Reclamation Series Volume 1 for the Want of a Pill

Publisher Marketing: The Reclamation Series examines our future world, beginning in the year 2270. Via many medical advances of the past century, world health care has taken an enormous step forward, thanks to the psychs with their fancy implant machines, the drug manufacturers, and the corporation executives, who now control the world. The psych drug Pytalon coupled with their PDH (pain, drug, hypnotism) implant technology has turned civilization around-no more wars, no more criminality, and jobs for everyone! Utopia. The Total Care program provides jobs, homes, food, and clothing for everyone, using the motto "From the Cradle to the Grave." Except, the drug turns people into mindless zombies who obey their implanted commands. Worse, corp executives turn some women into their "ideal woman," called Exotic Escorts (EE women), sex doll or toys for the wealthy. The first novel, For the Want of a Pill, examines just what the world is like. Apparently, a worker on the Pytalon production line fails to inject the drug into the pill base. Those who then get these faulty pills begin to come off of the psych drug, whose withdrawal symptoms are particularly nasty, causing many to hallucinate and become "insane," sometimes murdering others. This happens to two exotic escorts, whose sponsors are vice-presidents of Pytalon Corporation, Chicago. The pair manage to survive the withdrawal symptoms and are finally able to think for themselves, the first time in eight years. They plan to flee their sponsors and start a new life. A number of disorganized underground groups exist, working to undo the terrible mess, but each has totally different motives and methods. Two young men known as Weasel and Wart are world-famous as a computer hacker and "trouble maker," respectively. Other disgruntled members of their group hijack the airliner, the two EE women, and their sponsors as they are leaving to go on their trip; they fly it into the Pytalon Corporation skyscraper, severely damaging the main production lines. In the process, they force the two EE women to flee for their lives, and Jessica and Amanda end up at the hideout of Ben and Tim, the Weasel and Wart. Yes, they fall in love and marry these two men. Fallout from the ill-conceived attack forces the four to leave their safe house and travel under the guise of corporation executives of a refrigerator manufacturing company. They meet a young woman, Lisa, who believes she has a way to get a person safely off drugs and to get the residual aftereffects of the drugs out of a person's body. However, as she graduates high school, she is implanted and drugged before the four can get to her. Still, they rescue her. The ill-conceived attack brought the Feds, the Federal Elimination Division and Security, onto the case to apprehend the terrorists. The Chicago leader is Peter Delius, one of the few people in the country not on Pytalon or implanted. While he captures those who executed the attack, he has suspicions about Ben and Tim, but Jessica and Amanda play "dumb," convincing him they had nothing to do with the terrorists. Peter has other plans though. Power corrupts him. People not on Pytalon and implanted are the ones causing the problems in today's society, he reasoned, so why not get everyone on Pytalon? By this, he means the corporation executives, who had been exempt from the beginning, along with many of the members of the Feds. Thus, he devises a clever scheme to do just that. Ben and Tim, as exempt CEOs, fall victim to Peter's plot. Having just tracked down these exotic escorts and finding Ben and Tim as their new sponsors, he decides to have the two men properly implanted. Amanda, Lisa, and Jessica rescue them and in the process, Lisa develops a method to flush the drugs from a person's body, while Jessica invents a science of the mind that desensitizes the implants and erases them, thereby offering a way to salvage the world.