Chapter 10

2017 a.d.
A Day in the Life of...

“Now, Katie, this won’t hurt a bit,” Dr. McCarty promised cheerfully.

Fifteen-year-old Katie flinched back anyway as she glared at that wicked, sharp-looking ‘thing’ held delicately in the doctor’s white-gloved hand.

“Now, sweetie,” Tanya said in the sugary voice she often used on her youngest daughter. “Frankie had his last year; now it’s your turn. I have an implant, and it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“I don’t want it!” Katie insisted. “Don’t I have any rights? You can’t force me – it’s against the law.”

Tanya sighed. Katie was always the rebellious one. “Sweetie, in this day and age, I’d feel a lot better if you’re wearing a Body Monitor. It’s not a snoop like your friend Carrie says. It’s a tool, and it’s for your protection. If you come up missing, I want to know how to find you.”

“Mom,” Katie argued, “I’m not going to run away again! I promise!”

“Honey,” Tanya replied, her voice sounding a little more tired, “There’s somebody out there who is kidnapping and murdering teenage girls. This newly developed Body Monitor is the only defense we have until we catch him.”

“He hasn’t murdered anyone I know,” Katie sulked. “Besides, what makes you think I can be...”

Her mother’s sudden frown silenced the young girl. She was special, as were all the members of her family, and that ‘special-ness’ was a secret among them. Not even their family doctor knew.

Katie had been about to say, ‘What makes you think I can be killed, anyway?’ After all, neither her mother nor her older brother and sister knew what she did in private. In fact, the tiny incision in the side of her neck where the Body Monitor would be placed would be a minor trauma compared to some of the things she’d privately done to herself while exploring the capabilities and sensations of her sexually developing young body.

“Alright, fine!” Katie said sullenly, suddenly changing her mind. “Put it in!”

The doctor moved smoothly, but quickly, before the moody young child changed her mind again. A tiny sting, and it buried itself in the side of her neck. Dr. McCarty quickly put a bandage over the tiny hole to prevent any blood from leaking down the girl’s neck and upsetting her further.

“Now check the point of insertion tonight before she retires,” Dr. McCarty said to Tanya. “If there is any redness or swelling, call me and I’ll meet you here in my office. Don’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Tanya said, smiling. She knew, as well as Katie, that the wound was already healed under that bandage. That was their family secret.

“Alright, then,” the doctor replied, then to Katie, “Okay, sweetie, let’s see how it’s working, shall we?”

She handed Katie what appeared to be a purse. Katie opened it. On the inside was a surface that was camouflaged to look like a mirror.

“I can use this like a regular purse, right?” Katie asked, deciding to cooperate with the bullying grownups.

“Of course!” the doctor said cheerfully. “Now, you need to imprint your voice pattern. Press on the corner of the mirror ... that’s right ... Now, give your monitor a code name.”

“Hot Dog,” Katie replied, saying the first words that came into her mind. That was her nickname for her brother, Frank, when she was feeling friendly toward him. She had nicknames for everyone – usually more than one nickname per person depending on her mood at the moment.

“Good! Now, let go,” the doctor said. “Okay, let’s test it, shall we, sweetie?”

Katie grimaced, knowing they only called her ‘sweetie’ when they wanted something from her (usually her cooperation), then nodded her head. “What do I do?”

“When you want to check your Body Monitor,” explained the doctor, “just open your purse, look into the mirror and say the code word.”

Katie sat down and reopened her new purse. “Hot dog.” A display appeared, showing her heart rate, blood pressure and GPS coordinates.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked it. Another line appeared, showing the same GPS coordinates.

“Where’s Dad?” Katie asked, knowing that her father didn’t have one of these devices implanted on him. Nothing happened. She looked up at her mother.

“We’ll see that he gets one, Honey,” Tanya promised.

Katie smiled, realizing that she could keep track of everyone in her family with this little device. The downside of that, of course, was that anyone who had one of these could also keep track of her.

“Where’s Frankfurter?” she asked it. Another line showing her brother’s coordinates replaced the line displaying her mother.

“How come it knew who to look for?” Katie asked, perplexed.

“This is connected to your home system,” the doctor explained. “Your Body Monitor probably asked your home system who ‘Frankfurter’ was, and got the information that way.”

“Hmm,” Katie replied, thinking. “Okay.”

She got up and walked toward the door. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ were no longer part of the teenager’s vocabulary – not for the last year or so, anyway.

“Oh,” Katie said, suddenly remembering why her mother was insisting on this invasion of her privacy. “What happens if I get attacked or something and I’m not carrying this purse?”

“Your Body Monitor continually transmits your location and your vital signs to your home system,” the doctor explained. “The transmitter is in your purse. So long as that is within fifty feet of where you are, your location is known. That way, you don’t have to carry your purse around with you at home. An alarm will signal if your home system decides that you are in danger.”

“Wild,” the young teenager replied, bored again. Then she turned and left.

Tanya caught up with her at the elevator. “That wasn’t so bad, was it, sweetie?” she asked in her sugar voice.

Katie turned her head and looked up at her mom. “It feels funny,” she said, scrunching her shoulder and bunching up her neck muscles.

“I know,” Tanya admitted. “Mine does, too.”

“I don’t get it,” Katie said. “You’re always like – It’s us against the world don’t invade our privacy go way and leave us alone! Now, you’ve hooked us into the citywide system that monitors everybody everywhere they go! You can’t even drive your own car anymore! And I’ve always looked forward to that! They come up with these Monitor devices and suddenly you just lay down like a whipped dog and do what they say! That’s really disappointing, Mom.”

“Katherine,” Tanya replied quietly, using her daughter’s given name to let her know that she was being very serious. “This is the price we pay for living around other people. There has to be some control. The reason for that, is ... well, there are people out there who aren’t as responsible as we are.

“People are not allowed to drive in the city anymore because there were too many ... independent acts of selfish behavior that were getting people injured and killed. Now, hardly anyone gets killed in a traffic accident, and traffic jams are a thing of the past.”

“But, Mom,” Katie said, trying not to sound like she was whining, “now anybody can just punch up your numbers and find out where you are! Isn’t that invasion of privacy?”

“Of course it is!” Tanya agreed. “But look at it this way – every time you use your phone or activate your personal net, your location becomes public knowledge anyway. The only advantage here is, your can always be found, no matter what kind of trouble you get into. You can be rescued without having to call 911.

“Please try to understand that this is an incredible load of worry off my mind, will you, Honey?” Tanya pleaded.

The elevator arrived. Mother and Daughter were silent again until they were alone and walking out toward the car.

“I still don’t like it,” Katie murmured, almost to herself.

“Young lady,” Tanya said, stopping in the middle of the aisle. She smiled at her favorite daughter, then squatted down on her heels and looked up at her. “You know what I use mine for?”

Katie shook her head.

Tanya leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “It keeps me from getting pregnant!”

“Mom! Really!” Katie exclaimed, eyes wide in shocked surprise, then added as she realized, “It can do that?”

Tanya nodded, grateful that for once she had her daughter’s rapt attention. “It’s more foolproof than a morning-after pill...”

“When we get home,” she said, rising back up, “punch up the instructions for your monitor. It can do a lot of things, including letting you know if someone is monitoring you. That should take care of any concerns you have about your privacy. Okay?”

Tanya felt relieved and happy. She and her daughter were friends, again – at least for the moment. They hadn’t been friends for the last year – ever since she walked in on her daughter during one of Katie’s self-exploration sessions.

It wasn’t just the fact that the child was masturbating – it was the two dozen safety pins carefully poked through her barely-developed breasts and nipples, traveling in a shiny line down the child’s stomach and decorating the soft tissue around her little labia.

The blowup between them was so intense that it was months before either of them could even speak a civil word to the other without war breaking out all over again.

When they got home from getting her implant, Katie went directly to her room and sat down at her console. She punched up her privacy code, then read the instructions on her Body Monitor as the text and diagrams scrolled across the screen.

As she learned how to access the device’s features, she programmed them in. She set up a ‘safety zone’ outside her room. If anyone approached her bedroom door within five feet, her Body Monitor would go into ‘Alarm Mode’.

She tested it to see what ‘Alarm Mode’ felt like. It was a tiny, but very noticeable vibration in the side of her neck where the device was implanted. She had no doubt it could wake her up if she was asleep.

She also programmed it so that it wouldn’t alert other family members if her vital statistics rose suddenly unless she also spoke the word ‘help’. Now she could ‘experiment’ without alerting the entire family. She also set it so that if she suddenly became unconscious or sub-vocalized the word ‘help’ three times in a row, the alert would be sounded.

When she got to the question, ‘Do you wish to be included in the Citywide Grid?’ she entered, ‘No’. Then it asked if she wanted to be notified if someone nearby was in danger or was calling for help. She entered, ‘Yes’, figuring it was her civic duty to help someone if they were having a heart attack or something.

‘It is required that you be included in the Citywide Grid to be notified if someone nearby is in danger. Do you wish to be included in the Citywide Grid?’

Katie thought about it, feeling that she’d been tricked by the previous question, then gave in and entered, ‘Yes’.

She was finished. Her Body Monitor was programmed.

“Locate family members,” she said to the little mirror in her purse. A three dimensional diagram of her house appeared with different icons representing each person positioned somewhere in the diagram.

“When’s dinner?” she asked it. There was a delay of several seconds. Then it responded, ‘one half-hour from now’.

Katie wondered how it knew, then realized it must have accessed the home computer and calculated dinner by determining what devices were activated in the kitchen and for how long.

It was getting dark. Katie didn’t like showering then going to bed slightly damp, so she usually did it before dinner. The simple act of showering before dinner also put her in a better mood to tolerate Brother Brat-Worst and Sister Slut while she ate.

“Shower – one hundred and four degrees,” she said as she doffed her clothes and bounced through the door to her own private bathroom. The shower came on, controlled by the home computer while she pulled off her socks and threw them into the hamper. When she stepped into the shower, the water temperature was perfect.

She’d hardly soaked down her hair when her Body Monitor Alarm tickled the side of her neck.

“Crap!” she exclaimed. “Shower off!”

As the shower trickled down to nothing, she wrapped a towel around her wet body and stepped out of the bathroom. Someone was knocking on her locked bedroom door.

“What!” she exclaimed angrily. “I’m in the shower!”

It was Brother Brat-Worst. “Mom sez not to get your implant wet!”

“Shit!” Katie exclaimed to herself, then stormed over to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open.

“Take a look!” she snarled, turning her head and displaying the skin where the Body Monitor was implanted. “Anything sticking out?”