this way,” Jerry said. The pain, constant as it was, had become unbearable; he had never gotten used to it, and he knew he never would. The urge, the longing, to take another shower was overwhelming him. “Hey, man,” he gasped, straightening up, “you go on putting them in the jars while I take a leak and like that.” He started toward the bathroom.

“Okay,” Charles said, his long legs wobbling as he swung toward a jar, both hands cupped. An ex-veteran, he still had good muscular control, though; he made it to the jar. But then he said suddenly, “Jerry, hey—those bugs sort of scare me. I don’t like it here by myself.” He stood up.

“Chickenshit bastard,” Jerry said, panting with pain as he halted momentarily at the bathroom.

“Couldn’t you—”

“I got to take a leak!” He slammed the door and spun the knobs of the shower. Water poured down.

“I’m afraid out here.” Charles Freck’s voice came dimly, even though he was evidently yelling loud.

“Then go fuck yourself!” Jerry yelled back, and stepped into the shower. What fucking good are friends? he asked himself bitterly. No good, no good! No fucking good!

“Do these fuckers sting?” Charles yelled, right at the door.

“Yeah, they sting,” Jerry said as he rubbed shampoo into his hair.

“That’s what I thought.” A pause. “Can I wash my hands and get them off and wait for you?”

Chickenshit, Jerry thought with bitter fury. He said nothing; he merely kept on washing. The bastard wasn’t worth answering … He paid no attention to Charles Freck, only to himself. To his own vital, demanding, terrible, urgent needs. Everything else would have to wait. There was no time, no time; these things could not be postponed. Everything else was secondary. Except the dog; he wondered about Max, the dog.

***

Charles Freck phoned up somebody who he hoped was holding. “Can you lay about ten deaths on me?”

“Christ, I’m entirely out—I’m looking to score myself. Let me know when you find some, I could use some.”

“What’s wrong with the supply?”

“Some busts, I guess.”

Charles Freck hung up and then ran a fantasy number in his head as he slumped dismally back from the pay phone booth—you never used your home phone for a buy call—to his parked Chevy. In his fantasy number he was driving past the Thrifty Drugstore and they had a huge window display; bottles of slow death, cans of slow death, jars and bathtubs and vats and bowls of slow death, millions of caps and tabs and hits of slow death, slow death mixed with speed and junk and barbiturates and psychedelics, everything—and a giant sign: YOUR CREDIT IS GOOD HERE. Not to mention: LOW LOW PRICES, LOWEST IN TOWN.

But in actuality the Thrifty usually had a display of nothing: combs, bottles of mineral oil, spray cans of deodorant, always crap like that. But I bet the pharmacy in the back has slow death under lock and key in an unstepped-on, pure, unadulterated, uncut form, he thought as he drove from the parking lot onto Harbor Boulevard, into the afternoon traffic. About a fifty-pound bag.