Tenth of December

Jeff is a test subject and prisoner at a facility nicknamed Spiderhead because of its central hub with hallways branching off of it. The facility tests new drugs on inmates. Abnesti, Jeff’s handler, uses a device called a MobiPakTM to inject him with drugs via a remote. The drug ED763 makes the Interior Garden Jeff is in seem beautiful, and the drug VerbaluceTM makes him capable of expressing that beauty using sophisticated language.

On another day, a woman, Heather, joins Jeff in Small Workroom 2. Abnesti asks them to say how they feel about each other’s attractiveness. They are injected with a drug that makes them attracted to each other, “Like if you’d dreamed of a certain girl all your life and all of a sudden there she was, in your same Workroom” (47). Jeff and Heather have sex while Abnesti watches. He adds VerbaluceTM to their system and asks them to detail their intense love for one another while they continue having sex. After, they are allowed to stay together for an hour; the drugs start to wane, but Jeff still feels residual love for Heather.

Abnesti changes the drugs to bring them back to normal. They become embarrassed and stop feeling love. At lunch, Jeff thinks about his time with Heather: He has clear memories, but no longer feels any emotion for her except shame for having sex in front of Abnesti.

After lunch, another woman, Rachel, is brought in. The drugs are turned on, and the same thing happens: Jeff and Rachel fall in love and have passionate sex. Jeff experiences his feelings as unprecedented even though he had them all with Heather before lunch. Afterward, Jeff is intensely sad that “love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing” (51).

Jeff is brought into the Control room and presented with a choice: Heather and Rachel are in another room, and he must give one of them DarkenfloxxTM, which makes subjects feel terrible. Jeff does not want to choose, as he feels it would be random, and he remembers how horrible DarkenfloxxTM is. Abnesti threatens both women, and Jeff still refuses to choose; for Abnesti, this means that the love drug works. Abnesti tells Jeff that, with the power to control whether or not someone loves another person, “we have unlocked a mysterious eternal secret […] Say someone can’t love? Now he or she can. We can make him” (55). He hints that Jeff would not have been put in prison if he’d had access to the drug, which bothers Jeff; he asks to go to bed, but he’s led back to a Workroom.

In the room is a man named Rogan, and they sit quietly while nothing happens. Jeff realizes what’s going on; he ducks into the Control Room and sees Heather, who admits that she has been asked to choose between the two men. Jeff correctly suspects that Rachel will be brought in next to make the same decision. He questions her, too, which annoys Abnesti. Jeff is put back in a Workroom with a new man, Keith, who admits he’s had sex with Rachel and Heather, too. Jeff tells Keith what’s happening, further irritating Abnesti. Later, Abnesti questions Jeff in his Domain. Jeff admits to feeling “jerked around” by the process but has no feelings of residual love or resentment.

The next day, Abnesti calls Jeff and tells him that their results are “not good enough for the Protocol Committee” (65). Abnesti is tense with his colleague Verlaine as he explains that Heather must receive DarkenfloxxTM  for five minutes while Jeff watches. When Jeff is hesitant, Abnesti implies that if Jeff knew of Heather’s crimes he might feel differently, then threatens to take away Jeff’s ability to Skype with his mother. Jeff relents, and the experiment begins: Heather weeps and paces while Jeff is ordered to speak in detail while on VerbaluceTM. Jeff opines poetically about the nature of pain while watching Heather suffer, and Verlaine and Abnesti conclude that he has no romantic feelings toward her. Jeff is forced to watch and narrate as Heather beats her head against a wall, takes a chair apart, and attempts suicide by beating herself with it.

Later that day, Jeff is brought back into Spiderhead. Abnesti is cagey about whether Heather lived and says he hated what happened; then he calls Rachel into a Workroom to “complete the next portion of our Confirmation Trial” (71).

Jeff hesitates again, and he is given Rachel’s file, which reveals addiction to drugs and a triple homicide. Verlaine says that the experiment is “Not even us […] It’s science” (72) and he and Abnesti argue that it’s for the greater good. When Jeff refuses to acknowledge the experiment, Verlaine and Abnesti get a waiver to inject him with DocilrydeTM, which will force compliance.

Jeff considers his complicity in Heather and Rachel’s fate, then recalls his own crime: When he was 19 and drunk, he got in a fight with Mike Appel and ended up killing him. Rachel asks what’s going on from her Workroom, and Jeff realizes that if he isn’t there to describe her receiving DarkenfloxxTM, there’s no reason to do the experiment. He looks around for a way to escape and sees that Abnesti has left his MobiPakTM remote. Jeff watches Rachel dancing absently—“Why was she dancing? No reason. Just alive, I guess” (78)—then turns on his own DarkenfloxxTM  and throws the remote down a vent. He dies by suicide using the edge of Abnesti’s desk.

Now dead, Jeff’s consciousness rises above Spiderhead and sees the other prisoners; he considers that they are victims of “neurological tendency and environmental activation” rather than willful criminals (78). He views Rachel, his mother, Mike Appel’s mother, and then Abnesti and Verlaine trying to save him. A “kind voice” offers him the chance to go back, which he declines. Jeff is happy in death, as he knows he has not killed someone and never will again.