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Andy Becker was the head pharmacist. Well, I could count on not getting any sympathy there.
He shook hands with my Dad while not acknowledging Mum's presence, and assured them that they were doing the right thing to put an end to my delinquent streak. He also read through the forms, and told them that he was sure the price of this treatment would be a bargain for them. Because I had vandalised public property, and the mall's owners were pressing for the maximum punishment even if one of the shopkeepers was on my side. He told them about the discussion at a recent meeting of the tenants and the management, and how Mrs Yuan was being penalised for being too lenient with a vandal.
The way he told it, the punishment pill was the only thing keeping me out of court. And with the holding company's lawyers, there was a good chance I would end up in jail. As a pharmacist qualified to prescribe the treatment, he had seen this situation a hundred times before. The pill was supposed to help keep kids out of juvenile rehabilitation, but for kids over eighteen it was taken more seriously. Once my parents had offered the alternative, if I refused then the courts would see it as a sign that I had no remorse, or even that I was planning to continue with the same kinds of behaviour. Maybe there was a twenty percent chance they would give me six months in juvie for this, but the much more likely outcome, in his professional opinion, was a spell in jail and a permanent criminal record.
I thought he was exaggerating. I had looked through some law books; but they only covered the punishments that the courts could impose, not how likely they were to come out in the real world. A vast majority of the relevant cases I'd found mentioned in a search of local news online had resulted in the perpetrator going to jail; but they were also made out to be pretty bad people. Maybe that was just the way the journalists liked to spin things when they had an obvious villain of the piece; or perhaps it was because only the really bad guys would avoid taking the kids' way out. Either way, it didn't make my chances look good.
He told me to get up on the couch, lying face down, and turn towards him. I saw in Dad's eyes that he wasn't going to put up with any argument. Becker lifted down a box from the shelves at the side of the room, and I could see the HumiliX logo on the side. He set the box down on the table beside me, giving me a clear view of what was inside. There were a dozen glass tubes in there, and as the pharmacist carefully took one out I could see more clearly. Each of them was a little cluster of three sample containers, with a logo and a barcode printed near the top. First he unscrewed the cap of the longest tube, and took out a plastic rod with a swab on the end. This, he pushed into my mouth and scraped at my cheeks, presumably collecting some of my DNA. It was the same as the swabs for viral screening, but in this case the pharmacist was a lot rougher, and jabbed at the back of my throat almost like he was trying to make me throw up.
He put that into the longest of the three tubes, and then walked around the couch. I automatically half rose, and then my eyes went wide with surprise as I felt my skirt – an ugly knee-length pleated thing mandated by the school uniform – lifted up, and a sudden stab in my ass.
"We take the blood sample from relaxed muscle tissue," he said. "It's so that they have a more appropriate sample of metabolic products rather than measuring purely arterial blood." I buried my face in the pillow in front of me, and tried to ignore how careless he was being. I'd had blood drawn for tests before, and it had never hurt this much. But if it was supposed to be a punishment, I guessed there was no prize for gentleness. Or perhaps this was just his personal way of reminding me that he wanted revenge for the way he'd made himself look like a hypocrite and an idiot in front of the bullying committee.
As he took the samples, he carried on talking to my parents about the options available to them.
"There are currently twenty-three different variants of Punishment Pill technology, using different combinations of gene therapy, specific muscular suppression, and hormone uptake biasing. Different subjects may be more responsive to some of these techniques than others. For example, the 'PearShape™' weight gain dose is only safe to use on subjects with a healthy metabolic rate and within sixteen percentage points of the natural body mass selected by genetic predisposition. For this reason, HumiliX laboratories will select an adaptable programme of five to twelve viable doses. Our basic package, the semi-random dose, will have the facility prepare shots of the two most advantageous for her. One would be injected by a member of our staff, and we would then perform a simple test to ensure it is binding to the correct receptor sites within the body. If it fails to activate – which has never happened, but regulations require us to allow for the possibility – we can deliver the backup dose instead.
"However, you may also decide on the day that you would rather have some choice over the selection. You can pay a nominal fee for me to tell you which the two selected programmes are but not which is the primary, after which you can either allow the normal procedure, or you can pay an additional administrating fee of fifty-nine ninety-nine to make your choice of the two. Of course, in the case of a young vandal who has been terrorising the store owners of this mall for several months, I suspect that we would be willing to waive or discount those fees. There are also options that would allow you early access to the shortlist, with an option to select the primary and backup dose according to your own preference. But as they decrease the reliability of the process, there is a hefty surcharge to go with those, and of course they would also delay the production of the dose pack. You can also select to have up to four options excluded from the list, at a price of twenty-nine ninety-nine each."
"I think we'll go with the random one," Mum said. I could tell that she was already having second thoughts about this. "I don't want to be choosing a humiliation for my daughter."
Becker looked down at his vials then, and busied himself with organising them. The first blood sample had been taken with an old-fashioned syringe, and apparently needed to be smeared onto a card containing all kinds of reagent pads and fancy sensor electronics. That went into the second of the three vials. And then there was the second blood sample, a significantly larger one, which he told us was for the purpose of checking for any other drugs or disorders that could interfere with the process. Three little vials, containing all of my genetic information.
He held them up to the light, perhaps checking that they were sealed properly, and gave a smile.
"In addition," he said, like he was offering some kind of special deal, "there are additional shots marked as 'boosters'. We can sell these over the counter, to be used any time the delinquent child shows that she has no intention of reform. Boosters do not have the DNA-identification sensor, but instead a safety mechanism that allows them only to be used on a child who is under the effect of a compatible dose. The three types are coverage boosters, which cause topical effects such as acne to spread to a new body part, duration boosters, which extend the length of the punishment for durations between two weeks and six months, and intensity boosters, which can make the dose more embarrassing or more uncomfortable. Any of these can be purchased after the initial Punishment Pill is administered, I'll give you a price list, so you can consider it before Monday."
"I don't think that should be necessary," Mum said.
"We only want to keep her out of court," Dad added.
"So," Becker offered the leaflet to my dad, "Have you decided whether you would like to have a random selection of punishments, or to chose something which will be sufficiently degrading to ensure that she won't reoffend?"
"I think Maria is right, I couldn't be responsible for choosing my daughter's torture. Just the random one, please."
I just glared at the pharmacist's back as they settled the bill, and wished there was any way I could have avoided this.