Convicts are guinea pigs for some intense mood-altering drugs.

(from Tenth of December)

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.

So far, the best story in the collection, and that’s saying something. This is Saunders in his wheelhouse, a lab that relentlessly observes/experiments on human subjects being not so different from a theme park/living exhibit/re-enactor type scenarios. The subjects are at the whims of some diabolical pharmaceuticals. Vivistif is for boners. Verbaluce ups your eleoquence. Darkenfloxx fills you with despair. The subjects aren’t just chemically induced into sex, they fall in love, at least until the drip stops. And that’s not even the craziest stuff that happens.

• New Yorker subscribers can read it here.
• You can read it in English and Chinese here, for some reason.
• Moose And Gripes wrote about this story in 2010.