“I told you not to do it,” The Voice said. But the pain in her wrist was worse than the headache. Of course she threw her right arm out to break the fall, and she still hit her head on the floor. She flew across the room, seemingly in slow motion. The woman came off the stool and shoved Katie. Her arm rose, as if of its own accord, and poured the pop on the woman’s bleach-blonde, over-processed head. Katie tried to stop herself, but she couldn’t. She watched herself do it as The Voice kicked in. She didn’t remember, later, what the woman said that triggered her. She was on too many medications to mess with alcohol. They were there to sing karaoke, and Katie McGowan was ‘sober,’ as usual. They were on Earth, at a bar near Champaign, Illinois, part of the Chicago metropolis, which had sprawled across the Midwest and even down to Cairo, Illinois, where it merged with the equally sprawling Greater Memphis Area. He has no clue how badly he hurt her, how thoroughly he’s broken her trust-or that he may not get her back at all. He always intended to take her back as soon she had the surgery. Scott is elated when he hears he’s going to be a father and naturally assumes Katie will take him back.

She can’t have the surgery or take her meds until after the baby’s born. In a last-ditch, tough love effort to force her to get the chip, her husband, Scott takes her to the Moon and divorces her when she decks him.

Everyone is telling her she should go to the Moon and have microchip surgery, but she’s afraid she’ll become an automaton. Katie McGowan is bi-polar, and she’s run the gamut of medications. Abandoned, pregnant, and bi-polar, Katie McGowan’s going crazy on that God.

Rock Crazy by Rochelle Weber