LSD₂₅₀, an experimental drug of unknown properties was developed during the late 1960s. A variety of test subjects were found, all volunteers, mostly burned-out cases. The experiments were illegally sponsored by the CIA. The first few volunteers died shortly after administration of a dose of the drug. Each subsequent trial used a smaller dose. The twelfth victim, a jaded hippie lured by the chance to experience a new high, and receive a cool million dollars as well, eagerly swallowed the proffered mint – an Altoid.
He sat in his chair, wired to an EKG machine and an EEG machine, a respirator and a galvanometer, waiting for something to happen, waiting to feel the effects of the drug.
“How long before it takes effect?” he asked, searching through his experiences to compare with the uneventfulness of this one.
The doctor in charge glanced at his watch. “Strange, but the others all were affected by now. We’ll give it another half an hour before we begin the evaluations.”
The time crept by. The hippie listened to the machines he was wired to blip and whirr and click, he listened to his mind, heedful of new effects, but there was nothing. Behind him the doctor paced, sometimes muttering quietly to himself.
“That’s it,” he finally said, turning to the technician. “Disconnect him. That’s all we’ll get today.”
“That’s it? Nothing happened,” the hippie said, amazed. “I didn’t get off. This a rip-off.”
“Calm down young man,” the doctor said. “You should be grateful, you survived to collect your million dollars. The receptionist will arrange details if you’ll see her now. When you’re done, come back. I want to examine you before you leave.”
The young man, amazed and confused, made arrangements to receive his money as an untaxable overseas inheritance. The examination revealed nothing new but the doctor had the technician draw blood and schedule a follow-up with the hippie.
The hippie, Robbie Phoenix, left the office. He returned three times for examinations but they revealed nothing new. Either nothing happened or what happened was beyond the ability of medical science to detect.
Robbie went on with his life. During the next three years he managed to finish his bachelor’s degree, hitchhiked back and forth across America, wandered all over Europe and North Africa, the Middle East, comfortably well-off from investing in German and Swiss instruments, never worrying, never settling. In Sri Lanka in 1976 he had an accident. In the hospital he contracted sepsis. At the moment of death, lying in his bed, delirious, he imagined himself in a doctor’s office in Western New York a few moments after he swallowed an LSD₂₅₀-laced mint candy.
“How long before it takes effect…” he heard himself asking and then in a flash it him, everything had been a dream, but so vivid, so real.
The doctor in charge glanced at his watch. “Strange, but the others were all effected by now. We’ll give it another half hour before we begin the evaluations.”
Finally, he was discharged. At home, he thought about his experiences and his dream of life and death. It haunted him for months but at last he shook off the depression and began living again. He finished college and, after traveling for several months in America and Europe, drawing conservatively on his secret fortune, he decided to go to law school. He completed his degree, landed a job with an old Boston firm, settled in as an associate, married the daughter of a partner and was soon after made a partner himself, had children, became a judge, lived a careful life. Four days after his seventy-third birthday he suffered a heart attack. In the ambulance, as he was being rushed to the hospital, he lost consciousness. In a delirium, he imagined himself in a doctor’s office on Main Street in a suburb of Buffalo.
“How long before it takes effect,” he asked.
“Strange,” the doctor muttered, glancing at his watch. “The others were all affected by now…”
Robbie Phoenix sat up. Nobody noticed any changes. Time passed, the hippie was sent home. He pondered his memories, shrugged them off, decided to drop out of school and see the world; after all, he had a million dollars to spend and a lot of lives to spend it.
–A. Kaye
Stories
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This is such a clever inversion of the “trip that changes your life” trope — the drug does nothing, and yet it haunts both timelines anyway, right down to the identical dialogue and the doctor’s exact words repeating like a stuck record. The Sri Lanka death and the ambulance death mirroring each other almost word-for-word is the real gut-punch: it suggests Robbie never actually escapes that room, no matter which life he lives out. The ending, where he just shrugs and decides to go see the world again, is oddly perfect — like the loop is going to keep resetting no matter what choices he makes. Really unsettling, well-constructed piece.
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