A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Than the oil, I mean. And then the terminal step, of course, I keep to myself, but it involves an intricate methodological process of filtering.” He opened the freezer above the refrigerator and carefully placed the jar inside.
    “How long will it be in there?” Charles Freck asked.
    “Half an hour.” Barris got out one of his hand-rolled cigarettes, lit it, then strolled over to the heap of electronic testing equipment. He stood there meditating, rubbing his bearded chin.
    “Yeah,” Charles Freck said, “but I mean, so even if you get a whole gram of pure coke out of this, I can’t use it on Donna to … you know, get into her pants in exchange. It’s like buying her; that’s what it amounts to.”
    “Exchange,” Barris corrected. “You give her a gift, she gives you one. The most precious gift a woman has.”
    “She’d know she was being bought.” He had seen enough of Donna to flash on that; Donna would make out the shuck right off.
    “Cocaine is an aphrodisiac,” Barris muttered, half to himself; he was setting up the testing equipment beside Bob Arctor’s cephalochromoscope, which was Bob’s most expensive possession. “After she’s snorted a good part of it she’ll be happy to uncork herself.”
    “Shit, man,” Charles Freck protested. “You’re talking about Bob Arctor’s girl. He’s my friend, and the guy you and Luckman live with.”
    Barris momentarily raised his shaggy head; he scrutinized Charles Freck for a time. “There’s a great deal about Bob Arctor you’re not aware of,” he said. “That none of us are. Your view is simplistic and naïve, and you believe about him what he wants you to.”
    “He’s an all-right guy.”
    “Certainly,” Barris said, nodding and grinning. “Beyond a doubt. One of the world’s best. But I have come—we have come, those of us who have observed Arctor acutely and perceptively—to distinguish in him certain contradictions. Both in terms of personality structure and in behavior. In his total relatedness to life. In, so to speak, his innate style.”
    “You have anything specific?”
    Barris’s eyes, behind his green shades, danced.
    “Your eyes dancing don’t mean nothing to me,” Charles Freck said. “What’s wrong with the cephscope that you’re working on it?” He moved in closer to look for himself.
    Tilting the central chassis on end, Barris said, “Tell me what you observe there with the wiring underneath.”
    “I see cut wires,” Charles Freck said. “And a bunch of what look like deliberate shorts. Who did it?”
    Still Barris’s merry knowing eyes danced with special delight.
    “This crummy significant crud doesn’t go down with me worth shit,” Charles Freck said. “Who damaged this cephscope? When did it happen? You just find out recently? Arctor didn’t say anything the last time I saw him, which was the day before yesterday.”
    Barris said, “Perhaps he wasn’t prepared to talk about it yet.”
    “Well,” Charles Freck said, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re talking in spaced-out riddles. I think I’ll go over to one of the New-Path residences and turn myself in and go through withdrawal cold turkey and get therapy, the destruct game they play, and be with those guys day and night, and not have to be around mysterious nuts like yourself that don’t make sense and I can’t understand. I can see this cephscope has been fucked over, but you’re not telling me anything. Are you trying to allege that Bob Arctor did it, to his own expensive equipment, or are you not? What are you saying? I wish I was living over at New-Path, where I wouldn’t haveto go through this meaningful shit I don’t dig day after day, if not with you then with some burned-out freak like you, equally spaced.” He glared.
    “I did not damage this transmitting unit,” Barris said speculatively, his whiskers twitching, “and doubt seriously that Ernie Luckman did.”
    “I doubt seriously if Ernie Luckman ever damaged anything