LIGHTNOVELONLINE 022
Sometime around two hundred years ago, scientists on Earth invented a pill that could eliminate gender dysphoria.
The news media celebrated it as a medical breakthrough and a revolutionary accomplishment that won the Nobel Prize.
A patient merely needed to a swallow a single black pill, and poof!
Their gender dysphoria would vanish overnight.
A transgender person was no longer transgender anymore, at least in the sense that they were no longer plagued by the crippling misery and sadness that surrounding their bodies, pronouns, and societal roles. The pill would "fix" those dysphoric thoughts, and the patient would end up cisgender and "normal" like everyone else.
Political protections for transgender people evaporated within months.
The black pill became the new standard of care among endocrinologists, and it became "unethical" to perform genital reassignment surgery (GRS), since it was considered a form of "body mutilation". In this new era of advanced psychiatric medications, a transgender person only existed due to their individual choice. Conservative pundits lambasted LGBT individuals as purposeful social deviants, and the societal pendulum shifted south. Mainstream culture turned against transgender people, and people were pilloried if they refused to take their medication.
It was possible for employers to fire their workers for being transgender, just like it was possible for companies to fire customer service employees for their body piercings and visible tattoos.
Bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination reached an all-time high.
Pharmaceutical companies soon developed pills that could "cure" homosexuality and other minority sexual orientations. There was talk about homosexuality vaccines and other prenatal interventions that could detect whether a fetus's brain was malformed. Parents could test their infants for health issues so that life-changing treatments could be initiated early.
Over half of all global citizens took some form of blood pressure, cholesterol, or diabetes medication.
Around one third of the world population had medications to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, or autism.
One in every five people were prescribed pills to treat a LGBT disorder.
A disorder.
A problem to be fixed.
That was what it had become.
It was considered a widespread disease.
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I don't have any clear memory of what happened for the rest of the night.
I was probably semi-conscious, but a thick fog gradually crept over my mind, and I felt my body melt into a hazy cloud. I have this vague recollection that @Priscilla fed me dinner while I was drugged — those dry catfood pellets that honestly tasted like cardboard — but I don't remember anything that she said.
I think she asked me a lot of questions, and I ended up reflexively answering her without really meaning to.
The pill must have contained some kind of hypnotic drug that made me particularly compliant.
Ordinarily, I don't like to talk to strangers while I'm in my cat form.
I have a telepathy skill that allows me to silently communicate with anyone I'm touching, but I ordinarily try to keep this ability hidden. Slavers adjust the severity of their restraints according to their knowledge of the prisoner's capabilities. If they knew that I could still speak while gagged or while transformed in my animal form, they would obviously find another method to silence me.
Honestly, I was probably short-sighted.
If I knew in advance that @Priscilla intended to interrogate me, I probably would have been able to resist the effects of the potion better. However, I had focused nearly all of my concentration on thinking about @Jasper. Based on @Trisha's words, I was mostly afraid that they would try to medically suppress my feelings for him, so I swallowed the pills thinking incessantly about my master.
I wasn't going to forget him no matter what they fed me.
@Jasper was the only person I cared about, and I just needed to wait until the opportunity arose for me to find him again.
So far, I had found out that they were keeping the prisoners at a place called the Penitentiary.
Everything else was temporary and unimportant.
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The next morning, I woke up to a sharp jolt inside of my body.
I yelped and tried to spring up, but my limbs felt like dead weight, and my mind was whoozy and over-medicated. A pair of unfamiliar gloved hands were holding me down on some kind of medical examination table. The bright light and smell of antiseptic was disorienting, and I slowly realized that someone was drawing my blood sample.
We weren't in @Priscilla's bedroom anymore.
At some point, she must have taken me somewhere else while I sedated.
"Do you think you can adjust the dose on the sedative, @Wren?" I heard @Priscilla's faint voice in the distance. "I think it's too strong for him. It knocked him out cleanly for the night, but he would barely stir this morning."
It felt like I was listening through a fish tank.
"@Fiie is totally healthy. Dose adjustments are an inevitable part of the process, unfortunately," the foreign voice said. "It'll be a few days until we figure out the right formula for his body. Until then, it'll probably be a good idea to bring him to the clinic every morning."
@Priscilla sounded a little worried.
"He's alright then?" She asked.
The pair of gloved hands continued to rub my head.
"The procedure was quick and painless," the woman said. "I placed small probes inside his bladder, cervix, and prostate. A faint shock in any of those places will cripple him completely, so it'll be possible to subdue him in an instant. I discussed this with @Trisha, and we decided these modifications should be sufficient to control the cat, so the restraining chains are unnecessary now."
"How is this any different from the shock collar?" @Priscilla asked.
The woman in the lab coat smiled ominously.
"Well, the main difference is that I designed it," @Wren said. "Obviously, it has more features, and it's simply a superior product."
"...Do I really want to know the details...?" The vampire girl sounded apprehensive.
The scientist smirked and placed her hands in her coat pockets.
"I can explain if you're interested," she offered.
@Prisicilla frowned.
"Aren't you busy with the Disrupter project?" @Priscilla asked, changing the topic discreetly. "Where do you find the time to invent these weird implements?"
"The Disrupter is complicated and working on it all the time gives me a headache. Torture devices and sex toys are much more fun to create. Moreover, @Fiie's implements are actually practical. It has a low magical signature and is powered by his own internal mana. Moreover, it can do interesting things like—"
"Thank you, @Wren. I really appreciate it. I think we'll take our leave now." The vampire girl interrupted her quickly.
She reached to pick me up from the examination table, but the scientist stopped her.
"Wait @Priscilla, we're not done yet."
I stiffened immediately.
The foggy cloud in my mind was beginning to clear, and I was slowly regaining consciousness.
I hissed weakly, but @Wren's gloved hand continue to pet my head reassuringly.
"I noticed that @Priscilla was carrying you around everywhere in a sack, hm? You must be tired of it. Coincidentally, I have the perfect solution. You can consider it an upgrade, special courtesy of me."
She took off the glove on her right hand and slowly traced an intricate and complicated symbol on my forehead.
"Caecitas." She muttered. "Nedris pruva om to'msh."
Everything immediately plunged into darkness.
I blinked several times in bewilderment.
It was a curse of blindness.
@Wren was a witch.
She turned to @Priscilla and passed her a small pebble.
I realized that I could somehow still see the pebble in my vision, even though everything else was black. It glowed faintly in my mind, and I was conscious of it even if I wasn't facing in the same direction as the marker. When the witch moved the pebble around, I could also see a dim trace of its past trajectory.
It was like an invisible red string floating in the darkness.
"This is so @Fiie won't lose track of you," she said cheerily. "Neat little trick, right? A quality of life improvement."
⚘ ⚘ ⚘
