Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly, like most science fiction, is a projection of the future. Its setting portrays a society that is rampant with drugs, boasting high levels of addiction, paranoia and corruption. The main protagonist, a character named Bob Arctor, plays a drug enforcement agent attempting to correct and rehabilitate a misguided population. His aim is to eradicate a narcotic called Substance D, a hallucinogen that, after extensive use, destroys the functioning capability of the brain by splitting it into two competing hemispheres. Within Arctor’s society, the government had begun a wide range monitoring program in an attempt to identify drug dealers by use of a machine called a Scanner. Arctor is assigned to monitor the activities of specific suspects on the Scanners, also to live amongst them as an undercover agent, endeavoring to discover the origins of Substance D. In this atmosphere Arctor eventually becomes addicted to the narcotic and slowly deteriorates in his mental capacities, ultimately suffering the consequences of Substance D. Another device that is important to note is a scramble suit. The scramble suit is used by drug enforcement officers to protect their true identity from outsiders as well as from inside the agency. The suit becomes a central element in the theme of personal identity and self.
Another character that is important to the story is one by the name of Donna. Donna is a drug dealer that Arctor is dating in an attempt to discover her sources of Substance D. Later in the story you find that Donna is also an undercover agent who ultimately has been using Arctor as a pawn. In the end of the story Arctor loses his mind and enters a drug rehabilitation program and unwittingly discovers that the leaders of the rehab program have been cultivating and trafficking the drug Substance D.