This chapter is dedicated to Cassie. Thank you for all of your support!
Eleven days before...
"Yeah, well they haven't met my parents!" Marcie's words weren't the easiest to understand. It wasn't just her accent, although that was usually enough of a problem to anyone who didn't know her. It was the lisp which made her near-incomprehensible. We were still getting used to how we sounded, and even if we tried not to laugh at her misfortune we might have trouble occasionally working out what she was actually saying. Our friend had been so eloquent for most of the time we'd known her, but for the last few months her lips and tongue seemed to get in the way at every opportunity, turning every single word she said into a confused mix of syllables and saliva.
"Wth mmth cwrth–" Jodie started to reply, and I punched her on the arm. Maybe a bit harder than I should have, but I could see that Marcie was already upset about the events she was relating, and she didn't need somebody else making fun of her. It was hard not to, when her speech sounded so much like a little kid only just learning to talk, but of course that was the point. The punishment pill was a punishment for juvenile delinquents that was supposed to completely destroy their social life and lose them the respect of all their friends. There were a dozen different combinations of fancy nanotech computational proteins it could contain; targeting different parts of the body in different ways, but every one guaranteed to be lethal to a teen's sense of self-respect. In an age where juvenile centres and youth prisons were overflowing, the government had decided to legalise an alternative that should be a real deterrent.
And it would have worked fine. If Todd Becker had been given the pill, his skater buddies might have laughed at him a little and toned his ego down. If he'd known it was a possibility, he might have thought twice before beating on Clint Walsh. But Todd wasn't the kind of guy who got the punishment pill. Todd was the kind of guy who could do no wrong, whose doting father would explain to the school bullying committee that accidents happen when you're skateboarding, it's not a personal thing. And when a slightly nerdy kid brings his unfashionable board to the park, it's a natural and predictable accident that he might fall off in a way that pins his hands behind his back and brings his face into contact with the football star's face a few dozen times.
Todd Becker would never be punished by his father. And when someone who cared a little too much about justice dared the macho idiot to do an impossible stunt that ended with him losing three teeth, his father would be right there at the bullying committee complaining that his son was being picked on. No, Todd was never the one who would be punished. The punishment pill was for people like Marcie, whose parents' moral compasses had somehow got stuck in the nineteenth century, and only scrolled forward to the present day if they could find some new high-tech means of child control to supplement a regimen of unfair restrictions and corporal punishment.
"So what happened?" Nikki asked. It was the question we all wanted the answer to. While she waited for her answer, she took one step forward from the bench so she was standing right by the railings. Six levels of balcony shops stretched out below, all the way down to the big fountain on the ground floor. Nikki smiled and flicked a coin into the big "Mercer Center: With Pride" banner that hung over the gap. We watched the tiny metal speck bounce off taut canvas, tumble, bounce again, and then skitter down the banner all the way to the ground. Right in the centre of the fountain; we could just about see the splash as it hit the surface down below, almost right in the centre. Jodie gave a little cheer, and then turned back to see if Marcie had found her voice yet.
"I was supposed to meet Elspeth–" That word was particularly hard for Marcie right now, in all the time since she'd had the pill, she had never once abbreviated her girlfriend's name. It was a sign of how much she cared. "She was coming to our house. You know, since Mum decided I can't be trusted with a cellphone. So I'm waiting in the lounge, but Mum thinks it's a nice day and I should be outside."
"You could tell her you're waiting for your date to show up?" Jodie suggested, but I already knew that wasn't likely to be an option for Marcie. Her parents weren't big on listening to reason.
"She didn't even tell me until I was already on the way out. She's got that subliminal child trainer box plugged into the TV, you know? I was watching the news, trying to pass time in a useful way, you know? And then I glance away and out of the corner of my eye I see those giant words flash up on the screen. GO OUTSIDE. And as soon as I noticed one, I realised how antsy I'd been getting for the last twenty minutes, pacing and couldn't stay in my seat. That's how it gets you, you know? Once you notice it's there, you realise the urge has been building up for ages and you just can't fight it. Once I noticed how it had been building up it was like a hundred times stronger. I couldn't sit still, couldn't wait another second. Couldn't even grab a drink on the way out, I needed to be outside."
"So now Ellie's going to your place to meet you, and you can't tell her where you are?" Jodie was sceptical; but I'd experienced that subliminal thing once or twice myself. When Marcie's Mom decided that her friends had stayed over too long, or that it wasn't fair to help her study when she'd come back to school after being sick. It really was that powerful, and a real pain in the ass.
"I texted her," I said. "Figured it would be something like that."
"Thanks babe," Marcie gave me a theatrical peck on the cheek to show her gratitude, and I grinned. No matter what the older generation might want to do to us, things would be good so long as friends stuck together.