Alternate Ending to the Soul Pill

The Squads caught up to me half a block from the water treatment plant, the tires of their dark vans squealing against the asphalt and kicking up fans of gravel. I didn’t stop running, not even when the bullets began pinging against the ground around me. I ducked down an alley I knew, too narrow for the vans, and heard the skidding of brakes and the thud of the van doors opening behind me.

I ran like my life depended on it, which indeed it did. I made it to the side door of the treatment plant, swiping my mom’s badge on the scanner and scrambling inside. Mom had never distilled a pill in her life, but she did like to talk … and my dad had taught me how to listen. I navigated the narrow walkways like a ten-year veteran, emerging at last on the catwalk dangling twenty feet over the churning, swirling whirlpool of water receiving treatment.

I rummaged in my pocket, producing the vial. The contents swirled and shone like quicksilver as I held it up to the light. I thought of my father, and of the long years missing him.

“A pill to change hearts, rather than minds,” I promised him.

“Citizen!” a buzzing, mechanically altered voice shouted from behind me. I spun, startled, and saw a whole Squad standing ready at strategic points on the catwalks, automatic rifles pointed straight at me. “Stand down!”

I smiled straight into their shielded eyes. 

Then I quaffed the vial.

Instantly, I could feel the euphoria racing through me like fire, like light, stronger than ever before and everywhere. My thoughts were too big for my body, stretching and streaming down avenues of light and possibility. I was expanding in all directions, up and down, in and out, and I stretched my arms out wide, feeling air molecules tingling against the particles composing my skin. The cool halogens overhead flared brighter, blinding bright, and I shut my eyes against them even as I felt myself joining the illumination. The rifles roared in protest, bullets shredding through my tattering form as I threw myself backwards into the maelstrom.

I never even felt the impact.

---

A few days later, Theo went to my house, hobbling on a pair of crutches and with a heavy brace on his knee. My mom answered the door, her eyes red swollen twins of his own, and her voice was hoarse and pained.

“What do you want?”

“I came to pay my respects,” he said.

“I want none of them,” she said, trying in vain to slam the door. He had shoved the tip of one crutch into it.

“Please,” he said. “We were best friends.”

“You remember that now,” she said scornfully.

“Please,” he repeated, humbly.

She glared at him a moment, then swung the door wide. “Sam’s room’s upstairs. You remember the way, I trust.”

“I do.”

She left him there, to make his slow pained crawl up the steps on his own. He did, and then stood in the doorway of my room looking around. The sunlight danced in golden motes of dust, and he staggered in, finally collapsing to sit on the bed. He looked around at my room, devoid of any other living soul; his face was drawn tight, eyes hollow and too drained for tears. As if his thoughts had weighted his head too heavy to hold aloft any longer, he dropped head to hands, shoulders hunching with dry, wracking sobs. There is a place for grief, a time when it is right and meet to acknowledge and to experience, and so he did. But the sunlight was warm, warm and golden, and in due time  he tilted his face up to it and lines that had never been there before relaxed. For no reason he could name, he poked his hand underneath the bed and rummaged for a moment. His hand emerged with one of my greatest prizes, a portion of my inheritance.

And there in the empty room, golden light seeping into his skin, Theo began to read.