Violet woke reeking of synth and various bodily fluids. Her mouth was bone dry and filled with the taste of metal. Another morning in paradise. She’d fallen asleep with the lights on again. The brightness pierced her retinas and threatened to blow the inside of her brains out.

“Off!” she commanded. Her apartment’s lighting obeyed like the good little slave it was. She sat up and found that the pounding in her head grew worse with every pulsing heartbeat. What the hell had happened to her last night?

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the far wall and did a double-take. Who was she anymore?

No one she recognized.

Her hair was a rat’s nest. Lipstick was smeared across her mouth like a three-year-old had applied it. Dark red lipstick. Not her shade.

She pulled her lips back and nearly whimpered. Why did it hurt to smile? She probed her gums with her tongue and found stringy bits of flesh hanging from them.

She had lipstick all over her teeth as well.

She tried to lick her teeth clean and tasted metal again, like pennies.

She recognized the taste.

Blood.

She returned her stare to the mirror. Blood covered her face from the nose down.

She racked her brain for any reason why her face might be covered in blood.

She came up with nothing and instead made her way to the bathroom, a feat that primarily consisted of hopping off her elevated bed and taking exactly one and a half steps to the closet-sized lavatory that all of the identical apartments in Sector Six had.

Violet bopped the push-down knob on the sink’s faucet and dipped her hands into the cold stream of recycled water. She scrubbed her face with a secret fear that perhaps the blood would not wash off.

But it did.

The blood began to stream off, the dried pigments liquefying and leaving tracks down her chin and neck like a scene out of a horror film.

What had Becky gotten her into last night?

The bottle of pills sat on the back of the toilet next to the sink. The hand-written label read: ‘Forget Me/Nots’. She felt a twinge of guilt. She really needed to get some better friends. Some more “adult” friends.

She could almost hear her parents waxing on about it, “That’s the problem with being newly eighteen… The law defines you as an adult, but your actions aren’t necessarily ready to follow suit.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Violet picked up the bottle of pills and popped off the lid. She shut one eye and peered inside. Just as she suspected—only the hot-pink Forget Me pills remained. She’d have to swing by Becky’s and get some Nots from her if she was ever going to get some answers about what had happened last night and why the inside of her gums felt like they’d exploded inside her mouth.

Usually the Forget Me’s were for the morning after a few too many bad decisions, but the night must have gotten there first. The news feeds system-wide were all raging about the drug right now. “Where did it come from? How did it spread so quickly across the system? And most importantly, is it safe? Tune in at 8 to find out how you can protect your loved ones…”

The recreational drug was currently unscheduled, and most of the wanna-be anarchists that Violet ran with from school hoped that it would always stay that way. But who were they kidding? It was only a matter of time. The parental figures and the white wigs would never trust a drug that some corporation didn’t hold the patent for.

And that was what was so great about Forget Me/Nots—it was open-source Pharma. Some Chem-heads cooked up the recipe in a basement lab and then blasted it all over the Sol System. All you needed was access to a food-grade printer and, Presto!, you had weapons-grade party drugs.

Of course, the authorities tried to shut down the recipe downloads almost immediately, but when that failed, they moved on to seizing all the home model food printers. But the damage was already done. Huge batches were cooked up before the white wigs could seize all the printers, and the party had begun.

The drug took almost eight hours exactly to kick in. The first time was always a little nerve-racking for everyone, at least it had been for Violet. But after waking up that first time and having no memory of the night before, people’s inhibitions rapidly diminished.

There was a freedom in knowing that you could be whoever or do whatever you wanted and not be judged by the little voice in your head that usually sounded like one of your parents—telling you not to misbehave, or don’t kiss your best friend’s boyfriend. It made for the perfect shame-free living experience. If you can’t remember it, it didn’t happen. Right?

Normally, Violet would only take a Not pill about once a week, just to check in with her inner self and make sure she wasn’t getting too crazy. However, waking up with a face full of dried blood and feeling like she got punched in the face repeatedly definitely warranted finding out what the hell had happened to her last night.

Violet pulled on a pair of pants from the floor and shimmied into the shirt that was hanging on one of the hooks next to the bathroom.

She palmed the touch pad for the door and it slid open three inches before stopping. “Damn it!” she cursed. “When are they going to fix this?”

Her door had been on the fritz for two weeks and she’d put in multiple repair requests with the maintenance department. She didn’t relish the thought of having to go down to maintenance in person and talk to a real, live human being.

She cursed the entire station a few more times as she removed the panel on the wall next to her door and pulled out the hand crank. She turned the gears as fast as she could and the door slowly slid open a few more inches. When she saw it was open enough for her to slip through she stopped and stepped out into the corridor.

The halls were empty.

Strange.

She checked her terminal. It was 09:34 on a Thursday. Even if everyone was at work this morning, there were still usually a few people wandering about. She couldn’t ever remember the corridor being completely empty.

“Whatever—I don’t have time for this,” she said. She hit the touch pad on the hallway wall and her door slid shut like it was supposed to. “At least something works like it’s supposed to today.”