"Careful, Ijon, watch your step, be on your guard! This good weather can't be trusted! Come now, one-two-three, snap out of it! Don't sit there sprawled like some Onassis, weeping from the smoke, a bump on your head and universal loving-kindness in your heart! It's a trap, there's treachery afoot!" Though I didn't budge an inch. Yet my throat was exceedingly dry and the blood did pound in my ears (but that was due, no doubt, to the sudden rush of happiness). Driven by a powerful thirst, I got up to get another glass of water. I was thinking about the oversalted slaw at the banquet, and that dreadful buffet, then to experiment I thought about J. W., H. C. M. and M. W., my worst enemies-and discovered that beyond an impulse to clap them on the back, give them each a friendly hug, exchange a few kind words and kindred thoughts, I felt nothing whatever towards them. Now this was truly alarming. With one hand on the nickel spigot and the other holding the empty glass, I froze. Slowly I turned the water on, filled it, raised it, and then, twisting my face in a weird grimace-I could see the struggle in the bathroom mirror-I poured it down the drain.

The water from the tap. Of course. These changes in me had begun the moment I drank it. There was something in it, clearly. Poison? But I'd never heard of any poison that would… Wait a minute! I was, after all, a steady subscriber to all the major scientific publications. In just the last issue of Science Today there had been an article on some new psychotropic agents of the group of so-called benignimizers (the N,N-dimethylpeptocryptomides), which induced states of undirected joy and beatitude. Yes, yes! I could practically see that article now. Hedonidol, Euphoril, Inebrium, Felicitine, Empathan, Ecstasine, Halcyonal and a whole spate of derivatives! Though by replacing an amino group with a hydroxyl you obtained, instead, Furiol, Antagonil, Rabiditine, Sadistizine, Dementium, Flagellan, Juggernol, and many other polyparanoidal stimulants of the group of so-called phrensobarbs (for these prompted the most vicious behavior, the lashing out at objects animate as well as inanimate-and especially powerful here were the cannibal-cannabinols and manicomimetics).